“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” James Madison

Despite the fact that “political rants” were the original intention of my blog (started over six years ago) I rarely write about the subject anymore. Therefore, you should check out the latest post at The Kyle Conspiracy about the renewal of the Patriot Act. This is an unfortunate example of the ways in which the Obama Administration is no less “evil” than a McCain (or realistically, any other) administration would have been.

Being a cynical libertarian is fun most of the time! Our pessimistic outlook is usually validated by government failure!

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So it’s officially McCain and it’s officially going to be a stupid election.

I predicted yesterday that Hillary will take the Democratic nomination and delay the election of a female president by at least 50 years. (Of course, someone responded with “especially if she wins”) I don’t understand women who say that they’re voting for Hillary because it’s time to get a woman in the White House. I mean, I understand it, I just don’t respect it. I don’t think having Hillary as president would break down any new barriers. Hillary is a rich, white women. Most white women have it pretty good. The lives of the disadvantaged women will not change solely because there is a woman in the White House. Being female does not make her uniquely qualified to handle “women’s issues” nor is it a guarentee that she’d pay any attention to these alleged special issues.

I don’t like Hillary and I don’t like the people she surrounds herself with.

The Daily Show is in repeats and I couldn’t sleep, so I watched the11:00 PM episode of Seinfeld. It was “The Deal

I’ve always liked the episode of Seinfeld where, bored one evening and watching television, Jerry and Elaine decided to have sex (“that”),and come up with rules so that it doesn’t complicate their friendship(“this”).

Of course their rules fail them miserably. Elaine gets annoyed when Jerry doesn’t spend the night (“staying the night is optional!”), Jerry doesn’t know how to handle Elaine getting annoyed. And then he makes the mistake of giving her cash for her birthday, and referring to her as “kid.” So, she informs him their little arrangement isn’t going to work. This episode was on last night, and this little bit of profundity stood out to me:

“So no ‘this’?” Jerry asks

“No”

“And no “that?”

“No!”
“What do you want?!?” Jerry asks her in frustration.

“I want this…that…and the other thing,” Elaine admits sheepishly.

“Who doesn’t want this…that…and the other thing?” Jerry asks flippantly.

“You,” she exclaims in equal parts frustration and sadness.

(and I just put way more thought into that scene than any sane person ever should.)

Who ever said that Seinfeld was emotion-free? Of course, the character of Jerry Seinfeld is a bit of an extreme example, because as the series progressed, he played the perpetual bachelor, but this little exchange is example of what I mentioned in Andrea Dworkin Dies about feminism making more men fear commitment.

Elaine also remained singlethroughout the series – her character was intelligent, with good – if slightly eclectic – jobs. She was seemingly put together, but when it came to men, she was hopeless.

I realize, that almost everything I write comes back to therelationships between men and women. That, or boys, and I’m not quitesure what that says about me. If it weren’t for boys to distract me Iwould be on my way to taking over the world right now. I know a very smart woman who admits that in college she “minored in guys.” I think about a “Chicks Before Dicks” gathering I attended in college, andremember how, despite our efforts to bash men, the more wine we had,the more the conversation turned to “telling stories about cute things boys have done for us.” Boys drive us crazy, and we love it.

If you put a group of women together who don’t know each other that well,that’s how we tend to find common ground: we talk about boys. I am an intelligent, rational woman, but boys have always been the one thingthat can reduce to an emotion-ridden head case.

As Xina accused me of the weekend after I finally got together with HWSNBN, I become Sydney Ellen Wade to an Andrew Shepard – a smart woman reduced to nothing.

Perhaps this is what feminists mean when they talk about the power menhave over women, and why it’s better to stay single and keep thosedamn men from ruining your life. Maybe it’s because many of us know that no matter how tough we are alot of still want this…that…and the other thing. We know we can get “that.” We can probably get “this.” But as for “the other thing?”

Most days “the other thing” seems pretty hopeless.

So as I mentioned here, Andrea Dworkin is dead and thus there is one less radical feminist around to annoy me.

