Archive for the 'Sexism hurts men' Category

FBI’s New Definition Of Rape Still Excludes Envelopment

Thursday, October 27th, 2011 by Barry Deutsch

It appears that this will be the FBI’s new definition of rape:

Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.

It’s a huge improvement over the current FBI definition, which excluded many female victims and all male victims of rape. But the FBI shouldn’t exclude “envelopment” rapes by female rapists from their definition. Female rapists are less common, but they exist, and there’s no legitimate reason not to count their crimes.

Posted in Ampersand, crossposted on TADA, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues, Sexism hurts men | Comment

Good News: FBI Will Probably Update Its Horrible Definition Of Rape

Friday, September 30th, 2011 by Barry Deutsch

Some hopeful news from The New York Times.

Thousands of sexual assaults that occur in the United States every year are not reflected in the federal government’s yearly crime report because the report uses an archaic definition of rape that is far narrower than the definitions used by most police departments. [...]

“The public has the right to know about the prevalence of crime and violent crime in our communities, and we know that data drives practices, resources, policies and programs,” said Carol Tracy, executive director of the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia, whose office has campaigned to get the F.B.I. to change its definition of sexual assault. “It’s critical that we strive to have accurate information about this.” [...]

The definition of rape used by the F.B.I. — “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will” — was written more than 80 years ago. The yearly report on violent crime, which uses data provided voluntarily by the nation’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies, is widely cited as an indicator of national crime trends.

But that definition, critics say, does not take into account sexual-assault cases that involve anal or oral penetration or penetration with an object, cases where the victims were drugged or under the influence of alcohol or cases with male victims. As a result, many sexual assaults are not counted as rapes in the yearly federal accounting. [...]

Greg Scarbro, the F.B.I.’s unit chief for the Uniformed Crime Report, said that the agency agreed that the definition should be revised and that an F.B.I. subcommittee would take up the issue at a meeting on Oct. 18.

“Our goal will be to leave that meeting with a definition and a mechanism,” Mr. Scarbro said. But he noted that law enforcement agencies would have to support any change.

Slate has more on the activists, both from feminists and police departments, who have been lobbying the FBI for this change. And the Feminist Majority Foundation has an email form letter you can use to help keep the pressure on. (Hat tip.)

Posted in Ampersand, crossposted on TADA, In the news, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues, Sexism hurts men | Comment

California’s “Alternative Custody Program” Is Sexist Against Men

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011 by Barry Deutsch

California has a new program to let some non-violent offenders serve some time living at home, wearing an ankle monitor. Yay California!1

The program is for prisoners who were the primary caretakers of their parents before they entered prison. That seems good to me; you have to start somewhere, and that’s a good population to start with. Hopefully, if the program is successful, it can be extended to other non-violent prisoners.

But here’s the problem: Only female prisoners are able to use the “Alternative Custody Program.”

Spokeswoman Dana Toyama said the bill that made the program possible, SB 1266, was written with women in mind, because they tend to be the primary caregivers.

Toyama said constitutionally CDCR cannot bar men from applying to participate in the program, but she said they do not have the necessary programs currently in place to approve their participation.

“Right now, we are not offering it to them, but they can’t be statutorily excluded. We just don’t have the resources to offer it to male inmates,” Toyama said. She also said they do not have a date set to start extending the program to men.

It should be noted that although an earlier version of SB 1266 was written for mothers, the language was specifically rewritten to include both mothers and fathers (thanks to some praiseworthy lobbying by Fathers and Families, which is run by men’s rights activist Glenn Sacks). As I understand it, the law that was passed was gender-neutral, and included fathers. So what the prison system is doing is ignoring the legislature’s intent.

This is sexism, plain and simple. I don’t doubt that it would cost a little bit more to extend the program to fathers — but keep in mind, every prisoner switched to the “Alternative Custody Program” saves the state money. I strongly suspect that’s what really lacking isn’t resources, but will.

I hope that some imprisoned father sues the California prison system, and soon.

  1. Unfortunately, the program may not last long, since it only applies to people in prisons, and soon California will start putting low-level offenders in jail instead of prison.

Posted in Ampersand, crossposted on TADA, Prisons and Justice, Sexism hurts men | Comment

Want To Ban Circumcision? Include A Religious Exemption

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011 by Barry Deutsch

From a Time Magazine article about the proposed circumcision ban in San Francisco:

The San Francisco debate over circumcision initially centered on the value of the procedure itself — opponents call it barbaric, supporters point to its long tradition and say it prevents disease. But increasingly the debate is becoming one about religion, in which critics accuse backers of the referendum of bigotry and insist a ban would violate the First Amendment’s religious freedoms. [...]

