Are you a famous guy? Then, by all means, rape and pillage to your heart's content!

So if you haven’t been living under a rock, the chances are good that you have heard about the rape accusation that was brought against Heisman trophy hopeful Jameis Winston. Today it was announced that there was not enough evidence to seek criminal charges against Winston.

*cue victorious hate speech against lyin’, gold diggin’ hoes the world over*

For whatever reason, people have taken this to mean that the accuser’s story was deemed false or baseless, rather than simply unsubstantiated. Let’s not ignore the fact that the police waited almost an entire (fucking) year to begin investigating the matter. Also, rather than supporting the victim in taking a brave step that might result in a safer community, instead she was told:

“Tallahassee is a big football town and the victim needs to think long and hard before proceeding against him because she will be raked over the coals and her life will be made miserable.”

Just a fun fact to throw into this discussion: instances of false accusations of rape are very low and comparable to other crimes (2-8%). This isn't just an opinion this is based on a study.

Every time a person walks around saying "oh, she's a slut, you can't rape a slut" or "oh, she's just making it up because she regretted it after" or "oh, she just wants money out of him" or "any girl would be lucky to have sex with [insert name of celebrity male]. She's just lying." etc, is setting a dangerous and unfounded precedent to automatically disbelieve anyone who makes a claim of being assaulted, and arguably, simply because they are a woman. There is also significant evidence that most rapists are repeat offenders, so it should be no small matter to let one walk free.

Let's be clear, just because enough evidence was not found to secure criminal prosecution against Winston, that does not mean that there was no evidence to condemn him at all (and there could have possibly been more if the police hadn't put off investigation for almost a year). The accuser's story was not deemed false or baseless, only that it was not substantiated enough to have Winston charged in criminal court. The outcome may have been different if a civil case had been brought against Winston rather than criminal, but then people would probably say the accuser was a liar because she didn't seek criminal charges.

*shrug* Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I suppose.

So the criminal charges are settled, no thanks to massive negligence on the part of the Tallahassee Police Department. But there’s one small thing we can do to try and assure that other victims of sexual assault can feel safer about taking the very brave step of reporting the crime committed against them: go to Change.org and sign the petition urging the Florida Dept. of Law enforcement to Investigate the TPD’s handling of this case. Because when law enforcement takes virtually no action to investigate the violation of a community member's rights for almost an entire year, something is wrong. Police departments the nation over play an integral role in protecting us and keeping our communities safe. The actions this department failed to take reflects poorly on all the good work our law enforcement does and there should be consequences for such negligence.

Personal Perspectives: Why it’s easier to get through illness without God

Almost a year and a half ago, a doctor told me I had cervical adenocarcinoma in situ. For the regular English-speaker, this is basically cancer that has not yet become invasive (in situ means “in its place”). It is still very “treatable” (I use quotes because the “treatment” is cutting out the affected tissue which doesn’t really seem like treatment the way I imagine it to be). It was still very traumatic for me for two reasons: 1) I was completely blindsided by it. Cervical cancer is generally a slow, meandering beast. This is good, because it allows plenty of time for screenings to catch it before it becomes dangerous. Screenings aren’t always accurate, though, and they do miss things sometimes. 2) This was caused by HPV, which in the small, moderately to extremely Christian communities I grew up in only happened to girls who sleep with lots of boys. (For the record, I got my first abnormal pap with a presence of HPV after my first sexual partner. It only takes one.) Furthermore, condoms??!! Well, you would have to be having sex to need those. And you don’t have sex, you hormone-crazed, rebellious, irresponsible, judgment-impaired teenager, you! Teaching you how to protect yourself from pregnancy and disease is just going to put ideas into your head and make you think you can just “get away with it”! We want to make sure God has his “opportunity” to fully punish your filth if you step out of line.

I had already begun rejecting my faith at that point in my life (wonder why…), but was still very conflicted on the matter. It’s natural to feel powerless in these sorts of situations, or even feel “dirty”. It is easy for a person of faith to feel like this is happening to you for a reason, and that reason might be that reason is God is “teaching you a lesson”/punishing you. The flip-side argument might be that “he” is trying to draw you nearer by putting you in a situation in which you feel powerless and are forced to turn the situation over to “him”.

My parents are quite religious (of the Christian persuasion) and urged me to turn to God and pray. But the more I entertained the idea, the more absurd it became. IF a God exists, I am convinced that “he” can only be either all-loving or all-powerful. We also get to assume that we get free will, in which God cannot meddle. I guess we then have to define what exactly “free-will” is. I think that free-will is the ability to make decisions on your own without outside coercion. It is difficult for the concepts of free-will and an all-powerful god to coexist, because, in theory, God must sacrifice some of his power to grant us free-will. Even if he still possesses that power but willingly refuses to use it, he is still rendered not all-powerful. But for fun…

