Well, Jason Bourne, he ain’t.

The reality is that a man has been accused of date-rape by two women. That man also happens to be committed to actual government transparency at all costs, having leaked two major sets of government documents to international press in the past year.

We have to resist the urge to think of him as this underdog hero, because really, what we have is just one guy and two acts on either end of the spectrum of human integrity.

When Assange’s date rape charges broke, I’ll admit that I thought it smelled ratty–it was too convenient, the charges too hard to verify–and I wasn’t the only one. Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore have been two of the biggest-name progressives to call bullshit on Assange’s charges. Moore wrote an extensive piece for HuffPo, citing Sweden’s abysmal record of not following up on date-rape charges before now, and publicly declared that he would post money for Assange’s bail.

It felt like good, sexy journalism then–Moore, himself a lover of ‘gotcha’ tactics, digging up the numbers to defend Assange, this silver-haired symbol of Freedom and Truth, against Big Evil Censoring Government.

But that wasn’t really what was going on. Moore didn’t reveal anything about government conspiracies or Assange’s innocence. All it really did was show that we still think that rape is something only committed by villains, that someone we know, like, and even respect, couldn’t possibly rape anyone.

That is an idea that we all have to get over as soon as possible.

It’s hard. I have a brother, and a father, and lots of friends with penises. It would be easy to make the (alarmist) leap to the conviction that all men have a rapist lurking inside them, which I don’t believe is true.

What I do think is true is that when a woman accuses someone of rape, we can’t let our feelings about that person allow us to dismiss it. As Michael Moore later said on Rachel Maddow’s show, “Every woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted or raped has to be, must be, taken seriously. Those charges have to be investigated to the fullest extent possible. For too long, and too many women have been abused in our society, because they were not listened to, and they just got shoved aside.”

Femme fatales and pure heroes only exist in the movies. Real life is much more complicated, and subtle, and nuanced. We need our thinking to reflect that.

Electras Talk Back-Feministing’s response (two editors are quoted-one of whom is misquoted-in Faludi’s article)

The Faludi article in full (because who subscribes to Harper’s?)

Who knows how many beans fit in that jar!

That had me pretty down. I mean, no one wants to look at the people who are in charge of what you get to do and not do and think, “You really couldn’t give less of a shit about making peoples’ lives better, could you?” It’s depressing. And then I read about Dan Savage‘s new project, called “It Gets Better”.

Born from yet another story of a gay kid in rural nowhere killing himself, the It Get’s Better project is a series of video submissions from queer people who got out, moved away, and are living lives they love. Free and easily accessible, it’s meant to give other isolated queer kids something to look forward to; someone besides the jerkoffs in their high schools to listen to; and someone like them that they can look up to.

This project just reminded me that, even if the government isn’t going to help us, we can still help each other.

When I logged on to Craigslist after I first read about this story, I honestly didn’t notice much of a difference. Granted, I’ve never gotten a hooker off the site, but it always seemed to me that casual encounters afforded plenty of room to buy and sell pretty much anything (100 roses for a blowjob anyone?), and that was still up and running.

Craigslist was pressured by 17 attorney generals to take down the section in an open letter, which cited child trafficking and, weirdly enough, rampant prostitution as their justification.

The gesture seems totally hollow to me–if you want to take steps to get rid of child traffickers, you don’t scatter the sex workers to various dark corners of the internet–and, after knowing why the asked it to be taken down, makes Craigslist’s noodley acquiesence that much lamer.

Maybe it did make a dent in in child trafficking, but all it really seems to have accomplished is to make it harder for young women to earn a little extra scratch without having to wait tables. Which, frankly, ain’t that big of a deal.

From here, it just looks like another sting by the morality police who don’t want people to suck cock for money. It’s not the most wholesome prospect, but that’s not the point. The point is that it shouldn’t be anybody’s business if you want to accept “100 roses” for a blow job. By letting the vice squad railroad them, Craigslist just reinforced the idea that strangers ‘who know better’ have the right to run your life.

Jan 12: Jennifer Love Hewitt goes on George Lopez’s late night show. Talks about how before she vejazzled, she felt like this:

and how after, she felt like this:

Jan 12: Anti-vajazzling sentiment grips the Internet. Hubbub decreases exponentially as bloggers get distracted by hipster puppies.

Feb 3: The Wikipedia article on vajazzling goes up. Mons-spangling has officially arrived!

Feb 24: Girl gets vejazzled, blogs about it. Includes the following photo documentation:

It's a pikachu!

Internet hubbub recommences with vigor.

Feb 25: Gawker deigns to acknowledge potential vejazzling trend. Informal poll of male reactions include “a mixture of horror and curiosity”.

Feb 25: Vajazzling first appears on the seminal cultural publication, Head.

March 23: Jennifer Love Hewitt (a.k.a Aman-duh)’s book, which includes an entire chapter about vejazzling, is released. Mediocre sales are predicted.

