god damn everything texas

minor plaintiff in east texas ordered to pay $45 thousand in court costs after supreme court refuses to hear her appeal of a court decision that her school district was justified in dismissing her from the cheerleading squad after she refused to chant the name of her rapist at a basketball game.

this. this is why i get so fucking angry when people accuse me of looking for things to be offended about, as though i have to fucking look.

i'm seriously. i am shaking with anger over this.

the court's decision rests on the principle that by voluntarily participating in an activity in which she serves as a mouthpiece for the school, the girl voluntarily ceded her first amendment right not to cheer on a basketball player who was convicted of sexually assaulting her.

a friend pointed out that in isolation, there wouldn't be a problem with this principle; the girl has the right to free expression, but the school likewise has the right to choose who they want to represent them. but the thing is, that's only applicable in isolation. what, for instance, do you think the court would have decided if she'd been dismissed over her right to pray? or for her right to engage in political speech out of uniform?

it's east texas, y'all. i guarantee you that if the problem had been her wearing a cross or demonstrating in front of planned parenthood, she wouldn't have had to sue the district. she wouldn't have had anything to sue over, because the district probably would have fired the coach.

fuck double standards, fuck the supreme court for letting this stand, and fuck east texas.

her rapist gets the rape charge conveniently dropped so that he is still eligible to play, and she gets punished for refusing to adhere to the fiction. once again, apparently it's worse to stand up to rape apologism than it is to actually, y'know, rape someone.

and to think that people ask me what i mean when i start going on about rape culture.

i'm trying to find out everything i can about this case -- here is the appeal that SCOTUS declined to hear, and here is a link to onpoint's reporting on the case, with links to many of the documents. having a best friend who is an attorney = great

fun fact: apparently after she was raped, the survivor petitioned for and received an injunction against her rapists which required their removal from the school. the DA apparently let this injunction lapse so that bolton could play basketball.

In fact, SISD weighed its basketball program’s and
Bolton’s interests against H.S.’ welfare and psychological interests, and during the week of February 16, 2009, gave greater weight to its basketball program and Bolton, and added Bolton to the High School’s Varsity Basketball team, where H.S. as the cheerleader would be forced to interact and cheer for the five man team including her rapist.

funner fact: there's this.

On February 17, 2009, C.S. and his plaintiff’s attorney met with Sup’t. Bain and when asking about the forced exposure of H.S. to Bolton and Rountree, were told by Bain that he and his lawyer considered there to be two sides to the rape, and that Bain was not going to take any action to insulate H.S. from Rountree and Bolton.

if you would like to register your displeasure, since setting the superintendent and district counsel on fire is not an option, here is the contact information for silsbee independent school district and for the firm that represented the district in court. i called both of them this morning just trying to verify the facts reported in the independent and got stonewalled, but i feel like making the calls was important.

silsbee ISD
richard bain, superintendent
415 hwy 327 west
silsbee, tx 77656

telephone 409.980.7897 (press 4 for administration)

wells peyton greenberg & hunt, LLP
century tower, 550 fannin, ste 600
p.o. box 3708
beaumont, tx 77704

tanner t. hunt, jr. (attorney representing the district)
telephone 409.838.2644

please call. we might not be able to obtain justice for this girl, but at least we can let them know that this shit is not acceptable, and it's not going to fly.

now if you'll excuse me, i'm going to call the girl's attorney and find out if there's a fund for her to help her pay the settlement. i don't want my money going to the fuckers at SISD, but i want this girl's family to be financially ruined because of her courage even less. (laurence w. watts, 281.431.1500)

another day, another rage blackout

this is all the fuck over, but: vicious assault shakes texas town:

The case has rocked this East Texas community to its core and left many residents in the working-class neighborhood where the attack took place with unanswered questions.

well, i know i'd have some questions, if 18 dudes i knew kidnapped an eleven year old girl and filmed each other raping her! for instance, "would it be possible for us to take those dudes out back and shoot them?"

just kidding, i don't believe in the death penalty.

however! read on, plucky adventurers!

Among them is, if the allegations are proved, how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?

"It’s just destroyed our community," said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. "These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives."

...

. . .

