Excerpt:

This is a story about a young and impressionable female intern in the White House — a virgin, with girlish dreams about princes and presidents. Young girls are trained to marry the wealthiest or most powerful man on the block. When the prince comes calling, few young girls can resist this opportunity.

However, they are not the ones who are abusing power and betraying both youth and a wife. That would be the prince or president himself.

And no, I am not talking about Monica Lewinsky in the Clinton White House.

I am talking, sadly, about the recent revelations by a former intern, Mimi Alford, in the Kennedy White House.
Alford is no Marilyn Monroe, who was reputedly the mistress of both John F. and Robert F. Kennedy. Nor, is she Judith Exner, who was reputedly the “Mata Hari” connection between President Kennedy and Sam Giancana, a Mafia operative. These were adult women who chose to use their sexuality to further their careers.

Read the complete original version of this item…

Authorities in Dallas, Texas were also aware of a possible influx of prostitution during the Super Bowl last year, warning that police would be vigilant about cracking down on traffickers selling children for sex.  In response, a writer for Dallas Observer News wrote a lengthy article on the “fallacy” of the sex trade during the Super Bowl. He wrote that fans have already paid through the nose for tickets, airfare, and hotels, leaving them little to no money for prostitutes. He cited a study conducted for the Dallas Women’s Foundation as the sole resource for the “hype” over sex workers at the Super Bowl. The author questioned its validity because the researchers asked one hundred adults it to look at the girls’ pictures and estimate their ages to determine how many girls are being sexually exploited on websites and in internet classified ads.

Near the end of the two-page article in the Dallas Observer, the reader finds the following: “Disclosure: The Dallas Observer and Backpage.com are owned by the same parent company,Village Voice Media Holdings.”  Jim Larkin, one of the men who controls Village Voice Media, views this as an issue of free-speech. The New York Times interviewed him and wrote,

“We have always had a very libertarian approach to advertising,” said Mr. Larkin, adding that classifieds represented 30 to 35 percent of their business. “We don’t ban cigarettes, we take adult advertising. We take ads that sell guns.”

Village Voice Media, makes more than $22 million per year from sex ads. Since Craigslist removed sex ads from their website (replacing it with the word “censorship“), Backpage.com has become the number one source for sex ads. A letter was written in December, 2011 to Jim Larkin and Village Voice Media calling on them to shut down their adult services ads. The letter outlines Village Voice Media’s acknowledgement of their part in the child sex trafficking industry and was signed by numerous human rights, women’s rights, religious, and anti-trafficking groups. It quotes a letter from the Attorney General, saying,

“In a meeting with the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, Backpage.com vice president Carl Ferrer acknowledged that the company identifies more than 400 ‘adult services’ posts every month that may involve minors.” Furthermore, during the first eight months of 2011, Backpage.com reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) 1,595 cases of suspected use of juveniles in sex ads, as NCMEC has publicly stated.

Recently, a 13-year-old victim  was rescued when she bravely knocked on a random apartment door (instead of the john’s) while her pimp waited in the car downstairs. The ad for her was on Backpage. Knowing this, however, Village Voice Media refuses to remove the ads, citing Section 230 of the Federal Communications Decency Act of 1996, which protects them from punishment for criminal wrongdoing if the ads on their site promote illegal activities. Even Google’s hands aren’t completely clean: they have been applauded for donating $11 million to anti-trafficking charities, yet a search on Google still yields thousands of ads for prostitution and porn.

The U.S. Department of Justice reports that “the Internet has also facilitated the recent rise in child sex tourism by providing a convenient marketing channel.”  Diana Scimone of Orlando, Florida is an author and journalist who founded Born 2 Fly International, an organization dedicated to the prevention of child sex trafficking.  According to Scimone, the internet “makes it easier to advertise, buy, and sell.” She says, “It’s not just the Super Bowl, though there is a huge spike in ads on Craigslist and Backpage the week of the event. Any time there is a large event with a party atmosphere, there will be trafficking. And it doesn’t have to be a sporting event.”

National Human Trafficking Awareness month is over. Trafficking of young girls, however, will continue throughout the year. Despite the many measures taken to crack down on prostitution on Super Sunday, there will likely be a spike in young girls trafficked.

