Daniella

Burglary. Kidnapping. Embezzlement. Arson. These and other crimes. What do they all have in common?

When people come forward to report them, those reports are believed until evidence suggests otherwise.

So why is it that rape or sexual assault and charges related to domestic abuse are so suspected regardless of the geographic area where they are reported? What is it that they have in common?

Women are by far the victims and reporters of these crimes. The distrust of women, the malevolence of the female, the demonization of femininity are motifs through out the world and through out history. Are these the traditions that cause women around the globe to be undervalued and untrusted? Is it the fear of the status quo (read: old men in their respective cultures) that these allegations will lead to their hierarchical unseating?

For those of us in or who have been in the collegiate environment, ambivalence toward the Greek system, especially the female end of it, is a fact of life. Sisterhood? Sign us up! Dressing alike, sounding alike, having all the same friends (forgive the stereotype)? Eh, not so much.

But the DePauw University Delta Zetas (known familiarly as DZ) have gone a step too far in their pursuit of the ideal sorority. When a psych professor surveyed students on the impressions they got from certain sororities, the response for DePauw DZ was "socially awkward." The result was the eviction of 23 overweight women and women of color from the DZ house under the guise of "lack of commitment". Six of their appropriately committed sisters also left the sorority but in protest, which is perhaps the best indicator that something was wrong here. Altogether more than half of the sorority was gone after the purge.

I have a vagina. I love my vagina. After all, she is my vagina, and we have the perfect working relationship. I was never ashamed of her, even when I wasn't entirely certainly how friendly we would be. I can't imagine my life without her because she is so influential in my identity.

So you can imagine my outright fury when a town in my homestate of Florida got involved in Eve Ensler's V-Day campaign, set performances for her play, and then changed their marquee to advertise their production of "The Hoohaa Monologues." I'm sorry. I don't have a hoohaa. I don't even have a pussy or a cunt or a kitty. I have a vulva? And eventually I guess I'll have a birth canal. But for now, I have a vagina. I have a medically accurate, neutral, beautiful vagina that I am very proud of, thanks.

Bad news comes in threes every time.

A fond farewell to our dear Molly Ivins, calling 'em out and putting 'em down every time.

I'm sure you've all heard about the young woman who survived a rape and then was jailed without being given her second dose of EC. Her rape took place in the middle of the afternoon at a popular and widely-regarded as dangerous street festival near Tampa, Florida. She is 21, pre-med, and had the forethought to go straight to police to make her report. Later after most of her assault treatment, police found out she had an open warrant for a juvenile charge. The investigation of her claim was abandoned, and the medical examiner at the jail where she was taken refused to allow her after-24-hours dose of EC. The examiner claimed it would be against her religion to do so.

Since graduating, I find my dedication flagging. The real world, with its preoccupation with jobs and making the rent and other such unimportant issues, is making activism energy a little scarce.

It started with an attempt to make a new friend via those endless networking sites on the net. Things began nice enough, maybe even a little flirtatious despite my distinct lack of interest-- until I outlined exactly the feminism that I had only hinted at. You know, it's amazing how many "pro-lifers" talk about a child as a punishment for having sex. I never realized how oxymoronic the anti-choice stance could actually be; I'm amazed by the depths of hypocrisy that I must have known existed.

Does Tivo count as live blogging?

Good Morning America sent Diane Sawyer to sit down with the 16 women of the U.S. Senate. Maria Cantwell (Washington) is an early standout, very diplomatic, very articulate, and frankly I think she's a little more intriguing than Hillary.

I didn't know much about Claire McCaskill (Missouri) before the midterms, but she's familiar with seeing both sides of an issue. When Sawyer threw out the classic "there'd be less wars if there were more female leaders", along with Barbara Collins (Maine) ("I don't want to leave the impression that a woman presiden't wouldn't do what was necessary to defend this country"), she was the one who stepped out of the happy "collaboration and cooperation" box that her colleagues had set up and was quick to point out that any of the women in the room would act decisively in the even of an attack on America (ha, well, except for the journalist...). I'm glad to see some balance that the media wouldn't let us see: Claire McCaskill isn't just a baby killer, she's pro-America too! The radical right would have you think she walks around frozen embryos with a magnifying glass on sunny days. However, I was wanting her to say "this is a tough group of people" when she kept mentioning a "tough group of women".

As usual, the holidays hit the highs and lows of the year. Coping with a critical break-up, graduating from college, traveling for nearly three weeks straight, family drama, job hunting--so much, so much to do. But it was my trip to visit the red, red, red relatives--funnily enough--in the Northeast.

Self-identifying as a leftist puts me on the fringes, farther out than the cousin who lived in Miami and who everyone thought was gay (without talking to him about it, of course). I didn't realize it until I went north and saw what exactly we're up against.

For my aversion to war games (apparently I'm anti-patriotic for not appreciating the World War II games with inhuman portrayals of Japanese soldiers, or so says the side of the family not bearing my Japanese grandmother), my eleven year old cousin saw fit to call me a terrorist-- or at best used the word to bait me into an argument. After quitting the conversation on the possible televising of Saddam Hussein's execution, my aunt continued to go on about CNN televising journalists who "joined" the "terrorists" and killing American soldiers. Forgive me if I don't buy your third- or fourthhand relay of the Fox News propaganda...

Susan Basow, the scholar most beloved by my Gender and Politics professor, called out the biggest obstacles to female-female friendships. One of them was competition for "high-status males" (uh, what). Another was the nuclear family (or its quivalent.

