In Which a Sexist Remark is Prefaced by “I’m not trying to be sexist, but…”

Bob Novak went on the Hugh Hewitt Show to talk about his memoir, Prince of Darkness (his title, I swear), where he said the following:

I hate to say it, but I think the hatred toward George W. Bush is just mad. I listen to, sometimes in the car radio, on talk shows, and the venom that comes out of the mouths of some of these women, particularly, I’m not trying to be sexist, but they’re so vicious toward him. And I don’t think that really contributes. And also, the bloggers, I don’t read the bloggers very much, but it is really, it’s really vicious.

I don’t know why women would be particularly spiteful toward LOLprez. Let me think… it could be that building a Supreme Court full of justices who want to overturn Roe v. Wade makes some of us a little nervous, or that we find it patronizing when justices make rulings about reproductive health in order to stop adult women from making choices that will make them feel sad later on. Some of us might be slightly less than pleased with the Bush Administration’s emphasis on abstinence only sex “education,” others might be displeased about reports of female soldiers being sexually assaulted by their male colleagues. We might be miffed about the inappropriate appointees at the FDA’s Office of Reproductive Health or the DOJ’s Office of Violence Against Women. But, please, ladies! That’s no reason to be so vicious!

Probably we all just have our periods or something.

On Asking for Gang Rape

Just in case you were wondering why feminists are angry a lot of the time, I offer this:

In March, a 17 year old girl was gang raped at a house party. There were a bunch of guys in the room cheering, some girls at the party eventually broke down the door and took her to the hospital. The victim was drunk to the point that she had vomited all over herself and passed out (uhm, whatever about the debate over drunken consent – you cannot give consent when you are unconscious).

The DA is not prosecuting the case because there is “insufficient evidence” despite the fact that the girl was taken to the hospital, and it was reported that “some kind of sexual assault” had occurred. Really, without any further detail, that seems like enough to move forward with some kind of prosecution: the girl was 17 so it is statutory rape at the very very least; she was wasted/unconscious and unable to give consent; there were 8 men in the room cheering, so if someone could fucking put them under oath and make them say what happened, I’m sure there would be no dirth of evidence. Also, another girl came forward in the middle of this controversy to say that she had also been gang raped at a party at the same house, by some of the same guys, a few months before. The guys had given her shots of tequila and taken shots of beer themselves. Classy. For a bunch of despicable rapists, that is.

P.S. A bunch of the gang rapists and their cheerleaders were on their community college baseball team, so the case is now dubbed “The De Anza Case” (that’s the name of their community college) and all the rapists are referred to in the media as “Johnny Smith, junior secondbaseman” etc. (By the way, I love baseball – huge fan, but in the face of unprosecuted gang rape even I fail to see its significance.)

As if this isn’t barf-worthy enough, here’s another kicker. I was reading about this on IBTP (whose post is much more detailed than mine, fyi) and one of the De Anza players left this comment:

“sounds like you sure do buy in to the way the media twists a case in a girls direction…ever thought about what happened before the girl went in that roo…what she was doing…..saying….acting….perhaps when the truthful story comes out after all this dies down you will lower your chin a bit and look in the mirror…..the media is not the accurate source of info. they were not there in that room…i was….justice has been served”

Dear De Anza Rapists,

Some information you might find useful:
(1) No matter what a drunk 17 year old does/says/wears or how she acts, if you have sex with her when she is unconscious, it is rape.
(2) When you have to lock a woman in a room so that you and your friends can sexually assault her, that is rape. When a woman wants to have consensual sex with you, you will notice the following – (a) she will not be drunk to the point of incapacitation (b) you don’t have to lock her in the room.
(3) Are you seriously using the “she was asking for it” line? REALLY?? You’re going to write it down and everything? You are so ignorant you don’t even have the sense to be ashamed this ridiculous/misogynist defense?
(4) If the media isn’t a fair source of information about what happened, what about the victim’s account? What about that of the girls who rescued her and took her to the hospital? You and the other guys who were in the room aren’t the only people who get to tell the story here. You’ll forgive me if I don’t think that people who repeatedly commit violent crimes with their friends are the most reliable witnesses.

Seriously, that comment truly makes my blood boil. I forget sometimes that these kind of Neanderthals are still roaming the planet, raping girls and saying “she was asking for it.” Can we have some public discussion about why “yeah she [said no/ was unconscious/ was too drunk to give consent] but she was [talking sexy/ wearing a short skirt/ flirting with me/ etc] is never an excuse for rape, so that we don’t have to listen to this bullshit any more?

Poor Little Monica

Monica Goodling testified before Congress yesterday about her role in the firing of the 7 US Attorneys. She admitted to doing what people already said she had done: inappropriately using political litmus tests in the hiring of prosecutors and DOJ staff. While I am of the mind that she herself should not be focus of all the negative attention (there’s a bigger fish to fry here, and his name is Gonzo), she did make some comments that deserve to be called out.

When asked repeatedly if she had broken the law, she refused to give a straight answer, saying repeatedly things like “that’s not for me to decide” (although, she has a law degree and worked at the Justice Department, so one would certainly have to hope she could figure this one out on her own). Finally she was asked not whether she had broken the law, but whether she believed she had broken the law, to which she responded,

“I believe I crossed the line, but I didn’t mean to.”

That’s nice, if you’re a 9 year old getting in trouble with your mother, but unfortunately for all us grown-ups, “but I didn’t mean to,” doesn’t cut it.

Even more irritating than this little-kiddism was the description she offered of herself,

“At heart, I am a fairly quiet girl, who tries to do the right thing and tries to treat people kindly along the way.”

Seriously? You are a 33 year old woman working in a very serious and powerful job, at the Department of Justice, which is – whatever else it may have become – a workplace for adults. Sandy Levinson at Balkinization has a great post on why this characterization is if not inappropriate then at least very weird. Whether these statements accurately reflect Goodling’s opinion of herself (that she is just a nice girl in the big bad city), or whether they are more cunning statements designed to make listeners feel sorry for her, I don’t really care.

Aside from these irritations, the most interesting part of Goodling’s testimony was that she said that Gonzales’s top aid, who just resigned, had been “not fully candid” in his testimony, and that she had had a conversation with Gonzales before she resigned from the DOJ that made her feel uncomfortable, as though he might have been testing the waters to try to see how she would answer questions before Congress. Gonzo still has Bush’s support though, so we’ll just have to wait and see what happns next.