The Stranger has an article up about the gentrification of my neighborhood and the divide between black and white. It’s interesting, the white people move in, the police respond to crime, the black people feel targeted and hey where were those drug busts before the white urban pioneers started taking over?

I have lived in this neighborhood for the better part of 7 years. I lived for a time across the street from Deanos, before there was a Safeway and a Starbucks. I remember one morning being entertained by a pimp chasing a woman around the block with “Bitch where’s my money”. Her response included a word that I can’t even type.

There has been a learning curve to living in this neighborhood. I have to examine my prejudices (does that guy giving me the look up creep me out because he is a creep, or because he is a black guy?) and I have had to learn that boundaries are different here.

Neighbors regularly ask to borrow the phone, bus money, a few minutes of internet time, booze, my vacuum cleaner. I am horribly dull in that I am the neighbor who borrows eggs or a cup of milk. But more than in any other place I’ve lived, my neighbors look out for each other (and me too).

There are things that I know they can help me with better than I can do on my own. For example, when a couple of kids tried to rob my Kid two years ago, it was my neighbor Karen who knew exactly where those kids came from and is the one that put the fear of god into them, rather than the limp response from the police. I like to think that one of the few good things my white privilege does is that when Karen got in a fight with a family member that resulted in her being thrown into my door, my statement to the police helped her get her side of the story out.

I am aware of my privilege. I know that if I were to be fucked with on the streets in my neighborhood, the chances that the police would give my story more credit because of my skin color are pretty good. I have had a couple of encounters with pushy men who were incensed that I don’t have the white women’s fear of the big black man. Maybe that is true, maybe if it were white guys harassing me on the street (which doesn’t happen as often because of where I live, not because white guys are better behaved) I wouldn’t be as brazen at calling them on their shit. I hope that’s not true, but I do have to consider if it is actually bravery when I stand up for myself or knowledge that I would have the upper hand if things escalated?

But then again, I do call white men out on their shit pretty loudly. I think it’s that I encounter white men in different situations than I do black men. I have told a white man who was my boss that if his hand “accidentally” slipped onto my ass one more time it would also be slipping into a lawsuit. I have made a 6’4″ former marine stutter apologies when I told him it was sexist to call me “dude”.

The point is that to live in this neighborhood and be a good neighbor, you have to actually interact with the people who have been here before you and you know, be neighborly.

I almost missed blogging for sex education day. Oh Noes!

But here I am typing away. I have a 12 year old boy so comprehensive, medically accurate sex education is a very important subject to me. I read once that parents do all sorts of stuff to get their kids to learn to walk or to read, but sex education is the only thing that we put off teaching kids till they ask about it. What a load of horse shit (apologies to my little addict pony, Latawnya). We don’t wait till a kid asks us to teach them how to cross the street or that fire is hot.

But this idea is pretty well entrenched in parent’s heads- so I am grateful for sex education in schools that explains how STDs are transmitted and how pregnancy happens and how to stop them. My kid will someday be out in the world having sex with “their” kids and I don’t want to be a grandma before I’m 50- so it’s better that everyone gets the basics.

But it really is just the basics, and sex is so much more than putting on a condom. It’s learning your own body and all the different ways it responds to someone else’s body. It’s big waves of emotion. It’s everything that leads up to getting naked and all the stuff that comes after you’ve put your clothes back on. School doesn’t teach that. But it could go further than it does now.

School could teach boys and girls that pressure, begging, pleading, harassing etc. are a hairsbreadth away from rape. They could teach boys and girls that consent means an enthusiastic hell yes and anything else should be considered a no. They could teach boys that it is their responsibility to stop and not the girl’s responsibility to stop them.

But they don’t teach that, so I go solo on that trip and teach it to the Kid despite all the social messages he gets to the contrary. I have a fairly liberal “no censorship” policy in my house. That means that the Kid gets exposed to adult ideas and situations and when he has a question or I think he needs to know something- he gets a direct answer. It also means he’s seen Margaret Cho doing her thing on DVD until I got tired of having to explain every blue reference and sent him to bed so my friends and I could finish the video in peace.

The Kid has reached an age where almost everyday there is some new discussion about controversial things in the world like sex and drugs and feminism and racism.

Poor former torturer- he’s all busted up cause he used to make people pee their pants in fear of him.

For Lagouranis, problems include “a creeping anxiety” on the train, he said. The 45-minute ride to Chicago’s O’Hare airport “kills me.” He feels as if he can’t get out “until they let me out.” Lagouranis’s voice was boyish, but his face was gray. The evening deepened his 5 o’clock shadow and the puffy smudges under his eyes.

Not long ago in Iraq, he felt “absolute power,” he said, over men kept in cages. Lagouranis had forced a grandfather to kneel all night in the cold and bombarded others in metal shipping containers with the tape of the self-help parody “Feel This Book: An Essential Guide to Self-Empowerment, Spiritual Supremacy, and Sexual Satisfaction,” by comedians Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo.

“At every point, there was part of me resisting, part of me enjoying,” Lagouranis said. “Using dogs on someone, there was a tingling throughout my body. If you saw the reaction in the prisoner, it’s thrilling.”

