I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the “right to privacy” and American law, particularly how it relates to women’s bodies. This elaborate thought-tangent started when in my ususal online perusal of gossip (more guilty pleasures) I came across yet another photo of a famous woman who had left the house without wearing underwear, and some creepy photographer managed to snap a photo up her skirt. Hours later, this picture hits the internet. This kind of thing has always bothered me, and I began reading a lot about paparazzi and privacy laws (and for famous folks, there really are none), which slowly led me down the road of thinking about all of the ways women’s bodies are capitalized on and manipulated in our society, and how the right to privacy, when used to defend them, is so vague that it often doesn’t get the job done. I was thinking instead about how amazing it would be if there was a codified “right to bodily autonomy” within the right to privacy framework [as an aside, I understand these are charged words within the abortion debate, but I use them to paint a broader pictire] under which a variety of issues, image consent and distribution and sexual harassment [and yes, abortion rights] might fall. I started writing a long post on the matter, but just didn’t have time to do the proper research and got busy with a zillion other things.

Then today, via After Silence’s twitter, I came across this post on the Pursuit of Harpyness about the Jaycee Dugard case. Dugard’s story was all over the news last week: kidnapped at age 11, she was kept in sheds and tents in the backyard of Phillip Garrido, who raped her and fathered her two children. Blogger Pilgrim Soul at …Harpyness writes about the neighbors who saw into Garrido’s backyard and thought something might be wrong, but did nothing because they thought it wasn’t any of their business to interfere. In other words–what right did they have to infringe on a man’s provacy? Pilgrim’s response is understandable outrage, and skepticism of the “rights discourse” that prompts such apathetic behavior. Pilgrim writes:

I think , in short, that there comes a point where “it’s a free country” becomes a weapon against rather than protection for the marginalized…Rights have their natural limits in the degree to which they interfere with the well-being of other people, and of all people, the marginalized know this best.

This post struck a particular chord with me as just yesterday I began reading Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, the 2003 expose on the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints), the fundamentalist Mormons who insist that polygamy is an integral part of their religious beliefs and have a long history of marrying off underage girls to middle-aged men. The first part of the book recounts the history of government attempts to interfere with FLDS settlements after a number of girls who had been forced into marriage and raped came escaped and reported the crimes. However, these interventions (mostly notably in 1954 but again in 2001) were met with public ambivalence; Krakauer writes about the 1954 raid of the Short Creek FLDS compound in Arizona:

But to the dismay of the LDS leadership, most of the press presented the polygamists in a favorable light. Photographs of crying children being torn from their mothers’ arms generated sympathy throughout the nation for the fundamentalists, who protested that they were upstanding, law-abiding Mormons simply trying to exercize their constitutionally protected rights. (pg 17)

Too a certain extent, I can remember hearing similar comments in 2008, when an FLDS ranch in Texas was raided. But there is no question to me that there is a world of difference between protecting religious freedoms and the right to allow people to live as they like, and sitting back passively while we know that children are being abused.

What both Pilgrim Soul noticed with Garrido’s neighbors and what Krakauer wrote about on a national level can only, I think, be described as bystander behavior. Whether it be over a concern for the sanctity of rights, or just a case of not wanting to get involved, time again people have–we have–watched as women and girls are raped right under our noses. And not spoken up. Because it wasn’t our business.

Which brings me back to “the right to bodily autonomy” as being distinct from the right to privacy. Perhaps reframing the “rights” question in this way could shift the conversation—if the idea that a woman should have control over her body (when and how she has sex and with whom; what medical procedures she chooses; what she encounters when moving through public; who can distribute her image) was as entrenched in our society as the freedom of speech or the right to own a gun, perhaps when confronted with a potential abuser our first reaction would not be—am I trampling on his/her rights if I interfer, but instead: is someone being violated in a way that merits intervention. It is harder to be a bystander if your primary response is one that focuses on the potential harm being done to another human being, and not the potential inappropriateness of getting involved.

Last week I came across this post at abyss2hope about a Texas judge who supposedly questioned a rape survivor’s accusation based on the fact that during the rape “she was on top.” He brought this up during the trial, though at the time the transcripts were not published–rumor of his remarks were spread by court observers and reported on this Houston blog. When the blogger initially inquired about the comments, Judge Fine called his actions in the courtroom “incorrect,” but maintained that he had valid “concerns” about the “physical evidence.” Marcella has a good analysis of the judge’s response at the abyss2hope post.

This Monday, the survivor spoke to the Houston Chronicle about her ordeal in court, and we now get to see just how “incorrect” Judge Fine was.(emphasis mine)

The judge crossed the line, she said, during sentencing, which Escobar had opted to let Fine decide instead of a jury. Although the jury already had found Escobar guilty of aggravated sexual assault, Fine went on to challenge the victim’s version of events, doubting her truthfulness on details from her vague time line to the method in which her clothing was removed. Near the end, Fine remarked that “sending an innocent man to prison in the name of law and order is the greatest injustice this society can do.”

What shocked the victim most was when the judge questioned whether she was really raped since he found it “odd” that was she was on top of Escobar during the assault. The judge required the victim to recount, in detail, her position during the rape and explain how Escobar, who maintained the sex was consensual, was able to force himself on her.

“I know these are tough questions and I don’t like to have to ask them,” the judge told the victim, according to a July 31 transcript, released late last week. “It’s just you understand that most rapes take place with the man on top so he has complete control of the female.”

Hm. Good point—I wonder how a woman could be raped without being pinned down and actually physically constrained? Oh right, something like this could happen:

The victim testified that she repeatedly fought her attacker, but that he wasn’t fazed by the blows to his face and was able to force himself on her. All the while, she said, Escobar threatened to put her “in the bayou,” claiming to have killed five people already and saying he’d do the same to her with a knife she believed he had in his pocket.

Forget for a moment about the fact that, while apparently within the bounds of the law (?), the judge’s behavior in court was completely inappropriate and potentially traumatizing for the already traumatized survivor. Consider just how crazy it is that this man is a judge and has one of the most absurd, narrow definitions of rape possible. As Lisa Falkenberg of the Chronicle writes:

Whether he meant to or not, Fine has sent a troubling message about sexual assault. Coercion comes in many forms. By gunpoint or perceived threat. From a stranger, or a boyfriend. And in various positions.

Juries, even in Houston, don’t convict in rape cases easily, and when they do, it’s not the judge’s place to second-guess the verdict.

Couldn’t have said it better. As for Judge Fine, he eventually came around….

In the end, the judge apparently reconciled his concerns about conflicting time lines and other testimony and acknowledged the compelling evidence that led him to sentence Escobar to 25 years in prison: After listening to the 911 tape of the screaming girls “for the sixth time,” Fine told the court, “there’s no doubt in my mind” that “no means no, period.”

Abercrombie & Fitch has a long history of shameless sexism, racism, ableism, etc. And they’ve done it again, with their “College Tees” line, available in stores only. There are offensive shirts for men and for women.

The objectification of women as nothing but sex objects in this line of t-shirts, aimed at college students, is so blatent, I’m at a loss for words.

I saw this on the Prevention Connection listserv, where one person asked why A&F hasn’t learned their lesson, after all the protests they face. Someone replied, that they’ll do whatever sells. Responsibility lies with the company and the consumers – they should be more socially responsbile, and we should be protesting louder. But I’m stuck as to how to publicly address something like this without being labeled as a lame prude. Anyone have any good protesting ideas?