The Super Bowl is Sunday, February 5. Here are a few “Pre-Game Stats” from credible sources to consider:

• The average age at which girls first become victims of prostitution is 12 – 14; for boys and transgendered youth it is 11 – 13 (US Dept. of Justice).
• The sex trafficking industry is the 3rd largest illegal industry in the word, following very closely behind sales of illegal narcotics and firearms (Ibid.).
• 1 in 5 pornographic images is a child (Washington State Office of the Attorney General)
• 55% of child pornography comes from the United States (Ibid.).
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials estimate trafficking of human beings as slaves brings in roughly $9.5 billion per year (MSNBC).
• UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children worldwide are trafficked for sex every year.
• The U.S. State Department reports that 80% of trafficking (sex and labor) victims are females, and 70% of them are trafficked into the sex industry (Ibid.).
• This does not just happen in other countries. The FBI estimates 293,000 children are at risk in the United States for becoming victims of human sex trafficking.
• Victims of sex trafficking can be very difficult to rescue because they develop “Stockholm Syndrome” after having been abused over such a long period of time (FBI, Diana Scimone). The younger a girl becomes involved in prostitution, the more likely it is that she comes from a background of sexual abuse (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services).
• Girls who are sexually abused are 28 times more likely to be arrested for prostitution (Ibid.).

As a woman, I often wrestle with this conception of perfection. In the middle of a sleepless night, in the department store dressing room, in the aisle of a grocery store, I wonder whether I am “enough.” Blond enough. Tall enough. Thin enough. Smart enough. Funny enough. Pretty enough. I compare myself to these perfect images time and again. And I find myself wanting. Not perfect enough.

On the eve of my forty-second birthday, I’ve decided that it’s enough. Enough criticizing. Enough comparing. Enough of living under some delusional belief that perfection is attainable. Only statues — ivory, bronze, or plastic — can be perfect. And they’re perfect because they’re not alive. Not breathing, they miss both the joy and the tears that come with life. They touch nothing and nothing touches them.

Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, it’s high time “to throw off” this tyranny of perfection and declare my independence. The video linked to below talks about how and why this tyranny of perfection is damaging to girls and women. I hope you’ll watch and then decide to join me in founding a “new republic,” where women help each other accept ourselves and compliment – rather than criticize – ourselves and each other!

I went on my first diet at age eleven.  It was my dirty little secret.  Perhaps having a gorgeous, shapely mom who had a habit of telling me I needed to “watch it” was a contributing factor.  Cool girls in my sixth grade class who made fun of me because I had baby fat on my tummy didn’t help.  The coup de grace was when Mom took me shopping and told the saleslady, “Give her the next size – she needs it in the hips!”  Whether I did or not.  At the same time, she wouldn’t let me rest unless I ate for an army.

This is less about criticizing my mother than it is a cautionary tale.  I don’t know what it is to be a parent, but I do know what it is to be a child starved for a parent’s approval.  Since I resemble my mother, I was indirectly her representative and if I didn’t advertise properly, there was hell to pay.  It is possible her criticism of me was a projection of her own insecurity about her appearance.  I’m sure she thought she was helping me.  My father had no opinion on the subject.

I always thought I was fat.  I tried everything to erase the ten or fifteen offending pounds.  To be slender was perfection, control, attractiveness.  It never occurred to me to share my fears or feelings on the subject with a friend, or with my parents.  I thought I would be shamed for my weakness.

For years I had an eating disorder.  Food was my drug of choice.

When I was eighteen, my mom fell gravely ill.  I became borderline anorexic.  My food intake was the only part of my life I could control and a rare source of joy in a stressful situation.  I dropped twenty pounds and was model-thin.  I relished the way my ass looked in tiny pants.  I counted calories religiously – keeping to 800 calories per day.  My bathroom scale was my best friend.  If I gained half a pound, I had a written plan to get rid of it.

A few years later, the pendulum swung the other way.  On my bad days as a 22 year old, usually once a week, I would move through the refrigerator and the cupboards like locust.  I don’t even remember what I was eating, so great were my feelings of anger and inadequacy.  I would eat until my stomach hurt; an urge to fill myself up when life hurt or disappointed me.

For another fifteen years, I “dieted,” always fighting with the same ten pounds, beating myself up whenever I lost the fight, using it as an excuse to punish.  Every exercise program I started eventually was discarded out of boredom.

