Posted in Humor | 1 Comment »

A sex crime by any other name

From the Pacific Sun News:

A sex crime by any other name

Experts refute idea that age-of-consent sex crimes against boys are ‘victimless’

by Ronnie Cohen
Pacific Sun Staff

The defense attorney for a former kindergarten teacher charged with sexually molesting two 15-year-old boys describes the one-night incident in Corte Madera as a victimless crime.

“I don’t know who’s the victim here,” attorney Michael Semansky said of the case against 41-year-old Amy Lee Kelly. “How do you molest a boy who’s 15 years old, who’s filled with testosterone and alcohol and begging for sex? I think it’s a victimless crime.”

But therapists who work with sex offenders and victims of sex crimes paint a different picture. They say sexual relations between 15-year-old boys and a 40-year-old woman can overwhelm boys, traumatizing and scarring them for life.

“Boys, though they can’t acknowledge their vulnerability, have a potential vulnerability that’s equal to females,” said psychologist Michael Grogan, director of San Rafael’s Jeannette Prandi Children’s Center, where sexually abused children are sensitively interviewed. “Boys are subject to the same kind of psychological implications as girls. There has to be an awareness that when you get involved with a person sexually, and you are an adult, there can be ramifications to that child that are lifelong. And I don’t think it matters if it’s a boy or a girl.”

The law treats male and female perpetrators of sex crimes equally. So Kelly, who taught at Bacich Elementary School in Kentfield for 11 years until June 2006, faces the same charges and the same punishment a man would face. In July, the district attorney charged the divorced mother of two with sexually molesting the Redwood High School boys and having unlawful sexual intercourse with one of them.

Kelly, who lives in the East Bay, was released from jail after posting $100,000 bail. Although she has pleaded not guilty, her lawyer said she feels remorseful about her role in the events that unfolded on a Friday night last October in her friend’s Corte Madera home. Semansky blamed alcohol for the alleged sex crimes and said Kelly completed a 90-day alcohol-rehabilitation program after the incident and now volunteers in the recovery community. She faces up to four years in state prison for the sexual intercourse charge. If convicted, she would have to register as a sex offender.

Despite the lack of distinction based upon gender, gender does color community perception about whether a case like the one against Kelly should be prosecuted and even whether it should have been brought to law enforcement’s attention in the first place.

Kathryn Mitchell, chief deputy district attorney, said numerous adults had knowledge about the drunken incident, which took place while Kelly was visiting her friend last October. “A lot of people apparently knew all about this and didn’t come forward in the fashion they should have,” Mitchell said.

According to court documents, Kelly told her friend–in whose home the incident occurred–about the sexual activity the following morning. Instead of summoning authorities, the hostess found the alleged victims–friends of the hostess’ 15-year-old daughter–at a Redwood High School football game, and the three of them vowed to keep the incident secret.

“That’s a pretty big secret for a 15-year-old to have to maintain,” said a therapist who works with Marin County sex offenders and requested anonymity. “Can’t tell your friends. Can’t tell your family. They’re afraid they’ll get the adult in trouble. The secrecy is a burden for a young person.”

After meeting with the alleged victims and promising secrecy, according to court documents, Kelly’s friend returned to her Corte Madera home, photographed everything she thought might be relevant, donned gloves and retrieved two used condoms, one from beneath a balcony and one from her daughter’s bedroom. The party hostess put the photographs and the condoms in a paper bag and gave it to another friend who lives in Mill Valley.

About four months passed before law-enforcement officials heard about the incident. In February, a Kent Middle School counselor, a so-called mandatory reporter, informed authorities that a parent told her Kelly may have had sex with multiple boys while she and the boys were intoxicated. A few months after the counselor’s call, a Twin Cities police detective began his investigation.

Detective Toby Miller said the incident remains under investigation, and authorities have not yet determined whether they will press charges against Kelly’s friend in whose home teen-agers were drinking alcohol that night. [The 'Pacific Sun' is withholding the hostess' identity in the interests of protecting the identity of her teenage daughter.]

The hostess appears to have cooperated with authorities. She had her friend in Mill Valley bring to the Twin Cities Police Department a sealed paper bag with the used condoms. And she turned over to police three recorded voice-mail messages Kelly left for her. In one of the messages, court documents say, the former teacher asked if anyone knew about the “Mary Kay Letourneau incident.”

The most infamous of teachers in sex scandals, Letourneau was 34 and the mother of four in 1996 when she began having sex with a sixth grader in her suburban Seattle school district.