I can’t seem to muster any compassion for this guy or his dumb as a sack of hair girlfriend who likes him ’cause he’s “gentle”. Wakeup asshats! You deserve no pity because you did your job without complaint and now are suffering from guilt. Had any moral system kicked in before you decided to play the Iraq version of the Jack Bauer Pauer Hauer then you might not feel so bad now.

Seems like this guy who thought he was wearing the white hat just figured out that he’s been twirling his evil mustache instead. Had he used the bit of grey matter between his ears he might have figured that out before waterboarding became part of his skill set.

I was hanging out with a darling friend yesterday and she felt the need to show me this little children’s lit gem.

Some questions though-

How does a horse light a joint?

How does a horse open a bottle of whiskey?

Why aren’t horses shooting horse instead of smoking joints?

Is the line “Then Daisy slapped the alcohol and drugs out of Latawnya’s hoof” The. Best. Line. Ever?

In the end I laughed so hard I cried and thought I needed to have my appendix removed from the laughter induced stomach cramps.

In the interest of full disclosure- I read this story while preparing a nalgene bottle full of vodka and juice to bring to a show. We saw the Diminished Men- a fab local band that does a spaghetti western surf rock thing and has one hell of a drummer. We also brought a flask full of rum and chain smoked through the show. Latawnya’s mother would be very unhappy. Latawnya’s daddy would have shown us the rotting corpse of his overdosed horse friend. Latawnya’s sisters would have slapped the booze out of our hands. We don’t know what Latawnya’s brother Gregory would have done, because though he is mentioned in the book we have no idea if Gregory would approve of our alcohol fueled Rock N Roll lifestyle.

(The author would like to thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for nalgene bottles full of vodka and juice. “Thank you Fllying Spaghetti Monster!)

Either I am PMSing or the state of the world has gotten really bad, cause this video just made me all teary eyed.

I think it may be Saul Williams’ voice in the background on this video. He rocks.
I always thought Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations theory was a bunch o’fearmongering.

After my last post on How men can stop rape- this little blog is now being found by people googling such phrases as

sHOw me boys being raped

little kids being raped

Lovely.

For all you sick ass pedophiles- may your cock fall off and be eaten by rabid dogs. You picked the wrong site to read – unless you want to learn something- then by all means.

Here’s a quick lesson- children cannot consent. No matter how much you think they might enjoy you raping them – they cannot consent. Just like they cannot consent to dropping out of school or running away to join the circus- they cannot consent to being the cum dumpster for a sick pervert.

You are a grown up. Children are not grown ups. I suspect that a large part of the reason that you like them is that they cannot consent- makes it soooooooooooooooo much easier than trying to have sex with another adult, who could call you on your sick delusions and knee you in the crotch.

Fuckwads- all of you. And I know your IP addresses. Yes- that means you in Oakland and the guy who is good about hiding all of his information but his IP address.

After my last post on How men can stop rape- this little blog is now being found by people googling such phrases as

sHOw me boys being raped

little kids being raped

Lovely.

For all you sick ass pedophiles- may your cock fall off and be eaten by rabid dogs. You picked the wrong site to read – unless you want to learn something- then by all means.

Here’s a quick lesson- children cannot consent. No matter how much you think they might enjoy you raping them – they cannot consent. Just like they cannot consent to – they cannot consent to being the cum dumpster for a sick pervert.

You are a grown up. Children are not.

Via Pandagon comes the horrific story of a 17 year old girl gang raped by guess who…

No really, guess..

It’s not hard, I promise.

OK- by a group of 8 college athletes from DeAnza Community College. Who couldn’t see that one coming? OK- maybe you couldn’t pick the exact school, but college athlete is becoming code for rapist.

“This poor girl was not moving. She had vomit dribbling down her face. We had to scoop vomit out of her mouth [and] lift her up. Her pants were completely off her body,” says Chief Elk. “She had her one shoe on, her jeans were wrapped around one of her ankles and her underwear was left around her ankles. To the left of the bed there was some condom thrown on the ground.”

“When they lifted her head up, her eyes moved and she said ‘I’m sorry,’” says Grolle. “One of the guys who was in the room said ‘This is her fault. She got drunk and she did this to herself.‘”

Lovely- like she just wandered into a room and fell on 8 cocks. Totally her fault, natch.

In the comments at Pandagon a discussion came up about how men can stop rape and why is it men’s responsibility to stop it instead of both men and women.

First- why is it men’s responsibility.

Women have been told that it is their responsibility to prevent rape since forever. We are told not to dress a certain way, walk alone at night, get drunk, lead someone on, etc. etc. etc. Yet for some reason, all of our efforts to eliminate rape through our own behavior have failed because the only difference between a mini-skirt wearing drunk girl walking home by herself at night and a rape victim is THE PRESENCE OF A RAPIST. So boys, half the population has been working to eliminate rape already and that hasn’t solved the problem. It’s time for you guys to get with the fucking program.