I enjoy pointing out the crazier things Dworkin has said (she claims they have been taken out of context. She’s only 90% lying) and then commenting on them in a bias manner. My bias is that I stated last night (and I have a witness) “The rape scene is the only thing that makes the Fountainhead worth reading.” However, I must amend, that on further consideration I must say that the scene where Dominique goes to see Howard Roark before she gets married and simply says “I love you, Roark,” tugged at my heartstrings a bit. Because I’m a girl, and us chicks get all emotional over romance junk like that.

But, according to Dworkin, romance is just rape embellished with meaningful looks anyway.

This is another gem: “Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women’s bodies.” I mean, come on honey, you know he only tells you you’re pretty to get you into bed. Really, he hates your body.

And this is my favorite, favorite Dworkin-ism: “Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist bothers to buy a bottle of wine.”

Well,  last time I got very drunk on wine was around New Years and I had a fabulous time. My two favorite wines are rather inexpensive, so not only is it fun to get me drunk; it’s cheap too!

So, in conclusion, Andrea Dworkin is crazy, wine is good, and I am oppressed simply because men exist and “Only when manhood is dead – and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it – only then will we know what it is to be free.”

I just made a Wizard of Oz reference. I must be gravely ill.

Firstly, I realize that my LJ has completely declined into too much of a real journal — too “personal-y” and at times unapologetically sappy, or maudlin.

That’s why if you want to read something I’ve written that’s relevant or passably intelligent, you should read my very rudimentary, still a work-in-progress blog

The LJ will remain for schlok and countdowns.

Anyway.

The weekend was wonderful, and awesome, and filled with pretty weather, and laughing, and goodgood conversation.

I’m bored, but my new goal is to be the most well-read receptionist in history.

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For a long time, probably since high school, I have been reluctant about the label of “feminist.” I didn’t feel that I fell under the term. After my experiences at Hampshire, I jokingly called myself an “anti-feminist.”

This entry, on one of my favorite blogs, momentarily made me think that maybe I had been to harsh to claim I am not a feminist. But you know something? Apart from the Neo-Nazis and racists, who aren’t ever going to alter their deep-seeded hatreds, we ALL believe in equality. To simply say that the dictionary definition of feminism is enough and that is thereby encompassses anything else you may believe it misleading and wrong.

Feminism isn’t a state of being. It’s an affiliation, similar to a political affiliaiton.

My Feminist Political Thought class this semester is just affirming to me that I am not a feminist. At best, I may be willing to consider the term “Libertarian Feminist” (or iFeminist) even though Wendy McElroy and his ilk are still kind of looney. Then again, most Libertarians are.

I basically agree with this entire article.

October 28, 2003

Partial Shield

Those accused of rape have rights, too

By Cathy Young

The judge in the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case has ruled that the basketball star will go to trial even though the evidence against him is slim. Meanwhile, the hardball tactics of the defense, which has requested access to the accuser’s health records and has disclosed that the young woman had had sexual intercourse with two other men in the three days preceding her encounter with Bryant, have come under harsh criticism from victim advocates. “Trying to shift the blame is a standard tactic for rape defendants, but this was a new low in attacking the victim,” Cynthia Stone of the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault told the Denver Post.

Advocates and many commentators warn that victims of sexual assault will be discouraged from coming forward if they know they can be publicly smeared or grilled about embarrassing, intimate details of their private lives. That’s an understandable concern. But we must also remember that respect for the privacy of an alleged victim cannot supercede respect for the defendant’s civil rights.

Attitudes toward sexual assault victims have changed greatly in the past 30 years—and thank goodness for that. In the early 1970s, juries in many states were still commonly instructed to consider evidence of “unchaste character” (such as going to bars alone or using birth control) as detracting from a woman’s credibility or suggesting that she was likely to have consented. Rape shield laws forbidding the use of the complainant’s sexual past as evidence are rightly seen as an important accomplishment of the women’s movement.

And yet many people, including feminists such as Columbia University law professor Vivian Berger, have cautioned against going too far in protecting the accuser at the expense of the accused. In some cases, the woman’s past—including her sexual past—can indeed be relevant to the man’s guilt, particularly in he said/she said cases without much physical evidence.

What if the woman has a record of making false accusations of rape or other crimes? What if she is so mentally unstable that she has trouble distinguishing between imagination and reality? What if she has engaged in sexual acts that could provide an alternate explanation for the physical evidence the prosecution is using to prove sexual assault?