On Friday afternoon, Oct. 20, court documents say Kelly brought her two young children to her friend’s house and began to drink red wine and beer. Later in the evening, Kelly’s friend determined she was too drunk to drive home, the documents say. So before the hostess went to bed, she hid Kelly’s car keys.

While the hostess and Kelly’s two children slept, the hostess’s 15-year-old daughter entertained friends. Court documents detail sordid images of teenagers unchaperoned except for the alleged too-drunk-to-drive and flirtatious former teacher. At one point, the documents say, the hostess’s daughter walked into her own bedroom to find one of her 15-year-old male friends naked with her mother’s 40-year-old girlfriend. Stunned, the girl shot photographs.

More details could come out during a preliminary hearing to determine if sufficient evidence exists to force Kelly to stand trial. The hearing is scheduled for Oct. 31.

Earlier this month, Kelly appeared in Marin County Superior Court briefly with Semansky, her attorney, to set the preliminary hearing date. Wearing her long black hair loose and a stylish black pantsuit with high heels, the trim, 5-foot-7-inch Kelly appeared inwardly agitated when Judge Faye D’Opal granted the ‘Marin Independent Journal’’s request to photograph her.

After the hearing, Kelly rushed out of the courtroom with a pony-tailed man Semansky called her boyfriend and two women the attorney identified as Kelly’s mother and sister. Kelly refused to comment. But, outside the courtroom, Semansky said he was surprised the District Attorney filed the charges and described the alleged victims as “sexually aggressive.”

Steven Duditch, a San Rafael attorney who explained his role as working behind the scenes to protect the rights of one of the boys, said he cannot discuss the facts but called Semansky’s claim that the boys were aggressive “ridiculous.”

“All the parties were drinking,” Semansky said. “They were probably nice young boys, nice boys who should have been home. She was in what I think was a blackout. She’s completely remorseful about what’s happened. She’s in therapy. After her divorce, she had problems.

“I just wonder where all the parents were. Would they want to bring their kids to court?”

Prosecutor Mitchell said she expected testifying would be difficult for the victims and their families.

“Going through the court process could be as shame-provoking and anxiety-producing as the offense,” said the therapist who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“Nobody wants to bring their sexual-assault experiences into a courtroom,” psychologist Grogan said. “There’s an immediate judgment about the victim. It can be a devastating experience to have this happen and then have it explored in a public forum.”

Both therapists said boys generally are more reluctant than girls to come forward as victims of sex crimes because the culture expects males to handle their own problems and because they are supposed to always want to engage in sex.

“There is a stereotype that boys are very interested in having sex with adult women. It can be overwhelming and traumatizing to a young teenage boy. Boys would feel: I gotta do this, when in fact, they may have very mixed feelings, especially if they aspire to be macho guys. Boys are expected to be more sexually experienced than girls, that the definition of their masculinity comes from their sexual prowess. A real man would never turn down this opportunity. That’s not reality. That’s a fantasy. It really hides the potential vulnerability of young men,” Grogan said.

Of the 430 sexual-abuse interviews he has conducted at the Prandi Center, he said no more than five have involved female perpetrators. But both therapists said they have treated adult men who as children were devastated and overwhelmed after sex with adult women.

“It’s a very complicated dynamic to explain,” Grogan said. “It so flies in the face of public perception.”

Ronnie Cohen can be reached at ronniecohen@comcast.net.

Posted in Justice, MGTOW | 8 Comments »

Feminism has destroyed young women

Julie, a commenter on Fidelbogen’s blog, The Counter-Feminist, left the following comment. I thought it was a good observation, and a sobering one at that.

Feminism has destroyed our young women in particular. Because feminism has been so busy to say that women were oppressed, and continue to hold men accountable, and give women every right to do as they please, and excuse ALL bad behaviour, our young women suffer.

Our young women WILL not and CANNOT be held accountable for their deeds thanks to feminism. This means that they have no boundaries. And their actions are begging for them.

They lie, steal, cheat and harm others as well as themselves – but nothing happens. They call males names, they hit, kick and even stab them. And nothing happens. They stand in public places and speak of their nasty deeds loudly for all the adults to hear and we CAN do nothing. We can’t help them.

Teachers and social workers cannot be one on one with them for fear they will cry rape – and they do cry rape! And they can’t discipline them.

But what they are crying out is, “Please love me. Please care enough to tell me where the line is”. And these females are angry, very angry. And they don’t understand why they can’t have a boyfriend and they can’t understand why they will be nothing more than used and discarded and they can’t understand why they have no good people in their lives. Well done feminism. You have empowered these young women, all right.

