• A woman from Arizona may be forced to fly more than 300 miles away from her hometown to give birth, because her local hospital insists she must have a c-section. Joy Szabo had a c-section for her last child, and the hospital claims that doing a vaginal birth after a c-section is too risky. •  According to a British study, less than 33% of men wash their hands with soap after going to the bathroom. In order to increase the number of hand-washers, researchers suggest placing messages above bathroom sinks, which either shame the person into washing, or gross them out ("Soap it off or eat it later"). •  A man from the UK - who the Daily Mail dubs "Cruel Graeme Conroy" - has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for forcing a 3-year-old girl to smoke cigarettes. Conroy had a 14-year-old girl film him while he forced the young child to chain smoke five cigarettes, "as a joke." •  A Missouri ninth-grader has been arrested for making a website that called a classmate a "slut" and said she "would be better off if she just died." Missouri is cracking down on cyber-bullying after Megan Meier's suicide. • A woman who was raped as a 13-year-old is speaking out against rape kit backlogs after her kit sat untested for twenty years, much longer than the statute of limitations for her case. • A Berlin brothel is offering an "eco discount" to johns who walk or bike there. • PUMA Amy Siskind says "President Obama seems largely tone-deaf to women and women's issues," and praises the Republican party for "promising stars" like Sarah Palin. • But Jimmy Carter is bullish on Obama, saying that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize "as much as anyone who's ever gotten it for his achievement already," and that "he's spelled out an agenda that can be adopted by others in Europe and around the world to lead toward increased peace and human rights and the alleviation of suffering. Those are all tangible contributions - even though the fulfillment of all of them has got to require time to realize." •

The Megan Meier Act states that "electronic communications provide anonymity to the perpetrator and the potential for widespread public distribution, potentially making them severely dangerous and cruel to youth," and that "cyberbullying can cause psychological harm, including depression; negatively impact academic performance, safety, and the well-being of children in school; force children to change schools; and in some cases lead to extreme violent behavior, including murder and suicide." But its real meat is the following:

Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

Part of the No Child Left Behind Act does require schools to institute anti-bullying efforts, but no federal law currently prohibits cyberbullying. The Megan Meier Act would change that. Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) argues that the law is necessary because, "Bullying has gone electronic. This literally means kids can be bullies at any hour of the day or the night, or even in the victims' own home." British bullying victim Emily Moor agrees. Of her harassment from the ages of 13 to 18, she says, "Bullying usually ends when you leave school, but with Facebook it feels as if there is no end." Her mother adds,

The internet is a sinister, silent enemy: you simply don't know where to start to tackle the problem. But faceless as a computer may be, it is every bit as threatening as a physical bully, if not more so because the audience reading these horrible messages can be enormous.

The Daily Mail is calling Moor's tormentor "the first Internet bully sent to jail" in Britain, but she also physically assaulted Moor, and it's likely she would go to jail in the US too, cyberbullying laws or no. And many in the House feel that specific laws preventing online harassment give prosecutors too much power. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) says the Megan Meier Act "appears to be another chapter of over criminalization," and that it could be used to prosecute the "mean-spirited liberals" who criticize him on blogs. He added that prosecutors might use the law to "harass the harasser," and that, "a good prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich."

While harassment by a sandwich is something I'd like to see, it is true that the Internet is still relatively uncharted legal territory, and laws regarding it can be misused. Megan Meier's harasser Lori Drew was initially convicted of violating the MySpace terms of service, but a judge overturned her conviction because it would allow anyone who violated a website's service terms to be prosecuted. As heinous as Drew's behavior was, such a precedent might give websites enormous powers to get users thrown behind bars for crimes much less serious than hers.

Then there's the question of whether legislation is even the right way to combat bullying. Forty-five states now have some sort of anti-cyberbullying law, but harassment researcher Catherine Hill says there's no indication yet that they actually prevent bullying. And Justin W. Patchin, coauthor of Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying, says,

I really don't want to criminalize this behavior. I think there is a role for both the federal and state governments in terms of educating local school districts about what cyber-bullying is and what they can do about it, and providing resources to help them prevent and respond to online aggression. But criminalization doesn't seem to me to be the best approach.

