Month: August 2011

Rape Victims and Child Support

~ Clarissa ~ 448 Comments

An interesting post has been placed on ethecofem (which is a great blog that I highly recommend, by the way), and I want to address it here. Blogger Danny writes:

Kris Bucher is being held up for child support. However he says that he was raped by the mother of the child and should therefore not be held responsible for child support.

Alright we’ve seen cases before where under aged boys were held up for support of children they had with adult women. Or even worse sometimes said under aged boy’s parents would be held responsible to pay it (can you imagine being ordered by a court to pay child support to a woman that statutorily raped your son?). In this case though Kris is saying that the age difference is not the issue (and I’m inclined to agree since he was 17 and she was 18 at the time of conception) but rather that he said no to the sexual encounter that conceived the child.

As a quick reference I’ve laid out before that a woman can rape a man, so there is no need to try to question that. The hard part to think about is was he raped (he never pressed charges) and should he be held responsible for supporting a child that was conceived through rape?

I agree that a woman can rape a man, so for me, as for Danny, this is not something that needs to be questioned or discussed*. Now, my opinion on this issue is that such a person is, indeed, responsible for paying child support. I hope, of course, that every rape victim presses charges against the attacker and removes any possibility that a child would end up being raised by a criminal.

Child support, however, is not about either parent or the process of how they ended up being parents. It’s about ensuring that a child – a separate human being who never asked to be brought into this world and who in no way influenced the circumstances of his or her conception – has adequate means of support. It is the role of the justice system to defend the person who is the weakest and who cannot even speak for him or herself, namely, the child. A justice system that prefers to deprive a child from adequate means of existence in order to avoid being unfair towards an adult is no justice system at all.

The fact that a person was created during the commission of a crime in no way reduces that person’s need for food, clothing, medical care, and education. Imagine baby Anna and baby Jessica. Anna is a product of a passionate loving consensual sex act. Jessica is the product of rape (whether by a man or by a woman). Is Jessica going to eat less? Will she be less deserving of visiting a dentist? Should she have fewer toys than Anna? Can anybody reasonably argue that one of these kids should be punished because she has a criminal for a parent?

People seem to think way too often that child support is money that is given to the other parent instead of to the child. This way of thinking comes from their inability to see a child as a separate human being with rights of his or her own. What everybody needs to remember is that the moment a child comes out of a woman’s body and takes his or her first breath, s/he stops being a woman’s body part and becomes a person.

* Reader Christopher Marshall pointed out to me that the man went to the police 2 weeks after the incident and they refused to follow up on it. This is what we need to fight: the prejudice against men that positions them always as the perpetrators of violence and never as victims. Here is the real injustice in this case. A statement that a crime has been committed is dismissed by the authorities.

By Readers’ Request: More on Why I Emigrated, Part II

~ Clarissa ~ 3 Comments

The reason why my groupmates were acting this way was that after decades of genocides and repressions, people had become afraid of pretty much everything. This is the kind of fear that gets transmitted on a genetic level. You might not have experienced the genocide yourself, but the genetic memory of your ancestors who conceived you in fear and gave birth to you in mortal terror is always there with you.

So the students started attending one of the courses and ignored the other one. Now, the professor of the ignored course showed up to his scheduled class and discovered that the students weren’t there. He also had the Soviet legacy of inborn terror, so instead of going to the Dean’s office and inquiring as to the whereabouts of his students, he kept coming to class in a futile hope that one day students would appear.

They never did, of course.

At the end of the semester, when the exam period came about, a huge scandal broke out. Students hadn’t taken one of the courses and couldn’t pass the exam. The professor had been getting paid for not delivering his lectures. The future schedules got messed up beyond recognition.

People got into all this trouble for the simple reason that they couldn’t deal with the simple task of going to the administration and saying, “I’m sorry, I think there might be a mistake.”

This was when I realized that I wasn’t only completely different from the older generation. I also had nothing in common with my own. Believe me, I’m not blaming my people for being the way they are. I just understood that I was so different from them that no happiness was possible for me in their midst.

So I came home and said, “You were right, we should leave. I’m now ready to submit an application to the Canadian consulate.”

This was absolutely the best decision of my life. It brought me poverty, divorce, struggle, hardship but it got me to a place where, on the most basic level, people think and act like me.

By Readers’ Request: More on Why I Emigrated, Part I

~ Clarissa ~ 8 Comments

Reader Maria says, “I’d like you to finish the “Why I immigrated story.” For those who missed the first two installments, you can find them here and here.

