Tag: politics

Conservatives Win the Healthcare Messaging War

For many left-leaning Americans, little is more important aside from the state of the economy right now than healthcare reform – and they’re inextricably linked. Coverage of healthcare reform is pretty high this week, with the expectation that the Supreme Court will hand down their decision regarding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act this Thursday. This hasn’t always been the case.

Interestingly, while this is being considered a flagship of the Obama Administration, in his first year as President, healthcare reform ranked third in terms of media coverage mentioning Obama:

Media Coverage of Stories Featuring Obama in First Year of Term – Courtesy of PEW Research Center

One would think that covering healthcare reform – and specifically, the details of the Affordable Care Act, and what the law really means – would be imperative after the passing of the ACA. Ensuring that the law was really understood by citizens would seem to be fairly essential, but what happened instead was a decline in media coverage of HCR after Obama’s first year as President – as shown by the Pew Research Center:

HCR Coverage Over Presidency – Courtesy of PEW Research Center

So what does that mean? If coverage goes down, and little has been done to ensure that people truly understand the law (for example, understand what the mandate really means, and what the implications are if it is struck down, which was recently elegantly laid out by the NY Times), the short messaging around the issue becomes even more important.

Cable news can be inflammatory, reactionary, harsh, exaggerated, and at times, unsurprisingly infuriating. They often preach to their respective choirs on the political spectrum, and because of this, I worry that they’ve become so comfortable with their audience that the arguments aren’t as sharp, or clear, as they could be. The brief messaging lacks context and nuance, and headlines or key phrases can substitute for deep understanding of one’s understanding of an issue (and taking today’s ruling on the Arizona immigration law, one can see how brief messaging can create some confusion – one headline read that SCOTUS struck down three components of the immigration law, and the next one I saw trumpeted that SCOTUS had upheld a key component of the immigration law – both were true, neither were particularly informative)

In the context of the fight for comprehensive health care, conservatives seem to have won this messaging game. The new study from the Pew Research Center shows that while liberal talk shows spent more time talking about healthcare reform –

Liberal Versus Conservative Talk Show HCR Coverage – Courtesy of PEW Research Center

– certain select terms used by healthcare reform opponents that really emphasized negativity were used at rates nearly twice that of terms used by supporters that underscored positive elements of healthcare reform:

Terms Used in HCR Debate – Courtesy of PEW Research Center

Take a look at these terms – which would you say were more compelling? Phrases that would incite more visceral, gut reactions from listeners? I can see how “insuring pre-existing conditions” would actually appeal to both sides, but this barely stood a chance against “more taxes with health care reform” which was mentioned nearly twice as many times and can certainly appeal to the financial fears of viewers. “More competition” would seem to appeal to many free-market espousing conservatives, but is trumped by “more government involvement,” which is the base fear of many Republicans. “Rationing health care” just isn’t true, but instead of rebutting that with facts about the law, HCR supporters shot back with “greedy insurance industry,” which likely wouldn’t win over any opponents to the law, who can claim that insurance agencies are just businesses, trying to capitalize on profits. And that’s where I think the HCR supporters had an in that they didn’t take – commenting on the prioritization of profits for a specific industry over the health of our communities and country as a whole.

Is the assumption that compassion is not an effective communication tool? If so, why is that? I find myself deeply moved by stories of people who are in desperate need of health care but lack the resources – insurance, financial, proximity to quality affordable care  – to get it. And I’m certain that I’m not the only one. New York Magazine today touched on the alarming fact that the moral argument – the empathetic position, the community cares idea, the position that healthcare is a fundamental human right – has been remarkably absent from the healthcare debate. I fear that it mostly plays into the uniquely American mentality that regardless of circumstance, each individual has to be able to fend for themselves. While this concept underscores certain types of resiliency and determination that are I think are overly-admired, the fact of the matter is that disregarding the circumstances is not possible. Disregarding the impact of staggering inequality of access to care and financial resources is short-sighted and, more importantly, I would say rather cruel.