But then what about the 20 and 30 year olds. What has feminism done for them. Well, they gave them choices but now they want to take away these choices and force them to be independent because a man cannot be a provider and protector for them. Feminism is so concerned about women having equal money that they are forcing them to give their children up to daycares and work. They are so concerned for their welfare they enslave them.

And now they are fighting for the children’s rights against the mothers. Now mothers have no rights nor choices with their own children. Now the state takes their children straight from the hospital bed. Feminism doesn’t even give a mother a chance to be a mother. They are too busy putting cotton wool around the children yet when they take them away they abuse them through their own welfare system. The state will never love a child like a mother and father will. The state will never be a family to a child.

Posted in MGTOW, Politics | 11 Comments »

Why it doesn’t work

Captain Singleness has a good post on women who delay marrying and having children for too long.

Posted in MGTOW | 3 Comments »

Must arrest

This blog post from Glenn Sacks is an important read, I think. Yes, it is hearsay, but it is an undeniable fact that in many states – those with “must arrest” laws – police officers are trained to arrest the male in a domestic violence dispute even if he is the victim!!!

Where’s the justice? Oh, I forgot. Like George Orwell’s Animal Farm, some have become “more equal” than others.

Posted in Justice, Rants | 2 Comments »

You can’t say that. Ever.

Kathleen Parker has a new column about the Larry Summers witch hunt. Doesn’t the PC crowd have any idea how ridiculous they look? Anyway, I’m reposting it here.

You can’t say that. Ever

By Kathleen Parker
Friday, September 21, 2007

WASHINGTON — The latest smack-down of former Harvard President Lawrence Summers should extinguish any remaining doubt that political correctness is the new McCarthyism.

Summers, you’ll recall, was driven out of his university post in 2005 after he suggested at a conference that gender differences might account for an underrepresentation by women in science, math and engineering.

Summers’ remarks were seized upon, taken out of context and misinterpreted by many, including one female biologist from MIT, who walked out on the president’s talk, later saying that she felt she was either going to faint or throw up.

And we say there’s no difference between men and women? Can you imagine a man bolting from the room with light head and upset tummy if a woman college president suggested that genetic differences might account for males lagging behind females in reading and writing?

Men, being the logical, bemused fellows that they mostly are, would probably say, “Hear, hear!” — and wonder how much longer before lunch. Stomping out of the room in a tizzy is not in the adult male repertoire. (Could it be genes?)

For thinking improper thoughts, Summers the Blasphemer was banished into the outer darkness. There’s no debating that he was punished for saying something that made a special group feel bad — the new blacklisting offense. To be called a sexist, racist or homophobe today is tantamount to being a communist sympathizer 50-60 years ago.

Fast-forward to this month. Summers was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the University of California Board of Regents bimonthly board meeting.

And then he wasn’t.

Maureen Stanton, an evolution professor at UC Davis, was “stunned and appalled” when she learned of Summers’ upcoming speech and circulated a petition to have his invitation withdrawn.

Sinning against the sisterhood not only isn’t forgotten, apparently it isn’t ever forgiven.

Summers’ invitation was “not only misguided but inappropriate at a time when the university is searching for a new president and continues to build and diversify its community,” the petition said.

One can’t help wondering what those cultural principles might be if they don’t include supporting free speech? As the university continues to build and diversify its community, will that mean diversity of thought or only diversity of gender identity and race?

The answers are implicit in the draconian reaction to Summers’ invitation. Diversity on the American campus of today — and increasingly in the broader culture — means a multiculti rainbow of like-thinking people. Say or think incorrectly and one will be censored and potentially ruined.

Summers’ original offense is shocking only if you ignore the fact that men excel in certain areas and women in others — outcomes more likely related to our hunter-gatherer genes than to contemporary bias. Whatever the case, there’s simply no denying that math giftedness is more prevalent among males, a fact some scientists surmise may have to do with testosterone exposure in the womb.

Blame the mother.

Meanwhile, if it helps mitigate nature’s imbalance, we might consider that there are also more male than female mass murderers. If males get to boast Einstein, Newton and da Vinci, they also get to claim Attila, Hitler and Pol Pot.

Women who object to Summers’ assertion can argue with facts, if they choose. One study found, for example, that women’s scoring on math tests is influenced by whether they believe their performance is a function of genes or socialization.

Other studies also show that the gender gap in math is closing. None of these findings negate what science has otherwise revealed about boy and girl brains: They develop and operate differently.

