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~ An eclectic kaleidoscope of whatever tickles my fancy, makes me think, gives me pause, grabs my heart, gives me the giggles, or in any way hits me in the feels.

So There Was This Today

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Not So Fun Facts about Rape

05 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by 98maryanne in Politics, Rape Culture, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

• Rape is not solely or even mostly about sex. There can be several reasons for rape, including sexual gratification, revenge, recreation, power/control, and attempting to prove masculinity. Men don’t rape 80 year-old women because they are horny. If rape were only about sex, then only attractive young women (or men) would be raped (although women under 30 are by far the largest group of victims and that includes children). Anyone of any age, gender, or sexual orientation can, and have, been raped.

• Women can also commit rape. While most of the attention is on male sexual violence, and rightly so, because females are ninety-one percent of rape victims, some of those rapes are perpetrated by women, and women perpetrate some of the nine percent of rapes that happen to men. We can’t truly understand and hopefully end, sexual assault without understanding all aspects of the problem.

• It does not matter if a woman who is raped is a virgin or has slept with every man that moves. A woman who enjoys her sexuality is A) NOT a slut (that particular bit of male shaming of women’s sexuality is especially egregious) and B) if raped, was not raped because she enjoys her sexuality or in any way deserved it. See first comment if the reason why still eludes you.

• False accusations of rape are rare. There are actually two types, a false allegation, meaning a woman claims she was raped, but does not name a perpetrator, and a false accusation meaning the woman claims she was raped and names a perpetrator. The distinction is important because false allegations (no one is named) are more common than false accusations (a perpetrator is named), and many news reports that claim that false allegations of rape are around 40%, are not making the distinction that the majority of those never named a perpetrator, meaning no one suffered from the allegation. False accusations are no joke and can cause much harm to the accused including loss of job, expensive court proceedings, and loss of reputation, and very rarely jail time. What is troubling however, is that because a vanishingly small number of men face very real issues from false accusations, a very large number of women are automatically assumed to be lying about their sexual assault. The vast majority of rapists walk free among us. Any accusation of rape or sexual assault must be take seriously, and investigated thoroughly, to make sure that women get justice and that falsely accused men get the same.

• Worry over falsely accused men is not the only reason women are not believed. Two of the most common questions rape survivors are asked are, “Why didn’t you fight back?” and “Why can’t you remember certain things about the assault?” How our brains and therefore our bodies and minds react to trauma hold the answers. When a sexual assault is occurring the victim can literally be paralyzed. This is called tonic immobility. Several different hormones are released that inhibit thought processes, that help deal with potential pain, and to help the victim remain calm. Other hormone levels fall, leaving the victim with less energy available to fight or flee. These same hormones affect the hippocampus, which turns sensory information into memories, and the amygdala, which then processes the emotions related to the memory. So the same hormones that work to keep our bodies safe during an attack, also make it difficult to remember in great detail that same attack. In spite of the hard facts of science, the myth persists that unless a woman fights back or remembers every specific detail of her assault, she is likely a false accuser.

• Why don’t more women report rape? The last two paragraphs offer a big clue. One study indicates that 90% of survivors who report, face secondary victimization, including being told by police that they shouldn’t file a report, questioned about what they were wearing, questioned about their prior sexual history, and even if they had an orgasm during the attack, although that particularly nasty question usually only happened if the victim did not have an advocate present. The idea that a woman must have a pristine reputation, must have behaved as expected during her assault (fighting back), must remember every single detail of the assault, had to have been primly dressed, stone cold sober, have physical injuries, and most ludicrous of all, witnesses to the assault, persist and women know they aren’t likely to be believed. The U.S. media is also to blame for perpetuating the rape culture that is so entrenched in society. And people wonder why rape is the most underreported crime, with 63% of victims never reporting.

• Let’s talk a bit about consent. This really shouldn’t be that hard folks. Someone who is so drunk, that you’re positive they couldn’t make it home safely by themselves, also cannot give consent for sex. Just because someone has said yes before, that’s not a blanket yes for all sexual encounters. If someone uses coercion to force the issue, they do not have consent. Consent is an active act by both parties and it should be totally obvious that both parties are totally into it, whether that consent is verbal, or through body language.