Whenever a child is bullied, especially when the bullying has dire consequences as in the case of Megan Meier (pictured, with her mom), it's natural to ask why the authorities in the child's life didn't offer protection. And schools shouldn't throw up their hands and dismiss bullying as a fact of life, as Moor's school initially did. Criminally prosecuting bullying after the fact may have a place in any anti-bullying campaign, especially inasmuch as acknowledges that virtual harassment can cause real harm. But the often anonymous nature of cyberbullying will always make it difficult to prosecute all offenders, and the danger of over-prosecution is (despite Gohmert's flippancy) a real one. Just as British libel laws can leave some journalists afraid to criticize anyone, cyberbullying laws could unfairly target bloggers. It might be more effective to prevent cyberbullying at the source, by teaching kids better methods of conflict resolution. Patchin himself, however, admits that we're still not sure how to do this. Cyberbullying may be new, but bullying itself is one of the many ancient human evils we don't really know how to curtail. At least Megan Meier's case has made us aware that we need to.

Cyberbullying Bill Gets Chilly Reception [Wired]
Facebook Bullies Ruined My Life: As The First Internet Bully Is Sent To Jail, The Story That Will Terrify Every Parent [Daily Mail]
Preventing Cyberbullying Remains Terra Incognita [Miller-McCune]

• Researchers have found that the children born to mothers that have undergone weight loss surgery are healthier than older siblings born before the procedure. The younger siblings were found to have improved heart health and a lower risk of obesity. • A Sudanese judge has ruled that journalist Lubna Hussein, who was arrested in July for wearing pants, will not be flogged (flogging is a legal punishment for indecency). Hussein is still facing a $200 fine, which she is not planning on paying. "I will not pay a penny. I won't pay, as a matter of principle," she said. •  Health workers at a clinic in rural Peru were frustrated at the low rate of births taking place inside the clinic (only 6%), and so they decided to ask local women what they were doing wrong. The mothers were happy to help. The clinic will now respect traditional practices, ensure that they have a doctor on hand who speaks the local language, and allow relatives to stay and help with the birthing process. • Celebrity polar bear Knut is getting a new pal: Giovanna, a female polar bear from Munich. However, since both bears are not yet sexually mature, there is little chance they will consummate their relationship. • Scientists are attempting to pin down gender differences in brain function, yet even the study of the brain does not provide an easy way out of the "old nature/nurture dilemma." What they found is something many have long suspected: "Individuals' gender traits-their preference for masculine or feminine clothes, careers, hobbies and interpersonal styles-are inevitably shaped more by rearing and experience than is their biological sex." • Al Franken has a cool party trick, which he recently displayed at the Minnesota State Fair. Click here for a video of Franken drawing the entire US map from memory. • Women in Australia are in luck: the Bluetongue Brewery plans to hire 10 to 15 professional beer tasters in the next year. And since women apparently make better tasters, they are looking for boozy broads to fill the open positions. • This weekend, Linda Rice became the first woman to win a training title at Saratoga. Rice has been training since 1987, but this is the first time she has taken home a title. • An op-ed from this Sunday's New York Times argues that the cyberbullying laws under which Lori Drew was tried are "too vague to be constitutional." • The mayor of German border town Vierlinden has announced plans to deter prostitutes from gathering on the B1 motorway through the use of butyric acid, which apparently smells like vomit and body odor. • In October 2007, Afghan journalist Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh was jailed for blasphemy after she was caught downloading an internet article about women's rights. A few weeks ago, President Hamid Karzai finally pardoned Kambakhsh, and she has since been freed. • The Justice Department is urging a Santa Ana court to toss out a lawsuit that challenges President Obama's Constitutional qualifications to be president. The birthers' suit claims that Obama was not born in Hawaii and is a citizen of Indonesia, and "possibly still citizen of Kenya." • A Jewish community leader has condemned the AIDS awareness ad that features a man intended to represent Hitler in the throes of passion, saying that it both unsuccessful and offensive. We agree. • Feministing features an interesting video about gender and language. The Hariri Foundation introduced a program that replaced words that are generally read as masculine with accents that mark them as feminine. More here. • As of today, Girl Scouts will now be able to earn a new patch for "preparedness." "This new preparedness patch will increase citizen preparedness and enhance our country's readiness for disasters," said Homeland Security Department Secretary Janet Napolitano. • Farmers in India are facing increasing hardships as crops fail and debts pile up, which has caused many impovrished farmers to take the drastic measure of selling their wives. According to some reports, as many as several thousand men have sold their wives to money lenders, who then transfer the marriage contract to a third party. •

Drew, 50, was supposed to be sentenced yesterday after being convicted in November of three misdemeanor charges for unauthorized computer access. She faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a $300,000 fine, but probation authorities recently recommended probation and a $5,000 fine.