If the discussions had focused more on why everyone deserves healthcare – why everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, receive comprehensive care, understand how to care for themselves – since healthcare is an essential component of our right to life (not to mention the pursuit of happiness), would the results have been different? If we appealed to our humanity and illustrated the absurdity of someone dying from a treatable illness, when people who could have helped them essentially stood by just because…they didn’t have any money? Because that’s essentially what this is – the inability to personally protect oneself and one’s family because of dearth of resources. If we had made it more personal, and less political? If we focused less on the greedy agencies, the so-called rationing of care, the increased business competition, if we had actually responded to the claim of too much government intrusion with the response that the government should in fact be intervening when doing so can save the lives of its citizens? Does the punishment of death really fit the ‘crime’ of not getting oneself health insurance, if one was not able to do so because they couldn’t afford it?

Is that the legacy we want to leave?

Sebelius Caves, Girls Pay the Price

By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard that Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has blocked the recommendation of the Food and Drug Administration that the over the counter (OTC) drug Plan B, commonly known as the ‘morning after pill,’ be made available without a prescription for girls of all ages. It is currently available without a prescription to girls ages 17 and up, and requires a prescription for girls ages 16 and below.

It is worth noting that this is the first time a Secretary of HHS has overruled the FDA. This is not insignificant. The purpose of HHS is to promote the health, safety, and well-being of Americans. The FDA is an obvious component of this. While the FDA is an agency of HHS, the purpose of the FDA is to promote and protect public health, through the regulation of OTC and prescription medications, vaccines, food safety, medical devices, and more. They do this through clinical trials and testing, which is how we come to know of drugs’ side effects as well as how significantly they aid in the relief of what they purport to treat. The FDA recruits researchers who understand both the purpose of and execution of this research. Attempts have been made to loosen the regulations of the FDA; for example, some terminally ill patients have petitioned the FDA to allow them to access experimental drugs after Phase I of a trial – the FDA has denied these requests due to the lack of research regarding a drug’s long-term effects post- Phase I. The FDA is not without criticisms; they have been accused of being both too hard and too lax on the pharmaceutical industry. Members of the FDA have also expressed feeling pushed to present certain results. Scientists at the FDA complained to Obama in 2009 that they felt pressured under the Bush administration to manipulate data for certain devices, and the Institute of Medicine also appealed for greater independence of the FDA from the powers of political management.

The commissioner of the FDA, who is a physician, reports to the Secretary of HHS. Sebelius’ job is not one of medicine or research, and requires a background in neither. It does require a background in politicking, which is exactly what we’re seeing here. The purpose of pointing that out, and of articulating that this is the first time a Secretary of HHS has overruled an FDA recommendation, is that Sebelius’ refute would not be based on differing scientific results, or research that opposes the FDA’s recommendations – because there is none. The override has different drivers, and the assumption floating out there – for good reason, since there is little alternate explanation – is to appease social conservatives and the anti-abortion contingents.

Plan B is not the abortion pill. It is the equivalent of an increased dose of a daily birth-control pill, and has no effect on already established pregnancies – it prevents pregnancy from occurring. Scientists within the FDA unanimously approved the access of the drug without a prescription for girls of all ages, after an expert panel put the recommendation forward. It is, to quote a USC pharmacist, one of few drugs that is so “simple, convenient, and safe.”

The conservative Family Research Council claims that requiring a prescription will protect girls from sexual exploitation and abuse – I fail to see how requiring a girl to get a prescription will protect against sexual violence, especially since girls may be attempting to get Plan B because sexual violence has already occurred. This comment is also a flagrant indication of misunderstanding of sexual violence and abuse – a young girl is not likely to disclose to an unknown physician that she is being sexually abused or assaulted and that’s why she needs a prescription for Plan B. Make no mistake, this ban is a victory for anti-abortion rights activists. If a girl cannot prevent a pregnancy from occurring, she is subsequently faced with trying to terminate an existing pregnancy (again – that could have been prevented!). Given how reproductive and abortion rights have been systematically chipped away at for the past few years, this girl who did not want the pregnancy and tried to prevent it from happening but was denied because she is shy of 17 years, will be in an even worse position. This is what anti-abortion activists are counting on – that once she is pregnant she will have to carry to term.