One day, I gave up on the whole enterprise and stopped buying into image management.  I decided to leave myself alone.  I can’t give you a proximate cause for the change, but I think Anaïs Nin stated it best “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

My healing came from years of writing about my experiences, solid mentoring, and choice to surround myself with people who looked upon me without judgment or a need to fix.  My change in thinking was, for a long time, a mechanical one.  Eventually, I learned to celebrate rather than curse myself when I looked in the mirror.  This new habit has mostly replaced the old one.  I still fall down.  But getting up is faster.

Unexpectedly, the day my obsession stopped, the pounds also began to disappear.  To be clear, the pounds were never the problem – the obsession was.  This external projection was something physical I could target to take the attention off my own feelings of inadequacy, of not being pretty enough, cool enough, successful enough.

At 53, I am in the best shape of my life.  I exercise by dancing in my house.  Nothing fancy.  Just jumping around.  Some people think I’m nuts but I just laugh as I kick my leg over my head.  I like to dance as much as I like to breathe, so I keep doing it, year in and year out.  I eat what I like.  If I have a bad day pushing snowball X up hill Y, I reassure myself the next day will be better.  And since I am older, I have the empirical evidence to know that this is true.

I don’t diet.  I don’t own a bathroom scale.  I don’t read magazines that tell me how I “should” look and what I “should” do to look that way.  I don’t look at other women and wish I had their lives instead of my own.  I remind myself the grass is always greener and no one knows what goes on behind closed doors.  Most important, I do my best not to listen to my mother’s critical voice inside my head.

It took many years for me to make peace with my own body.  It is odd that at an age when most women become invisible in society, I am proud to be visible.  That is not something I could have said twenty years ago.

I was moved to share this after viewing this TNA’s Searching for Sexism video.

Seeing these lovely young girls negate themselves in pursuit of an ideal sold by shark-like advertisers and an entertainment industry looking to consume the consumer is heartbreaking. Those sucked in by this obsession are in turn compelled to consume products, clothes, surgeries to make them the object outside of themselves that they desire.  Yet I remember that even on rare days when I achieved my ideal, my misery index was unaltered.  I don’t know if that is a lesson I can impart to someone who is only thirteen – and be believed.

Perhaps all that is possible is encouragement; reinforcement of a positive body image.  I would have been so grateful if my own mother, heroic in so many other respects, had tried to reinforce that positive image to me.

Today, tweeners, teens and the rest of us are bombarded with an obscene amount of image-distorting information from television, magazines and the internet selling the sexuality of children, and an idealized mega-thin body type that is not even real on most of the girls and women who sell it.

ABC’s “Body of Proof,” the Dana Delany crime drama, addressed this issue in an episode that aired last Tuesday.  The show featured:  a murder victim, who at 26 had already had botox, breast augmentation, liposuction and rhinoplasty; a doctor contemplating breaking his “diet” by eating a gigantic piece of chocolate cake as he confided to a friend he did not feel “good enough”; and the 13-year-old daughter of the show’s star, begging for a nose job, a trip to the hairdresser for blonde highlights and a new wardrobe that more closely resembled that of a sex worker than a girl in junior high.

The dilemma we face to overcome the fear of being judged by external appearance cannot be emphasized often enough.  I am grateful to be part of an organization striving to let a different message be heard.

I like to think of myself as having a pretty good sense of humor. I like to laugh, and I like to make other people laugh. One of my earliest memories is of a childhood attempt to drink orange pop through my nose at my sister’s birthday party. What can I say? Sometimes you have to suffer for your art.

My favorite joke of all time is really more of a groaner. It has a long build up, and it is, I kid you not, about a talking duck. I can’t tell the joke without cracking up. Nobody else ever laughs at it. It sometimes hurts my feelings that nobody else loves this duck joke. And yet, you know what I don’t do? I very rarely threaten physical harm to the people who don’t find my joke funny. I don’t think I’ve ever threatened to rape someone for not laughing at it. What’s up with that?

I was having kind of a crappy day yesterday. I’m on vacation, recharging at the end of a tough year. So I was watching old episodes of Xena and screwing around on Facebook, and I stumble across a post by the inestimable George Takei. For those of you who might not know, George Takei is awesome. After making a name for himself as Mr. Sulu on the original series of Star Trek, he has garnered a whole new set of fans through his subversive, goofy, and provocative comedy, often aimed at bigots and homophobes. Yay!