After authorities in Drew's home state of Missouri declined to charge her in connection to 13-year-old Megan Meier's suicide, prosecutors in Los Angeles, where MySpace is based, charged Drew using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a federal anti-hacking statute. The prosecution argued that Drew's violation of MySpace's terms of service when she created a fake profile to harass Meier was the legal equivalent of computer hacking, but U.S. District Judge George Wu said the prosecution's argument was "troublesome," according to the Los Angeles Times. "Using this particular statute in this particular situation is so weird," said Wu.

In an hour long discussion yesterday, Wu questioned Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krause on the law used to prosecute Drew, reports Wired. "Is a misdemeanor committed by the conduct which is done every single day by millions and millions of people?" asked Wu, "If these people do read [the "terms of service"] and still say they're 40 when they are 45, is that a misdemeanor?"

Krause responded that Drew committed a crime by signing up for the fake MySpace account with the intent to harm Meier, and that she knew her actions were illegal because she deleted the account shortly after the girl's suicide. After the jury verdict in November, the defense sought a directed acquittal on grounds that the defense did not prove their case. Judges usually quickly overrule such motions, but Wu has delayed his ruling for more than five months. Now he has further postponed the sentencing because he wants to reconsider Drew's punishment and the defense motion to dismiss the entire case.

Megan Meier's parents both spoke at the hearing. Wu did not look at Ron Meier during the first part of his statement, and only turned to him when his voice broke as he said, "I am no longer married to Megan's mom... We are both financially ruined, and I have gone through a living hell."

Tina Meier began her statement by repeating some details she mentioned during the trial itself; Wu interrupted her, saying she had already testified about those facts. Ms. Meier, who has been campaigning against cyberbullying across the country since her daughter's death, closed her statement by saying, "This is not just about Megan Meier," and that Lori Drew needs to be punished in order to "make a stand now for all the people who go through this."

MySpace Hoax Sentencing Delayed [The Los Angeles Times]
Judge Postpones Lori Drew Sentencing, Weighs Dismissal [Wired]

Earlier: Crime & Punishment
Breaking
MySpace Trial Jurors Wanted A Harsher Sentence For Lori Drew
Megan Meier's Mother Talks To Today About MySpace Verdict

In his op-ed piece, titled "I married an Ascham bully," Sheehan begins by briefly describing a recent cyberbullying scandal that occurred at a New South Wales school:

Several teenagers at an elite Sydney girls school are coming to terms with the full magnitude of their public betrayal via the internet. Where to begin? One has had her genitalia discussed in anatomical detail. Another has had her face likened to a koala's. A third has learnt that her circle of friends is not friendly at all: "She thinks she's best friends with lots of people but they actually hate her."

As a result of the incident, two girls have left the school in disgrace. School administrators have expressed their distress over the recent trend of spreading rumors via social networking websites like Myspace and Facebook. One mother has come forward, saying that her daughter, a recent graduate, also suffered from bullying while she was at Ascham. "When my daughter was there it was text messaging," she said.

But who is to blame for the cruelty of these students? Certainly not the girls themselves. Sheehan places the blame squarely on the internet, where gossip spreads like "a disease." He writes,

Gossip has become even bigger than porn on the internet. Much bigger. Facebook is largely gossip. So are the other big social networking sites. Millions of eyeballs also go to gossip sites like Go Fug Yourself, devoted to fashion and celebrity putdowns. (The terms "fug" and "fugly" are short for f—-ing ugly, though the authors pretend it stands for fantastically ugly). Or PerezHilton.com, which bills itself as "Hollywood's most hated website", or The Superficial (Because You're Ugly), or Dlisted (Be Very Afraid), or TMZ.com (Careful Who You're Kissing), or Pink is the New Blog (Everybody's Business Is My Business), or Jezebel (Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women, Without Airbrushing). All have large followings among young women.