The last straw for me was something that happened at my university. In post-Soviet universities, you didn’t choose what classes you had to take. Each semester, a huge hand-written table appeared in front of the Dean’s office informing each group of students which courses they had to take, where and when. We weren’t computerized then (I don’t know about now), so sometimes a mistake or two would creep into the schedule.

Once, at the beginning of the semester, my group huddled in front of this hand-written course schedule to see what classes we were going to take. Immediately, we noticed that two classes were scheduled (by mistake, of course) to take place at the same time on the same days of the week.

Now, I’d like everybody to take a moment to consider what you would do in such a situation.

For me, the answer was simple: let’s go to the Dean’s office and tell the people who work there that a mistake had been made in the schedule. My groupmates, however, shushed me down.

“Why do you have to be such a troublemaker?” they asked indignantly. “You never even show up for classes, yet you want to make trouble for everybody.”

“What trouble?” I asked. “I’m just saying we should inform people in a very polite way that there is a mistake in the schedule.”

“Will you stop being such a jerk?” one groupmate exclaimed. “You always have to protest, complain, defend your rights. You are so annoying!”

Of course, I shut up and withdrew. It was true that I wasn’t planning on attending either of the courses scheduled for the same time slot. In the meanwhile, the group discussed the situation and decided to show up for one of the courses and ignore the other one.

By now, readers must be wondering why the group was refusing to mention the problem with the schedule to the authorities. Please, offer your answers in the comments. I’d love to hear what you think.

To be continued momentarily. . .

P.S. Thank you, Maria, for asking me to write about exactly what I wanted to the most. 🙂

Would You Have Handled It That Much Better?

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

I kind of don’t like it how people are falling all over themselves in criticizing Obama for the way he handled the whole debt ceiling debacle. He compromised too much, people say.

And what alternative did he have, exactly? No, seriously, if you are disappointed with Obama’s actions during the crisis, what would you have done in his place?

Thank You, Dear Readers!

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

Thank you, dear anonymous readers, who recently followed the links from my blog to buy whatever it is you bought on Amazon. Your support of your favorite blogger is highly appreciated. With the profits I get from Skimlinks that make this kind of monetization of a WordPress blog possible, I will be able to buy more books and expand my wisdom even further. 🙂

Please feel free to do the same in the future. 🙂 If you are planning to buy something from, say, Zappos or Macy’s or Canon, anyways, why not do it by clicking through to the site in question from a blog you like? It changes nothing for you but ends up benefiting a blogger.

This post is sticky because I want people who did this good thing to see my gratitude for sure. Scroll down a little for new posts.

Through the Eyes of a Stranger: Delegating Prayer

~ Clarissa ~ 25 Comments

I don’t spend much time in American churches, as you might have guessed, but today I visited one to attend a wedding. And was shocked to discover little cards that you could fill in to get the church staff to pray instead of you.

I'm sorry the image is blurry. I think I might need a new camera

On the other side of the card a space is provided for you to describe the request you want this prayer to contain.

I understand that people lead busy lives but there should still be things that we don’t delegate to others. Thinking, breathing, eating, loving, drinking, sleeping, learning, even going to the dentist are activities that nobody can do for us. Surely, prayer is one of them. How could it have occurred to anybody that you can get others to pray instead of you? What next? Pre-recorded prayers that are made at regular intervals for a low price of $19.99?

This is just mind-boggling. If somebody wanted to ridicule religious people, they couldn’t do it as well as the religious people manage to all on their own.

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites [are]: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen [do]: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 

I wonder what the guy who came up with the the above-mentioned suggestions would have had to say about this practice of getting others to pray instead you.

Lions, Tigers, Alligators and Elephants in Ukraine

~ Clarissa ~ 8 Comments

David Bellamy has sent me a link to the story of a man in Ukraine who has spent 35 days in a cage with lions. Here is a photo for you, and you can see an entire slideshow over here:

Zoo owner and artist Aleksandr Pylyshenko looks out from between bars of a cage, next to female African lion Katya, at a private zoo situated in his yard in the city of Vasilyevka, southeastern Ukraine August 3, 2011. Pylyshenko decided to spend five weeks in a cage with a pair of African lions, Katya and Samson, to get money for improving the lions’ living conditions, according to local media. He is broadcasting it on internet to attract the public’s attention to plight of wild animals in private Ukrainian zoos, which do not get enough fundings.

There is, of course, a certain cultural reality behind this, and I thought my readers might find some background I can provide useful for the understanding of this piece of news.