Plan B can prevent abortions from happening. HHS, with its mission of protecting the health and welfare of all citizens, should do everything they can to protect the health of girls’ reproductive development, which includes the prevention of unwanted pregnancy at its earliest stage. The girls under the age of 17 who need Plan B the most are the ones who also need it to be as easily accessible as possible. Much like requiring parental permission for abortions for girls under the age of 18, this ban actually can put girls at risk. Many girls will not have the family support, financial means, or healthcare to manage a pregnancy; some girls may face parental and familial abuse if they have to admit to needing to prevent a pregnancy with Plan B. What if a girl is a victim of sexual assault within her family? Should she be forced to deal not only with this trauma, but also have to determine how to prevent herself from being forced to carry a fetus to term as a result of this tragedy? Most girls under the age of 17 do not have easy access to clinicians and hospitals on their own, nor are they able to navigate our increasingly complex healthcare system on their own, which they would not only need to do to access Plan B, but would need to do within 72 hours for the pill to be effective. Girls whose bodies are not ready for pregnancy, girls who were victims of assault and rape and incest, girls whose futures will be dramatically changed and opportunities truncated – they all become casualties of this ban. Before we start sex-shaming and proclaiming that they shouldn’t have had sex if they didn’t want to deal with the consequences, let’s remember that these girls were not miraculously impregnated. Whether consensual or not, a boy was involved. This is a gendered issue – the girls are the ones who will have to deal with the lack of access to Plan B, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Originally, advocates in 2003 successfully petitioned Plan B to be available OTC for girls 18 and up (after having been available with a prescription since 1999), but a judge overruled that decision and lowered the age to 17 after he deemed the decision had been made politically, not for scientific reasons. It appears that history is repeating itself.

The DSK Decision and the Definition of Consent

I have held off writing about the DSK case being tossed out because honestly, I can’t really bear it. Plenty of other news sources and bloggers have reported on the reasons why I feel this is a catastrophic blow to victims of sexual assault, and reiterating it would likely only upset me and readers even more. However, a news story reported in my hometown paper, The Chronicle, got me thinking about the definitions of consent and what it means to be a person worthy of a trial, and I thought I’d tie these two instances together.

According to the DSK decision, if one has lied in the past they are considered unworthy of a trial in the eyes of the DA – whose goal seems to be focused solely on winning as opposed to determining if in this particular instance one is lying. Let’s look at the specific lies in question – namely, the reason behind Diallo’s asylum in the United States and her recounts of the story.

First, the defense is claiming that since she allegedly lied on her asylum application about being gang raped in her home country, she cannot be trusted in this accusation of DSK. Had she lied? Yes, she admitted to that. Does that matter in this specific case of DSK assaulting her in the hotel room when a forensic examination, including a medical exam, proved to be consistent with her story? No. When she lied on her asylum application – as many, many people do (an interesting and poignant piece in the New Yorker recently profiled this in a case example) – she did so to escape a country in which she felt constantly at risk and in danger and wanted to protect her daughter from the same fate. Should the fact that many people do this – and lie about repeated gang rapes in particular – immediately excuse the lie? No. But it does put it in the context of a reality that should not go unexamined. While lying in previous instances can make a case harder to win, and isn’t something I’m championing or condoning, when you look at her reasons for a falsehood on her asylum application, it make no sense that she would then risk a job she was grateful and proud to have gotten as a hotel housekeeper, raising in her daughter in New York, by having what the defense claims was consensual sex in the middle of her cleaning duties.

In regards to the changing of her story, it is well known and understood by trauma experts that women who have experienced sexual assault (and not just sexual assault, but any traumatic event, for both genders) often recall the order of events differently and clarify them as time goes on, due to the effects of the shock, denial, and the coping mechanism of blocking out of painful incidents. This does not mean that the assault didn’t happen, particularly since this reaction has been seen and understood many times over by many other rape and assault victims.

What I also find interesting in these cries about credibility is how gendered they are. DSK has a notorious history in France of being too forward and sexually aggressive with women; in my mind this causes some credibility issues for him as well, as he claims in this instance it was only consensual. It also reminds me of the fact that one of the NYPD officers acquitted this summer had a history of sexually harassing women, unsubstantiated arrest of a woman and blocking the filing of a report of the woman whom he sexually harassed – yet this was not seen as hampering his credibility. Nor was the fact that he made false 911 calls that routed him back to the apartment of the East Village victim and denied ever sleeping with her and then promptly changed his story to one of doing so but using a condom and assuring it was consensual. If we’re saying Diallo has credibility issues, I’d say these two need to join her on that wagon.