What men can do to eliminate rape

1) Don’t rape (obvious, I know)

2) Don’t treat rape like a joke or try to equate it to something else. For example- it is not ok to say “Man I got raped on that car deal”. Overpaying for a car or getting the bad end of a divorce settlement is not in any way comparable to getting raped. Actually getting raped is comparable to getting raped.

3)Don’t laugh, wink, or quietly let slide when other guys make rape jokes. You know you’ve done it. You need to grow a pair and say “that’s not cool”. This includes making jokes about prison rape – no one deserves to be Bubba’s prison bride just like no one deserves to be murdered.

4) Treat anything less than an enthusiastic “Hell yes!” as a no when it comes to sex. No one has ever died or had their life ruined from not having sex, but having sex with someone who is not a completely willing partner will ruin someone’s life. You should treat an “I don’t know”, “Maybe” or no response at all as a “No”. Women are conditioned from before we grow boobs that men are dangerous. A woman who doesn’t say an explicit “no” may simply be trying to find the least confrontational way out of the situation. Even if you don’t think you are dangerous, our frame of reference says otherwise.

5) Assume drunk equals “No”. It doesn’t always, I know. I think everyone has at least one drunken sex story, but play it safe and assume it’s a “No”. If she’s sober next time and wants to- yippy! But if not, be glad that you dodged a non-consent bullet at worst and serious morning after humiliation at best. If you never see her in a sober state- assume she has a drinking problem and should be avoided.

6) Begging, pleading, seducing, charming, lying, bothering, convincing, pestering, etc to get a woman to have sex with you may not legally equate to rape (in some places it does)- but it makes you an asshole and it hurts the person you want to have sex with. Here’s an example, cause I feel like being all personal and shit lately.

A few months ago a “special friend” was supposed to come over for a visit. I had developed a horrible kidney infection. Antibiotics weren’t working, my back was killing me and I had a fever of 103. He showed up, I didn’t even want to get up to answer the door so I just laid in bed.

He kept ringing the bell. For like 20 minutes. I finally answered the door and yelled at him- “What the fuck dude- I’m sick and you’re ringing my bell like a god damned stalker”. He was very apologetic and said if we couldn’t have sex he would just come hang out for a while and take care of me. Fine, whatever. 15 minutes later and he’s trying to put his hand up my shirt. “Seriously, dude- do you not understand kidney infection?- We are not going to fuck!”

“How about if you just jack me off?”

“No”

“OK I’ll just give you a back rub”

“Fine, but we really aren’t going to fuck”

After a few more futile attempts to get me to fuck him, he left. When the fever was gone I sent him a seriously bitchy email about how that was not ok. He’s still not talking to me (no loss) or the friend that introduced us. But he really did think that harassment is an ok way to get laid.

Here’s a radical idea for you all- getting sex from a girl is not a battle to be won. That is maybe the most radical idea on this whole list-

7) Getting laid is not a battle.

Repeat- getting laid is not a battle. You are not trying to capture an enemy flag. You are not trying to show your manly prowess by hunting for girl game. You don’t “win” by convincing a previously unconvinced girl that she wants to sleep with you.

8) Sex is a thing for mutual enjoyment. I promise that any boy who has to spend that much time convincing a girl to fuck him has not in the end actually convinced her that he is an awesome love god, but has instead worn her down into delivering sex for the sole purpose of getting him to leave her alone. It’s worse than a mercy fuck dude. At that point the girl has basically decided that it is easier to be a hole in the mattress than to deal with your whining for another hour. It means she has given up all hope of your being a decent guy. It also means that she probably faked an orgasm just to get you off her faster.

9) If she says yes to begin with and then changes her mind- stop immediately! Again with the mutual enjoyment thing- she’s not enjoying it and you don’t have a god-given right to finish once you’ve started. You will live through a case of blue balls, I promise.

10) Teach your kids that their bodies are theirs and they have control over them. This is for both boys and girls and it starts in small ways. I remember being a kid and my mom’s friends would tickle me until I cried. Instead of being told that I could tell them to stop (or better yet- having my own mother tell them to stop picking on a little kid)- I was told to stop acting like a baby. Basically- I was told that I didn’t have the right to stop people from touching me in a way I didn’t like.

I didn’t do that with my kid. The rule is that in play fighting or tickling or anything- one no is all that has to be said for it to stop. This goes for him and me, just because I am his mother doesn’t mean he gets a free pass. It teaches him that his body is his own and someone else’s body is their own to do with as they please. If he understands that basic premise of sovereignty and that it applies to everyone then he is less likely to ignore a girl when he gets older and she says no. He is also better prepared should someone try to rape him (not as likely for boys, but this is an added benefit).

11) Don’t minimize rape. No one ever asked for it, there is nothing she could have done differently and with the huge stigma that comes from being raped, the chances that she is making it up are really, really slim. Don’t apologize for rapists or excuse their behavior. The only crime where we question if the victim is actually a victim is rape. You can scream about innocent until proven guilty all you like, but give the victim the same respect you’d give the victim of any other crime and assume that she is actually a crime victim.

And finally, to the 3 girls who stopped the rape and got the girl to the hospital- you 3 have ovaries of steal and hell of a lot more morality than any of the boys in that room. You rock and are my heroes for today.