Over the course of a year, a pastor at an Alabama church sexually exploited a 14-year-old girl who was entrusted to his class for adolescents for sexual abstinence. [LegalVote]. The church was warned repeatedly: first about his use of his position at a former church to gain sexual favors from other women, and then directly confronted with a lewd e-mail that he had sent to the young woman. But they refused to investigate or reconsider his position. When he was finally caught kissing the girl, he was dismissed and has been convicted of statutory rape. Due to their irresponsible refusal to investigate the pastor when they were warned, the mother has sued the church on charges of negligence.

The church, disgustingly, is planning to fight in court and will not take accountability. They claim they have no responsibility for the actions of their employee, even though they were repeatedly warned about his predatory behavior, and then they argue this as a defense: "Anne P. lives with a single mother, and there is some likelihood that the girl was exposed to promiscuity at home that may have prompted her to seek out a voluntary sexual relationship with the youth minister."

Um. What the hell? First of all, this is overt victim-blaming. We have enough child molestors making the bullshit claim that the children "initiated" and asked to be fucked by a grown man. Do we need a church to take up the same bullshit argument on their behalf? Second, it’s absolutely irrelevant. What part of "statutory rape" do they not understand? The pastor’s sexual relationship with the girl was a crime no matter what the situation was, and the church has a responsibility to look into the allegations that he abused his position in the church for sexual favors. The insults they are hurling against the girl and her mother are simply prejudicial, irrelevant bullshit.

LegalVote is asking for your opinion on the case. I’ve added my own comments below.

The D. Church’s behavior was clearly irresponsible and horrendously negligent. As an institution trusted with the care of children the Church MUST take every effort to investigate the background of members who would be spending time with children in order to protect its children’s safety. Yet rather than taking careful responsibility, D. Church has a history of employing sexually manipulative and predatory men in this position–while Rev. S. did not commit the kind of grave sexual abuse that Rev. D. did, he clearly saw his position as a safe place from which to try to manipulate women into sexual encounters.

D. Church was warned about Rev. D’s past sexually manipulative behavior. Sexual relationships with adult women certainly aren’t the same as statutory rape of a 14 year old young woman, but it does reveal a history of abusing his situation to manipulate women into sexual encounters. Even worse, they were confronted with direct evidence that he was sexually exploiting Anne P. Yet they did not even investigate the charges. I understand that they cannot simply take action without an investigation, but to not even begin the investigation is unconscionable.

Furthermore, I was disgusted to see what D. Church considers to be a defense: “Anne P. lives with a single mother, and there is some likelihood that the girl was exposed to promiscuity at home that may have prompted her to seek out a voluntary sexual relationship with the youth minister.” This is nothing more but the same old revolting blaming of the victim that has happened over and over again in sexual abuse cases. What part of "statutory rape" does D. Church not understand? It is Anne P.’s fault that Rev. D. abused his position of trust and power to manipulate and sexually exploit her, and the disgusting suggestion that D. Church is any less accountable because they think she might have been "asking for it" is revolting.

Furthermore, the mother’s failure to act may be reason for pursuing a claim of negligent child endangerment against the mother… but it is not any reason to absolve D. Church of its accountability for ignoring the sexually predatory behavior of its trusted employees.

D. Church should take accountability for its failure to act and the damage that has inflicted on one young woman. If they attempt to fight this in court, particularly on the basis of their revolting victim-blaming arguments, they will only further continue their pattern of revolting negligence and refusal to take accountability.

(link provided courtesy of one angry girl)

Brothers in Spirit

Domestic Violence: endorsed by dipshit porn stars

The Klan: endorsed by dipshit frat boys

The day after I had a perfectly lovely evening watching the vigilante-feminist classic Girls Town, and on what had been a perfectly good morning of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, I had my day ruined by this. It is such a fucking insult to the simple decency and intelligence of humankind that I can barely convince myself that it is real and not some kind of ill-conceived feminist parody. James Doolin of Dallas has set up Wife-Beaters.com T-shirts, an online catalogue selling white undershirts (often called wifebeaters) with the words Wife Beater across the breast of the shirt. The festive website features a posed background image of a man spanking a woman in his wife beater shirt, Prodigy’s song Smack My Bitch Up blaring in the background, a Wife Beater Hall of Fame including celebrity batterers, rapists, and murderers such as Ike Turner, Mike Tyson, John Wayne Bobbit, and O.J. Simpson. I wish to God I were making this up—as added jokes Doolin offers a Lil’ Beater shirt for infants, and offers a special rewarding convicted batterers: he will send a second shirt at half price if you enclose proof of a domestic violence offense you committed.