Last night, however, he posted a joke that really rubbed me the wrong way.

I’m told that it was from a TV show that I’ve never seen, and that the context tempers the wording somewhat. I honestly don’t care much. The initial joke struck me, and a significant minority of other readers, as being sort of insensitive, effectively minimizing and normalizing date rape and engaging in victim blaming (the discussion of women’s culpability for what happens to them after drinking will not be addressed in this post, feel free to go at it in the comments). A number of people made comments indicating that they didn’t find the joke funny and why, many indicating that they were a little disappointed in George Takei for posting it in the first place.

Honestly, I don’t give a crap about the joke itself. It wasn’t my cup of tea. Fine. But there are three types of jokes: those that reinforce cultural learning, those that subvert and call into question cultural learning, and those that are purely silly without much larger meaning, usually playing into very simple ironies and defying very straightforward expectations.

Do I think that some subjects are purely beyond the pale, and totally inappropriate as fodder for comedy? No. I think that everything is fair game. I just wish people would pay attention to their comedic intent. When you make a joke about a sensitive subject, are you trying to promote a particular idea, to subvert an existing idea, or are you just voicing the dominant cultural narrative? So, sure. I think rape jokes can be funny. Assuming they’re about subverting the dominant cultural paradigm about rape. As an aside, Takei himself has made what I consider to be a funny and subversive rape joke before, playing not on actual rape, but on the homophobic fear of predatory gay lust.

So yeah, I was a little put off by this post by someone who I thought really understood how to use humor to promote social change. But what really made me lose all hope for humanity was the comment section (as per usual). Keep in mind, this is Facebook. The majority of these people were posting these comments with their names and pictures right there, publicly and without anonymity.

The comments ranged from “I don’t get what’s wrong with this”, to “I didn’t get that she was passed out, but if she’s drunk it’s okay,” to “Who cares if she’s passed out, drunk sluts FTW,” to “I miss my frat house,” to “Commenter X needs to get laid,” to “Commenter X must have been raped, ha ha,” to “humorless feminists should get raped,” to “what’s wrong with you, bitch, you need me to fuck you until you bleed?” All but that last one were coming from both male and female commenters, by the way. Why on earth would this stuff be acceptable to say under any circumstances? How secure in your sense of women as second class citizens would you have to be to want to put those sentiments out in public with your name attached to them? Why is this simply accepted as what happens when someone says “rape jokes aren’t funny?” This is certainly not what happens when someone says “talking duck jokes aren’t funny.”

It happens because this is NOT subversive humor. What is subversive is objecting to this line of humor; people who try to undermine the dominant cultural narrative must be beaten down. It happens because people will defend their perceived right to rape. And people will defend their right to think that rape victims deserved it, and thus were worthy of ridicule. I get why people do that, ridicule rape victims. It makes them feel safe, it distances them from suffering. When I was raped the most upsetting aspect of the situation was the knowledge that I was now a part of a club that I had never wanted to belong to, that I now had to think of myself as wearing the “rape victim” label, as having diminished agency. So I can see why you might want to see rape victims as having brought it on themselves. I can see why you might want to say this kind of reprehensible crap about people who have the gall to… what? Not laugh at a joke?

I get it. I really do. Nobody wants to give up their power, or their sense of safety. And I don’t mean to be sanctimonious, but a joke like this reinforces cultural narratives about rape. And spawns discussions like that comment section, which normalize victim blaming around rape. And makes guys like that feel even more comfortable threatening women they disagree with, with rape. And nothing bad happens as a result of those threats. How can that not reinforce the idea that rape is a consequence-free action? That is how these jokes perpetuate rape culture. So maybe we shouldn’t let rape threats in comment sections and online harassment of female commenters slide. Maybe we shouldn’t look the other way when people victim blame in comment threads. Maybe we shouldn’t laugh at rape jokes. And maybe we should think twice about whether our comedy serves our values or whether it works against them.

“Millions of children are lacing up sneakers and skates, donning swimsuits and grabbing rackets to join the ranks of youth sports teams and leagues across the country, often with minimal parental supervision.”