In the Soviet Union, zoological gardens were extremely popular. We had a really big one in my city and used to visit it often. As a child, I always felt a lot of discomfort at the sight of polar bears, giraffes or elephants stuck in small cages in what was very obviously not a comfortable environment for them. I could never understand how visiting a zoo could be considered fun. I haven’t been to any zoos in North America, so I don’t know what the conditions there are like. Even though I’m not a huge animal-lover (to put it very mildly), I always suffer at the idea that a poor creature is kept away from its natural habitat because people find it enjoyable to gawk at it for some puzzling reason.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, funding for state-owned zoos became very scarce. Many animals simply starved or froze to death during our harsh winters. At the same time, many private citizens came into big money. Post-Soviet nouveau riches competed with each other in how much money each could spend on something completely outrageous. Among them, it soon became prestigious to have an iguana, an alligator, a monkey, a python, or a tiger of their own. There came into existence a huge black market dealing in exotic animals.

Eventually, this situation led to some people opening “private zoos”, like the one owned by the guy in the photo. Anybody can build a cage in the backyard of their house in a village, like he did, bring in some animals, and keep them there. It might seem strange to you that a guy could keep lions, a bear and two lynxes in his backyard just because he wants to, but in Ukraine it’s not a big deal. As the owner says on his website, he bought a lioness for just $3500 + shipping costs.

Should There Be a Heterosexual Pride Parade?

~ Clarissa ~ 49 Comments

The main argument you hear from people who oppose Gay Pride events is, “Well, then why don’t we have a hetero pride parade, huh? If other people have a right to be proud of the way they have sex, so should we, don’t you think?” A variation on this is, “What is there to be so proud about the way you fuck? I like doing it sitting in an armchair. Should I throw a parade to celebrate that?” And now, a city council in a fiercely homophobic Brazil has established a Heterosexual Pride Day.

The problem with this argument is that* it involves a (willful?) misunderstanding of how the term “pride” is being used in the context of gay rights movement. It isn’t about being proud in the sense of “I’m so better than you are, nyah, nyah, nyah!” It’s being proud in the sense of not being ashamed. Of accepting who you are and not hiding it from the world. It’s about pride as an absence of shame and self-hatred.

Of course, if you have spent years being ashamed of your heterosexuality (or preferring sex in an arm-chair) and have hated yourself for being the way you are and have been discriminated against for it, then go ahead, have a Hetero Pride Day or an armchair-fucking day.

*I’m not gay and I explain this the way I understand it. My queer readers should feel free to state their own perspectives.

By Readers’ Request: Polyamory

~ Clarissa ~ 31 Comments

Reader Bola asks, “What do you think about polyamory?”

I’m probably the most monogamous person anybody has ever met. I have had a very intense personal life but I always had a single partner at any given time (or no partner at all.) For me, being in a relationship is a concession I make. I’m a person who is very happy being single. I practice singlehood like a form of art. So for me to agree to be in a relationship, I have to experience such a profound passion for a person (which might last 2 hours or 20 years) that nobody else exists in the world. When I’m in love, I literally don’t see a huge group of naked, athletic men running around me.

But other people are just that, other people. They have other needs and other ways of achieving personal happiness. I could never be in a polyamorous relationship, just like I could never be in a lesbian relationship. I do, however, firmly believe in everybody’s right to find sexual happiness and fulfillment the way they want. For me, polyamory is neither better nor worse than monogamy. It’s a way of being that other people prefer and that makes them happy. And I celebrate that.

P.S. This was the easiest one, so I answered it first. 🙂 Thank you, Bola, for making my live easier. 🙂

Stigmatizing Girls Under the Guise of Caring for Them

~ Clarissa ~ 8 Comments

Can somebody please explain to me why we need a program ” trying to get girls to think differently about their bodies through multimedia presentations around the country” and “a campaign that encourages girls to make their dreams come true while maintaining a healthy lifestyle”? Why not a program and a campaign that promote these goals among people, irrespective of their gender?

The very existence of such a campaign signals that this is and should be a women’s problem. How is this not detrimental to women?

The founders also know that girls look to television, advertisements and the pages of fashion magazines to figure out what beautiful looks like, so they’re joining the industry itself to try and make a difference instead of trying to get girls to stop what they’ve been doing for decades.

And where exactly do boys find their ideas of beauty? Aren’t those same TV shows and ads filled with ripped, perfectly muscular men with no chest hair and unattainably perfect figures?

Can we just stop singling out women as people who need to be protected from the bad, horrible media at all costs? A thousand TV shows and glossy magazines do not do the kind of damage to women that is inflicted by this relentless insistence that we are perennial victims who need some guy to come and save us by teaching us how to relate to our own bodies.