University women do have a right to be concerned about how they are perceived as they compete with men for tenure, which women receive less often. Studies suggest that bias may play a role, but other research points to conflicts between family and career. The system may need tweaking for fairness and balance, but educators have a higher moral obligation to nurture the marketplace of ideas.

In Joseph McCarthy’s day, academics were among the primary targets of the thought police, while women had barely earned a voice in the political arena. Of all who should rebel against the stifling of voices and unpopular ideas, university women should be leading the charge.

The best way to prove Summers wrong, meanwhile, is to prove him wrong.

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment »

What are they thinking?!?!

Click on the picture for a full-sized version:

I don’t know if that’s a photoshop job, or a real top. Either way, it’s in incredibly poor taste. Were I the father of a young girl, hell would freeze over before I allowed her to even think about wearing it. What are these people thinking?!?! I’m absolutely sickened that people think that this sort of sleaze is “cute.”

Posted in Rants | 2 Comments »

No wonder men treat us as sex objects if we act like this

The Guardian ran the following column. It is time for women to admit their own complicity in their “objectification.”

No wonder men treat us as sex objects if we act like this

It is too easy to blame lad culture for today’s brand of sexism. Women have to stop lying about their own complicity

Decca Aitkenhead
Thursday September 13, 2007
The Guardian

Women have been debating whether lad mags are sexist for so long that the average media studies sixth-former could probably have scripted most of yesterday’s discussion on Radio 4. One of the genre’s leading titles, Nuts, launched its own cable TV channel last night, and a Nuts TV spokesperson was invited on to Today to persuade the feminist writer Natasha Walter that the station was in no way sexist. Nuts TV’s female – naturally – executive offered the familiar, if outlandish, proposition that lad mags “celebrate” and “respect” women. Walter said that’s funny, because they look exactly like a vision of old-fashioned sexism, not female empowerment.

Walter is so self-evidently right that you wonder how this “debate” can still be taking place. The reason – and the problem – is that the feminist critique has consistently failed to account for women’s own complicity in the genre.

The Nuts website, for example, features a page called Assess My Breasts, inviting men to study photos of naked breasts and rank them – which doesn’t seem particularly respectful. But the thousands of images have been uploaded by ordinary women – “entirely voluntarily”, for free, as the spokeswoman took pleasure pointing out. Without these willing armies of female volunteers, there would be no breasts for any readers of Nuts to assess – or any of the “Real Girls!” beloved of porn shoots, and no “High Street Honeys” for FHM porn scouts to find.

“A lot of young women feel very angry” about lad mag culture, Walter still insisted – but the evidence is, regrettably, against her. Circulation figures for lad mags have actually been plummeting; fewer and fewer men are buying them, and the genre’s bubble is widely believed to have burst. More and more women, however, are giving every impression that they would consider it a compliment – indeed a triumph – to be objectified in the manner of a cover girl.

A recent American book, Pornified, chronicles countless cases of schoolchildren videoing themselves having sex – on the school bus, surprisingly often – and distributing the footage via their mobile phones. I had hoped this was a peculiarly American phenomenon, but at a London school where a teacher I know works, a pupil recently videoed a younger girl giving him a blowjob in the school toilets, then uploaded her performance straight on to YouTube.

I used to think that rumours about normal, well-adjusted teenage girls posting topless pictures in chat rooms for boys they had never even met were alarmist myths. But I spent some time around 12-year-olds this summer, and it turns out they are absolutely true. This week FHM was censured for publishing a photograph of a topless 14-year-old without her consent – but the real shock came in FHM’s revelation that it receives more than 1,200 submissions of women topless or in lingerie every single week.

It is no wonder a lot of men now genuinely believe that women want to be treated as sex objects. Who could blame them when so many of us have internalised an exhibitionistic ideal of our own objectification? You could argue, I suppose, that women who put headless photos of their naked torsos on to the internet are still suffering the legacy of millennia of male sexual oppression. But there must come a point where it is simply implausible to keep blaming men.

“The beauty industry is a monster, selling unattainable dreams. It lies, it cheats, it exploits women.” The woman who said that was mourned this week as a progressive feminist heroine – so it’s a pity, and a puzzle, that Anita Roddick spent her life encouraging women to buy into it – but she was far from alone. Postfeminists in the 90s assured women they could safely re-embrace their “femininity” without sacrificing equality or credibility.

And so manicures, and Brazilian bikini waxes and pole-dancing classes were all reintroduced under the guise of harmless girly “fun”. Barely 10 years later, we look in the mirror and mistake ourselves for sex workers.

