While the big news was the Supreme Court hearing on abortion rights (more on that below), a clarifying moment for me came with a different story this week.
In August, Andrew Cuomo resigned as NY Governor after an investigation found evidence that he had harassed at least 11 women, including inappropriate comments, forced kissing, and groping. This week it came out that his brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, had used his position and contacts to help cover for the governor, and lied to investigators about it.
CNN suspended Chris Cuomo “indefinitely,” and a couple of hours ago he was officially fired. The suspension announcement from CNN was unusually sympathetic: “But we also appreciated the unique position he was in and understood his need to put family first and job second.” And several of his colleagues were openly saying they’d have done the same.
Note the downplaying of Gov. Cuomo’s actions — which allegedly included shoving a hand into a woman’s blouse to grope her breasts — as mere “trouble” or “scandal.” Note also that Chris Cuomo could have helped by getting him a lawyer or (better yet) staging an intervention — but he went all in on smearing the victims.
I tried a thought experiment. Imagine that Chris Cuomo had a sister who was the “false accuser” bogeywoman that men are always warning each other about. Imagine that she had intentionally harmed at least eleven men with made-up harassment accusations. (I know, it’s hard enough to picture a woman being believed once, but stay with me for a minute.) Now imagine Chris Cuomo covering for her and attacking the victims. Imagine those same sympathetic, understanding comments from his colleagues in the media.
Wouldn’t happen. Because this isn’t really about “family” — plenty of people, men and even women, will defend harassers they’ve never met. It’s about who and what gets excused and forgiven.
As always, this diary is a group effort. Thanks to mettle fatigue, elenacarlena, SandraLLAP, ramara, J Graham and the WOW crew for links and discussion.
Reproductive Rights:
Reproductive rights — all of them — are on the line with the current Supreme Court case out of Mississippi. Link to the whole hearing.
A year ago, Poland passed a near-total ban on abortion. Now it’s announcing plans for a centralized registry of pregnancies and miscarriages. Meanwhile, calls for loosening restrictions have been spurred by the death of a woman who was forced to carry her nonviable fetus until she died of septic shock.
Sarah Jones responds to an article that supported “pro-life feminism.” Jones argues that there is no feminism without bodily autonomy.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that El Salvador had violated the rights of a woman who was imprisoned for violating the country's abortion laws and died while serving her 30-year sentence.
Abortion rights will be a ‘driving force’ in 2022 elections, experts predict.
Thom Hartmann: Next up on GOP's agenda: Stripping women of political & economic power. Next step is going after birth control.
Michele Goodwin: “I was raped by my father. An abortion saved my life.”
Violence:
Women in the UK military face lasting health issues if they endured sexual harassment, emotional bullying, physical assault, and sexual assault during their service.
Catholic nuns lift the veil on abuse in convents.
From WomensAgenda (Australia) Sustainable development goals are pointless unless violence against women & girls is eradicated.
In the aftermath of the economic meltdown since the Taliban takeover Afghani families 'marry off' young teens and even little girls for dowry money as starvation looms.
Despite workplace progress in victim credibility on sexual abuse and harassment, recent research finds that women’s --and children's-- reports of domestic violence by men are still widely rejected in the US and globally, especially in family courts, where rulings often worsen the situation of mothers and children.
While the stereotype about wrongful convictions imagines a woman who has consensual sex and then falsely “cries rape,” the realistic problem is actual rapes where the victim misidentifies the perpetrator. This was the case with Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones and Lucky: her bad eyewitness ID sent the wrong man to prison for 16 years. And our justice system still rarely prosecutes any rape other than those by a stranger — if the victim knows the perpetrator well enough to positively ID him, the cops and courts mostly aren’t interested.
Why the Women's Tennis Association rallied for Peng Shuai.
The language police use can undermine domestic abuse victims:
We found patterns of victim-blaming in the language used by officers and gatekeepers in these documents [a form the police fill out after being called to a home for DV - gatekeepers being supervisors such as sergeants and others]. The intensity of verbs was downgraded as the process of reporting progressed, for example. And the grammatical constructions deployed could be seen as mitigating the suspect’s role in the crime. Victims were, at times, presented as contributing to their own situation.
Intersectionality:
Female faculty members of color in particular are disproportionately called upon by colleagues and students to do diversity, equity and inclusion work unrecognized in regard to salaries and promotions, an example of how sexism and racism contribute to persistent lack of female faculty members of color across higher education.
Video at article:What it means to grow up Native American - Two young Native American women speak about what's it like growing up Native American, what it means to be Native and how we can better show Native representation.
Uncategorizable:
Professor at Boise State University goes on bizarre anti-feminist rant.
Amanda Marcotte notes that both Ghislaine Maxwell (Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged partner in sex trafficking minors) and Elizabeth Holmes (CEO of Theranos, which bilked investors out of millions for an invention that never worked) have both adopted defenses claiming they were the hapless pawns of controlling men. One can at least make the argument for Holmes: her much-older boyfriend, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, was reportedly verbally abusive and cruel to anyone he had power over. But Holmes spent more than a decade building an organization that she knew was a fraud, and she was Balwani’s boss.
It's frustrating because it is true that a lot of women in prison for various crimes probably don't deserve to be there because their crimes are a direct reaction to abuse or the result of being coerced by abusive men. But those kinds of crimes, such as drug use or prostitution, are often victimless crimes. In other cases, women are in prison for literally trying to defend themselves against abusive men.
Maxwell, on the other hand, is accused of procuring underage girls for Epstein's sexual exploitation, and even participating herself. Holmes is accused of lying to investors about what Theranos medical devices are capable of doing. These are not situations where someone is using drugs to cope with trauma or being forced into sex work. There's a deliberation to their behavior over literal years that simply can't be squared with the idea that they lacked agency and were under some kind of male control.
Some British nominally-feminist groups have issued a a “Declaration of Sex-Based Rights of Women.” Not gonna link because it’s just one long transphobic manifesto. First red flag: it’s being very loudly endorsed by Richard Dawkins, whose last encounter with feminism consisted of viciously attacking Rebecca Watson when she dared suggest sexual harassment at conferences was a bad thing.
Good News and Action Items:
Tuesday, Barbados officially became a republic, with a nonroyal woman head of state and another as head of govt.
Stacey Abrams announces a second run for Georgia governor in 2022.
Charlotte Clymer will be the first transgender person to join the board of the LPAC, a Super PAC founded by lesbians.
This site’s Activism Roundup diary has a bunch of action items for reproductive rights: