Nubian representatives say that the line compares black Egyptians to monkeys, and are suing the singer, her record label, and the songwriter. • The man charged with the kidnapping of Shaniya Davis has also been accused of raping and asphyxiating the 5-year-old South Carolina girl. Mario McNeill is being charged with first-degree murder and rape of a child. • Amanda Knox broke down in tears today in court as the prosecution closed their case against her, saying she "harboured hatred" for Meredith Kercher and "killed her to take revenge." • Amanda Knox's parents are so confident she'll be acquitted that they've already bought her a plane ticket home to Seattle. •  The British man charged with strangling his own wife on a camping trip was found not guilty on account of a rare disorder, which caused him to murder Christine Thomas in his sleep. "You are a decent man and a devoted husband. I strongly suspect that, not withstanding the circumstances here, you may well be feeling a sense of guilt about what happened that night. In the eyes of the law, you bear no responsibility," said the judge. •  Reporter Michael Crowley sat down in a restaurant the other night and found himself sitting two tables away from Sonia Sotomayor. Naturally, he sent out a Tweet, which read: "She left her purse on a chair; stern-faced security guys came back for it about 30 min later." •  Soldiers in Sweden are fighting for flame-retardant underwear. The Swedish Conscription Council claims that the female soldiers were promised appropriate bras and panties years ago, but the armed forces has failed to deliver. • Selma Aliye Kavaf, Turkey's minister for women's affairs, says, "The mentality change regarding women's participation in business or political life would take time. Legislation or laws are not enough for women to become active in business life." • A dad from Minnesota claims that during the first three years of his son's life, he spoke to him only in Klingon. The dad says it was part of an experiment, to see whether his kid would pick up the fictional language. He says he stopped when it became clear his son, now 15, preferred English. •  Warning: This story is disgusting and highly disturbing. Short version: a gang in Peru has been accused of murdering people in order to collect their fat, which is then sold on the black market for cosmetics. • The highest court in New York has rejected an attempt to throw out two government orders to recognize the rights of same-sex couples married in other states. While this is good news, the ruling was based on a technicality, and did not address the broader human rights issue at stake. • A team of researchers have made headway in understanding how the body metabolizes date rape drugs. They hope that the breakthrough "may provide new clues on how to counteract the drug's effects, or to enhance its metabolism and decrease toxicity for chronic abusers or victims of sexual assault." • A study from the Harvard School of Public Health found a woman's risk of developing multiple sclerosis during her lifetime is doubled if she was obese at age 18. This is the first time MS risk has been linked to obesity. The research was based on the Nurses' Health study, but doctors say "There's no reason to believe that the biological mechanisms would be different." • Ohio State University researchers found that alcoholics over the age of 60 have more than 40 alcoholic drinks a week on average, compared to between 25 and 35 drinks a week on average for younger alcoholics. The findings suggest older alcoholics have developed a tolerance and need to drink even more to get drunk. • A North Carolina doctor could lose his medical license for allegedly poking a patient's thigh and calling her fat and irresponsible for being unemployed and using taxpayer's money to pay for another pregnancy. The doctor admitted he told her that her fat thighs and diabetes could make her go blind. • Could "real" America's love affair with Sarah Palin be coming to a close? In this video an angry mob boos her and calls her a quitter after left a an event in Noblesville, Indiana without signing the books of about 300 families who had been waiting for more than three hours. • A few Indian travel agents are pushing "divorce tourism," package deals designed to help couples salvage their relationship. Viresh Hirjee, chief executive of a Mumbai travel agency, has been sending customers of vacation along with marriage counselors. "We are trying our best to bring the couple together," he said, but warned, "We are not destiny changers." • School officials in Orange County, California warned kids that if they skip school today to see New Moon they'll be marked truant. • The business information analysis firm IBISWorld says that the growing popularity of online dating sites is responsible for Australia's sex industry losing $67.6 million in the past year. "The rapid growth in online services means it has never been easier for like-minded individuals to organize casual liaisons for little or no cost," said IBISWorld analyst Edward Butler. • Barbara Ann Radnofsky, Democratic candidate for attorney general in Texas, says a clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages accidentally banned all marriages in the state. The clause reads: "This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage." Backers of the ban say she's reading too much into the clause for political reasons. • The city of Auckland, New Zealand paid $74,000 to give a 66-foot fiberglass Santa statue a facelift. One of his mechanical eyes had been drooping and people were worried it would scare children. His face has been bandaged and the repairs will be unveiled on Sunday. •

According to Thomas MacAulay Millar of Yes Means Yes!, via the Washington City Paper's Sexist blog, researchers David Lesak and Paul M. Miller asked 1882 college students the following questions:

1) Have you ever attempted unsuccessfully to have intercourse with an adult by force or threat of force?
2) Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone who did not want you to because they were too intoxicated to resist?
3) Have you ever had intercourse with someone by force or threat of force?
4) Have you ever had oral intercourse with someone by force or threat of force?

As the Sexist's Amanda Hess points out, you'd think no guy would admit to any of these acts. But 120 respondents, or 6% of the sample (which, by the way, was ethnically diverse, and included older students, up to the age of 71), answered yes to at least one of the questions. 76 of those men had committed more than one rape or attempted rape — these recidivists averaged 5.8 offenses. That is, writes Millar, "just 4% of the men surveyed committed over 400 attempted or completed rapes."

