Don't try this at home + links of horror
Jul. 22nd, 2010 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabby1. Via ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sphinctourist:
The ViceTV guide to the Anarchist Cookbook. Lots of nice explosions, questionable sense of self-preservation. I can't say "do not try this at home" often enough for this 12-minute long video. Don't try any of the recipes in the book itself at home either. Just don't.
I wonder if anyone has ever made a book of recipes for vegan and dumpster-dived foodstuffs and called it "The Anarchist Cookbook."
2. MAC is a bad company.* Makeup and fashion, inspired by the lives and deaths of maquiladora workers in Juarez, Mexico. I think there was an episode of More Tears like this, only it was supposed to be ghastly parody.
3. Most everyone has seen this awful story. A Palestinian man was convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a Jewish woman, who was under the mistaken assumption that he was a Nice Jewish Boy. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised—we live in a world where a man can get away with murdering a woman if he finds out that she's transgendered.
For the record, things you should disclose to a new partner before having casual sex with them for the first time: If you have any STDs, if you have any other partners, if your significant other is likely to barge in and aim a shotgun at your head, and, if you are taking them home with you, whether you have any sort of animals to which they might have a deadly allergy. Things that you do not need to disclose: The shape of your genitals, your ethnicity, your religion, whether you've done your taxes yet this year, whether zombies or pirates would win in a fight, whether you're ever going to give them up or let them down. The former is life-or-death stuff directly related to sex. The latter is typically nice to know when you're sleeping with someone, but we takes our chances and part of life's adventure is discovering things we don't know about our fuckbuddies, pleasant and otherwise.
* Really gladzingerella introduced me to Urban Decay last weekend. I do like my fancy makeups.
sphinctourist:The ViceTV guide to the Anarchist Cookbook. Lots of nice explosions, questionable sense of self-preservation. I can't say "do not try this at home" often enough for this 12-minute long video. Don't try any of the recipes in the book itself at home either. Just don't.
I wonder if anyone has ever made a book of recipes for vegan and dumpster-dived foodstuffs and called it "The Anarchist Cookbook."
2. MAC is a bad company.* Makeup and fashion, inspired by the lives and deaths of maquiladora workers in Juarez, Mexico. I think there was an episode of More Tears like this, only it was supposed to be ghastly parody.
"At Rodarte, the designers were inspired by the idea of workers in Mexican maquiladoras walking half-asleep to the factories in Juarez, after dressing in the dark."
3. Most everyone has seen this awful story. A Palestinian man was convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a Jewish woman, who was under the mistaken assumption that he was a Nice Jewish Boy. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised—we live in a world where a man can get away with murdering a woman if he finds out that she's transgendered.
"The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls."
For the record, things you should disclose to a new partner before having casual sex with them for the first time: If you have any STDs, if you have any other partners, if your significant other is likely to barge in and aim a shotgun at your head, and, if you are taking them home with you, whether you have any sort of animals to which they might have a deadly allergy. Things that you do not need to disclose: The shape of your genitals, your ethnicity, your religion, whether you've done your taxes yet this year, whether zombies or pirates would win in a fight, whether you're ever going to give them up or let them down. The former is life-or-death stuff directly related to sex. The latter is typically nice to know when you're sleeping with someone, but we takes our chances and part of life's adventure is discovering things we don't know about our fuckbuddies, pleasant and otherwise.
* Really glad
zingerella introduced me to Urban Decay last weekend. I do like my fancy makeups.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 01:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 01:56 am (UTC)That's, in my opinion, in the very least "fraud".
At the same time, I think, using the term "fuckbuddies" definitely puts it in perspective (that is to say - fuckers lie a lot).
It's quite obvious the politics of it, and on that grounds I oppose it. But it is shady. Ultimately, lying about ones ethnicity should no more be considered rape than lying about ones age.
BTW: Zombies should win in a fight - I hope that doesn't change your mind about me! LOL.