Still, the drafters of the San Francisco referendum could have avoided the religious issue — and kept the focus on the harms and benefits of circumcision — if they had included an exception for circumcisions done for religious reasons. Jews, whose religious traditions require male children to be circumcised eight days after birth, and Muslims, who also practice circumcision, are a small part of the city’s population.

Instead, the referendum expressly states that the ban would apply equally to religious circumcisions.

By not including a religious exemption, the writers of San Francisco’s proposed ban guaranteed that what should have been a debate about boy’s rights to an intact body, and about health issues, has become a debate about if they themselves are bigots. That’s neither smart nor effective.1

Circumcision ban advocates might respond that Jewish and Muslim boys deserve to remain intact as much as anyone else. But talking about the proposed ban as if it would actually prevent circumcisions among Jews and Muslims is unrealistic. Determined parents — and after this campaign, Jewish and Muslim parents in San Francisco are, I’d wager, more determined than ever — can drive out of town to have the circumcision done, or have the circumcision done at home (as many Jews already do).

The only thing a circumcision ban could do, other than help start some conversations, is change how parents who don’t feel strongly about circumcision choose. Some parents currently having their sons circumcised, not because they’re determined to do so, but because circumcision is more-or-less the default choice in many US hospitals. Those are the parents who might change what they do because of a ban. But the ban will never pass if it doesn’t include a religious exemption.

  1. Actually, there’s good reason to think that the folks behind the San Francisco ban are in fact antisemites. But perhaps some future proposed bans will come from people who aren’t dragging around huge “we are bigoted jerks” baggage.

Posted in Ampersand, Anti-Semitism, crossposted on TADA, Sexism hurts men | Comment

Supreme Court, In A 4-4 Vote, Affirms Sexist Discrimination Against Fathers

Sunday, June 19th, 2011 by Barry Deutsch

Italian Dad Reunited

[Crossposted at Family Scholars Blog.]

I wrote about Flores-Villar v. United States last year. The Times summarizes the state of the law in 1974, when Ruben Flores-Villar was born:

Children born outside the country to an unmarried American parent are considered American citizens at birth if the parent lived in the United States before the child was born. For a mother, the required period of residence is one year. For a father, it is 10 years, five of them after he turns 14. Fathers must also prove parenthood and pledge to support the child.

The case involves Ruben Flores-Villar, whose father — but not mother — is an American. Ruben was born in Mexico and moved to the US when he was two months old. Ruben has been declared an “illegal immigrant” and deported to Mexico. Ruben’s father was sixteen years old when Ruben was born, and so the “five of them after he turns 14″ provision of the law was impossible to meet.

(It’s important to note that immigration law was altered in the 1980s; the current law is still sexist and should be fixed, but the discrepancy is not as large as it was when Ruben was born.)

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling on a 4-4 vote; Kagen recused herself because she was involved with this case as Solicitor General. This is particularly frustrating since, had Kagen voted, it’s expected she would have voted in Flores-Villar’s favor.

Amanda Rice writes, “When the Court splits, the lower court’s decision stands, but the Supreme Court’s decision creates no precedent. In other words, it’s just as if the Court never granted certiorari.” And this split decision creates some ground for optimism: perhaps a future case, in which Kagen can participate, will lead to this sexist immigration law being overturned.

Marcia Greenberger of the National Women’s Law Center writes:

The case demonstrates how vulnerable the hard-won Constitutional protection against sex discrimination has become. The Constitution requires an exceedingly persuasive rationale to justify the government’s treatment of people differently based on gender—and there was simply no rationale offered that even comes close here. Four Justices on the Court were willing to let stand a decision based on outdated stereotypes about the roles of men and women in raising their children.

The Court’s decision allows the continued application of tougher standards for U.S. citizenship to children born abroad to unmarried U.S. citizen fathers as compared to unmarried U. S. citizen mothers. Flores-Villar, an unmarried father, could only have passed his citizenship on to his son if he had lived in the U.S. for at least ten years prior to the child’s birth, with five of those years after the age of 14—a standard that was physically impossible for him to meet since he was 16 years old when he became a father. In contrast, unmarried mothers only have to live in the U.S. for one year—at any time in their lives—a standard Flores-Villar easily met. This unequal treatment imposes real harm on mothers, fathers and children, and because of this decision, the harm continues.

And Sandra Park of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project writes:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the law in response to Flores-Villar’s constitutional challenge. The court failed to take into account that gender stereotypes that presume fathers are less responsible for child rearing influenced the passage of the law, despite the fact that laws that discriminate between men and women based on gender stereotypes have routinely been struck down as violating the Constitution. 