If we do not want to find channels like Nuts TV on our televisions, we are going to have to stop lying to ourselves and each other. That would mean we have to stop buying pre-teen daughters T-shirts that say Babe In Training or Born To Shop, or taking them to see Bratz: The Movie. It means not reading any more magazines devoted to laughing at a celebrity for having a sweatmark on her dress, and not watching any more Living TV – the closest female equivalent on cable to Nuts TV, being targeted explicitly at women and consisting almost exclusively of programmes about breast enlargement.

It is hard to see how men can be expected to notice a distinction between professional sex objects and the vast majority of women if we can’t tell the difference ourselves.

The author’s email is decca_aitkenhead@hotmail.com

Posted in MGTOW | 1 Comment »

Posted in Miscellaneous | 2 Comments »

Men cope by avoiding

I found this article by Jeff Zaslow. I thought it was pretty good, so I’m recommending you read it.

Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope With Being Cast as Predators

September 6, 2007

These days, if Rian Romoli accidentally bumps into a child, he quickly raises his hands above his shoulders. “I don’t want to give even the slightest indication that any inadvertent touching occurred,” says Mr. Romoli, an economist in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif.

Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. “Being male,” he explains, “I am guilty until proven innocent.”

In San Diego, retiree Ralph Castro says he won’t allow himself to be alone with a child — even in an elevator.

Last month, I wrote about how our culture teaches children to fear men. Hundreds of men responded, many lamenting that they’ve now become fearful of children. They said they avert their eyes when kids are around, or think twice before holding even their own children’s hands in public.

Frank McEnulty, a builder in Long Beach, Calif., was once a Boy Scout scoutmaster. “Today, I wouldn’t do that job for anything,” he says. “All it takes is for one kid to get ticked off at you for something and tell his parents you were acting weird on the campout.”

It’s true that men are far more likely than women to be sexual predators. But our society, while declining to profile by race or nationality when it comes to crime and terrorism, has become nonchalant about profiling men. Child advocates are advising parents never to hire male babysitters. Airlines are placing unaccompanied minors with female passengers.

Child-welfare groups say these precautions minimize risks. But men’s rights activists argue that our societal focus on “bad guys” has led to an overconfidence in women. (Children who die of physical abuse are more often victims of female perpetrators, usually mothers, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.)

Though groups that cater to the young are working harder to identify predators, they also ask that risks be kept in perspective. Big Brothers Big Sisters of America does criminal background checks on each of its 250,000 volunteers, and has social workers assess them. Since 1990, the group says, it has had fewer than 10 abuse allegations per year. More than 98% of the alleged abusers were male.

“If we wanted to make sure we never had a problem, one approach would be to just become Big Sisters — to say we won’t serve boys,” says Mack Koonce, the group’s chief operating officer. But, of course, that would deny hundreds of thousands of boys contact with male mentors.

The Boy Scouts of America now has elaborate rules to prevent both abuse and false accusations. There are 1.2 million Scout leaders, and the organization kicks out about 175 of them a year over abuse allegations or for violating policies.

These policies can be intricate. For instance, four adult leaders are needed for each outing. If a sick child must go home, two adults drive him and two stay with the others, so no adult is ever alone with a Scout. “It’s protection for the adults, as well as the children,” says a Scouts spokesman.

The result of all this hyper-carefulness, however, is that men often feel like untouchables. In Cochranville, Pa., Ray Simpson, a bus driver, says that he used to have 30 kids stop at his house on Halloween. But after his divorce, with people knowing he was a man living alone, he had zero visitors. “I felt like crying at the end of the evening,” he says.

At Houston Intercontinental Airport, businessman Mitch Reifel was having a meal with his 5-year-old daughter when a policeman showed up to question him. A passerby had reported his interactions with the child seemed “suspicious.”

In Skokie, Ill., Steve Frederick says the director of his son’s day-care center called him in to reprimand him for “inappropriately touching the children.” “I was shocked,” he says. “Whatever did she mean?” She was referring to him reading stories with his son and other kids on his lap. A parent had panicked when her child mentioned sitting on a man’s lap.

“Good parenting and good education demand that we let children take risks,” says Mr. Frederick, a career coach. “We install playground equipment, putting them at risk of falls and broken bones. Why? We want them to challenge themselves and develop muscles and confidence.

“Likewise, while we don’t want sexual predators to harm our kids, we do want our kids to develop healthy relationships with adults, both men and women. Instilling a fear of men is a profound disservice to everyone.”

Something to think about, isn’t it?

This society, in attacking men, is going to make children suffer.

Posted in MGTOW, Rants | 4 Comments »