• There are many myths surrounding rape that just won’t die including a few discussed above. One of the most common is that most rapes are perpetrated by strangers who yank unsuspecting women into dark alleys and rape them at knife point. While that kind of rape does happen, the majority are perpetrated by someone the victim knows. Another myth is that it wasn’t really rape unless the victim is physically injured. The rapist may use a weapon to control the situation, the victim may succumb to tonic immobility, they could be drunk, or they could have been drugged by the rapist. Another persistent myth is that victims who withdraw a rape allegation were never raped in the first place. There are many reasons why women decide not to pursue a rape claim including pressure from family, fear of reprisal from the perpetrator and more. Another enduring myth is that sex workers cannot be raped. This goes back to consent. If there is no consent it is rape, no matter what a person does for a living. These and other longstanding myths must be combated and counteracted at every opportunity if we are to ever get a handle on the issue of sexual assault.

• As rare as they are, there are false allegations of sexual assault and rape made. Why do women do this? This article does a deep dive into allegations, accusations, the reasons they are made and the mind-set of the accuser. It is well worth the read.

• Finally, let’s talk a bit about how credible women are seen to be when they accuse someone of rape. If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you would answer, they are rarely seen as credible and you would be right. Let’s suppose Suzy Smith came home from work and her apartment had been burglarized. Would she be afraid to call the police? Would she be afraid that they wouldn’t believe her, that they would find any number of reasons to find her report of a burglary not credible? Of course not. What about if she reported her car stolen? Her purse? What about if she called and said she had seen a child kidnapped off of the street? Or that she had seen a suspicious looking person leave a suspicious looking package somewhere? No to all of the above. Do lawyers see women as so non-credible that they never call them as witnesses in court or seat them on juries? Yet again no. So then why do women have little credibility when reporting a sexual assault? Rape culture. It is up to each and every one of us to educate ourselves on what rape culture is, and what we need to accept that we’ve been doing or believing to perpetuate it, and then making it a priority to change.

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Biggest Election Fraud In History Discovered In The United States

04 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by 98maryanne in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

WOW

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Gary Johnson is Worse than Donald Trump

31 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by 98maryanne in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

I’ve seen lots of former Sander’s supporters say they would support Gary Johnson. Here’s why that is a terrible idea.

Benjamin Studebaker

Since Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton, I’ve heard a number of Sanders supporters indicate that they’re considering supporting Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party’s nominee. We need to nip this in the bud right now. Gary Johnson is by far the most reactionary and right wing candidate in the race, especially on economic issues. I didn’t write him a candidate evaluation because in 2012 he received less than 1% of the vote, but a recent poll says 10% of Sanders supporters are now willing to support Johnson. If you are a Johnson supporter or you know someone who is, there’s some important information about Johnson and the Libertarians that everyone needs to know.

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Bernie Sanders vs. The Powers That Be

10 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by 98maryanne in Politics, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton

I’ve had a couple of days to digest the primaries on June 7th. My stomach is still upset. I knew things were bad in this country. I knew wealth inequality was at levels not seen since the Gilded Age. I knew that our government had been bought and paid for by the oligarchy and I knew that it would be a long term struggle to reclaim it on behalf of the people. What I didn’t quite realize yet was how deeply, in the media, and in local, state and national government the rot had penetrated.

I’m going to talk about how the media completely ignored Bernie Sanders until it was obvious he was building a movement and how they then saturated the airwaves with he has no chance of winning despite his winning state after state. I’m going to talk about the media ignoring the massive and ongoing voter fraud that has been perpetuated in this primary. So let’s start with exit polling.