Let’s say I turn to God (all-powerful, all-knowing). In doing so I have to acknowledge the possibility that I was being punished, either for stepping out of bounds, and/or for drifting too far from God, but both of these concepts run counter to the idea of an “all-loving” God.  It also assumes that this is something God “did to me” in an attempt to coax/encourage/force/coerce me into turning back to him, which not only runs counter to the idea of an all-loving God, but also infringes on the premise that we were fully-endowed with our own free will. It’s like a crazy boyfriend whom just as you are about to walk out, poisons your oatmeal and proceeds to tell you he has an antidote that will “potentially” cure you, but only if you pledge your undying love and unending loyalty to him will he give it to you. If God really loved you, he wouldn’t have poisoned you in the first place, and if it so happened that you had become poisoned outside of his bidding, he wouldn’t withhold help on a condition that you love him, dammit. I see only minor differences between submitting to a God that gets off on making me feel like shit about myself and/or traps me in an abusive relationship against my “God-given” right to free will vs. eternal anguish and torment.

You could make an argument that God doesn’t have the power to cure you or save/protect you from the afflictions of this world, but does love you, and that your faith in him will save you not in this life, but after it. Thus, he is all-powerful, but only outside of the realm of our human life on this plane of existence. In this scenario, thus far, God can be both all-loving, and, hypothetically, (at least in a sense) all-powerful. And that’s works well until we introduce the idea of needing to have something to be saved from after this life. Hello, hellfire. This is actually where a little bit of divergence presents itself, since some Christians have begun to reject the existence of hell. Let’s assume, for now though, that there is one. If God is all-loving, then he would surely do everything he could to save you from such a horrible fate. And in the event of him being all-powerful, there is nothing he can’t do, so he can absolutely save you from Hell. So, if we have an all-loving, all-powerful God, why even bother to gain his favor or attain impossible perfection in our life when obviously he will want to/be able to save us in the afterlife? If he is not all-powerful outside of this plane of existence but remains all-loving, then that means that this other force (Hell) has an edge over God and maybe God can’t even save us after this life. If God is all-powerful then the only reason we would go to Hell is because he is not all-loving, and in fact, is quite likely full of a great deal of malice, which doesn’t bode well for your chances of gaining his favor. But maybe Hell isn’t all fire and brimstone. If Hell doesn’t exist, then it doesn’t really seem like there is anything that we need to be saved from after this life (which, I guess does allow this God to be both all-loving and all-powerful…in a way), but then if everyone ends up in the same place, what is the benefit in believing in God at all? If God is all-powerful outside of this realm, then if you do meet his rigorous standards of perfection you get to hang out with him for the rest of eternity…but presumably your free-will is waived…which leaves you a little like an automaton. The alternative being, you either burn in fiery hell for eternity (if God is malicious and hateful) or, maybe more mercifully, cease to exist.

We haven’t even brought in the concept of all-forgiving, yet!!!

So, in order for God to be a relevant force warranting such unending faith, loyalty and adoration/fear, God is, most likely, powerless in our earthly plane of existence, all-powerful in the afterlife, but hates your guts by default and relishes the opportunity to see you sizzle unendingly forever, unless you managed to sneak a quick prayer in for forgiveness before your earthly demise, in which case, you’ll be best buds!

The alternative is that God is all-loving but powerless, and can only negotiate your salvation if you follow a strict code, except for the silver bullet that if you are able to seek forgiveness for your sins before having the opportunity to commit anymore before you die, you are automatically in…but only if you ask…he’s sort of like a genie.

The alternative to all of this mess is actually much more comforting…and waaaaay simpler. This happened to you, simply because these things happen. You were unlucky, and/or you did not know that you could protect yourself from this fate, and/or you were just a stupid teenager. Conflict can create moments of clarity and opportunities to know more about who you truly are. It helps you discover truth. In the end, I fell back on the fact that as a human being I have inherent worth and dignity that no sexual history, tiny virus or really confusing, probably non-existent, or at least irrelevant, deity can take away from me for as long as I live and breath!

This is what else I took away:

 The perpetual threat of death (and its permanence) is what makes every day of life important and meaningful. Conflicts make life interesting, and by overcoming them we learn who we are at our core and what it is that we really believe. I think happiness is a carrot evolution dangles in front of us to motivate us to be better, to adapt and to excel. Happiness is a fleeting thing that we chase through life, catching it occasionally, only to release it (or have it taken away) when we get bored of it and start chasing it again. The journey to happiness, the journey to overcome obstacles and tribulations, is more exciting, beautiful and profound than the actual having of happiness. This journey is what gives life meaning. And it is a fuller and more complete and more certain than anything I know about Christianity at this time.

Human Evolution and One Reason Why Modern Society is Better than a Zombie Apocolypse

I seem to attract people who enjoy talking about what a failure modern society has become and how they wish the world governments would just collapse already so that, after a given period of chaotic violence, the “legitimately” strong could once again prevail and we could go back to living in tribal anarchy* where human evolution once again exists. Oddly, most of these people are computer nerds (or, to a lesser extent, rednecks, who probably would benefit from such a system...provided they are male). They think this is the superior way to live, and go so far as to say it is healthier because it is more “natural”.