The study had two important implications. One is that rapists aren't really all that secretive about their activities — as long as you don't come right out and call it "rape." The other is that one common assumption about date rape or "gray rape" — that it's usually the result of miscommunication and happens when good guys get the wrong idea — appears to be wrong. As Hess says, we hear a lot about "the acquaintance who 'misreads' the situation and 'goes too far'" and "the longtime friend who genuinely thought you had consented, and is shocked when you tell him that, no, it was rape." When we conceive of acquaintance-rapists this way, solutions tend to be woman-focused — women need to say 'no' louder, to avoid sending mixed signals, or, most upsettingly, to accept that the vagaries of sex are such that occasionally someone will just "accidentally" rape them. This thinking also trivializes date-rape and rape involving alcohol, leading to scenes like the one in Observe and Report (pictured above) in which sex with an unconscious woman is played for laughs. But Lisak and Miller's research shows that many acquaintance-rapists aren't just nice guys who screwed up once — they have a history of repeated assault. Rape isn't just an unfortunate feature of everyday male-female relations — it's a crime committed disproportionately by a few. And yet rather than being ostracized, these few are frequently protected by those who say, in Hess's words, "He's my friend, so he can't be a rapist." Hess continues, "We need to reverse that equation-'He's a rapist, so he can't be my friend.'"

Rapists Who Don't Think They're Rapists [Washinton City Paper]
Meet The Predators [Yes Means Yes!]

8 Cervarix is only $5 cheaper than Gardasil, but unlike Merck's vaccine, it doesn't prevent two other types of HPV that cause genital warts. The committee decided not to endorse one vaccine over the other, and the CDC still has to adopt the committee's recommendation for it to be approved for widespread use. • The Oklahoma law that would require the collection and anonymous public sharing of abortion patients' personal data will not go into effect as scheduled on November 1, due to some legal wrangling and highly unusual judicial decisions. The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a suit requesting a temporary restraining order to prevent the law from going into effect on behalf of two local women. The judge recused herself from the case and the new judge, Twyla Mason Gray, has ignored the request but granted the state's request for an extension, moving the hearing to December 4. Gray set the bond for the temporary restraining order request at $25,000, which is an uncommonly large sum for such cases. Oklahoma Representative Wanda Jo Stapleton says so much personal information would be made public by the law that, "Women in small towns can be identified by nosy neighbors or, equally important, they can be misidentified when the guessing games start." • Megan Williams of West Virginia is now says she was lying when she reported that she was assaulted by a group of white men. She accused the men of keeping her in a trailer for several days, beating and stabbing her, and forcing her to eat animal feces. Seven men plead guilty and were convicted, but now her lawyer says she made up the story to get revenge on one of the men she was having a relationship with. Prosecutor Brian Abraham says the men were convicted on physical evidence and their own statements. • In only the second known case of a sperm donor passing on a genetic disease, a donor has given the heart condition hypertrophic cardiomyopathy to nine of his 24 children. One died at age 2 and two of the children, who are now teenagers, are at risk for sudden cardiac death. • Dr. Marci Bowers, who herself underwent a sex-change operation, now performs "female circumcision reversals" that can restore sexual pleasure in 80% of genital mutilation victims. One patient says she's looking forward to "a romance with my husband." • Israeli researchers say people who are violent with their partners are usually in control with their friends and bosses. They say the abuser usually goes through a calculated decision-making process and their behavior often escalates from verbal aggression, to threats of physical aggression, then moderate physical aggression, and severe physical aggression. • Six women are accused of posing as victims of domestic violence to jump to the top of the New York City Housing Authority's waiting list for subsidized apartments. A manager noticed there were similarities in some of the women's police reports and other documents. If convicted of forging court documents, the women could each face seven years in prison. • 53-year-old John Marshall of California has been charged with drugging and raping an acquaintance then shaving off all of his victim's hair. There are at least two other complaints from men and boys who say he drugged and raped them but he hasn't been charged with those crimes and is currently out on bail. • Kuwait's highest court has granted women the right to obtain a passport without their husband's approval. Thousands of women have been petitioning the courts to overturn the 1962 law requiring their husbands' signatures for a passport. Women in Kuwait can vote, serve in parliament, and drive, unlike women in some neighboring countries. • Researchers from Yale University and the VA Connecticut Healthcare System asked 18,481 female and 134,731 male veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom if they are in pain since coming home. Only 38 percent of female veterans compared to 44 percent of the men said they experienced any pain, and women were more likely to report moderate-severe pain but less likely to report persistent pain. "We were surprised by the lower pain prevalence in women Veterans which is contrary to studies conducted in civilian populations," said Dr. Sally Haskell. The discrepancy could be due to the fact that women do not serve in direct combat roles, or women being reluctant to seek treatment and admit they're in pain. • A 50 year-old Russian coal miner is trying to sell a signed photograph of Brigitte Bardot to pay for a $2,090 operation to treat his lung disease. • The one day suspension of a Springfield, Illinois bus driver who wore a pink tie to support breast cancer awareness has been rescinded. Springfield Mass Transit District managing director Linda Tisdale wrote in a newspaper editorial, "Unfortunately, my decision has left the mistaken impression that the SMTD and I do not support the Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign and, even more regrettably, has hurt and insulted the many families who have had to deal with this horrible disease." • A Florida judge says he will not dismiss a civil lawsuit against Casey Anthony, charged with killing her daughter Caylee. The girl's former nanny Zenaida Gonzales is suing Anthony because she says she damaged her reputation by naming her as a suspect in Caylee's death. • A recent study found that adults who are childhood cancer survivors are 20 to 25 percent less likely to marry compared with their siblings and the American population. Sometimes cancer treatment can lead to fertility or developmental problems and survivors may suffer from ongoing medical issues. • Hahnium Goren, the mother of a 15-year-old girl believed to be murdered by her father in an "honor killing," testified against her husband Mamet Goren in a London court today. While on the stand she screamed at him, "Look at my face. What did you do to Tu lay?" He's accused of killing their daughter in 1999 because she was dating a boy he didn't approve of. • The British news program More4 News will feature actors playing Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson, and John Ruskin "reporting" on the societal changes since their time. The Jane Austen character will discuss modern courtship and the waning popularity of marriage and observe a speed-dating session where "you can encounter dozens of potential partners in one evening, with no obligations." • Some extremely serious runners have their toenails surgically removed to make 50 or 100-mile races less painful. Nails are removed by pouring acid on the nail bed. A podiatrist who treats runners says, "Even within the ultra community, less than 10 percent or maybe even 5 percent are permanently removing their toenails." •