In the San Francisco case, we are confronted with a similar – though not the same – situation; one of assessing the validity of the accuser based on previous actions or claims. A SF lawyer (who specializes in sexual harassment cases, interestingly) is accused of raping three women, ages 19 – 36, whom he met over Craigslist while searching for partners interested in dominant-submissive rough sex. Two of the women had consented to having sex with this man on previous occasions before filing specific incidents of assault and rape. The man’s attorney has used this as evidence that the women were consensual partners, interested in engaging in sex and agreeing to what the man proposed in his post.

It seems we need a reminder of the definition of consent.

It does not matter if a woman is a prostitute. It does not matter if a woman had sex with you consensually in the past. It does not matter if in an email a woman expressed interest in specific sexual roles, positions, and activity. What matters is if in the specific encounter at hand, both parties have expressed the desire to go forward, and that if one withdraws that consent at any point it is the responsibility of the other to stop. The women could have easily agreed over an email exchange to engage in dominant-submissive sex, arrived at the man’s home still agreeing to it, and agreed to it right up to the minute they were to begin. But if in that minute she decided she no longer wanted to do this or was hesitant and unsure and wanted to wait, and he went ahead anyway – then it becomes rape.

Rape and sexual assault cases are notoriously difficult to try. They are usually he said/she said situations, at best aided by forensic evidence. Each case is unique, each has elements that are often not introduced or examined until a trial begins – this exemplifies the importance of scrutiny and juries who devote days to understanding the nuances and details of cases that are not reported or perceived by the media.

Setting the precedent that previously engaging in sexual activity, lying, or expressing interest in sexual experimentation eliminates your chances for a fair trial regarding the specific assault case at hand pushes us into the realm of implausibility. It is also worth noting that despite outcries of false accusations, the most frequently repeated results of studies regarding false claims and filings of rape show that the real rate of these is between 2% at its lowest and 7% at its highest (American Prosecutors Research Institute). But the media sheds so much light on the false claims that people presume it is much higher. The vast majority of rape and sexual assault charges never see the spotlight – perhaps because they aren’t dangerous enough or don’t involve high-ranking political figures or people whom media isn’t able to coin as gold-diggers and attention mongers because of their social or socioeconomic status. The bottom line is that each story deserves to be closely and carefully examined, and not discarded because a DA thinks he can’t win the case. District Attorney Vance is quoted as saying “If we don’t believe her beyond a reasonable doubt, we cannot expect a jury to.” I would venture to say that given the outcry over his decision, many people would like to hear the full story (and who do in fact think that the issue of reasonable doubt is in question) from both sides, with all the available evidence and fleshed out arguments. The issue of the truth, and seeking it, should take the precedence over one’s doubt at a courtroom victory.

Abortion Isn’t That Simple, Mr. Douthat

Ross Douthat, one of the NY Times conservative columnists whose pieces I occasionally force myself to read, wrote an article yesterday about sex-selective abortion. In short, he claimed that the reason 160 million women were “missing” (that is, the reason they were so outnumbered in many countries like India and China, as well as other nations in the Balkans and Central Asia) was because they were “killed” via sex-selective abortion. In his words, the women weren’t “missing,” they were “dead.” (He also claims that the author of the book he cites, Mara Hvistendahl of the book “Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men,” appropriates the issue to one of patriarchy, of greater social issues and inequities – which I agree with. He then says that “the sense of outrage that pervades her story seems to have been inspired by the missing girls themselves, not the consequences of their absence,” saying that she is more upset by the idea of abortion itself than she is about the issues surrounding abortion. Don’t you think that’s for her to decide? And doesn’t it seem she’s already decided what she thinks based on her book?)

Douthat, however, manages to contradict the crux of his argument near the start of his column.

He begins by saying “female empowerment often seems to have led to more sex selection, not less.” He then quotes Hvistendahl as saying “women use their increased autonomy to select for sons,” because male offspring bring higher social status. In countries like India, sex selection began in “the urban, well-educated stratum of society,” before spreading down the income ladder.

If this were the case – if in fact women had become truly empowered in their respective lands – culturally, politically, economically – then why would they be aborting based on the opposite – that men in their communities are still holding the cards? Are they imagining that men still hold positions of power and wealth in their countries, or are they living the ramifications of that painful reality everyday? Women do have some increased autonomy in many of these regions. But guess what? This autonomy has likely served to highlight the still very real inequities and disparities that exist in their communities, which contributes to the rates of sex-selective abortion. If women see which sex has the higher status, and one of the few autonomous decisions they can make is to choose the sex of their baby – they are likely going to choose the one with more status. This upsetting power dynamic shows just how far away true empowerment is for many of these women and their communities. If they felt their children would have the same opportunities if they were female than if they were male, the sex selection abortion Douthat decries would actually decrease. It is not the responsibility of the female fetus to ensure she is treated with the same respect and equality as the male fetus. Douthat seems to really care about female fetuses – but seems less interested in addressing the massive social, political, and economic issues that create so many difficulties for them once born. (His colleagues Paul Krugman and Nick Kristof seem to have handles on that. Too bad they were off yesterday.)