What Basow doesn't tell you is that the opposite is also true, that the break down of that competition and the failure of that family set-up (kids or no kids, married or unmarried, hetero- or homosexual) can really endorse and encourage those relationships we neglect.

My silence at the AGA can be attributed to a number of excuses: classes, exams, graduation, work, fights with my boyfriend; feminist issues seem to fade in the personal drama ("the personal is political" who?). While I see an opening for further discussion already (the nuclear family or the pursuit of it impedes female-female friendships and--gasp--feminism!), I mean to take a moment for a little gratitude.

Between my only two classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I while away the hour and a half in the nearest campus computer lab. With every student taking class at this campus given a username and password upon enrollment, we keep our internet records straight and ensure that any unauthorized activity is properly handled.

Today I went to my usual tucked-in-the-corner computer and sat down to the sign-in screen. Now with our sign-in and sign-out system, the screen keeps the last username to sign out in the box to fill out. Today my screen read "Username: Women are stupid".

I'm signed in, and I'm writing now; but there's something unexpectedly painful about seeing that message. Knowing that the person (I can only assume a man seeing as most women's suspicion of other females is so rarely so intense as to inspire this sort of effort) had to sign out and deliberately type the words before leaving-- I mean, seriously, this was needless and impulsive, not the move of an intelligent person.

Being a Northern Virginian at heart, I have always found the state of Maryland to be a little bit suspect, a little bit sketchy. Yesterday morning? They blew my mind.

Montgomery County is the affluent Maryland county bordering the District and also the site of a case that a Maryland appellate court overruled yesterday. Judge Kenney Davis in this appellate court overturned the conviction of a rapist because the trial judge should have answered "no" when the jury asked if a woman could withdraw her consent once sex had begun.

It speaks for itself, and I have very little to add to that travesty of justice. Apparrently this is not a crime under current Maryland law, which leads the legal-minded side of me to grudgingly agree with the ruling (a fact that I unabashedly despise); the law requires consent prior to penetration, and that's all. The judge concedes that refusal to stop could constitute assault. Wait, but not sexual assault? Ri-damn-diculous.

About a week and a half ago, Kampire pointed out the plight of the Biting Beaver (link) for us to see an actual story of a woman denied EC. Over at her blog (link), she's posted her story cut and dried, and it's empowering. As a young feminist in this rich internet socio-political community, I strangely (and rather guiltily) feel more proud of her actions than sorry for her troubles. I'm thrilled with the fact that she's living rpoof they're all wrong--all those anti-choicers out there unreasonable enough to believe that denying a women EC fights abortion, that a 24 hour waiting period will change a woman's mind when that's all she's probably thought about since she learned she was pregnant, that abortion directly results in depression and anxiety disorders.

As we all know, we're drawing to a close on National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the endless parade of pink pens, pink stuffed animals, pink socks, pink cookies, pink product packaging, and pink cereal boxes. Every pink beribboned box and ad promises that "a portion" of the cost of its purchase will go "breast cancer reasearch" or the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

I, for one, am offended. Breast cancer, a very real and very present killer, has become a marketing ploy. Women care about breast cancer, and women shop; therefore women will buy more if they see a "breast cancer aware" product, right? And now everything sports that omnipresent pink ribbon. Pastel pink, the color of baby girls and patronism and forced femininity. I love pink, but seriously. A major serious women's cause deserves something more than cute or pretty.

The most recent rash of school shootings is as jarring as its predecessors, but no one seems to be noticing the trend: what makes it such a crime to be young and female? Jessica over at Feministing brought this up earlier, and I realized I wasn't the only one whose mind went for the political as I watched the Amish families and children waiting outside of their school.

In reporting both shootings that monopolized this week's headings (along with the statutory sexual harassment perpetrated by the ex-co-chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children), no one in the mainstream media had bothered to note that the adult male shooters had specific victims in mind: namely, young girls. Duane Morrison of the Platte Canyon High School hostage situation sexually assaulted the young girls he isolated before assassinating one; Charles Carl Roberts actually released the adults and boys before lining up and executing a line of girls in front of their classroom blackboard. Why is two and two so difficult to put together? Why is no one reporting on the blatant and dangerous misogyny that drove these two admittedly catastrophic and heartbreaking events?

I will be graduating from university in the middle of December, and I've never been so terrified in my life.

My B.A. will be in English, but I feel like it's the least practical thing I've ever done now. I love my program and the professors, but every job that interests me requires a degree in Psychology or Sociology--ironically, the very concentrations I always considered useless. Cruel fate laughs at my arrogance, but for once, I'm laughing too.

I'm thrilled to finally have a chance to start at this whole 'saving the world' thing. I feel like I'm standing at the edge of the rest of my life. I've started writing again, and I feel myself becoming the change I want to see in the world, as Ghandi put it. While the real world is painted as a daily grind of 9-to-5 gray drudgery, I'm exhilarated at the possibility.

I've been pretty seriously involved with boy friend for more than a year--spent holidays with his family, live with him, get along pretty well between the two of us and our respective siblings. This past weekend I finally went to church with him. Why is this a big deal? Because his family is Mormon. And apparently Mormon women made a significant faction of women's groups opposed to the ERA. Not that it has any bearing here, but I've always been a little leary.

We went to see his niece get christened, which occurs as part of a church service like any other religious rite. But they surprised me when a group of five men put their arms around each others' shoulders while the father said a prayer over the baby. A tiny baby girl in a circle of men. Because obviously men are the access points to salvation. Her mother sat fairly removed from and silent during the action--not a player in the ceremony at all. By this point, I was confused not to mention more than a little flustered. So wait, women give birth but have no role in this function that many religions deem essential? My inequity sense is tingling.