16 Days: “She Probably Agreed”
Today’s the last day of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence and it’s also International Human Rights Day. I’ve made posts on a couple of issues: widespread rape in Congo; the 200 lashes + jail time punishment of the female rape victim, the suspension of her lawyer’s license, and the 90 lashes for the male rape victim in Saudi Arabia; the 1989 Montreal Massacre; and (on a much brighter note) Devildoll’s interview with girl-wonder.org. All these posts can be found under the 16 Days tag.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to close off my 16 Days blogging. I almost wrote a post on why I blog, why I care about feminism, and why I haven’t just given up and shut up in response to the endless, depressing barrage of outrageous violence against women. I trawled the NYT, the blogs I read, and other sites, collected links, began a draft, and then got stuck, because I couldn’t figure out a conclusion. As I reread the links and articles, I felt like Sisyphus with his rock. I wondered, why do I care? It would be so much easier to stop thinking about feminism, stop paying attention to the news articles on violence against women, and stop caring. It would be less depressing for sure.
And then I saw this article from Australia’s Herald Sun. Six boys, aged 14-16, and three men over the age of consent, aged 17, 18, and 26, gang-raped a ten-year-old girl and the judge said, “The girl involved was not forced and she probably agreed to have sex with all of you.”
Judge Bradley also said, apparently without giving herself an aneurysm from the incredibly contradictory thoughts in her brain,
“All of you have pleaded guilty to having sex with a 10-year-old girl and (one of the juveniles) has pleaded guilty to having sex with another young girl as well.
“All of you have to understand that you cannot have sex with a girl under 16.
International Human Rights Day: Rhetorical Hand Grenades
Today is International Human Rights Day:
Last Monday, the NYT Editorial Board blogged about the resignation of Michael Guest, the first openly gay ambassador in the U.S., former ambassador to Romania, and Dean of the leadership and management school at the Foreign Service Institute. Guest gave a speech at his retirement party outlining the reasons why he’s retiring, after twenty some years in the Foreign Service:
Before friends, colleagues and top officials in the State Department Treaty Room, Mr. Guest took Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was not present) to task for failing to treat the partners of gay and lesbian foreign service officers the same as the spouses of heterosexual officers. And he revealed — with eloquent sadness, not anger — that this was the reason for his departure.
“Most departing ambassadors use these events to talk about their successes . . . But I want to talk about my signal failure, the failure that in fact is causing me to leave the career that I love,” said Mr. Guest, 50, whose most recent assignment was dean of the leadership and management school at the Foreign Service Institute, the government’s school for diplomats.
“For the past three years, I’ve urged the Secretary and her senior management team to redress policies that discriminate against gay and lesbian employees. Absolutely nothing has resulted from this. And so I’ve felt compelled to choose between obligations to my partner — who is my family — and service to my country. That anyone should have to make that choice is a stain on the Secretary’s leadership and a shame for this institution and our country,” he said.
Here’s a list of some of the benefits provided to heterosexual spouses and denied to same sex partners:
* State Department-provided security training
* free medical care at overseas posts
* guaranteed evacuation in case of a medical emergency
* transportation to overseas posts
* special living allowances when foreign service officers are assigned to places like Iraq, where diplomatic families are not permitted.
The post continues,
The good news is that unlike the military, which subscribes to a counterproductive “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that forces gays to pretend to be otherwise, the State Department does not consider open homosexuality a firing offense. And Mr. Jensen says the State Department is a much more tolerant workplace for gays than it was 10 or 20 years ago.
“In the past, there was quiet toleration. Now, it’s accepted,” Mr. Jensen says. “But it’s fair to say there’s been no focus on equality of benefits for gays and lesbians and their families in the State Department.”
Well, gee whiz! Open homosexuality is not a firing offense at the State Department! Good God, that’s some damned progressive thinking right there!
There’s a clear belief that queer diplomats in same sex relationships are inferior to their heterosexual, married counterparts, and that same sex relationships are inferior to heterosexual relationships. Denying transportation to an overseas post indicates that you think the same sex partners either don’t desire and need each others’ presence in the same way that heterosexual spouses do, with the subtext being that the relationships just “aren’t the same” in terms of commitment and love, or that because they’re queer, same sex partners don’t deserve the same emotional support as heterosexual spouses. The lack of employer-provided security training, free medical care, and guaranteed evacuation in case of medical emergency more directly and simply states that queer lives are not as valued as heterosexual lives. “What’s that? You think your partner’s at risk of kidnapping, murder, and other danger because of your position as a U.S. diplomat? Because you’re stationed in a dangerous area? Too bad.” “Your partner’s sick? Well, you’re not married because we don’t let anyone but heterosexual people marry, so you’re going to have to pay for treatment out of pocket unless s/he/it has separate health insurance.” “Your partner’s deathly ill and needs to be evacuated to another hospital for treatment? Oops, not straight. We might be able to arrange it, sooner or later, but we can’t guarantee it’ll happen. Too bad!”
Characteristically, the State Department and Rice have said nothing:
Some changes would require congressional action; others Secretary Rice could implement by fiat. Mr. Guest told The Times that he has heard nothing from her, even after his speech.
This kind of discrimination is a blatant statement that, as far as the State Department’s concerned, the lives and well being of queer Foreign Service employees and their same sex partners are worth less than those of heterosexual couples. It’s a measure of progress that we’re able to have this conversation publicly, but the content of the conversation is a measure of how much further we have to go before equality.
(And people argue that state-sanctioned civil unions are enough or that marriage doesn’t confer important legal benefits on the spouse. Bullshit.)