The 2LoveMyLips gloss is available in five different "seductive" colors. On the website, the product is described as "sasy (sic) zestful two-in-one lip plumping breath freshening lip gloss, cleverly packaged to include a drink spike detector testing kit!" Tracy Whittaker, managing director of 2LoveMy, says that the date rape kit is easy to use and requires only a single drop of the suspicious drink. "If they turn blue tell your friends immediately and get help from security and the police," she said.

The website describes the design more fully. It seems like the gloss is not actually attached to the drug testing strip, but instead comes with a separate card inside the box. In their mission statement, 2LoveMy explains:

Our primary goal is to promote 2 LOVE MY LIPS as a fashionable brand with a distinctive logo that is easily recognisable to women within our target age group of 16 to 50.

2 LOVE MY LIPS aims to bring safety and beauty to the finger tips of women of all ages. A revolutionary female concept, where women's beauty and safety blend together so transparently that the customer buys beauty and acquires safety almost subliminally.

Something about this rubs me the wrong way. It is great that they want to help women avoid creepy rapist assholes, but it seems a little odd that this is marketed as the merger of beauty and safety. Whittaker says she hopes to sell the gloss in vending machines and bar toilets, the very places, Cosmetics Design notes, that women will need it most. This just seems like an obnoxious way to sell their lip gloss to scared women, who are forced to buy their pricey ($16 plus tax!) product when what they really want is a way to tell whether or not they are in immediate physical danger. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but given all the restrictions stated on their website (you cannot use the test with wine, most fruit juices, and the test does not detect Rohypnol), it may just give women a false sense of safety while promoting sales of yet another beauty product we don't really need. In fact, the best thing about 2LoveMyLips is a paragraph on the company's website that advises women to buy their own drinks, throw out any beverages that have been left unattended, and trust their own instincts. But if we do all that, what's the use of the lip gloss?

Date Rape-Preventing Lip Gloss Debuts [Cosmetics Design]
2LoveMyLips [Official Site]

The decision to depict Marsalis' attorney as a cool cat backed by mood-setting music was bizarre. Even weirder? When, after a segment detailing how Marsalis would slip sedatives into his dates' drinks in order to have sex with them, the episode faded to black and an ad for Levitra came on.

After two separate trials, Marsalis was acquitted of the charges. But one more woman sparked a third trial, and this time, the jury didn't buy Marsalis' stock defense that his accusers were just women scorned by a handsome suitor. (The accuser was a lesbian.) Marsalis was found guilty and will be eligible for parole in 2031.

Earlier: How To Rape 100 (Cute, Educated, Upper Middle-Class) Women And Get Away With It

Former Jezebel editor Jessica Grose writes on Slate that after seeing the movie she found the date rape scene to be:

... just another stomach-turning plot point in a movie consisting of several similarly revolting scenes. If you are to take the film and its characters seriously, which perhaps is beside the point, Rogen's cop not only sexually assaults Faris but basically stalks her, and the movie ends with him publicly slut-shaming her.

As Jessica points out, in an interview with the Onion's A.V. Club director Jody Hill said he thinks the scene would have been even funnier if he left out the line some have construed to mean that Faris's Brandi consents to the sex (even though she's passed out):

AVC: In the Times piece, they describe the scene you're talking about as Seth Rogen's character forcing himself on Anna Faris. Is that how you perceived that scene?

JH: [Pause.] I dunno. I've always kind of liked scenes that you talk about how fucked-up they are. I would have been happy without any dialogue in that scene. I wanted to show them just having sex and her passed out, and I thought that would have been funnier. But I think I have a darker sense of humor than most people. So at the end, [Faris' character] is okay with it. [Laughs.] And that was like, "I'll shoot it both ways." So I actually shot it both ways. I just kept the camera rolling. There's like a line that's "We're okay laughing, and you're pushing the envelope." But you're not really pushing the envelope until you cross that line where a lot of people don't go along with you.