“But accusations of abuse last week against a major figure in amateur athletics have renewed concerns that the dynamics of youth sports could provide predators easy access to children in an environment where abuse could go undetected.”  Reuters, 12/12/11

The above quote from Reuters was referring to allegations of child sex abuse against Robert W. “Bobby” Dodd, the former president of the Amateur Athletic Association. Other instances of child sexual abuse in sports are mentioned as well: a figure skating coach, basketball and baseball coaches have been “accused of abusing boys.”  The writer then enlightens the reader with, “Nor has the abuse been limited to boys. Coaches of girls’ track and volleyball teams have also been accused of interacting inappropriately with young women.”

This story is one of many high profile cases of child sexual abuse allegations that are making their way to the front pages of major news outlets. By now everyone has heard about Penn State, Syracuse, and The Citadel. Two men have come forward to sue the Boston Red Sox for damages after having been sexually abused by their late manager, Donald Fitzpatrick, in the Sox clubhouse. In 2003, a suit was settled between the team and seven men in Florida, who all said Fitzpatrick had abused them sexually.

There are other stories, however, about girls in youth sports being sexually abused that have not received the same amount of media attention, even though they were initially reported before the story about the abuse at Penn State broke. In October, Hilary Levey Friedman, Ph.D. wrote about a gymnastics coach in Colorado Springs named Doug Boger being banned from the United States Gymnastics Association (USGA) after ten of his former gymnasts came forward about being abused sexually and physically by him in the 1970s and 1980s. Although he was banned from the USGA, he continues to coach at Artsports Gymnastics in Colorado Springs. The owner of Artsports, Michael Zapp, was convicted in 1987 of inappropriately touching a female athlete’s breasts. Because Artsports is not a member of the USGA, Zapp and Boger are allowed to continue working with young female athletes.

Don Peters was the gymnastics coach of the U.S. Olympic team in 1984 that included Mary Lou Retton. Two gymnasts have come forward with allegations of having been abused sexually by Peters. Because the statute of limitations has run out, this case cannot be referred to law enforcement.

In 2010, a 20/20 investigation revealed that within the last ten years thirty-six swim coaches had been banned for life from the USA Swimming organization for sexual misconduct.

Not only are cases of sexual abuse against girls in sports underreported by media, the language used is more sympathetic toward boys than it is girls. In the Reuters article mentioned in the first paragraph, note the writer says “accused of abusing boys,” while girls’ coaches have been accused of “interacting inappropriately.”  The attorney for one of the (convicted) swim coaches said that, although her client was responsible, the parents were not diligent enough and created a situation that allowed for the abuse to happen. No one is questioning why, after Jerry Sandusky was investigated in 1998 for inappropriate and possible sexual conduct, that parents continued to allow their sons to go to his camp. When referring to the atrocities he committed against his victims, the media used the word “rape.”  In the articles about Boger and Peters, the authors write that the accusers claim “he had sex with them.” One of the girls was eleven years old. A grown man doesn’t “have sex” with an eleven year old. No one is questioning why Sandusky’s victims, or any of the male victims in the other cases, waited so long to come forward. No victim should ever be treated this way, regardless of gender.

Writer and sociologist Hilary Levey Friedman, Ph.D. recently asked, “Will it be the sexual abuse of boys that pushes legislators to better protect youth athletes?” Unfortunately, it has. Pennsylvania,  Iowa, and New York are doing just that. No child should ever have to endure the trauma of sexual abuse. So any change in legislation is good news for all children. But waiting until media reports male victims coming forward is tragic for all of the girls and young women in sports who have been abused. We should all be asking, “Why?”

I had recently had the opportunity to see the new music video by Billboard acclaimed Singer/Songwriter Sarah Fimm for the cause- based song “Everything Becomes Whole.”

Being that October was Domestic Violence awareness month, it is important for Sarah to continue to highlight the nightmare of domestic violence and the effect that it has on its victims. Sarah’s song/video carries a powerful message and it’s the voices of many women suffering from domestic violence.  “Everything Becomes Whole” is off of Sarah’s latest album Near Infinite Possibility, which is one of seven independent albums released by the singer.

The American born singer from Tulsa, Oklahoma has long been supporting organizations that are fighting to end the issue of domestic violence and she is currently working with two organizations – the International Justice Mission and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. With her video, Sarah wants to inspire others to take part in the battle against domestic violence and get people involved with organizations determined to put an end to this problem.