Exit polling is done extremely well. Exit polling is used by our own State Department and the UN to monitor elections for fraud in third world countries. If exit polls are off by more than two to four percent, the election is considered invalid due to fraud. That’s 2% to 4%. Got that? Take a look at this graphic and the election polling results for the democratic primary in several states:

6dc40ac3333d65c6649f71950191031f

Look at the differences in election polls and actual vote counts, and how off they are in favor of Clinton. And by the way, this is hardly the only graphic that shows this, but you do have to dig a bit because the mainstream media is ignoring this. How could they ignore this you might wonder? Well, when it became increasingly obvious that in the United States of America, one of the two major parties was running an election that would be thrown out as fraudulent by our own State Department, the mainstream media just up and declared they would not longer be using exit polling because they were “unreliable”. So what’s good enough to call into question elections in other countries is too unreliable for our stand up democracy. Huh.

But here’s the kicker. They decided to quit exit polling before California. Before the state with so many delegates up for grabs it could change the trajectory of the race, in spite of the clear voter fraud happening in previous races. Because if the exit polling was off by large margins in California more people would sit up and take notice. So we got no exit polling in California. And even though pre-election polling showed Sanders and Clinton in a statistical tie, she “won” handily. And we have no exit polling to compare with vote totals.

[Edited to add] Just found this. An exit poll of CA early primary voting (with a statistical margin of error of 3.52%) was off by 16% in favor of Hillary. That is a statistical impossibility. This same exit poll was spot on for all other races in CA on Tuesday. Combine this with the fact that in the 24 states where the exit polls were off by more than the statistical margin of error, 22 of those states exceeded that margin of error in favor of Hillary Clinton. The odds of that scenario occurring are approximately 1 in 78 billion.

Now lets talk voter suppression. From the constant barrage of Bernie will never win, Clinton is inevitable, coming from every single pundit on every single media platform including those same pundits calling a Clinton win the second polls closed, but waiting until 70, 80, 90% of the vote was in to call for Bernie even when he was winning a state by landslide margin; to adding super delegate totals to the pledged delegate total to make it look like Clinton had an insurmountable lead, even though super delegates do not vote until the convention and only if needed; to massive poll closures in important states that restricted where people could vote and causing hours long lines that many people just couldn’t wait in due to work and other commitments; to thousands and thousands of lifelong Democrats as well as newly registered Democrats getting to the polls and being told they either weren’t registered or weren’t registered as a Democrats so they could only vote provisionally, meaning their votes ended up in the dumpster; the suppression is obvious and would be called out in any truly functioning democracy.

But the  overripe cherry on this putrid primary season was the AP announcing the night before California and 5 other states voted that Clinton had clinched the nomination and was the Democratic Party nominee. Clinton did not have the pledged delegates needed when this announcement was made. The AP called the race based on phone calls they made to super delegates who confirmed their commitment to Clinton. So they outright lied to the electorate in order to suppress turnout. So now the entire media narrative is Clinton is the nominee, Bernie needs to exit gracefully and all the party bigwigs including President Obama and Elizabeth Warren have endorsed her.

There is only one major player who has not announced Hillary Clinton as the nominee and that is the DNC. In spite of claiming neutrality during the primary Debbie Wasserman-Schulz, the chairman of the DNC, has been doing everything in her power to stack the deck in favor of Clinton. Why would she not jump on that bandwagon now? Because according to the party’s own rules, unless a candidate has 2,383 pledged delegates (Clinton does not) they are not the nominee. Super delegates do not count until they vote at the convention. Their loyalties can and do switch for any number of reasons. That is why Bernie is taking this all the way to the convention. Clinton is not yet the nominee according to the DNC’s own rules. Bernie supporters, by the way, aren’t sitting around wishing for “unicorns and rainbows” in the form of the super delegates moving over to him en masse. They are establishment and will stay with Clinton, that much has been made clear. But Bernie’s movement deserves time and attention at the convention and we are grateful he’s still willing to fight for us.

But for me, the most disheartening thing about this whole business is how many Americans are willing to ignore and overlook the subjugation of our democracy because it benefits their candidate. These are the same people who act all appalled at the Republican’s voter suppression tactics through highly restrictive Voter ID laws that impact the poor, elderly, minorities and young people disproportionately and who just happen to vote Democrat by wide margins. But the very real, verifiable and egregious voter fraud and suppression happening in their own primary and it’s crickets. Do they not understand that if this kind of corruption is allowed to stand, it could very well be their candidate who is screwed next time around? Do they not understand that they are no better than the Republicans they vilify? Do they not understand? Or do they only care about democracy when it works in their favor?