It deserves mentioning that there is a snowball’s chance in hell that either of the two individuals I  most often have these sorts of conversations with would ever survive this manner of “society”. One of them thinks he’s having a seizure every time he nods off at his desk and claims to be chronically hypoglycemic, and thus, needs to smoke excessive amounts of pot, take three different kinds of pills a day and eat constantly. The other has dainty wrists, I’m just sayin’! We’ve had hour upon hour of debate over why/how tribal anarchy does/does not offer a superior standard of living vs modern society. Their arguments tend to boil down to evolution and the idea that we are no longer evolving (Which is not necessarily true. See the end of the post.) because technology has allowed virtually everyone to live in the world, regardless of whether or not they would be fit to do so without such technology (think allergies, chromosomal disorders, compromised immune systems, women with hips too narrow for childbirth...yes, even this one came up) and, thus, we can no longer improve as a species. It’s also tied into the idea (which I do not support) that violence is inherent in human beings and it is easier to express this “natural” aspect of our humanity within the societal structure of tribal anarchy…but for the sake of simplicity, I’m not going to get into that side of this for now.

I take issue with the original matter for many reasons. Perhaps the main one is that I don’t think I would be able to survive in that sort of society. I have allergies, and vision that is impaired enough to make me a useless hunter without corrective lenses, and outside of my "reproductive value" I don't have many real survival skills to offer...unless you count the ability to knit warm things. I certainly don’t think I would be privileged to exercise the degree of self-agency that I do today because the model that is described is very patriarchal. It writes off the intellectual value of a human being in favor of physical power. Since women are typically at a disadvantage when it comes to brute force, the value of a woman is reduced primarily to her ability to bear children (hence, the point about women with hips too narrow for childbirth). And women have a lot more to offer than that, and a society that embraces this fact is more likely to succeed and outlive the previous societal model.

Today I came up with a concise response to these arguments:

If evolution is the root of your argument and that by denying evolution taking its path we are doing humanity as a collective whole a disservice, then you would have us deny the path down which evolution has already taken us to a societal structure deemed more beneficial to the species than your preferred structure by the very mechanism that you cite as being the reason why you would prefer tribal anarchy in the first place. What you really propose is just back-tracking, or a loop, since evolution has already shown that we would end up right back here, provided no major events disrupted the natural progression back to this point. Let’s call this Societal Darwinism.

If all else fails, at least its convoluted enough to keep them thinking for the rest of the car ride home.

 

*Tribal Anarchy is a bit of an odd term that I think might be very specific to the conversations I have with very particular people. So, I feel I should elaborate on what I mean when I say this. The folks who I am talking about in this particular post say they would prefer to do away with government all together and opt for a system of loose anarchy instead (I know, right? My eyes hurt from rolling, too). We have both agreed that in order for something like that to even be plausible, the group size must be small, and in order for that to happen, something would have to happen to greatly thin out the human population. For fun, we'll just say a zombie apocalypse. Then small tribes of people could begin to form and anarchy could (maybe) be a viable option of governance...or non-governance...I guess.

Separation of Church and State....kind of.....

A week ago I attended a debate hosted by the Committee for Future El Paso in (you guessed it!) El Paso, TX to hear arguments on the separation of church and state. It was very timely, as I had recently found myself in a couple of different robust (and petty) Twitter kerfuffles over the matter. So I was interested to see how closely the debate would mirror the conversations I had been having, and I was eager to hear other arguments from both sides that I had never heard, as well as maybe some elaboration on points that I am already familiar with.

What I got instead was a front-row seat to an utter clusterfuck wrought with meandering segue after irrelevant segue marked by a complete lack of consideration, decorum and organization. Mind you, this was mostly due to only one of the debators. I will let you guess which one.

I could rant for a long time on this (there is plenty of material to work with), but I think the debate will speak best (or otherwise) for itself. So, without further ado, I give you, David Marcus and be-stubbled Alec Baldwin doppleganger, Bishop Tom Brown.

(If you want to skip straight to the debate, it starts about 6 minutes in. I really didn’t mind the opening statements, it’s everything after that.)

That's one way to start a blog!

I could not help but bust up laughing, I’m sorry, but the irony, hypocrisy and just sheer hyperbole in this commercial is legitimately entertaining. I give them points for concept. But I have to take some away for promoting misinformation, as well as general inconsistency (since, apparently it’s not okay to implement a program that will extend medical coverage to almost all uninsured women in the US, thus giving them access to gynecology and women’s health services they did not previously have, but it’s perfectly okay to crawl on up inside that baby-making stargate when it involves a woman’s autonomy and reproductive rights)…and probably a couple of points for clunky script writing. But hey! It’s nice to see these folks actually maybe beginning to gather some sort of inkling that women want the government to stay the fuck out of their vaginas?

According to the Guttmacher Institute 93 (out of the originally proposed 694) proposed pieces of state legislation, have been passed in 2013 alone, about half of which pertain directly to restricting reproductive rights…so then again…maybe not…