Hill goes on to praise Seth Rogen for standing up to the studio when they wanted to tone down the many disturbing scenes in the film, saying Rogen "really is a fighter for what he believes in." In a separate A.V. Club interview with Anna Faris, it seems that she wasn't as happy with the rape scene as Hill and Rogen, and actually assumed it wouldn't make it to theaters:

AVC: What did you think of the script for Observe And Report when you read it? Did you have a sense of how dark and tonally edgy it would end up being?

AF: Honestly, I didn't have a very good sense at all. [Laughs.] I mean, I read the script and I auditioned for it. I had to fight a little bit for the role, and I wanted to be a part of it so badly. I had seen Jody Hill's Foot Fist Way and loved it. Danny McBride, I loved. The unapologetic nature of Jody's comedy was so appealing to me, and I really wanted be part of it. I'm so grateful I was cast, but when I read the script, I thought, "Well, this is Warner Brothers. This is a studio movie, so this is all gonna be softened up. It's a comedy, right?" So when we were shooting it, even the date-rape scene-or as I refer to it, "The Tender Love-Making Scene"-I just thought, "We'll shoot it, but it's not gonna be in the movie. I don't have to worry about that one." And yet there it is.

Faris adds that she wanted to do the film because Brandi was so awful, since apparently she's having a hard time finding studio films featuring stupid, slutty female characters. She explains:

[Brandi's] really vain, she's really bitchy, and I always imagined she was incredibly stupid, too, but it was just a joy and delight to play her. It's not often you get to be that naughty. It was wonderfully shocking. I read a script where the lead female is so awful, and I was like, "This could not be a studio movie." So it was just a joy.

Blogger Majikthise explains that in the film Brandi's character, not just the one line she mumbles while drunk, are used to justify the rape. She writes:

[Hill] also makes Brandi's character so shallow, manipulative, drug addled, and "slutty" that the target demographic feels she deserves what she gets. Brandi's character is noteworthy because she [has] no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. Even Ronnie has his good points, like his tenderness towards his falling-down drunk mom, and his refusal to steal from his employer, and his heartfelt thirst for justice. I defy anyone who has seen O&R to cite an example of a good, or even neutral, characteristic of Brandi.

So it seems the early reviews were right: The rape isn't so bad when viewed in context, but only because Brandi is treated horribly throughout the film. Hill didn't intend for anyone to mull whether the sex was consensual or not, he just flippantly tossed the date rape in the film in an attempt to get some laughs.

Observe And Revolt [Slate]
Jody Hill Interview [The A.V. Club]
Review: Observe and Report [Majikthise]

Earlier: Is Date Rape Funny? Seth Rogen Explains It All For You
Critics Observe and Report: Seth Rogen's Dark Comedy Is Disturbing

You wouldn't know it from watching the commercials playing constantly on TV, but in Observe & Report Ronnie (Seth Rogen) date rapes Brandi (Anna Faris) after taking her out to dinner, and today, bloggers are talking about it. This is how The New York Times review describes the scene, which you can watch in the final 20 seconds of the trailer above:

In another scene [Rogen] forces himself on a makeup-counter saleswoman after a date of heavy drinking and drug use. (Before the scene is over she indicates that she had given her consent.)

In the scene, Brandi has thrown up on herself and appears to be totally unconscious as Ronnie is pumping away on top of her. He stops for a second, and then she murmurs the line that The New York Times says indicates her consent, "Did I tell you to stop, motherfucker?" before passing out again.

Dan Kois writes on New York Magazine's Vulture blog:

The movie doesn't mitigate that sex scene at all. In fact, it makes it even more clear than the trailer does that when Brandi and Ronnie get home from dinner, she's unbelievably trashed on antidepressants and tequila. Not only does she throw up all over the place, she can barely walk - and she certainly can't give any kind of informed consent. She's way too wasted for her yelling at Ronnie to mean anything.

But Kois doesn't get is that it's a dark comedy. People are so disturbed by rape that the fact that Brandi is too out of it to give any kind of consent what makes the scene so hilarious. Anna Faris told New York Magazine, "It's like date rape - that's funny, right?" Seth Rogen agrees in this interview posted by the Washington City Paper. He says:

SETH ROGEN: When we're having sex and she's unconscious like you can literally feel the audience thinking, like, how the fuck are they going to make this okay? Like, what can possibly be said or done that I'm not going to walk out of the movie theater in the next thirty seconds? . . . And then she says, like, the one thing that makes it all okay:
BRANDI: "Why are you stopping, motherfucker?"

Rogen explains that everyone in the theater then lets out a good long chuckle. See, even though she's probably blacked out and has no idea what she's saying, it isn't rape. (And Brandi's kind of a dumb slut anyway.) In the beginning of the trailer, a flasher is exposing himself to women in the mall parking lot and it looks like he's masturbating in front of Brandi. In this interview Anna Faris says:

It is the most traumatic event that's ever happened to her, which is funny because I always imagined that she's seen a bit of male anatomy and it wouldn't normally scare her.

Women who have many sex partners obviously love penis, so they'd welcome a stranger jerking off in front of them on their way to work.