The video was Sarah’s second collaboration with director Erik Montovano, the mastermind behind the groundbreaking, New York City based graphic design and production team, Newspeak. The collaboration between the two led to the video being selected for the 2011 Woodstock festival, which is also where the video made its official debut.

Sarah is able to depict a devastating situation by highlighting it with vivid and graphic images. I learned that the video was inspired by real accounts of violence towards women. The video portrays a relationship that quickly turns from loving to abusive, with the male character overpowering and physically harming the female character.

It has been very inspiring for me to learn about Sarah. She has been working as a musician for 11 years and doing that these days is not easy.  Sarah is still moving forward with her music and her message. With all this said, please take a look at Sarah’s video “Everything Becomes Whole” and I hope that it will enlighten you, as it has me, to get involved in ending domestic violence.

In his recent Huffington Post piece, Mike Edison made his case for “How Sex Magazines Made the World a Better Place.” His conclusion? In addition to supposedly holding “pictures of naked ladies” in a “more sacred light” than does today’s internet porn, Edison asserted that magazines like Screw and Hustler were “ground zero for relentless freedom of speech in the form of tasteless comedy, brutal political satire, and, of course, naked ladies.” As an amateur First Amendment scholar, I’m sure that Edison is aware that another group that has benefitted from key freedom of speech court decisions is the Ku Klux Klan, but I doubt that Edison would argue that they, therefore, “made the world a better place.” Indeed, it’s possible to be an unabashed supporter of free speech and still question the cultural value of magazines that mainstream the sexual objectification and victimization of women. Of course, people have been debating whether or not pornography has deleterious effects on society for decades, and women who identify as “feminist” and “pro-woman” often come down on opposite sides of the issue. What this debate has thus far ignored, however, is the pornification of U.S. political culture, where women’s images are often hijacked for prurient purposes, further degrading political dialogue.

This trend emerged forcefully during the 2008 primary and general election campaign cycles, at a time when women were making historic political gains. (Want all the gory details? The full version of the study is available here.) Hillary Clinton was the first woman to be a major-party frontrunner for the presidential nomination, but she was also repeatedly called a term that “rhymes with blunt”:

Sarah Palin was the first woman to be a Republican vice-presidential nominee, but shortly after being attached to the McCain ticket, Palin became the MILF next door:

It wasn’t just women candidates who were pornified, however. Women voters were personified as needy nymphomaniacs in BarelyPolitical.com’s “Crush on Obama” viral video, touted as a top 10 viral video of the year by Newsweek, People, the Associated Press, and YouTube. The video, which launched the internet career of Amber Lee Ettinger, aka “Obama Girl,” features Ettinger pole dancing on a public bus, performing on a desk for male coworkers, and writhing onscreen as she professes her personal and political fealty to candidate Obama:

Perhaps the worst offender of 2008 (and the one that employed imagistic strategies closest to those employed in porn magazines) is the “Declare Yourself” get-out-the-vote campaign. Its “public service ads,” aimed at the 18-25 year old voter, use a “torture porn” aesthetic to convince ostensibly disengaged citizens that when they fail to vote, they limit their own political agency:

Interestingly, when Declare Yourself’s images of violent victimization are combined with the campaign’s tagline, “only you can silence yourself,” they reinforce the “blame the victim” mentality that minimizes both violence against women and the sexism that runs rampant in U.S. political culture.

Declare Yourself is not the only political organization attempting to seduce new supporters with sex and violence. PETA has featured scantily clad models in many of its campaigns, slyly winking at the audience with clever taglines such as the following:

Unfortunately, the rhetorical force of PETA’s message is often achieved by portraying sexually attractive, vulnerable women in violent situations. The following images are meant to critique bullfighting and eating meat, respectively. Unfortunately, the stylized violence is designed to titillate as much as it shocks.

Men are also sexualized in PETA’s literature, but they are rarely, if ever, victimized or degraded. Instead, vegan men are the paragons of strength and sexual dominance. Recently, PETA announced that it will launch an .xxx site designed to “promote the organization’s animal rights and vegan diet message, and reach a broader audience,” bringing the pornification of its political appeals full circle.