]]> http://headmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/vajazzling/feed/ 0 myhenderson images Unknown 18 http://headmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/from-the-ether/ http://headmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/from-the-ether/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:51:21 +0000 myhenderson http://headmagazine.wordpress.com/?p=108 ]]> Two things given to me from the bosom of the internet:

http://sexisnottheenemy.tumblr.com/

A really cool, really dirty photo/musings blog. It makes me grateful that my office has a door.

the other is this:

http://dir.salon.com/topics/american_love/

a collection of oral stories about love that Salon ran last year (there’s a featured transcript of a polyamorous couple today on the Life section’s main page). I just learned about it now because the guy who did all the interviews has recently compiled them into a book, that, now that I know it exists, I’m looking forward to reading.

I’ve got such a boner for regular people being sexy in a way that’s totally honest and natural for them, especially since it usually ends up being dirtier than the stuff Vivid comes up with.

The study split  a group of 12 year old African American students from urban public schools in the Northeast into four sections to participate in four different sex-ed seminars: abstinence only, safe-sex, comprehensive (where safe sex and abstinence are taught) and healthy living (a control group about brushing your teeth and getting enough sleep). Team Jemott tracked these kids for the next two years to see who had sex and who hadn’t.

Here’s who he found knocking boots: 33% of the Abstinence kids, 42% of the Comprehensive kids, 47% of the Toothbrushers, and 52% of the Safe Sex kids. And, get this, Jemott reported that none of the courses has significant effect on condom use. Isn’t that weird? And counter-intuitive? So much so that it makes you want to take a closer look at the study to find out why that is?

Addendum from the study: The “relatively small number of sexually active adolescents limited the statistical power to test the effects of the safer sex and comprehensive interventions on condom use. Therefore, effects of these interventions on condom use were likely underestimated in this trial”

Ah, there it is.

And, to all the smug bloggers, before you say ‘I told you so!’, consider the following:

Jemott relied on the students themselves to report whether or not they had had sex (is oral sex sex? What about anal? Does it count if he pulled out?). This kind of data collection can be a little unreliable, even if you aren’t dealing with 14 year old kids.

Another thing is that the abstinence-only kids were exposed to a very different program than the one that usually springs to mind when you hear ‘abstinence-only’. All moral and religious language was removed from the curriculum; students were encouraged to wait ‘until they were ready’ rather than until they got married; sex was not talked about as a dirty or sinful thing and condom use wasn’t discouraged. Bush-era sex education classes (the ones that all the abstinence-only classes don’t work studies are based on) were infused with that kind of religious language. I remember my high school sex class consisted of pert 26 year olds pulling petals off a rose (i.e. me/my vagina)  for every hypothetical fuck and making us sign virginity pledges. That’s the kind of approach that doesn’t work. Talk to kids like they are thinking, feeling people and it’s no surprise that they listened.

Not even a Beast would want you, you dirty whore!

Still, the success of abstinence-only over comprehensive education in Jemott’s study is based on keeping kids from having sex. If that’s what we want, why don’t we bring back bundling and chastity belts? Because teenagers who aren’t allowed to experiment with sex grow up to be weird, maladapted adults who stand too close to you on the bus is why. Sex is part of a natural, healthy personhood, so I wonder why Jemott used virginity as his measure of success rather than, say, the number of STD transmissions, or the number of people who regretted their decision to have sex, or the number of unplanned pregnancies?

Truth be told, I  really like this study, as would anybody who is invested in good sexual education for kids. Now we know, or at least have a better idea of, how young teenagers respond to different approaches to teaching sex. The problem is that it’s a study on a hot-button issue that, if not understood properly, can support one agenda over another.

Totally gets Christianity

What became the Easiest and Most Obvious Trial of the Year was almost a benchmark in the anti-abortion/pro-choice screaming match over the ‘rights of a fetus’. Roeder believed that he had to kill Tiller in order to save the lives of future unborn fetuses, so his lawyers attempted to put together a defense based around the idea of necessity.  The necessity argument is for people who are placed in a situation where they have no choice but to break the law (it’s murder, but not murder-murder). If accepted, the jury could have charged Roeder with voluntary manslaughter (a lesser crime than first degree murder) as well as given the anti-abortionists another argument for overturning Roe vs Wade.

The judge, thankfully, actually studied the law and declared the necessity defense invalid, partially based on the fact that abortion is still legal in the United States.

At the end of the day, Roeder is going to jail (hella jail, actually. The minimum sentence is life without the possibility of parole for 25 years), and the courts remain steadfast in upholding the law of the land.

I’ve been neglectful about maintaining the blog, because I was never really sure I wanted Head to be a blog in the first place. I always had big dreams of a sexy, clever print magazine in independent coffee shops then in its own little street box next to the Phoenix then Fairchild Publishing calls but they want to ‘tone it down for mass audiences’ so I reject their offer but then NPR wants me on the show and I write a book and it becomes a sleeper hit with sex reform advocates and people call me in to consult on sex education curriculums and then I go on tour andandand…

…and I get writers block, because that kind of thinking keeps you from creating anything that isn’t exactly to your vision. Which is dumb. So, I’m going to do this blog because it’s fun and it’s important to me, Ira Glass or no Ira Glass.

* As much vigor I can muster now that I have a job job, an apartment to help clean, and a live-in boyfriend who needs lovin’