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Date: 2010-07-23 02:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 01:36 pm (UTC)I agree about zombies, don't worry.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 02:53 am (UTC)Sort of. It's not quite recipes and it's not quite called "The Anarchist Cookbook," but it is from crimethinc, so you just know something in there has to be about dumpster diving.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 01:39 pm (UTC)This said, if they didn't disclose it, I wouldn't consider it a criminal offense, which is what really blows me away about this case.
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Date: 2010-07-23 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 04:50 am (UTC)The rape case I have slightly mixed feelings about - from reading the article, it doesn't sound like it was only about whether he was Jewish or Arab, but that he "introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship", which involves several variables. I do agree that probably the only reason the case was taken as seriously as it was was because of the ethnicity factor in the context of Israeli politics, and that if it had been the other way around, it never would have come to trial - but at the same time, that doesn't mean it shouldn't have.
Deceiving someone into having sex with you by lying to them, when you know they probably wouldn't have sex with you if you told them the truth, is basically a form of coercing an unwilling person into having sex with you. It's more subtle that using direct force or intimidation, but the bottom line is not all that different. The same issue came up a while back with a case where a woman had sex with the identical twin brother of her partner, apparently believing that it was her partner, and the courts had to decide whether superficially consensual sex, where the consent was based on deception, counted as rape or not. I'm not sure how that case turned out - I think it was still in process when I read about it. But I'm inclined to think that, if not full-on rape by the usual definition, that sort of thing is at least somewhere on the same spectrum.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 01:28 pm (UTC)Exactly. I think it is rape, because consent based on lies isn't valid consent at all. (I do also agree that in a case like this, the background of pervasive racism means there may be more to this particular story than we're getting; but in principle, I think sex that is knowingly induced by lies is rape.)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 03:23 pm (UTC)The woman had a choice of whether to sleep with the dude or not. She slept with him of her own free will. Yes, the false information he provided influenced her decision. But she still consented. She still controlled her own sexual decisions.
I'm not saying what he did was right. It was wrong. But it did not remove the element of choice or consent. It was an entirely different kind of wrong from raping someone.
An analogous difference, to me, is the difference between defrauding someone by misrepresenting a product and enticing the mark to spend money, and taking someone's wallet from their handbag or mugging them. In all these cases, the victim has lost money, but the crimes are not the same.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 03:40 pm (UTC)Rashomon
Date: 2010-07-24 11:28 am (UTC)But I think in this case it also hinges on how much we think of the woman as "giving something" vs. "engaging in something". Like, how do we evaluate the extent of her "loss" as a result of the "transaction". And that, I think, depends how traditional we are in our thinking. Secular liberal feminists, I see, will not tend to make too much a deal out of it. Oh well, she fucked a guy who lied; unpleasant, happens to everyone, get over it. From a more traditional outlook, however, she was fucked, was used like a commodity - just as in rape. Society is a Rashomon gate like that - different people see different things happening.*
And I think in Israel - especially in Jerusalem - much of the public opinion on the case is informed by the more traditional feelings. In particular because there are many highly (secularly) educated and yet religious people - something that doesn't happen quite as often with Christians in the west. A believing Christian professor of math or law is an oddity, but a one who is a practicing Jew is not an uncommon occurrence.
* On a philosophical note, I wonder if people are not in part led to view the same events differently because the consequences of those events are different for them, and if we think deterministically, the same event can't lead to different outcomes.
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Date: 2010-07-25 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-25 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-25 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 02:27 pm (UTC)When this argument is used against trans people, it generally amounts to "you are obligated to disclose your entire gender history to anyone you might have sex with, or it's perfectly understandable if they stab you 38 times and hide your body under a mattress."
no subject
Date: 2010-07-25 12:47 am (UTC)Sweet icon; I remember going to the barber and demanding her haircut in grade 4. I got a 0.5 cm crew-cut instead. STILL BITTER!
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Date: 2010-07-24 11:35 pm (UTC)I guess we might have finer standards regarding the informed part of "informed consent" than most people here. I agree this feels rapey to me, if not full-on rape.