Furthermore, the lower court did not recognize that the government’s justification for the law – to avoid statelessness of children – was unpersuasive. By subjecting fathers to stricter residency requirements, the law exacerbates the risk of statelessness for their children and does not effectively address the problem. Without much analysis, the court relied on the reasoning of Nguyen v. INS, which approved the law’s legitimation requirement, but did not recognize a crucial distinction. In Nguyen, the Court emphasized that the father had ample opportunity to legally acknowledge his child and exercise his right to transmit citizenship. Flores-Villar’s father, on the other hand, faced an absolute bar to transmitting citizenship due to his age. In effect, the law declares that some parents have fewer rights, simply because they are men.

Today’s order did not rule on the merits of the 9th Circuit’s reasoning. But given that this nationality law continues to treat fathers and mothers differently, those questions will likely be raised again, to be heard next time by all nine justices.

The comments at the Volokh Conspiracy include some speculation about which justices voted on which side of this issue.

Posted in Ampersand, crossposted on TADA, Feminism, sexism, etc, Immigration, Migrant Rights, etc, Sexism hurts men, Supreme Court Issues | Comment

The FBI Says Men Can’t Be Raped

Thursday, February 10th, 2011 by Barry Deutsch

Colorlines highlights this terrible quote from an FBI FAQ about the Uniform Crime Reporting system, the nation’s leading source of crime statistics. (Which is unfortunate, because the UCR is a lousy source of statistics.) The FAQ also discusses the National Incident-Based Reporting System, a newer crime data system also run by the FBI.

For UCR reporting purposes, can a male be raped?

No. The UCR Program defines forcible rape as “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will” (p. 19). In addition, “By definition, sexual attacks on males are excluded from the rape category and must be classified as assaults or other sex offenses depending on the nature of the crime and the extent of injury” (p. 20). An aggravated assault is a Part I offense and would be reported on the Return A form. (A simple assault is a Part II offense but also would be reported on the Return A form.) Sex offenses qualify as Part II offenses and would be reported on the appropriate Age, Sex, and Race of Persons Arrested form (pp. 96 and 142).

However, in the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), a sexual assault on a male by a female could be classified as a forcible rape, depending on the nature of the attack and the extent of the injury. For NIBRS reporting purposes, forcible rape is defined as “The carnal knowledge of a person, forcibly and/or against that person’s will; or not forcibly or against the person’s will where the victim is incapable of giving consent because of his/her temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity (or because of his/her youth)” (UCR Handbook, NIBRS edition, 1992, p. 21). In the NIBRS, at least one offender must be of a different sex than the victim for the event to be classified as a forcible rape. For example, a female can rape a male, or in the case of multiple offenders, a female and male can rape a male. However, a male cannot rape another male, or in the case of multiple offenders, two males cannot rape a male.

Some comments:

1) This is so fucking appalling. Men can be raped. A so-called “uniform” crime-counting system that refuses to acknowledge this fact is both anti-male and systematically designed to undercount rape.

2) I understand that they want to keep the way they measure crimes consistent to preserve compatibility with past data. But that’s a technical problem, and one that could be mitigated. Footnotes could be deployed. Scholars could still access female-victim-only data for purposes of comparing with past years.

It’s not an impossible problem. Just a problem that no one has considered important enough to solve.

3) Honestly, the UCR and NIBRS suck as a means of measuring rape anyway, because all they measure are rapes reported to police. But virtually all surveys indicate that the majority of rapes are never reported to police. It’s interesting that rapes reported to police go up or down over time, but it tells us next to nothing about how often rape occurs.

4) The good news is that the NIBRS will eventually grow to effectively replace the UCR, which means that at least some male rape victims — those raped by women — will be counted. Unfortunately, switching from the established UCR to the NIBRS reporting system costs money for the states, and most states are broke.

5) Speaking of NIBRS… WTF? At least the UCR has the excuse of being designed in the 1920s. The NIBRS was designed in the late 1980s. What possible excuse could there be for excluding same-sex rapes from their definition?

In September, a CNN article by Emma Lacey-Bordeaux addressed this issue. Senator Arlen Specter seemed to be taking the lead on addressing this issue in Congress; hopefully someone else will pick up the issue now that Specter’s no longer a Senator. Lacey-Bordeaux wrote:

Advocates question the rape statistics because, they note, the federal government is using a 1929 definition of the crime that excludes male victims, statutory rapes and those committed without force.

Using such an antiquated, narrow definition is a harmful disservice to countless victims, according to Carol Tracy, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Women’s Law Project. Specter agreed, saying the definition is not “inclusive like it should be.”

Men account for roughly 10 percent of victims in the United States, said Scott Berkowitz, head of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

The adoption of broader rape statistics is critical to the recovery process for male victims, added Dr. Richard Gartner, a spokesman for the group Male Survivor.

Interestingly, the FBI’s man in charge of the UCR is quoted saying he’s open to changing the definitions.

Posted in Ampersand, crossposted on TADA, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues, Sexism hurts men | Comment