And if you aren't already laughing at the idea of a pervert exposing himself to women and someone getting date raped, Sady points out on her blog Tiger Beatdown (via Shakesville) that the film will be even more entertaining for women with history of sexual assault. Sady writes:

"The incredible frequency of rape and sexual assault in our society means that many, many victims of rape will see [the movie], and the PTSD that often accompanies rape will mean that, for a joke, for some dipshit filmmaker's attempt at being edgy, they are going to experience all of the pain and psychological trauma associated with that experience, they are going to feel that rape all over again, there, in their seats, in the theater, and they are going to pay for the experience, and if they try to talk about what that filmmaker did to them it's probably going to get sidetracked into some conversation about the Sanctity of Art which is invariably given more consideration than their actual lives."

An Auteur of Awkward Strikes Again [The New York Times]
Does Seth Rogen Rape Anna Faris in Observe & Report? [New York Magazine]
Observe and Report's Date Rape Apologism [Washington City Paper]
Um. [Tiger Beatdown]
Quote of the Day [Shakesville]

She realizes he popped on on her radar because one of her Facebook friends is friends with him virtually. She writes:

Should I attempt to contact him, or just let bygones be bygones? Honestly, I could take it or leave it. My only worry is that he will think date rape is OK. ...
All I want to know is that he knows what he did was wrong, and is sorry for it. But is it worth contacting him, if the answer may be "no" or "I don't know what you're talking about"?

I mean, if — and that's a big if — the man in question has acknowledged to himself that he raped her, admitting it to her and/or apologizing for it could result in his prosecution as it did for William Beebe. But even Beebe, who was motivated for his own reasons to apologize for raping Liz Seccuro, had difficulty saying the word "rape" when apologizing, seeking to minimize his own culpability and the violence he inflicted on his victim. To confront one's rapist via a social networking site seems unlikely to yield the desired result of an apology, if that's even the true desired result.

On some level, I think most victims want their rapists to have lived an unhappy life (as William Beebe reportedly did). You don't want him to have gotten up from that moment and walked away without consequence or thought or fear. You don't want his life not to have changed in that moment because in some way — or in many ways — yours did. And yet, Facebook can tell you it doesn't work that way. A close friend found her rapist there one drunken night, all smiling and normal looking, proudly proclaiming his good job and relationship status. My date rapist is on Facebook, too, and his arms-length self-portrait shows him with his arm around a woman who looks not dissimilar to me. You don't want to think that he's the seemingly normal one now — but too often, he probably seems as normal to everyone else as he did to you before he became your rapist.

Cary Tennis suggests that the woman speak to a therapist rather than to her rapist and to not go running around to any of their Facebook friends making charges until she understands what she's dealing with herself — probably because she says she doesn't care and that she needs an apology in the same sentence, which suggests some internal conflicts. But given the prevalence of acquaintance rape, sexual assault on college campuses and the increasing ubiquity of Facebook, Cary Tennis' reader isn't likely to be the last person that this happens to.

My Date Rapist Is On Facebook As A "Person I Might Know" [Salon]

Related: The Letter [MSNBC]

In the clip at left, two actors, Brigitte and John, sit at a bar pretending to be on a date. While Brigitte is in the bathroom, John pours a powder in her drink. While, as anchor John Quinones says, what's frightening is that this happens in real life, it's unlikely this exact scenario would happen, since no human has ever responded to his date saying she feels ill by saying, "I have a pool at my house." The terribly written skit is performed in front of a group of guys and a middle-aged woman, and you can probably guess who intervenes and tells Bridgitte she's been drugged.

As pointed out on Shakesville, the word "rape" is never uttered during this segment. When Bridgitte and the woman cry and hug after it's revealed that it was just an act, Quinones says "Why are you crying? You're an actress!" He adds that Bridgitte was probably all worked up because she was drugged in real life two years ago, but "no one came to her rescue until after she had taken the drink."

Read This—and Resolve Again to Be All In [Shakesville]

Marie Claire's Abigail Haworth treats the issue in classic women's magazine style, presenting it as a semi-titillating cautionary tale of risky sex in an exotic locale. It's set in Hong Kong's "pulsating red-light district of Wan Chai," "a riot of neon-lit sleaze" which "heaves with easily available female flesh." Much of this heaving flesh belongs to "bar girls," legal prostitutes who flirt with Western men and later sell them sex. Haworth visits one nightclub, Neptune II, where "there are no Asian men (rich Hong Kongers have their own red-light area) and not a single Western woman."

Dragon-lady stereotyping aside (horrors! A bar where Asian women prey on white men with not a white girl in sight!), the specifics of the cases are pretty disturbing. Executive Simon Garcia says he didn't intend to leave Neptune II with a strange woman, but the last thing he remembers is dizzily exiting the bar with her on Friday night. He woke up at 2 a.m. on Sunday, minus his cell phone, wallet, and watch. Police found Rohypnol in his urine. And some men, including Finland's former police chief, have died after being dosed with Rohypnol by prostitutes.

But bar girl Juli gives the unsettling flip side to the old "she asked for it" excuse: "of course it's bad news if a guy dies or loses his marriage because his wife finds out, but nobody forces them to come to Wan Chai." She adds, "we've always had to protect ourselves from men. Maybe now it's their turn to start protecting themselves from us."

Dangerous Liaisons [Marie Claire]

The results from a study of jury trials in rape cases are pretty stark.