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Date: 2010-07-23 05:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 05:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 07:26 am (UTC)While the sentencing is quite overly harsh for the crime committed (in which sexual coercion through fraud is a crime in the Israeli penal code) due to racial bias, it really wasn't not disclosing his ethnicity/religion, it was lying about his marital status and motivation for seeking a relationship that would do it.
The fact that this case has made international papers is a good thing, the harsh sentencing is a bad thing, I don't think the guy was in the right though.
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Date: 2010-07-23 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-23 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-25 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-25 12:42 am (UTC)"A Palestinian man was convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a Jewish woman". No, he was convicted after having sex. Whether the sex was or was not consensual is what's being argued about. What she consented to was not what she got.
Now, fine -- by your criteria of what one should be honest about with a new partner before having casual (what does that mean? how do we know she was casual about it?) sex, he's good to go as long as he tells the truth about STDs, other partners, homicidal SOs, and pets -- exemplars of "life-or-death stuff directly related to sex". I would argue most STDs and the non-homicidal partners aren't exactly life-or-death, and their inclusion on the list suggests you have some personal standards for disclosure unrelated to mere survival which, if violated, would leave you traumatised. Likewise, we might assume that the woman in this case had personal standards for disclosure which included marital status-- ok, you had that one under "other partners/SOs", let's skip it -- and religion/ethnicity. That's totally silly, right? It's not like people ever get ostracised or even murdered for sleeping with people of the wrong faith... It's not like people may have preëxisting trauma related to people of some ancestry which makes them freak the fuck out, however irrationally... It's not like Judaism has all these hang-ups about pollution which might make one ritually impure for screwing outside the faith (yes, I know premarital sex is bad too, I'm not her conscience though)... It's not like the Jews, for all their current political power, are fearing becoming a minority in their country in a few decades (and remembering how well that turned out for them in the past). I dunno, all of these sound like possible life-or-death matters to me.
So I think what makes me so very uncomfortable about this case is the idea that because the woman's feeling of violation happened within a larger framework of a racist society and racist courts, her sense of violation must therefore stem solely from racism, and be prima facie invalid as grounds for charges of fraud or rape. Her body gets thrown under the bus of Middle Eastern politics, a puppet or a joke. That really does not sit well with me. I think a Jew should have the right to refuse her body to a non-Jew just as much as, say, a daughter of Indian residential school victims should have the right to refuse hers to a Catholic white man, a sex-worker to a man with no money(*), hell, a vegan to a butcher. A pre-sex conversation which includes some form of "I would never sleep with X" followed by a lie about "well, I'm certainly not X" sounds like rape to me. Or at least some near analogue. "I thought she wouldn't really care that I'm not X the next morning" is a little close to "I thought she would have wanted to sleep with me sober". I'd rather err on the side of caution, and honesty, and the woman saying she'd been raped.
(*)I think I remember this also being a case in Canada -- can a prostitute who is told she'll be paid and then finds out she won't get paid claim she's been raped? Anyone else remember it, or am I recalling some theoretical exercise?
***
I remember a while back we had a heated exchange about whether people who died due to Clinton's embargo on Iraq were morally and, I think, war-crime-legally equivalent to people who died due to being blown up by Bush's bombs. I thought it was clear Clinton was hardly culpable for their deaths, you thought otherwise. This feels like a retread of that with our roles reversed. I'm suddenly more open to the idea that murder is murder, however mediated... because I see now how you must have felt about my blithe dismissal. Harrumph.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-25 12:06 pm (UTC)Generally speaking, we need to look at the difference in consequences, if any. But consequences are very socium-dependent. Worse yet, the consequences depend on what we think they are. In fact, the lion share of consequences in most cases is due to what people think of them. It's complex.
In this specific case, I must admit that a piece of information that leads me not to take the woman's claims too seriously is the fact that she had sex in a public building with a guy she'd met in a public place only minutes earlier. There is very little that comes across as vulnerable in her position (other than her likely being a frecha (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k78jZIM3Eog)).
no subject
Date: 2010-07-25 12:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 04:38 pm (UTC)I find your argument troubling in a number of ways. I think it diminishes the concept of meaningful consent, and suggests that a woman's "purity" is a commodity that can be exchanged or taken through fraud (the prostitute scenario is slightly different in that she is selling a commodity). It also sets up unreasonably high standards.