. . .

and the rest of it goes on like that. she dressed like a much older girl, so it's her fault. (and apparently 20-year-olds deserve to be raped for...dressing like 20-year-olds?) her mother didn't keep an eye on her, so it's her fault. these "boys" (the eldest is apparently 27) were "drawn into" this business; they didn't make a conscious decision to abduct and repeatedly rape a child.

this is truly atrocious on so many levels that i barely know where to start. didn't stop me from calling the NYT correction/retraction line (888-NYT-NEWS) and demanding an apology in writing, but there have been good responses elsewhere:

This is the point at which, as the writer's editor, I would send him an email. "Dear James," it would say. "Thanks for getting this in! I have some concerns that we've only got quotes from people who are worried about the suspects ('The arrests have left many wondering who will be taken into custody next') and think the girl was asking for it, especially since, even if she actually begged for it, the fact that she is 11 makes the incident stupendously reprehensible (not to mention still illegal). We don't want anyone wrongly thinking you are being lazy or thoughtless or misogynist! Please advise if literally no other kinds of quotes are available because every single person who lives in Cleveland, Texas, is a monster."

honor killings: coming soon to a south dakota near you!

mother jones reports:

A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of “justifiable homicide” to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state’s GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state’s legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person “while resisting an attempt to harm” that person’s unborn child or the unborn child of that person’s spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman’s father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.

all flippant one-liners aside, though: what the fuck?

if you click over, you will see that rep. jensen's response to the internet at large asking that very question is "it's only if the person being justifiably homicided is trying to commit a crime!" and that sounds great until you remember that this is a state that actually had a total abortion ban signed into law in 2006.

i've had this article kicking around my inbox with a "blogqueue" tag for the past week and a half while i tried to decide exactly what i wanted to say. i still can't really organize my thoughts about it; just rereading it now has made me sort of sick to my stomach.

all of these efforts to make abortion more difficult, dangerous, and expensive are textbook studies of the law of unintended consequences. a zygote is a legal person? whoops, a woman who miscarries has just committed manslaughter. your daughter wants an abortion? south dakota wants to make it legally justifiable for you to kill whoever's taking her to the clinic and every person who works there.

i have a lot of trouble believing that anyone could be evil enough to intend these effects. but honestly? i think evil would be a much more comfortable explanation. as it is, the conclusion i keep drawing, over and over again, is that these statutes come into being not because antichoicers are evil, or even because they're stupid. it's because they don't care.

they don't care that pregnancy can kill us. they don't care that even with all contraceptive due diligence, accidents still happen. they don't care that an egg can't tell your boyfriend's and your rapist's spermatozoa apart. they don't care about the millions of single mothers living in poverty, and they don't care about the millions of children in the foster system who despair of ever finding loving families.

misogyny is undoubtedly evil, but the thing about an oppressive system is that it makes tons of people, who given the choice would not choose to be oppressors, complicit in oppression. and the rhetoric about protecting life -- in which my esteemed congressman is apparently so well-versed -- is a smokescreen that exists to maintain that complicity. and it is a mistake to tar all antichoicers with the same brush. possessing the privilege of being insulated from poverty, the fear of sexual violence, and inadequate health care doesn't make someone a bad person; only refusing to own it does. and if someone doesn't care about you, it is wrong to condemn them without giving them the chance to care by using your voice.

so i guess what i'm trying to say is hooray for mother jones. hopefully that article will separate a few more of the well-meaning but ignorant prolifers from monsters like phil jensen.

a quick word

so yesterday, charlie parker of san antonio's first news was commenting on the christopher lee debacle, and he made me very angry!

and i wrote his co-host and asked for a transcript or recording of the show so that i could source this post, but apparently they don't keep them around (or just don't make them available to random ladies on the internet, more likely). thus you have to take my word for it when i report that mr. parker called mr. lee's would-be ladyfriend a skank and a snitch, and said she should have kept her mouth shut.

also, she apparently shouldn't have been suspicious that he was lying to her, because everyone on craigslist lies, so she...? should have just stopped talking to him, i guess, and not exposed him for an adultering sack of shit.

i wonder what mrs. lee would think of that!

there was some speculation on wednesday afternoon and evening on what the republicans would do to spin this so it wouldn't make their social conservatism act look even more ridiculous and hypocritical than it already is. what i want to know is why they even bothered asking, when the scandal comes with a built-in person to blame!

...the lady, of course. what, you think they'd actually blame a rich white dude for something?