Current mood:	fucking unbelievable
Entry tags:	feminism and sexism, sexual violence and harassment

Oh, fuck
Your daily dose of wisdom from Phyllis Schlafly.

William J. Hetherington has been incarcerated in Michigan prisons for more than 20 years for having sex with his wife Linda.

Actually, no. He has been incarcerated for raping his wife Linda. But, you know, small difference. Rape is just sex, after all, and damn the woman who tries to say otherwise.

Linda was not a battered wife; she testified at the trial that he had never beaten her in their 16 years of marriage.

Oh, right, I forgot -- only men with long histories of physical violence are rapists! So that means I don't have to worry about anyone whose malice is expressed in forms other than physical spousal abuse, right? My mistake.

Twenty years later, despite an exemplary prison record, the parole board routinely refuses to parole him, giving as its sole reason "prisoner denies the offense."

So a man convicted of rape refuses to admit that what he did was wrong -- hell, denies that he even did it. Well golly gee, why don't we just toss him right back into society?

No physical evidence of rape was produced at the trial. A pelvic examination of Linda at the hospital three hours after the alleged offense showed no evidence of injury or forced penetration.

Bzzt! Rape =/= violent penetration. Rape can also be a result of coercion or the rapist incapacitating the victim so that she is unable to resist. Or are you one of those people who believes that rape only occurs when a man in a dark alley grabs a woman (who shouldn't have been walking alone in public and was probably one of those slutty types who wears tight clothing and can't keep her legs shut anyway). In other words, it doesn't happen to married women. In other words, it doesn't happen to people "like me."

Suchy's letter [discrediting Linda's story] is hearsay but has the ring of authenticity.

Oh, yeah! Linda's testimony isn't reliable because there isn't any (physical) evidence backing it up, but this random person's story is reliable because ... uh ... well, because Schlafly says so!

Is "has the ring of authenticity" some kind of code for "is in favor of the man"? Just wondering.

A man's life has been sacrificed, and three children have been denied their father [...]

I know, the poor, poor rapist who can't raise his children just because he raped their mother ... It's tragic. Truly.

[...] by malicious feminists [...]

*makes Scary Mean Feminist face*

[...] who have lobbied for laws that punish spousal rape just like stranger rape [..]

Unbelievable, isn't it? Those crazy feminists just don't get the fact that being married means you can never say "no"!

[...] and deny a man the right to cross-examine his accuser.

Keep in mind, people, it's only the man's rights we're worried about, here. We don't care about a woman's right to have her rapist punished.

At this point, I don't even care about the case in question. I can't say what's true or not based on what I read on the Internet. But it's dazzlingly clear from what Schlafly and other people have written that their primary concern lies with preserving the reputations of possibly innocent men, rather than defending or even sympathizing with the victimized women.

Only in rape cases do you see so many people so willing to sacrifice the victim for the sake of the perpetrator.