Until now, it’s been impossible to know exactly how many of these cases collapse in court, because no prosecution data was being collected. But the research and training group End Violence Against Women International in Addy, Washington, just completed a four-year study across eight states and has allowed SELF an exclusive early look at its conclusions. Of all the rape cases that come across prosecutors’ desks, stranger-rape cases have the best courtroom odds, with 68 percent ending with a conviction or guilty plea. But when a woman knows her assailant briefly (less than 24 hours), a mere 43 percent of cases end in a conviction. When they know each other longer than 24 hours, the conviction rate falls to 35 percent. Even fewer, 29 percent, of intimate partners and exes are punished. “And keep in mind, the cases that come through the prosecutor’s door are the strongest ones — strong enough for the police to have referred them along in the first place,” notes EVAW International research director Kimberly Lonsway, Ph.D.

And, that doesn't even include the women who choose not to report to the cops who serve as the gatekeepers for referring winnable cases to the prosecutors.

According to government estimates, a mere 19 percent of rapes, including stranger rapes, are ever reported in the first place. As Valliere notes, women who have been sexually assaulted find so many reasons not to call police, including denial, shame or their hazy grasp of the facts due to drugs or alcohol. Many survivors assume they won’t be believed. Still others, such as Marie and Leigh, are mortified into silence by what they see as their complicity in their own attacks.

And, if that's not depressing enough for you — because, notably, it doesn't mention whether those acquaintance rapes involved violence or not — the reasons why are even more so.

“To a juror, a rapist is a guy who jumps out of the bushes and throws a woman to the ground,” [Lynn Hecht Schafran, director of the National Judicial Education Program of Legal Momentum] explains. “She has terrible injuries, and she leaps up and reports it immediately to the police. Anything that falls short of that story is questionable.”

So, basically, if your rapist isn't violent enough, you're going to have trouble securing a conviction if you're even one of the 1 in 5 women who goes to the police in the first place — which might be part of the reason plenty of victims don't.

Since we last wrote about Marsalis a year ago, he pled no contest to "unlawful restraint" charges in an 11th sexual assault case in Philadelphia that hadn't been part of either of his first two trials —- in exchange for prosecutors agreeing not to pursue another trial on one of the rape charges on which the jury had deadlocked in his second trial. After fighting it for the better part of a year, he was finally extradicted to Idaho in August to face charges of raping a co-worker there in 2005. That trial is expected to begin in January of 2009, 4 years after he sexually assaulted his victim. Whatever the results, he will eventually have to return to Pennsylvania to serve out the remainder of his 10-21 year sentence on the 2 sexual assaults prosecutors managed to actually convict him of. Marsalis is a walking reminder of the statistics: having known most of the 12 victims in these 4 cases more than 24 hours, at best, he'll be convicted of assaulting 33% of them.

Date Rape Cases Still Hard To Win [Self, via MSNBC]

Related: Marsalis Removed From Pa. Prison, Sent To Idaho For Another Rape Trial [Philadelphia Daily News]
Attorney Alleges Perjury In Marsalis Rape Case [Idaho Mountain Express]

Earlier: How To Rape 100 (Cute, Educated, Upper Middle-Class) Women And Get Away With It
Can Rapists Get You Off? Our Questions About How Serial Rapist Jeffrey Marsalis Got Away With It, Answered

Mirren told GQ:

If a woman voluntarily ends up in a man’s bedroom with her clothes off? It’s such a tricky area, isn’t it? Especially if there is no violence. I think she has the right to say no at the last second. But I don’t think she can have that man in court under those circumstances.

Mirren admits that she couldn't have reported her date rapes when they occurred, but, apparently, it's better that way. "I guess [date rape] is one of the many subtle parts of the men/women relationship that has to be negotiated and worked out between them," she says.

The attitude — as demonstrated by the Daily Mirror's Sue Carroll — that all date rape victims are women who wake up next to a guy they don't like and go running to the cops is so beyond ridicule that it's hard to even try. Carroll says:

Though in recent years we've become confused by the endless court cases where rape charges are totally demeaned by scorned, ruthless women seeking revenge against men.

Right, naturally. Carroll obviously lacks quite a bit of familiarity with both the legal system and "feminists" — who she accuses of encouraging women to report rapes that weren't rape-y enough for her taste.

Reporting a rape involves a physical examination of all your orifices (without lubrication, by the way, so as not to contaminate the samples) and hours of questioning by police officers, if not a search of your home and the confiscation of your possessions. It involves meeting with prosecutors if someone is even arrested and if you decide to prosecute, "pretend" cross examinations intended to make you cry and question yourself, and lots and lots and lots of talk about your sex life and other personal habits — the rape shield law doesn't shield you from much, actually. Cops will question your friends, they'll ask your significant other (if you have one) to submit a DNA sample and basically your whole life will be rooted through for quite a while to make sure you're not the half-mythical woman crying wolf. Like a rapist, the kind of person who would falsely report a rape is a seriously disturbed individual and not someone who slept with someone regrettable and is looking for some kind of excuse.

So, no, Dame Helen, women and men can't just work it out amongst themselves — unless women and (normal) men agree that all "date" rapists are just, you know, rapists. Knowing him, however briefly, or kissing him does not give him the right to force you (and it didn't give Helen's rapists the right to force her) and every woman should have an absolute right to prosecute her rapist. And a few sick women who get off on falsely accusing men shouldn't tar the rest of the world's victims or be held up as the reason the rest of us shouldn't be allowed to prosecute any more than a few sick men who get off on raping wome,n should be the reason I don't kiss a man I want to kiss, or hang out with a guy I don't intend to fuck.