It seems that Douthat wants to push for the feelings of regret and remorse about abortion itself, separate from the issues surrounding it. Does sex-selection abortion sadden me? Yes. Does aborting a fetus that indicates it will have Down Syndrome sadden me? Yes. You know what else makes me sad? That a woman cannot afford a baby because she is single and has no familial or community support; because she has an abusive partner (homicide is the number one cause of death for pregnant women); because she has a low-wage hourly job that offers no maternity leave which could help her stay well while carrying the baby if needed; because she has no health insurance meaning she can’t access quality pre-natal care to make sure her baby would be healthy since we are systematically closing down those facilities that offer services for women who are uninsured (and also help provide birth control to prevent pregnancy!); because she has no way to pay for day care and she may have to quit her low-wage job to care for her baby; because she would then have no money for all the supplies, food, and developmental tools her baby would need to thrive which can lead to malnutrition, behavioral problems, child depression; because she could then become part of the 29.9% of families in poverty that are headed by single women, and her child could become part of the 35% of those in poverty who are under 18 years of age – the poverty rate for households headed by single women is significantly higher than the overall poverty rate.

We’ve cut child welfare services that aid women by the tens of millions in the past few years. Georgia alone cut over $10 million in Child Welfare Services. We’ve also cut subsidies that support adoption agencies – the organizations that help women find families that may be able to care for her baby were she to carry it to term – and who make sure these families are actually fit to do so! TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) provides women and families with aid so that children can be raised in their own homes or with relatives, instead of being placed in foster care and becoming wards of the state. How much have we cut from TANF? 17 of the poorest states, with some of the highest poverty rates in the nation, have already stopped receiving funds.

Birth control, one might say? Sure – birth control is expensive, so if she doesn’t have health insurance, she isn’t likely to be able to afford birth control (hey, Planned Parenthood can help with that, too! Seeing a pattern?) And if her partner refuses to wear a condom? If she is in an abusive relationship, if she fears leaving her partner, if she relies on her partner for added economic security – she’s much less likely to argue with him about the condom use. Or even feel that she has the agency to begin a negotiation discussion at all.

These facts make me sad. And all of these facts might lead a woman to decide she can’t have a baby. And many things not listed here may lead a woman to decide that she will not have a baby. And that she will have an abortion. Is it my decision? No. It’s not. It’s not yours or Ross Douthat’s, either. Again, Douthat represents the contingent of pro-lifers who want to make it seem like pro-choicers are cheering the performing of abortions right and left. What we are cheering is the right for women and respect of women to make their own decision based on their very specific personal circumstances. And given the fact that the medical establishment has not agreed with the pro-life camp in claiming that fetuses before a month into the third trimester can feel pain (reacting to stimuli does not equal pain, to reiterate, and pain without a cerebral cortex is seen by physicians as not possible), which has most recently become the pro-life camp’s wildly off-base rationale for preventing a woman’s right to choose, and given the fetus’ place of residence in the woman’s uterus as a part of her body, not as a human, these issues that Douthat sees as “sideline” are actually very much at the center of the argument. Bottom line – it’s the woman’s body. It’s the woman’s choice. She will be the one carrying it, she will be the one birthing it. No one else. So why should anyone else decide?

Additionally, it is not a crime for a woman to not want children. Since she is able to give birth, it is her decision as to when and how that will happen. Everything about her life and future will change once she has a baby. So she needs to be sure she is ready for that. How can one disagree with that? Douthat may not like it, but “the sense of outrage that pervades his story” (see what I did there? 😉 ) seems to me more rooted in his anger and frustration with his opinion not being considered by women in these decisions and not being able to control what a woman decides to do about what is going on in her body.