Look, I know this dipshit is trying to be provocative. I know that he’s exploiting controversy to sell his dumb-assed product. But what the fuck is wrong with him that he could possibly even begin to think this is remotely amusing? Listen, in the United States there are three times more shelters for animals than there are for battered women. One out of every four women will suffer partner violence in her lifetime. The overwhelming majority of murders, stalkings, rapes, assaults, and all other forms of violence against women are committed by their partners or spouses. I have seen domestic violence inflicted on too many people I love—a friend’s sister was sent to the emergency room by her stepfather beating the shit out of her; in my own family, a cousin and aunt of mine were viciously beaten by a motherfucker who thought wife beating was not a big deal. And Doolin thinks that this is all hy-larious? Look, bucko, not everything is a joke. This shit has a very real, blood-soaked, meaning. And I wish I had some words other than inarticulate swearing to express how horrendous, how enraging this is. I’m sure it’s really fucking funny to you, Doolin. We’ll see how funny it is when it’s someone you love in the emergency room.

For further reading:

• GT 11/14/2001 on the moral crippling of laid-back liberalism
• More on laid-back liberalism and why we need activism
• GT 8/1/2001 Partner violence rampant in teenage dating
• Alabama Coalition Against Domestic Violence: The Facts about Domestic Violence

Take action! Write James Doolin at his oh-so-droll e-mail address bruised@wife-beaters.com and let him know exactly what you think of him. Then, go to StopFamilyViolence for what you can do to help stop domestic violence. Finally, if you have any money, please consider contributing to the Alabama Coalition Against Domestic Violence or your own state’s chapter of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence so that they can continue to do their life-saving work in providing safehouses for battered women.

For the past 5 years feminists have been doing most of the work in understanding and combatting the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan is one of the largest and most firmly-established anti-Taliban resistance groups in the world. The Feminist Majority Foundation’s Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan has been the authority in the US on the Taliban regime for nearly five years (Eleanor Smeal has given briefings to Congress on the topic and has testified before a joint hearing of two U.S. Senate Foreign Relations subcommittees). Acclaimed journalist Saira Shah lived undercover as an Afghan woman (with the assistance of RAWA) to make her groundbreaking documentary, Beneath the Veil. Because the first victims of the Taliban were women, women and women’s groups, abroad and also in the U.S., are the most credible authorities on the Taliban regime.

And yet, somehow or another it ended up happening that only 12% of television programs have featured women as experts on the post-September 11 crises [FMF], even after the U.S. alleged the complicity of the Taliban in the attacks. Instead, they are trotting out the predictable crowd of old white male pundits: generals, retired CIA operatives, State Department cronies. In the time since September 11, I have seen networks, without a trace of irony, put Bob McNamara, Henry Kissinger, and Oliver North in front of the camera as experts on what we ought to do about international terrorism. Well, I guess they ought to know–when it comes to terrorism, maybe it takes one to know one!

So, while the media drumbeat for the war continues it’s the same old cock-swinging commandos droning on about Afghanistan. The same CIA and State Department cronies who propped up the Mujahedeen and the Taliban in the first place, who trained Osama bin Laden because they believed that foreign jihadi were more reliable opponents of the pro-Soviet regime than locals. And since women’s voices are being silenced, no-one much seems to be pointing out that Afghan women were the first and most horrifically victimized by the Taliban regime. That Afghan women, who are imprisoned in their homes and banned from driving or travelling without a male relative on pain of death, cannot escape the cluster bombs dropping over their heads. That women continue to be oppressed our equally thuggish allies in the Northern Alliance (who are nothing more than the old Mujahedeen). That women have repeatedly been cut out of the tribal councils on forming a new government, and the U.S. government can’t be bothered to give a damn whether or not equity for women is brought up as an issue in the formation and constitution of a post-Taliban State.

The mealy-mouthed monologue of the corporate/government-colonized newsmedia has been parroting the words of feminists that they ignored for years–deploying a weak brand of pop feminism against the Taliban to keep the war fervor high. And yet, somehow, it seems that the actual women are not being included in the dialogue, and the actual needs facing women in Afghanistan are not being discussed.

What a fucking surprise.

feminist media watch has returned with a new URL. Watch this space: the awesome woman that brought us FMW is hosting the returned FMW on her developing site, f-word.org. It’s sure to be very cool.

Despite their continuing slide into uselessness, Salon has put out a very important article that you don’t need their premium service to access. Janelle Brown writes on the struggle of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) against the Taliban regime and their brutal gender apartheid. RAWA continually risks torture and execution defying the Taliban through underground girls’ schools within Afghanistan, videotape footage and photographs documenting Taliban atrocities to the outside world, and other direct action against the regime. Sadly, the United States is currently deciding to side with the thugs of the Northern Alliance – a mishmash of the old Mujahedeen and pro-Soviet thugs who blew Afghanistan to hell for two decades with their occupations and civil wars – rather than with RAWA. Last time we propped up the Mujahedeen, we got the blood-soaked mess that Afghanistan is in now; is it too much to ask that we learn from obvious mistakes within the past 10 years?