Mirren Criticized Over Rape Remarks [Time]
Helen Mirren Talks About Being Date Raped, Loving Cocaine [LA Times]
On Helen Mirren: Women Must Wake Up To The Reality Of Date Rape [Mirror]

Roger Graef argues in the Daily "Male" that the there needs to be some sort of less-unhappy medium found between women's right to drink themselves silly — and their right not to be assaulted — and the acknowledgment that drinking can make a person more vulnerable to predators. Actually, he doesn't so much "argue" as create a bulleted list of sometimes contradictory points about rights, perceptions, changing values, and the need to respect victims' rights. He also claims that many women who think they were date raped by men using date-rape drugs often "find" out that it was just too much alcohol because no drugs are detected in their systems afterwards, ignoring the fact that some date rape drugs can't be detected by the time you're coming to. It's actually kind of a messy, wishy-washy cop-out of an argument in which the headline ("Don't blind-drunk women who cry rape bear any responsibility for what happens to them?") is the most strident position taken in the entire piece. Yes, getting blind-drunk without being cognizant of the risks of doing so is foolish — for men and for women. But it doesn't make anyone any more culpable for being preyed upon by a criminal.

Zoe Williams argues in The Guardian that being drunk, while it does make one more vulnerable to predatory criminal elements, does not lessen the culpability of the criminal or increase the culpability of the victim. She does, however, argue that the culture of alcohol and excessive drinking that she finds pervasive in society should be discussed and dealt with.

The problem, as I see it, it thornier than either of them teased out. There are supposedly two kinds of sexual assaults going on, about which people feel very differently. One is acquaintance rape, or date rape, in which the assault is committed by someone known to the victim, with or without the addition or alcohol or drugs. The picture most people carry in their minds about this kind of assault — since it doesn't normally involve a weapon or a savage beating (though it can) — is of a man who, through some combination of brute strength and impairment of the victim, is able to sexually assault her. (Yes, men can be victims, but this is the general picture). The other type of assault is stranger rape, in which victim is assaulted by a perpetrator unknown to the victim, with or without the use of a weapon. In most people's minds, this is the stereotypical, old-school version of rape, a less common and perhaps more easily prosecutable version.

Both parties are assuming that the women in the case of the CICA were victims of acquaintance rape, though reports have said Helen's attacker was a stranger. If you think about that for a second — are you more offended that Helen's compensation was reduced for being drunk while being raped by a stranger? And, if you were, did you then think to yourself that you're thinking about it wrong?

Most people — even many feminists, like Camile Paglia — view date rape as separate and different from stranger rape, as something that women can protect themselves against and, by protecting themselves, prevent entirely. She says:

These girls say, "Well, I should be able to get drunk at a fraternity party and go upstairs to a guy's room without anything happening." And I say, "Oh, really? And when you drive your car to New York City, do you leave your keys on the hood?" My point is that if your car is stolen after you do something like that, yes, the police should pursue the thief and he should be punished. But at the same time, the police—-and I—-have the right to say to you, "You stupid idiot, what the hell were you thinking?"

It sounds like a vaguely convincing argument, only it's not.

As I know too well, you don't have to be stinking drunk to be raped by an acquaintance, just physically weaker and unwilling or unable to commit to taking a beating in the hopes of leaving with only external bruises. Or you can be drunk, and still say no and mean it and still be too physically weak to get away. Or you could forget to watch your drink like a hawk and end up under the influence of more than alcohol. Or you can not know your tolerance well enough one night because you didn't eat enough. Or you could be drunk, passed out in your own apartment with the doors locked when someone breaks in and decides he won the criminal two-fer lottery: your vagina and your stuff. The kind of "man" (and I put that in quotes for good reason) who gets his rocks off by holding a woman down and forcing her, or sticking his dick in an unconscious person or having sex with someone he's first paralyzed with fear or physical pain isn't going to not rape someone because there aren't any drunk girls passed out upstairs at a frat party — because he's not doing it for sex or to just to get his rocks off, he's doing it because he has a fucked up power-trip of a mental idea of what sex is, and that idea is that rape is sex. And we can all be sober as judges, and wear jeans and turtlenecks and live by whatever set of rules someone decides means we didn't leave our collective keys on our collective hoods and those men will still decide to rape women because there is no motivational difference between date rapists and stranger rapists — it's just their modus operandi and how they choose to gain access to the women they intend to victimize that differs.

So, Camille and Roger, just because I have one more orifice than a man doesn't mean I should have to spend the rest of my life protecting it from what some sick fucking rapist wants to stick into it. My body is not a car, and there are no keys to my vagina that I can inherently protect any more than I can protect the rest of my body against any other random act of violence. It is random, and a rapist is a rapist is a rapist, regardless of whether he uses a gun, a hand, a pill or a better alcohol tolerance level. And the sooner people recognize that I didn't "let" myself get assaulted by an acquaintance when I was sober any more than I "let" myself get assaulted by a stranger when I was drunk, the better.