All of the things I listed – the job issues, the healthcare issues, the family and community issues, the issues that arise when a child doesn’t have access to food, clothing, and developmentally appropriate stimulation – are the causes. So why don’t we start figuring out how we can mitigate those facts and issues instead of attacking the effect – the abortion – which is a decision women come to after weighing all of those facts and issues just discussed. Douthat’s fear tactics of talking about female fetuses strewn across Indian hospitals is scary imagery. So is this:

Photo thanks to ehow.com

And this:

Photo via Captain Hope's Kids Blog

And this:

Photo property of streetkidnews.blogsome.com

Want less abortions? How about providing health insurance, that covers both birth control and pre-post natal care? How about equal pay for equal work, so women are more financially and economically secure, providing them with the resources to stay out of poverty and keep their children out of it, too? How about child care in work environments, helping women who cannot afford day care can stay in their jobs and remain a part of the economy? While we’re at it, how about great public schools and clean community centers, so women know their children are being intellectually fed and socially stimulated in safe environments that help keep them out of more dangerous and potentially life-threatening social circles? How about comprehensive sex education so men and women know how to protect themselves not only from pregnancies but from diseases that can endanger a fetus and create complications during birth and cause health issues for them and their children – creating more expense, particularly if one has no health insurance.

Let’s talk then. And how about you follow me on Twitter?

Ed Schultz, the NYPD, and the Burden of Victims

Three fairly prolific things have happened in the past three days that all incorporated the ways in which women are attacked in the public eye, how the media shapes the representation of female victims, and what we think are crimes worthy of solving and what kind of help is worth giving.

Let’s start with Ed. Given the obviously hard liberal bent of this blog, I’m guessing most of you have already determined that my views are aligned with many on MSNBC, despite not usually watching TV for my news (I prefer to read my news, because I hate commercials and because I’d rather get the straight facts than deal with a sensationalized version of a story with a reporter’s personal opinion bending it one way or another). This past week, Ed Schultz referred to Laura Ingraham as a slut.

This frustrated me for a number of reasons. First of all, I don’t care about Laura Ingraham’s sex life. I don’t care how many people she’s slept with, who they are, or what they’ve done. Why does Ed? Why does anybody? To use that as a platform of attack is insulting, crude, sexist, and entirely irrelevant to the argument. Schultz was angry and wanted to be mean – and the best way to be mean to women in America is by calling them out as sex-crazy animals. It’s a double shot – you’re calling them dirty and you’re calling them immoral. Is that the way we’re mean to men in America? No. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Secondly, just take a quick, cursory look at Ingraham’s website. There are…so, SO many things that I would rather have had Schultz tackle regarding Ingraham’s absurd political ideology than calling her a slut. Without even clicking through, I can see about ten things that Schultz’s usually incisive wit and on-target analysis would have been better poised to take on. The last thing I want someone like Ingraham getting is an increased audience size due to sympathy culled because a TV personality called her a bad name. I would much rather have her getting an increased audience size due to a TV personality calling out her intense and callous right-wing agenda and seriously out there hard-core conservative rants against what she sees as Obama’s socialist agenda. He could have killed her mission with facts. Instead, he propped her mission up with an insult.

Next up – the acquittal of the two NYPD officers charged with raping a woman in her East Village apartment in 2008 after supposedly “helping her home.” The officers were called to escort a woman home who was apparently so incapacitated that she could not manage on her own. They entered her apartment, supposedly helped her into bed, and then faked 911 calls multiple times through the night so they could return to her apartment, “talk to her” and “cuddle with her” when she wasn’t wearing underwear. In their words, they were “checking in on her” and one of the officers even said he was “counseling” her on her alcohol use since as a former addict himself, claiming to recognize she may have a problem with alcohol. She reported that she awoke to a man taking off her tights and penetrating her. He said all he did was “cuddle” with her. When a conversation that she had taped became public – she went to his precinct to confront him and ask him if he had used a condom – he back-peddled and agreed that sex had occurred but that it had been consensual. He said, as quoted on the tape, that “yes, I used a condom, you don’t have to worry about diseases or anything.” She insisted on an answer to this to protect her health because she was too drunk to knowingly consent to sex. A story change like that alone – going from “we just cuddled” to “actually, we did have sex” should make one highly suspicious of his defense. It is not the job of an NYPD officer to decide that he should be counseling a woman he was called to escort home. Why, if you were so concerned with her safety, would you fake 911 calls to go back into her apartment? You could have easily reported that you were concerned and noted that you felt there was a need for her to be checked in on.