While we don't want to deny that the internet does provide a terrible platform for certain types of cruelty, Sheehan's piece is annoying for several reasons (and not just because he mentions this site). Sheehan seems to assume that this is something only girls do, that this kind of cruel body snarking and malicious gossip is somehow unique to the female gender. He does not mention that several of the websites he include are run or staffed by men (PerezHilton, Dlisted, The Superficial). When he does mention Perez Hilton, it is to mock him for being a "failed actor and a failed journalist." Sheehan ends his argument with a rather exaggeratedly dire view of the future:

Because the internet is so unfiltered and so vast, it has become a far more accurate reflection of the human condition than the traditional mass media. The self-portrait that has emerged is not flattering. The explosion in productivity, transparency, community and knowledge has been accompanied by largely unfettered pettiness, vituperation and schadenfreude. This is the encompassing public medium of the young. This is their stage and their minefield.

This may have been an interesting critique at one point, but I can't help but feel like we've heard this all before. Like people in the workplace, high school kids have always been cruel: the internet has just provided them with a new platform for spewing their hatred. Maybe instead of pointing fingers and trying to identify the culprit — when clearly, there is no one source of the bullying virus, to borrow Sheehan's metaphor — we should all focus our energies on working to provide alternative ways to talk about young women.

I Married An Ascham Bully [Sydney Morning Herald]

Earlier: Female "Bullies" At Work: What Are These Pieces Really Trying To Say?

[Image via Gossip Girl official website]

• Many have expressed doubts about Jennifer Figge's 24-day swim across the Atlantic ocean. As several internet commenters have pointed out, in order for Figge to have crossed the Atlantic in such a short time, she would have needed to swim more than 80 miles a day. • For the third year in a row, a 26-year-old Canadian woman has taken to the streets of Toronto to offer free hugs. • An 8-year-old British girl with a dentist phobia recently starved to death. After undergoing traumatic dental surgery, Sophie Waller refused to open her mouth to speak or eat. • Mattel has created a new Barbie doll based on German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Mattel says they hope that the doll (which is "flattering" to Merkel) will be an inspiration for young girls. • Just in time for Valentines Day: for the low price of £29.95 you can purchase Sex Panther cologne, first seen in the movie Anchorman. Sex Panther works every time 60% of the time, so you really can't go wrong! • Recent high school graduate Katherine Evens is fighting back against charges of cyberbullying. Evens was suspended for cyberbullying two months after publishing a Facebook rant about her teacher, which invited other students to share their complaints. She is now suing her school to have the suspension removed from her record. • A new study shows that women who drink two or more cans of soda per day are almost twice as likely to develop kidney disease. Fortunately, diet soda did not appear to carry the same risks. • The World Boxing Council has reversed their approval of Kazumi Izaki's title shot due to health concerns. At 45, Izaki is Japan's oldest female boxer, and if she had been allowed to fight for the belt, she could have been the oldest world champion. • Farmers in Britain are abandoning cauliflower due to decreased demand, opting to grow broccoli instead. However, cauliflower-lovers are fighting back with an ad campaign designed to increase public awareness of the benefits of the pale brassica. • The first woman to receive a face transplant in the U.S. has been discharged from the hospital. The woman, whose name remains unknown, is only the fourth person in the world to undergo this surgery. • An Indevus Pharmaceuticals gel designed to protect women from contracting HIV/AIDS has been shown to be effective up to 30% of the time. • Researchers have identified neurochemical mechanisms which they believe may be the underlying cause for feelings of depression and increased anxiety that arise in men when they are separated from their female partners. • There is a fascinating profile in the Telegraph of Ruth Dee (not her real name), who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder). Dee describes her traumatic childhood and the many personalities that sprung up as her way of coping with abuse. • A new study shows that our "gut instincts" may be more effective than we think. Researchers found that when making decisions, we sometimes access memories that we are unaware of having formed. • Eluana Englaro, the 38-year-old woman at the center of Italy's right-to-die debate, passed away today, much to the relief of her family and friends. •

Authorities say that 21-year-old Williams sent a lewd text message to a 17-year-old girl whom she had heard was involved with her boyfriend. The specifics of the text message were not released, but some voicemails that Williams and others had left the girl threatened rape.