Payout Review In Drink-Related Rape Cases Ruled Out [The Guardian]
Don't Blind-Drunk Women Who Cry Rape Bear Any Responsibility For What Happens To Them? [Daily Mail]
Victimhood Isn't A Matter Of Degree For Others To Dictate [The Guardian]
Date Rape Drugs [Women's Health]
Rape Victims Awarded Less Compensation For Drinking Before Attack [Telegraph]

• Check out the GoateeSaver, a device that one bites onto while shaving to create the perfect goatee every time. • Mothers are launching their own businesses in the UK after they become fed up with the lack of flexibility to spend time with their family in their old jobs. • Gamma-butyrolactone and 1,4 butanedoil may be banned in the UK where they convert into the date-rape drug GHB when ingested rapidly. • Working-age singles in Australia report having "low life satisfaction," and are only happier on average than marginalized groups like the unemployed and single parents. Is this another study trying to scare single people into getting married? • A new law may be forming in Kuwait that will require that all gyms become gender-segregated. • A 90 year-old woman had her biggest wish come true when a male staffer at her assisted living facility volunteered to serve her fish and chips in a thong. Some staffers complained that it wouldn't have happened if the genders had been reversed.

(Image via B12 Solipsism.)

Yeah, that's right: RAPE! An endlessly thrilling topic, whatever the social context! Especially at the beach, I can totally see this playing out so well:

DUDE: Hey, hotness. The keg may be tapped, but I can show you a clothes dryer where a quarter-bottle of Malibu has our names engraved on them…

'COSMO' READER: Um, cool! So like, did you know, that if you slip something in my drink, I can totally find out if you had sex with my unconscious body the next day without having to drag the police into it?

Seriously though, rape should get talked about more, but it's odd to see Cosmo suggesting it's as simple and no-big-thang as, say, sticking a finger in his ass while you're in reverse cowgirl. But hey! Maybe I'm just old and rape is now so just so common it's lost its stigma as a discussion topic. How awesome would that be?

Cosmo

So, how has date rape become such everyday dudehavior? You can probably blame a religious fetishization of virginity for the fact that a lot of girls say "no" to sex they actually want. Perhaps this is a source of some disappointment to dudes who try to fuck Christian girls. (Dudes, come on, stop trying to fuck Christian girls.) So...they date rape them? So they can leave them filled with a nagging sense of lifelong shame? That will fuck up their sex lives, much worse than the religion ever did, for years and years to come? Jesus Christ. Okay, and then there is the chance that she just doesn't want to have sex with you. Maybe she's flirting with you for affirmation, maybe she's heard you're shitty in the sack, maybe she's hung up on someone else, maybe she heard about your folliculitis of the balls. Whatever. So you stick it in anyway and achieve the worst sex of your life and leave her wondering for years and years and years, "Why the fuck did he do that to me?"

One time when this happened to me, I actually asked, and he said, "You just didn't seem to be the kind of girl who thought sex was that big a deal." How perceptive! So why the fuck would you commit a felony to stick it in a girl so deeply uninterested in having sex with you she bothered to say "no" for once in her entire sex-positive life?

I still don't know. But hey! Apparently the shirt's been pulled. Go Feministing Bonerkiller Squad!

Hilarious Rape Shirt Pulled [Feministing]

He goes on to accuse the Labour party of "criminalis[ing] the hard working and the law abiding." These comments come just a month after Cameron spoke out against rape, calling for tougher sentences on sexual predators.

On November 12th, Cameron told the Conservative Women's Organization that he would increase funding to rape crisis centers and said that too many men commit rape because they "think they can get away with it." The Home Office Minister in charge of sexual crimes policy, Vernon Coaker, told the Guardian that if Cameron was really serious about his comments from last month, he should immediately apologize for his friend Redwood's remarks and call on him to issue a retraction."

In the same blog post in which he discusses the "doctrine of equivalence" perpetuated by the Labour Party, Redwood also decries the increasing criminalization of speeding and increased regulations on business. By minimizing the crimes of speeding and date rape in the same breath, Redwood seems to be even further dismissing the seriousness of acquaintance rape. Coaker says it best in the Telegraph: "[A]lmost 90 per cent of rapes are committed by men who know their victims, so this type of rape is the biggest problem we have to deal with - not something to be dismissed as a lesser crime."

A Better Class of Criminal? [John Redwood's Diary]
Redwood's Date Rape Comments Infuriate Campaigners [Guardian]
John Redwood: Treat Date Rape Differently [Telegraph]

Earlier: In British Date Rape "Adverts", Rapist & Victim Look The Same

TV Advert To Warn Men Over Rape [BBC]
Police Launch Rape Awareness TV Campaign [Greater Manchester Police]
Earlier: 'Cosmo' Wonders: Is It Rape If You Had Too Many Jaeger Shots To Remember It Anyway?

And was refused. After which she was also denied rape kits by both the police and the George Washington Hospital. Who asks for a rape kit if they don't really, really need it? Is it naive of me to assume rape kits are not, like, anyone's idea of fun? (Uh, yeah, nevermind; Safesearch ON when Googling "speculum," guys.) It's one thing for a jury full of ignoramuses to disbelieve a rape victim, but a whole bunch of trained professionals who deal with this shit every day?

Rape Survivor Denied Treatment Because She "Appeared Intoxicated" [Feministing]