Precious and Fragile Things

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"So what is going to happen after a court hearing? If he is a predator he is still going to prey. If he is locked up for a few months, he is still going to target her. In my professional experience, separation is the best solution," Welner said on "Good Morning America" this morning. Welner suggested that if you cannot immediately escape to a location where the stalker can't find you, ask your neighbors and your workplace security to be your eyes and ears.

"Get yourself escorted to the parking lot, or escorted [into work] until the courts can make a difference or until laws change to allow civil commitment of people who are a danger to someone in the community. But the key thing is [to] limit your communication. Be very specific. Get separation, and until you can get separation, don't allow yourself to be alone," Welner said. [Emphasis Mine]

At that hearing, on Jan. 12, Tagle went before Judge David Mazurek in the Joshua Tree courthouse to show cause for a restraining order. “…On Dec. 31, we were doing our exchange, and he proposed to me, and I said no. He got angry and stole my phone and pushed me down. I made a police report about that,” Tagle told the judge, according to a transcript.

Garcia told the judge the report was “falsely made up.” Mazurek denied Tagle the restraining order. “If I grant the restraining order, how do you think that’s going to help with respect to you two being able to raise Wyatt together or work together to make sure Wyatt grows up happy and healthy?” the judge asked, according to the transcripts.

Asked about an e-mail in which he confessed to hitting Tagle, Garcia told the judge he had slapped her during a fight, but it was Tagle’s fault for “pushing and pushing and pushing until she could get something from me.” Tagle pointed out she was nine months pregnant when Garcia hit her.

“I kind of get an idea of what’s going on,” Mazurek said. He denied the restraining order, saying, “I don’t think that Mr. Garcia poses a threat to Ms. Tagle.” Mazurek went on to suggest Tagle might have ulterior motives for alleging domestic violence. “I get concerned when there’s a pending child custody and visitation issue and in between that, one party or the other claims that there’s some violence in between. It raises the court’s eyebrows because based on my experience, it’s a way for one party to try to gain an advantage over the other,” he said, according to the transcripts.

Of all the varieties of irritating comment out there, the absolute most annoying has to be “Why can’t you just watch the movie for what it is??? Why can’t you just enjoy it? Why do you have to analyze it???”

If you have posted such a comment, or if you are about to post such a comment, here or anywhere else, let me just advise you: Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Shut your goddamn fucking mouth. SHUT. UP.

First of all, when we analyze art, when we look for deeper meaning in it, we are enjoying it for what it is. Because that is one of the things about art, be it highbrow, lowbrow, mainstream, or avant-garde: Some sort of thought went into its making — even if the thought was, “I’m going to do this as thoughtlessly as possible”! — and as a result, some sort of thought can be gotten from its reception. That is why, among other things, artists (including, for instance, James Cameron) really like to talk about their work.

ginmar

We're so completely incapable of respecting women that we don't realize the heroic odds against which women labor to lead full lives. And, God, I'm so damned sick of idiots who whine, "But don't you believe women should take basic precautions?! All it is is locking a door....or wearing pants....or not drinking....or not having a life......:" There's a sadism to the ever-increasing list of restrictions under which women must labor, and you can just bet if a woman dared to have some fun, and a man raped her, she'd get blamed---not the predator who's the boy next door, or the guy next cubicle, or the neighbor across the street.

And what simple precautions are those? The Army likes to cite a figure of----OMG! 52% of all rapes involve alcohol! But...what about the 48% that don't? Those are sober men raping sober women, but once that 52% shows up, nobody wants to hear about anything else. Women shouldn't have any fun at all, and if they do, they'll get punished. And everybody will gloat, because let's face it, that's what it is.

Here's the precautions that people think women should take: don't wear mini skirts, high heels, walk at night, keep your keys poked out between your fingers, don't park in ramps, don't wear overalls, long hair, ponytails, drink with guys, go to parties, and in short, don't have fun. Live in fear, ladies, is the message, and then people will gloat because, hey, somebody's got to suffer, and isn't that women are supposed to do? If you avoid getting raped, your life will be so miserable that you might as well be in purdah. But we're so much better than the Taliban, mind you!

lupabitch

Women who are taught not to speak up too loudly or too forcefully or too adamantly or too demandingly are not going to shout “NO” at the top of their goddamn lungs just because some guy is getting uncomfortably close.

Women who are taught not to keep arguing are not going to keep saying “NO.”

Women who are taught that their needs and desires are not to be trusted, are fickle and wrong and are not to be interpreted by the woman herself, are not going to know how to argue with “but you liked kissing, I just thought…”

Women who are taught that physical confrontations make them look crazy will not start hitting, kicking, and screaming until it’s too late, if they do at all.

Women who are taught that a display of their emotional state will have them labeled hysterical and crazy (which is how their perception of events will be discounted) will not be willing to run from a room disheveled and screaming and crying.