These are wrenching questions. Obviously, a woman with a history of mental illness (such as, apparently, Kobe Bryant’s accuser) or of substance abuse or even of lying about rape could still be a rape victim. Obviously, the prospect of having embarrassing details of one’s life exposed in court—let alone the media—may discourage victims from coming forward. Just as obviously, keeping relevant evidence from the jury may result in sending an innocent person to jail. Some victim advocates worry that even if the woman in such a case has not been raped, she may be brutally abused by the legal process. They seem to forget that being falsely accused of rape is a terrible form of abuse as well.

Sometimes, the broad application of rape shield law has almost certainly resulted in miscarriages of justice. In New York in 1998, Columbia University graduate student Oliver Jovanovic was convicted of kidnapping and sexually abusing a Barnard College student and sentenced to a minimum of 15 years in prison.

While the defense argued that the encounter involved consensual bondage, the judge disallowed the use of e-mails in which the alleged victim had discussed her interest in and past experience with such activities. The conviction was eventually overturned by a court of appeals, which ruled that Jovanovic was denied the chance to present an adequate defense.

Rape is a despicable crime, and an accusation of rape should be taken very seriously—but the rights of the accused should be rigorously protected. After the 1997 trial of sportscaster Marv Albert, defending the judge’s decision to admit compromising information about Albert’s sexual past but not about his accuser’s, feminist attorney Gloria Allred decried “the notion that there’s some sort of moral equivalency between the defendant and the victim.” Yet as long as the defendant hasn’t been convicted, he and the victim are indeed moral equals in the eyes of the law.

It’s frightening to put oneself in the place of a sexual assault victim who finds the intimate details of her life paraded in public. But it’s at least as terrifying to imagine that you, or your husband or brother or son, could be accused of sexual assault and denied access to relevant information that could make the difference between guilt and innocence.

Cathy Young is a Reason contributing editor. This column appeared in the Boston Globe on October 27, 2003.

“The wreckage will not become a funeral mount for me, but will serve as a height I have clibed to attain a wider feild of vision. My pride and my power of vision were all I owned when I starter-and whatever I achieved, was achieved by means of them. Both are greater now. Now I have the knowledge of the superlative value I had missed: of my right to be proud of my vision. The rest is mine to reach” -Hank Rearden, Atlas Shrugged

So I’m finished with my Atlas Shrugged Essay, its been submitted and I never want to look at it again. I know I won’t win, because a) its not my best work, by any means and b) its like decathlon. the winning essay never makes any sense and usually sucks. Mine doesn’t suck enough and makes too much sense. If you read the winning essay from 2001 you’ll understand…

I’d post the essay here, but I don’t want to obsess over it. After November 23, when I find out that I didn’t win and can get a free book (!!!) I’ll post it.

Writing this essay only got me more obsessed with the book, but I have to put it away for a few months, because I don’t want to read it and obsess about things I should have put in my essay. I was really limited (only 1000 words) so I had to be concise to a fault. I know some people who read this are currently reading Atlas Shrugged so I won’t go on my other rant about this essay and the part of the book it’s based on, because I don’t want to spoil anything.

In other news:
I am going to kill whoever keeps changing the requirements for an IA minor/major.

Now I have to go to Feminist Political Thought & watch the Lib Fems get upset by the professor’s comments.

So my feminist political class is going to be interesting, as once again, I’m probably the most “conservative” female in the room, and it’s a lot of the same people from my Public Policy class last semester. There are lots of people to argue with, I just have to get over my inability to speak up in political theory classes. Yes, its a very specific defiency, I have done extensive studies on it, etc.

Classes like this are always fun, because you inevitably get someone bitching that Locke (it IS all about John Locke, thanks for the advice Jimmy K….) doesn’t include his thoughts/opinions/etc about women.

Which…ok…yes…what?

Women weren’t respected as part of intellectual society, and thats the entire point. I know we’re all blah blah blah equalitycakes here, but one has to accept that women WERE left out of almost everything, and when you read a dead-white-male writer, you need to understand that he wasn’t neccesarily a horrible person who ate babies (though that would be pretty cool), he was just a slightly more intelligent than normal, typical guy writing some stuff down.

Hm

I need coffee.

And I need to finish my Atlas Shrugged essay and think about my literary crushes