Obviously, a woman has the right to withhold consent, but the issue here is that she did consent, but chose her partner poorly. We've all been there.
The context of Middle Eastern politics is also inescapable. The comparison to an Indian residential school survivor and a white Catholic is less useful than, say, a scenario where a white Southerner has slept with someone and then found out that person has more than a few drops of non-Aryan blood. The horror and sense of violation is coming from somewhere, but I'm guessing it's not solely stemming from the feeling of being lied to.
But ethical issues are somewhat beside the point, because we're talking about legality as well. While I listed things that you ought to disclose to casual sex partners, I would argue that none of these ought to be mandated by law. It just becomes too difficult to enforce (except where, as in this case, the law is being used to enforce racist ideals). The standard that you have set for disclosure is incredibly high—by this logic, no evasion can be considered too trivial when it comes to sleeping with someone you just met, as long as it's vitally important to the parties involved. I personally don't give a shit what my partner's ethnicity or religion is, but some people consider it crucial. Likewise, I might feel the need to know their voting record, whereas someone else might find this trivial. If someone fails to disclose that he voted Tory and I find out the morning after, should I be able to charge him with rape? After all, I wouldn't knowingly sleep with someone who voted Tory! That's disgusting.
Let's look at a more common and realistic scenario. A guy–your typical Craigslister—is looking for single ladies between the ages of 20 and 30, NSA, and so on. A woman answers his ad. She's 45 and looks good for her age. She wants to get laid, so she tells him she's 30. She can pass for it. They hook up, have sex, and in the morning, by chance, he sees her driver's license and finds out her real age. Should he be able to charge her with rape?
no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 08:45 pm (UTC)fun tidbit
Date: 2010-07-26 09:09 pm (UTC)I saw a documentary about Mac users recently where a woman said she wouldn't knowingly sleep with a PC user. After she said that, my sister and I just stared at each other.
Re: fun tidbit
Date: 2010-07-26 10:17 pm (UTC)o_0
o_0
o_0
...this makes me want to buy a PC.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 05:44 pm (UTC)So one could conceal being HIV positive. Or having SARS, for that matter. Or carrying a knife and planning to use it violently.
she did consent, but chose her partner poorly. We've all been there.
Especially the 80 grannies whose savings funds were stolen, the people infected with HIV and SARS after unknowingly interacting with their carriers, and those of us murdered after failing to flee the murder scene in time, mainly due to the sound editor's negligence in not playing the spooky music at the right time. There was nothing to suggest the dramatic outcome in the way the scene was lit, either.
The comparison to an Indian residential school survivor and a white Catholic is less useful than, say, a scenario where a white Southerner has slept with someone and then found out that person has more than a few drops of non-Aryan blood.
Whites in the South have not been victims of as much violence from non-Aryans as have Jews at the hands of Muslim Arabs in Palestine in the past 100 years. To my knowledge, it is, for instance, not true that a sizable fraction of Southern Whites has a family member or a friend killed by non-Aryans. I think there are two or three White settlements in the South that were recently bombed by non-Aryans, but both me and Wikipedia seem to have forgotten their names. Could you please remind us?
[ in the morning, by chance, he sees her driver's license and finds out her real age. Should he be able to charge her with rape?
No. By answering an ad on CL he relinquished all of his human rights. What happens on CL stays on CL. The first rule of CL is that you don't talk about CL. Etc.
FTR, I'm opposed to the verdict in this case. ]
no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 08:51 pm (UTC)"Would he have been convicted of rape? The answer is: of course not."
Some might wonder whether or not the woman in that scenerio would have been prosecuted rather than the man.
Laura Mulleavy told Piercy that she wanted to make the pale-skinned girls look “like beautiful ghost versions of themselves.”
You know, rather than dark-skinned girls made to look like horrific, carnicería versions of themselves.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 05:46 pm (UTC)Where? In Israel? Probably not. In a neighbouring Muslim country? Oooh, baby.