Now, you want to become acquainted with a woman you see in public. The first thing you need to understand is that women are dealing with a set of challenges and concerns that are strange to you, a man. To begin with, we would rather not be killed or otherwise violently assaulted.

“But wait! I don’t want that, either!”

Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for women, it is. When I go on a date, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police. My activities after dark are curtailed. Unless I am in a densely-occupied, well-lit space, I won’t go out alone. Even then, I prefer to have a friend or two, or my dogs, with me. Do you follow rules like these?

So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this man rape me?

Do you think I’m overreacting? One in every six American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. I bet you don’t think you know any rapists, but consider the sheer number of rapes that must occur. These rapes are not all committed by Phillip Garrido, Brian David Mitchell, or other members of the Brotherhood of Scary Hair and Homemade Religion. While you may assume that none of the men you know are rapists, I can assure you that at least one is. Consider: if every rapist commits an average of ten rapes (a horrifying number, isn’t it?) then the concentration of rapists in the population is still a little over one in sixty. That means four in my graduating class in high school. One among my coworkers. One in the subway car at rush hour. Eleven who work out at my gym. How do I know that you, the nice guy who wants nothing more than companionship and True Love, are not this rapist?

I don’t.

When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape. I won’t know for sure unless you start sexually assaulting me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.

“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”

Roman Polanski raped a child. Let's just start right there, because that's the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in "exile" (which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never -- poor baby -- being able to return to the U.S.). Let's keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she'd rather not see him prosecuted because she can't stand the media attention.

The simple answer for that is because justice doesn't operate on the principle of what's best for the victim; it operates on the principle of what's best for the community. (That's why prosecutors represent "the people.") Particularly in a case of sexual assault of a minor, there is additional pressure to prosecute, even if the victim(s) don't support the prosecution, because interviews of convicted/admitted child rapists in prisons suggest that the rapist who only rapes once and never again has about as much supporting evidence for his existence as does the unicorn.

ginmar

When men kill women, the underlying reason is almost always an unfulfilled psychosexual need. This goes for spree shooters, rapists, and serial killers. I'm not surprised Sodini hasn't had sex in nearly 20 years. As I've written before, to men celibacy is walking death, and anything is justified in avoiding that miserable fate. [Emphasis added]

X-posted to rage_free.

I would have been happy without any dialogue in that scene. I wanted to show them just having sex and her passed out, and I thought that would have been funnier. But I think I have a darker sense of humor than most people. So at the end, [Faris’ character] is okay with it. [Laughs.] And that was like, “I’ll shoot it both ways.” So I actually shot it both ways. I just kept the camera rolling.. I think if you’re really pushing the envelope, you have to not include everybody, if that makes sense. Or else it’s not really pushing the envelope.

I mean, I get the "joke" of the scene in Observe and Report. The joke is that it's not rape because she wants to be fucked while drugged and unconscious and unable to move or to take bodily pleasure in the act. (Or, in Jody Hill's Very Special Edgy-Pushing-the-Envelope Director's Cut, the joke is that it is rape, which is hilarious in and of itself.) The problem is that this is a joke you can't make unless you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of sexual consent, or the nature of rape. Anyone who does understand it knows that a single phrase blurted out by a semi-conscious, incoherent, out-of-her-mind high character who can't really even know what's going on, let alone respond to it in a way that is "full and informed," does not mitigate the fact that the male character in the scene is raping her. Anyone who doesn't understand that is capable of getting rape and consent confused - and, for that reason, may be entirely capable of committing rape. This joke doesn't just rely on our misunderstandings of rape; it actively promulgates them. That's the problem. That's why I'm not laughing. [Emphasis added]

After dark, Ronnie catches up to Brandi in the mall parking lot. He scares the hell out of her in the process of offering her a ride on his golf cart, but he won't take no for an answer, so she gets in. Instead of letting her off at her car, he keeps driving, joking that his brakes have failed. He asks her out on a date, making it clear that the only acceptable answer is "yes." She grudgingly agrees to go out with him.

...He gets his job back. He gets the good girl--that self-described born again virgin from the food court, whose boss he assaulted.

In the final scene Ronnie regales a TV news team with his professional and personal triumphs. Pointing to his now-girlfriend he explains that she has made a promise not to have sex with him, but that he intends to make her break it. [Emphasis added]

...I have no problem with putting rape in a movie, or even using it for dark comedy, which could, in theory, be done well. I’ve often strained against feminists who claim there’s entire categories of things that can’t be joked about. But if you’re going to put rape in your movie, put rape in your movie. Don’t put a rape in your movie, and then create a faux “out” so that the sexist idiots who see your movie can tell themselves it wasn’t really rape. And don’t pretend it’s edgy to slap every stereotype imaginable about women who deserve to be raped, either.