So far, there have been fewer examples of pornification in the 2012 presidential campaign—perhaps because the one woman candidate in the Republican primary, Michele Bachmann, has been framed with a different c-word: “crazy.” Whether appearing bug-eyed on magazine covers or being referred to as “Tutti Frutti” by a fellow contender, Bachmann’s candidacy reminds us of the continued utility of the “nuts or sluts” charge—originally popularized by attorneys defending accused rapists.

You don’t have to look far, however, to find persistent pornification of political women in 2011. Elizabeth Warren was heckled as a “socialist whore” at one of her campaign events. When Sarah Palin failed to confirm or deny her intention to run for president in 2012, Meghan McCain derided her as a “tease.” Janice Hahn, a candidate for California’s 36^th congressional district, was lampooned in an attack ad that the conservative Daily Caller describes both as “the most racist, fear-mongering, sexist sing-a-long the political world may ever see,” and as “horribly hilarious.”  In the video, titled “Give Us Your Cash, B—ch,” Hahn is cast as a pole-dancing “ho” who funnels funds to menacing gang bangers.

Hahn won her election, Warren continues to lead in the polls, and Palin’s Facebook page is as popular as ever, so is there really any harm coming from the pornification of politics? As I argue in my academic research, the pornification of political women is “indicative of the persistent, pernicious backlash against women’s political gains. Even—or perhaps especially—as women approach the last glass ceiling of U.S. electoral politics [the presidency], they are disciplined by increasingly base, vile, and violent discourses that reinscribe the worst kind of misogynistic patriarchy.”  Popular culture serves as one measure of popular sentiment, and the continued pornification of political culture may be one reason why 90 years after women secured the right to vote in the U.S., women still comprise a meager 17% of the senators and representatives in U.S. Congress, 24% of state legislators, and are 6 of 50 sitting governors. Sure, voters profess the willingness to vote for a “qualified” female presidential candidate—funny thing is, no one has managed to quite clear that bar yet.  In our postmodern political environment, it may be tough to define misogyny . . . but I know it when I see it.

On Tuesday, December 6, 2011 the FBI’s Advisory Policy Board voted unanimously to change their official definition of the word “rape.” Since 1929, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program has defined “forcible rape” as “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” The Board’s new definition is: “Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

The old definition has long been criticized as being archaic and misleading. Earlier this fall, data released in the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) showed a five percent drop in rapes reported from 2009 to 2010 (See “Overview”). However, most states have already adopted a broader definition of rape, one that has not been accepted by the FBI. As a result, fewer rapes are included in the UCR than are actually reported.  For example, in 2010 there were nearly 1400 sexual assaults in Chicago, none of which fit the FBI’s current definition of rape and, therefore, were not included in the national statistics. Twenty-four percent of the rapes reported by the police department in New York were not federally recorded for the same reason.

The removal of the word “forcible” is highly significant. Because the current definition says, “forcibly and against her will” (emphasis added), there has been a “resistance requirement” that, although dropped from most states, is still a common defense. Victims not only have to prove they did not consent, they have to prove they fought back as hard as they could to prevent the rape from occurring. The word “forcible” stigmatizes rape victims who were held down by someone bigger or stronger, rendering them unable to “fight back.” It also does not take into account a “freeze response” by those victims who are too terrified to move or because they feel even greater harm will come to them if they resist. A 2011 Washington State University report, “Force and Resistance Requirements” states “as the former Special Rapporteur has explained, judges, juries and prosecutors alike are more likely to believe that a perpetrator is guilty of sexual assault if the assault was accompanied by other physical injury.”

Having an object forced into a vagina or anus is no less devastating than unwanted sexual intercourse. Upon approval of the change in wording, these acts can be prosecuted as rape, rather than aggravated assault. The new language also ensures that a man will no longer be able to grab a woman by the hair and force her to perform oral sex on him without serious legal repercussions.

Currently, the FBI counts “sexual attacks” on men as “aggravated assaults or sex offenses, depending on the circumstances and the extent of any injuries.” One in ten rape victims is male, and one in thirty-three men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in his lifetime (Source: RAINN.org). The new wording is good news for these men who have been victimized and suffered in silence.

Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) wrote in an article for The Hill’s Congress Blog that she led forty-one of her Congressional colleagues in sending a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller  ”urging him to institute major changes in the way the Bureau classifies rape.” In her article, she emphasizes that changing the definition will greatly impact key funding for critical programs that aid victims and puts rapists behind bars. The new definition is now awaiting approval by Director Mueller, and it is the hope of activist groups that it will go through in January of 2012.