Bernie Sander’s movement will continue well beyond this election in spite of the powers that be working diligently to make sure he doesn’t have a platform to return this country to one that works for all Americans. In point of fact, their fraud has made sure of that.

 

 

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Clinton Supporters are Scaremongering about Donald Trump to Silence the Concerns of the Young and the Poor

25 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by 98maryanne in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Benjamin Studebaker

I started seeing it a few weeks ago, when Daily Kos told its contributors that after March 15th, they were no longer allowed to robustly criticize Hillary Clinton from the left. As Donald Trump continues to win, win, and win some more, it has only intensified. First they asked Bernie Sanders supporters to unite behind Clinton. Now they’re accusing Sanders supporters of being privileged if they resist. And from there, it’s just a small step to calling Sanders’ people enablers of racism, sexism, or even fascism. If you haven’t seen these arguments yet, you will soon. The arguments being peddled are very poorly constructed. They rely on a mix of fear and bias toward the near.

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I Love People Who Love Bernie Sanders

04 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by 98maryanne in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Love this!

theindependentthinker2016

bernie-sanders-portlandorI love people who love Bernie Sanders.

They are intelligent.

They see through bullshit.

They seek truth.

They strive to be fair.

Each one of them is a daily reminder to me that the world is okay.

Before this happened, I wasn’t so sure some days.

From the time I was a kid I knew that the fix was in and I just wanted to Rage Against the Machine…

But no one would rage with me.

Everyone was watching football.

I was the only one protesting.

Why couldn’t I just relax and watch American Idol?

Why was I angry about what was happening to others?

…

The world was going to hell and no one noticed…or cared.

…

When I found out Bernie was running I knew it would change my life.

I ran to my girlfriend’s house and said

“You know the Senator from Vermont that I like? He’s running for…

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Being A Girl: A Brief Personal History of Violence

07 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by 98maryanne in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Most women I know, including me, have gone through at least some of these things, some even worse things. This blogger has a lot of guts for speaking out.

The Belle Jar

1.

I am six. My babysitter’s son, who is five but a whole head taller than me, likes to show me his penis. He does it when his mother isn’t looking. One time when I tell him not to, he holds me down and puts penis on my arm. I bite his shoulder, hard. He starts crying, pulls up his pants and runs upstairs to tell his mother that I bit him. I’m too embarrassed to tell anyone about the penis part, so they all just think I bit him for no reason.

I get in trouble first at the babysitter’s house, then later at home.

The next time the babysitter’s son tries to show me his penis, I don’t fight back because I don’t want to get in trouble.

One day I tell the babysitter what her son does, she tells me that he’s just a little boy, he doesn’t know…

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A Smelly Trump

10 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by 98maryanne in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Even non-Americans understand the workings of the GOP’s clown car better than many right wing Americans.

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The McKinney, TX Pool Party Debacle

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by 98maryanne in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

