In the last ten years in Congo, hundreds of thousands of women have been raped, most of them gang raped.

A recent escalation of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo has resulted in over 45,000 people fleeing their homes since Monday.

As men, women, and children flee with whatever they can carry, camps for displaced people are straining under the burden. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said the situation could become "a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic dimensions."

A cease-fire has allowed supplies and aid workers to return to the area, but the situation is still dire. If you can, please donate to bring emergency water and sanitation aid into the existing camps. Even skipping one meal or latte makes a difference...you can collect change from friends too...just leave a jar in the common area with a sign posted!

This summer we were all talking about the scandal at Eastern Michigan University, where university officials attempted to cover up the rape and murder of a student. Quick update in the story came yesterday when the former president, John A. Fallon, sued EMU, charging it violated the state’s whistleblower protection law when it fired him in July, according to a story in The Ann Arbor News. I’m no expert on this one, but I have no sympathy for a guy who was complicit in covering up a heinous crime, telling the parents of Lauren Dickinson, the raped and murdered student, that she’d died of a heart problem. Not only immoral and illegal, but also would seem to be ignoring a duty to let students know about what’s going on in their community, potentially putting them at greater risk of suffering a similar fate as Dickinson.

Last week a man accused of raping and repeatedly molesting a 7-year old girl in Rockville, Maryland got the charges against him dropped. Did he get a top-notch defense attorney who made an incredible argument? No. The court simply took too long to find an interpreter in his native West African language.

Yesterday it was announced that John A. Fallon had been fired from his post as president, two years into his five year contract at Eastern Michigan University. Also let go were James Vick, vice president for student affairs, and Cindy Hall, the public safety director. The three along with other university officials had attempted to cover up a rape on campus. (see the NYT coverage here)

Can you imagine a person who's been robbed being barred from using the word "rob" at his assailant's trial? How can you tell a jury your wallet was stolen without using the word "steal?"

At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick writes of a Nebraska judge who has banned the words "rape," "assault," "victim," "assailant," and "sexual assault kit" from a rape trial. The victim says that after sharing a few drinks with a man in a bar, she blacked out, and awoke the next morning in the midst of being raped. But the only language left for her to use in the courtroom to describe this act is "sex" or "intercourse." As Lithwick points out, these are words that imply mutual consent. Is it any surprise the trial resulted in a hung jury?

The victim in this case is Torey Bowen. She has said, "This makes women sick, especially the women who have gone through this. They know the difference between sex and rape."

Why do we treat rape victims differently from the innocent victims of any other crime? 

The prosecutor in the Duke Lacrosse rape case, Mike Nifong, is being disbarred for lying to the court and from withholding DNA test results that would have cleared the names of the three players charged with rape.

This case has truly changed how rape cases will be viewed, and I really hope that it won’t make it harder for rape victims to come forward. One of the first mistakes made was that the victim was assumed to be correct, and that the three Duke players were guilty—this negates the right to be tried as innocent until proven guilty. I remember when the verdict came out that many were quick to say that the victim was making the entire thing up, when there was DNA evidence…just not from the three players.

I truly sympathize with the woman as a fellow rape survivor. If she was truly raped, I hope they find out whom. And, if the courts can learn anything from this, is to give the defendants the benefit of the doubt, but still encourage rape victims to come forward.

~世界の革命

In the February 7, 2007 edition of the Central Connecticut State University newspaper, The Recorder, the infamous “satire” by John Petroski was published: “Rape Only Hurts When You Fight It”. The piece went on to say that rape helped ugly women who would normally not have sex get laid. I would link to this disgusting article, but I can’t find it on their site (though you can download archived issues, so you can read it there). When I first heard about this piece, I did not want to read it: as a survivor, the idea that someone would write that infuriated me. It’s not that Mr. Petroski wrote about an unpopular point of view—he wrote about something that is hurtful, for both survivors and people who have been affected by someone else’s experience. I did up reading the piece, right before I went on stage for the Vagina Monologues (not the best idea); looking back at the video, I looked mad beyond belief.

American women die of dehydration, so terrified that they'll be raped if they leave their beds at night to use the bathroom that they don't drink enough fluids.

American women carry knives to work to defend themselves against their colleagues.

American women are jailed because after being raped by their bosses, they refuse to return to work.

These are some of the bone-chilling stories told in Helen Benedict's Salon expose, "The private war of women soliders." It is necessary reading for every American. Is it any surprise that our male soldiers are raping and murdering young Iraqi women when they can't even be entrusted to treat their sisters-in-arms as human beings? War corrupts. But it's not all hopeless. As Benedict's interviews with female veterans attest, military commanders who simply refuse to abide by sexual harassment in their units are successful at protecting their female soldiers. The DOD needs to institutionalize those values.

Every college campus has a few of these kids. They see themselves generally as non-partisan (or non-conservative, or libertarian), since their intelligence and objectivity put them above the fray of such squabbles. Contrarian often for its own sake, their arguments use deliberate and contrived non-PCisms and attacks on so-called conventional wisdom. In a nutshell, they parade provocation as unique insight. But, to paraphrase Dave Chappelle, sometimes arrogant and self-indulgent games of devil’s advocate can go wrong. The latest “victim” of this well-intentioned and oh-so-misguided practice is John Petroski, former opinion editor of Central Connecticut State University’s The Recorder.

In a Feb. 7th op-ed entitled “Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It,” Petroski’s feeble attempt at satire (ostensibly of modern news media sensationalism) crossed the line. “Which line is that?” you might ask. Why, it’s the “Rape is Never Funny, especially in the context of a serious college publication” line. More on that later, but first, to the op-ed and ensuing controversy.

Petroski’s gem of a satire opened with a defense of rape as “a magical act that benefits society as a whole.” The piece then meanders into a bizarre defense by way of obscure ancient Roman parables (all true scholars cite classical history to defend themselves, if you were unaware) and a hypothetical musing on why Puritans didn’t make the thrifty choice to rape native women before getting to the absolutely, knee-slapping hilarious parts: “Take ugly women for example. If it weren't for rape, how would they ever know the joys of intercourse with a man who isn't drunk.”

Moving onto how rape benefits prisoners, the author mentions how rape spares them from loneliness, and that “[i]nstead, they merely need worry about treating their rapist with enough love and respect to earn a quick reach-around.” As for a satire of media sensationalism, the closest Petroski gets is by arguing that rape should be endorsed for the sake of more captivating news headlines, just before advocating “some saucy circle-jerk rape action” over more mundane topics.

 The publication was, predictably, met with disbelief and outrage. A hundred students protested in front of The Recorder’s offices, seeking the resignation of the editor and Petroski. The University President was pulled into the mess as well, defending free speech while condemning the piece. Eventually, apologies were issued by both the editor and the (now-demoted) Petroski, and the ensuing dialogue seems to have been sincere enough that the controversy appears largely settled on the CCSU campus. But that it happened at all, that the editorial board could not foresee this being offensive and problematic, and that, during a campus forum discussion, it took the bravery of several students who are survivors of rape to bring the point home points to a more serious disconnect.