This crucial change in wording will mean that rape statistics will increase as more sexual assaults are counted as rape in national reporting to the FBI. It does not mean that there are suddenly more rapists running loose in this country. It simply means the statistics are far more alarming than many may have ever realized.  Our nation could finally be awakened from its deep slumber and realize this doesn’t just happen in other places. Perhaps now we will begin to take greater action to prevent rape from happening, and to make coming forward more palatable for victims.

A recent study from the Parents Television Council (PTC) shares that Trashy MTV Reality Shows Primarily Use Women to Trash Women.  On MTV, at least, what it revealed was that more misogyny is directed at women by women than men.  Fox News reports:

…[W]omen engage in a whopping 88 percent of the shows’ sexual dialogue, insult each other much more than the men, and offer themselves up in positive portrayals only when they’re talking about physical appearance and their ability to bounce back from getting ridiculed.

“The most shocking finding – or at least the most disturbing – was the way the two genders spoke of themselves. The women were overwhelmingly more disparaging when speaking of themselves. With so much being invested and so much at stake in empowering one’s self, especially for girls, the overwhelming message from reality television targeted at teen girls is to be overly negative to yourself,” PTC President Tim Winter told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column. “After so many years of pursuing equality for women, our study suggests a glamorized, but grossly distorted view, of what it means to be feminine.”

According to Nielsen data, the most watched prime time reality shows on cable among the 12 to 17 demographic in 2011 included MTV shows “Jersey Shore,” “Real World,” “Teen Mom 2,” and “16 and Pregnant.”  The PTC shared other findings:

– While terms men used for each other were often viewed as complimentary (e.g., big man, dawg, superhero, MacGyver, winner), women used far more degrading language when talking about other females (e.g., rodent, skank, trash bag, trick, ho and much worse).

– Females talked about sex acts more than men, talked about sex more graphically than men, mentioned sexual body parts more than men, and talked about intercourse and foreplay more than men.

This type or programming is just another kind of pornography, a prurient train wreck, casting women on reality TV who are designed to be combative, to get into “cat fights,” to trash one another, thereby advertising and glamorizing the worst stereotypes of what it is to be female:  women cannot be trusted, hate each other, they hate themselves, they are gold-diggers, ball-busters, cry-babies, man-killers, divas with lousy boundaries who have no idea how to resolve conflict in an intelligent manner, and of course, “hos.”

The study contends that much of the success of reality TV depends on the “outrageousness of its content.”  The temptation, then, is to encourage ever greater unsavory behavior in order to keep the audiences glued as they await the next inevitable “bitch” explosion.

Women literally or figuratively beating up other women is also part of the continuing “divide and conquer” strategy that keeps women focused on competing with and taking each other down rather than figuring out how to help move each other forward.  Someone once told me, “You know why you never have to put a lid on a barrel of crabs?  Because as one climbs out, another reaches up and pulls it back in.”

Young girls and women are the ones who suffer most as a result of the example these shows offer.

The PTC is looking to encourage debate as it complains that media dollars “underwrite programming” containing “sexualized and narrowly defined gender portrayals.”  Even if a teenager is smart enough not to want to emulate this behavior, the bombardment of these negative messages about women and what they are “good for” is bound to have an effect on the psyche over time.

In our celebrity driven culture, where one can be famous for being famous, there are more than enough people in both genders who are willing to parade their dirty laundry (either real or contrived) in front of an audience for fame or fortune.  Aside from the damage done by negative portrayals of young women on these shows, the reality TV culture and social outlets like Twitter and Facebook also have the unfortunate side effect of encouraging us to keep nothing private, that voyeurism is king, dignity and discretion be damned.

Women on these shows are constantly talking about sex, and sexual acts, likewise encouraging girls to embrace a part of themselves they may not be ready for.  Rampant “sexting” among teenagers is another example of what can happen when a high tech environment is offered to those not yet mature enough to understand the responsibility of the tools at their disposal.

There is an obligation by media outlets to offer programming that shares more positive views of women, letting young girls see who they can be, and how high they can excel, rather than how low they can go.

Women mud wrestling may be somebody’s idea of a good time, but is that really the best we have to offer?