McKinney is north of Dallas, where I live, and just slightly north of Plano, where I grew up. It is the county seat of Collin county and I’ve had family who lived there, so I have spent some time there either visiting family, doing business or shopping. I have never had any dealings with any police officers in McKinney and I doubt that the entire force is full of terrible policemen. But there is at least one terrible policeman and his name is Eric Casebolt. I doubt if McKinney is full of racists assholes, but there are clearly some. I have been reading with some amusement and even more disbelief, the nearly foaming at the mouth ravings of those who insist that the entire problem was caused by unruly black kids, crashing a party in a neighborhood that they didn’t belong in, fighting and causing problems, then refusing to leave when asked. So perfectly natural to call the police in such a case, right? That certainly doesn’t make them racists, right? Except as it turns out, the young lady who threw the party (who was black) lived in the neighborhood, many of the friends she invited (both black and white) lived in the neighborhood and her mother was chaperoning the party. Seems a white lady (who I’m sure would deny to her dying breath that she’s racist) started yelling at the black teens, calling them “black fuckers” and told them to go back to their section 8 housing. When a 14 year-old white friend tried to stand up for them, this fine upstanding white lady started berating her telling her “she could do better for herself” (I guess meaning better than hanging out with black people?) and when the host of the party told her to stop being ugly to a 14 year-old this fine upstanding white woman slapped her in the face. A white male called police, of course telling them that they were overrun with black kids that didn’t belong, were fighting with each other and who refused to leave. It turns out this man has a pretty extensive rap sheet (look it up, it’s not pretty) but by golly he needed to protect his family from all the blackness. I don’t need to explain what happened next. I’m not going to embed the video. Either you’ve already seen it, or it is easily found on youtube. But I do have something to say to everyone condoning the actions of the white folks, condemning the actions of the black teens, and applauding the actions of the cop named Eric Casebolt. Everything I’ve read from people like that, to a person, claims victimization over being called racists. Poor, poor, people just want to feel safe in their own neighborhoods and too many black teens in one place, even if they do live in the neighborhood are just so, so, scary. That’s not racist at all (sarcasm). So let’s just give all those poor, scared folks the benefit of the doubt and just pretend they’re not racist and look at the situation in the context of their preferred story. A whole bunch of white kids from outside of the neighborhood, showed up uninvited to the neighborhood pool, starting fighting with each other and refused to leave when asked. So the police were called. And the police came and grabbed a 14 year-old blonde and blue-eyed girl wearing nothing but a bikini by the hair and threw her on the ground, pushing her face into the grass, knee and full weight on her back before handcuffing her, because she was not moving fast enough, and then also drawing a gun on blonde, blue-eyed teen boys trying to come to her aid. (Wouldn’t happen, but we’ll pretend for the racists). But here is the rub. Whether or not those kids should have been there or not, whether or not they were talking back to the cops or not leaving the area (where they lived!) fast enough, whether or not they were black, white, or all the colors of the rainbow, you DO NOT get to slam UNARMED minors to the ground or PULL YOUR GUN ON THEM all while cursing at them. That is completely out of control behavior by a member of the police who are paid through the taxes of the citizens they are SWORN to PROTECT and SERVE. And sorry to all you non-racists who believe the cop was right, but they were ignoring the white kids, including the one taking the video and only mistreating the black kids. Any cop who is so afraid of UNARMED, black, teenagers does not need to be on the streets. And here is what the racists don’t seem to get. Any cop, or group of cops or department of cops that allows that kind of behavior for one group of people will eventually allow it for other groups. Police brutality is much worse for minorities, but it also happens to white people. If you condone it for one group, you condone it for all. As citizens of the United States, those black teens, just like you and me have rights. If you’ve forgotten what those rights are or if you believe they only apply to fine upstanding white folks, I would suggest doing a bit of research because you would be wrong. But as a citizen of this country, if I were you, I’d be appalled that ANYONE was treated in such a manner. And if you can’t find it in your heart to feel for people who are different than you, I feel very sorry for you. Not sorry enough to not call you out on your bigotry though. Grow the fuck up, grow some balls, some brain cells and some empathy. The world will be a better place if you do.

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Middle-earth’s “master of light” Passes Away …

29 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by 98maryanne in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

I agree so much with A Tolkienist’s Perspectives thoughts on Andrew Lesnie’s work and share his sorrow that we will not have any more of his movie magic to enjoy.

A Tolkienist's Perspective

Andrew Lesnie

Andrew Lesnie (1956-2015)

What looked like the start of a positive and optimistic day, soon turned into a melancholic struggle.

Andrew Lesnie, the master cinematographer whose indispensable contribution brought Middle-earth to life, passed away earlier today.

To general audiences the names of actors and directors are perhaps at the forefront of a film-viewing experience.

To someone like me who loves the technical aspects of filmmaking, the work of every major crew member behind the camera is of deep interest.

As with many others, I was introduced to Andrew Lesnie and his work via The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Suffice to say, the impressive visuals captivated my young mind and made me believe in the wonders of Middle-earth.

Peter Jackson may have had the vision and direction, but Lesnie brought the artistry to the moving images.

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