Williams' lawyer, Michael Kielty, claims that the new law which his client is accused under is poorly written and makes something illegal which wouldn't be under other circumstances:

Kielty said Missouri's revised harassment measures are bad law. "It's probably one of the worst written laws I've seen in my career," he said.

He said kids used to say things face to face or pass notes in school commenting on someone's looks or weight. The new law "criminalizes behavior that otherwise wouldn't be illegal except for the medium," he said.

"It's not criminal. It might be mean-spirited, but it's not criminal," he said.

One of the problems with Kielty's arguments is that Williams' behavior would in fact be considered criminal in another medium. The prosecutor of the Williams case notes that telephone harassment (which is essentially what Williams did) has been a crime for years in Missouri.

Kielty argues that because dumb kids say dumb things to each other about their looks or weight (he carefully avoids talking about threatening sexual violence) that Williams' harassment should not be seen as illegal.

Anyone who has been in high school in the past 15 years knows that harassment akin to the Meier's and William's cases are common. Kids do dumb things on the internet all the time, but now the dramatic influence of bullying and girl-on-girl crime are getting national attention. Are we—as some of the commenters on the Wired blog fear—turning into a coddling nanny state by expecting laws to save us from any uncomfortable moment? Or would ignoring these cases of bullying just make it okay for people to make threats of sexual and non-sexual violence just because they did it over a text message or a Myspace bulletin and not to the victim's face?

Prosecutors Charge Seven People Under New Cyberbullying Law [Wired]
Woman Accused Under New Cyberbullying Law [CBS News]

Two years ago, they heard about a girl in a neighboring Northern California town named Olivia Gardner who was cruelly bullied to the point where she was near suicide. "Her book bag had been dragged through the mud, her schoolmates had created an "Olivia's Haters" page on the internet, and they would whisper "Die Olivia" to her in the halls," the Buder sisters wrote earlier this month on the Huffington Post. "Olivia's story broke our hearts, especially when we learned that she was suicidal. We couldn't imagine such cruelty."

They organized a letter writing campaign for Olivia so that she would feel less alone. And letters from near and far started pouring in. "Suddenly, we were thrust into the world of bullying, as we read the letters sent to Olivia by former bullies and targets of these bullies. We learned of the remorse adults felt having been bullies themselves in their teen years, and of the depression the targets of bullies still experience years after they have been bullied," the Buders wrote in HuffPo. Eventually they compiled the letters in a book that came out earlier this month, called Letters To A Bullied Girl: Messages Of Healing And Hope.

Their book probably can't save all the Megan Meiers in the world, but it will probably make some of them feel less alone.

Letters To A Bullied Girl [Huffington Post]
“Letters To A Bullied Girl: Messages Of Healing And Hope” [Feminist Law Professors]
American Dream [FourFour]

Here in the US, a 12-year-old Brooklyn girl tied a belt around her neck and hung herself in her closet last week. Maria Herrera's mother claims that kids at school would "harass her, curse at her, call her 'train tracks' because she had braces" and "cut her hair." At Maria Hererra's memorial, classmates left notes that read "I am sorry" and "We won't bother you." Maria's mother says she went to the school to complain about the bullying and nothing was done.

In the UK, teachers have been instructed to crack down on bullying, manipulation and vicious behavior. But here in New York state, anti-bullying legislation has been proposed, but not passed.

Bullying is not new, but suddenly, we're living in a world where everyone's a critic. Cutting other people down is commonplace, a sport — from TV shows like America's Next Top Model and American Idol to blogs, MySpace and Facebook. Vicious words have always been present in school settings, but when we're in a society that seems to thrive on schadenfreude, how can kids feel like anyone gives a damn?

Cyber Bullying Common In Japan School Web Sites: Study [Reuters]
Bullies Blamed For Pre-Teen's Suicide [Gothamist]

Earlier: The Meanest Girls At School Are Often The Most Popular
Girl-On-Girl Crime: Schools Step In
If You Can Handle A Really Depressing Teen Suicide Story Right Now...