Yesterday in my hometown, a man received seventeen life sentences for the repeated rape of two minor girls, some of which occurred while they were as young as 11 and 12 years old, respectively. Complicit in these rapes was the girls’ mother– actually no, she was far more than complicit. […]
Read MoreSecret Agent Woman
Jennifer Shewmaker, a psychology professor at Abilene Christian University, has a blog post blaming the Steubenville rape case in part on objectification of women. You should go read it, but first read about the Steubenville matter if you haven’t already. I have some theories about what would possess teenagers to create […]
Read MoreProximate pratfall
Regarding Richard Mourdock’s “rape babies are a gift from God” comment… It’s fun to see people all over the internet making fun of Mourdock saying that a pregnancy which results from rape should be considered a gift from God, because that life is something God intended to happen. They can […]
Read MoreReddit’s rape thread
I had a whole blog post written about the Reddit thread discussing what it’s like to be a rapist, and now I don’t like it. It was supposed to be about the psychology of assigning moral responsibility to rapists and rape victims, but ended up being preachy and not scientifically […]
Read MoreYou have the freedom to make rape jokes. Should you?
There is no way, I think, to more thoroughly annoy a proponent of free speech than to claim that criticism violates it. It’s hard enough defending free speech sometimes. People don’t see anything wrong with stopping the Westboro Baptists from protesting. Denying the Holocaust? Yeah, go ahead and outlaw that. […]
Read MoreFollow-up: New York Times responds to complaints about their reporting
…poorly: The Times responded Wednesday evening to The Cutline: “Neighbors’ comments about the girl, which we reported in the story, seemed to reflect concern about what they saw as a lack of supervision that may have left her at risk,” said Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for the paper. “As […]
Read MoreHow not to represent rape: a report on a Texas travesty
A horrible crime happened in Cleveland, Texas. A small town just northeast of Houston, it has a population of only 9,000 people, but that apparently includes up to 18 boys and men who were willing to take part in the gang rape of an eleven year old girl. I imagine […]
Read MoreSpeaking of what makes people laugh becoming a moral issue…
…this is pretty much the definition of it. I’m not sure if I want to write a full-fledged post on this topic or not. As you can see from that timeline it’s a controversy that has been going on since August of last year with frequent twists and turns, and […]
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