Ultimately, all the cops were found guilty of was “official misconduct.” Faking 911 calls and repeatedly entering a woman’s apartment without her consent and “cuddling” with her while she wasn’t wearing underwear? How will this precedent serves those charged with rape on the stand in the near future? If a man enters my apartment and crawls into bed while I’m not wearing underwear to “cuddle” with me while I am too incapacitated to agree to it, “misconduct” does not describe how I would categorize those events. More like…breaking and entering and assault. The defense of the officers was insulting – they claimed that she was way too drunk to make it home on her own, but that she was sober enough to consent to sex. Seems like a woman can’t win.

When a few people on the jury were asked how they came to this conclusion, one man said that they “just didn’t believe the woman’s testimony” when it was read back. They also said they felt there were holes in both her and the cops’ stories. Yet they chose to not believe the victim. I understand the concept of reasonable doubt, yes – but, in this case, we had the testimony of a cop whose story had holes in it because he was trying to cover up his actions, and the testimony of a woman whose story had holes in it because she was drunk. If she was too drunk to have a cohesive testimony, what makes one think she is sober enough to consent to sex? It seems that this definition makes people more uncomfortable than the act of the non-consensual sex itself. An NYPD officer, above all, should know this (they go through sexual assault training – did he forget?), and should be in the position of protector. I simply cannot get beyond the idea that if one thought she was so drunk, so utterly incapacitated that you needed to check on her over and over again throughout the night, why – I just have to know – would one think she was in any state to have sex?

And lastly, news recently hit that New York, undoubtedly tight on funds, has proposed cutting the special victims unit teams at hospitals that serve women who were recently sexually assaulted and raped. SVUs are the group of professionals equipped to deal with the aftermath of an assault. They gather forensic evidence from rape kits, which collect DNA and have helped track down and identify many assaulters in the past. (There are already backlogs of hundreds of unexamined rape kits in many U.S. cities, something that rightfully angers and frustrates advocates who point out that these kits are often the most reliable evidence one has in linking an attacker to a victim.) They also provide the essential mental health support for women immediately after a sexual assault, and also help connect her to services that can continue the necessary ongoing mental health support in the future. It seems like a no-brainer that these services should be offered.

These three distinct stories are each, in their unique ways, indicative of one perspective that desperately needs to change – people hate women who have a sexual identity. They blame them for being sexually active and sexually expressive; if a woman has historically had a lot of sex partners, they make sure to bring this to light during a rape accusation and claim that she must have agreed to it, it must have been consensual because she loves sex so much! When they want to insult women they use terms that are charged with implications of having too much sex (Schultz doesn’t actually care how much sex Ingraham is having – he was furious with her political idiocy, and instead of calmly articulating that and making a much needed point about her fact-less rantings, he chose to sling a comment that he thought would be more hurtful – that we socially have decided is more hurtful – one that charged she was sexually ravenous), and use that to delegitimize her. Ingraham lobs a lot of softballs for liberals; why not attack her weak political ideology instead of attacking her supposed sexual proclivity?

Why cut the services that are so obviously needed for women who, after an assault or rape, feel incredibly vulnerable, angry, confused, and scared? Why would you not want a forensic team to gather evidence that could help arrest and implicate a rapist? Why would you not want a team of mental health professionals to support the victim immediately, to help her process it, to continue to help her process it, decreasing the likelihood of her struggling with depression, chronic fear and fatigue, incredible anger, and a serious lack of faith in the criminal justice system? All I can think of is that these people…don’t believe these are real issues. They don’t believe the women who are assaulted and who try to seek justice and healing after their attacks. It seems as thought the burden of being assaulted rests on women here just because they are women. It’s much easier to denounce having sex than have to go after someone who assaulted a woman. But what these people need to remember is that rape isn’t actually about sex, it’s about power over the victim. And these three stories offer up sensational examples of how the greater social power structure perpetrates this dynamic and supports and fosters the rape culture. By acquitting the NYPD officers we’ve shown that those in power will not be questioned, by removing SVU services we’ve told women that they are losing the resources that would have helped them regain personal power and that would have legally stripped their assaulters of theirs. And Ed, who thankfully apologized, showed that those who have a handle on the media, and who are lucky enough to have their voices projected farther than most, can still knock a woman (even those who are ostensibly on their same level in terms of exposure) down by calling her a slut.