YouTube Series Highlights Military Sexual Assault Victims’ Quests for Justice [Sex Crimes]

After news broke on the potentially fathomless depths of sexual assault in the military, women from the various service branches have come forward with harrowing stories of their assault allegations being either ignored or covered up. For some women, sexual assault was just the beginning of a long nightmare that could possibly include retaliation for speaking out or, in acutely horrifying instances, psychological profiling that would then serve as the basis for eventual military discharge. As more servicewomen decide to share their experiences in an effort to raise awareness about military sexual misconduct, more venues are opening to them, including a new YouTube channel called WIGS, which, starting Monday, will feature a three-part series on sexual assault in the military called "Lauren."

Flashdance star Jennifer Beals along with Troian Bellisario will be featured in the series, which chronicles military women seeking justice for sexual assault. The Defense Department estimates, however, that these women may merely constitute the dorsal fin of a large and menacing problem — as many as 86 percent of sexual assault cases may go unreported because victims fear that their careers will be adversely affected by bringing accusations forward, and nobody really trusts the current military justice system to deal with these cases effectively.

YouTube series focus on military sexual assault [AP via Yahoo!]

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Delusional Magazine Editor Fired For Sexual Harassment [Sexual Harassment]

Hey, remember that time your boss asked you to hold his hand and go with him to his favorite "make-out spot" and you didn't mind because he was being totally "paternalistic and nonsexual"?

No? Well, neither does the intern who was recently harassed by Marc Smirnoff, founder and editor of The Oxford American, the South's answer to The New Yorker since 1992. The magazine's board of directors fired Smirnoff last month, 10 days after a staff retreat during which he yelled at subordinate staffers and attempted the aforementioned "nonsexual" jaunt to his own personal Lover's Lane.

The New York Times reports that after conducting an investigation, the board concluded that staff members regularly felt sexually harassed, humiliated, and generally intimidated by Mr. Smirnoff and other editors.

It's difficult — perhaps impossible? — to imagine a worse way Smirnoff could be handling his termination. Let's break down a few ways in which one should not respond to sexual assault claims:

1. Acknowledge events took place, but deny that they were "harassment":

...After insisting that the intern ride back to Conway with him, he asked her if she wanted to hold hands. She declined, he said, saying she'd rather "hold hands with a dead dog." Still, he told her he wanted to take her to his favorite make-out spot.
...

During a conversation with the same intern earlier that week, Mr. Smirnoff said, he hugged her and kissed her on top of the head.

None of those things constitute harassment, he insisted.

"It was acceptable to her in that moment," he said, saying that she did not object to his behavior at the time. "My take of it was that we were trying to see if we could revive our relationship, professional and personal."

None of that is harassment, eh? What would constitute harassment? Rape?

2. Compare your managerial skills to The Office:

"I understand that I walk a fine line with my joking, my banter," Mr. Smirnoff said, comparing himself to the bumbling boss played by Ricky Gervais on "The Office." "I have made bad jokes. My intent with regards to that humor is just as important."

Dude: If you're humorlessly comparing yourself to a show that lampoons rather than endorses the actions of the most inappropriate boss ever, you're probably fighting a losing battle.

3. Act like a Sad Literary Man:

Slouched in a living-room chair, gesturing wildly and sprinkling his sentences with quotations from Shakespeare, Mr. Smirnoff gave a detailed account of the July 4 party on Petit Jean Mountain, a short drive west of Conway.

Oh. My. God.

4. Act Like an Angry Literary Man:

Smirnoff and his longtime girlfriend, Carol Ann Fitzgerald, who was also fired, have published a 53-page document titled "Our Story of Losing The Oxford American" on a website called "Editors in Love." (We know, we threw up in our mouths a little, too.) The report is like a mix between Gossip Girl (photos of underage interns with beer and notes like, "Enzinna sends urgent text messages to "best friend" (managing editor) Carol Ann Fitzgerald to persuade her to call him about his termination meeting with Smirnoff on following day."), Confessions of a Shopaholic ("Smirnoff hosts 4th of July party for editorial staff at cabin on Mt. Petit Jean. Smirnoff uses OA credit card for food but not alcohol. Editorial assistant Walker Beauchamp collects money from interns and buys/brings alcohol to Mt. Petit Jean" and, I don't know, my Grandma? ("WHEN RAISING YOU, DID YOUR MOM OR DAD TELL YOU THERE IS ONLY ONE SIDE TO EVERY STORY?")

There is also Smirnoff's "PERSONAL LIST OF THINGS HE WILL NEVER DO." On this list is "Never publish a photograph of a beat-up truck covered in kudzu," "Never visit a strip club," "Never publish the word 'eclectic' in a music review" and "Never watch The Matrix." Oh, there's also "Never sexually harass anyone." IT IS NOT EVEN NUMBER ONE! It comes after "Never buy a video game."

Smirnoff clearly has more issues than a Flannery O'Connor character, but his most egregious crime is not understanding what harassment means. From his website:

For all my foibles, serious and otherwise—which include patting and rubbing the heads of interns I am especially close to and trust, hugging them at times, sometimes hoisting them up (publicly and comically), occasionally touching feet or arms or shoulders, shooting portraits of them (I just began contributing photo essays to The OA website)—I have NEVER sexually harassed an intern (or employee) at The Oxford American.

Quick, someone come up with the best Shakespeare quote about delusion.

Editor Fired Following Harassment Accusation [NYT]

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Tippi Hedren Reveals "Evil, Deviant" Hitchcock's On-Set Sexual Harassment [Sexual Harassment]

Alfred Hitchcock has long been accused of putting his "cool blondes" through the ringer on movie sets; as a kid, I remember my mom telling me that Tippi Hedren had a real-life nervous breakdown on the set of The Birds after she filmed the famous attack scene, during which actual birds were hurled at her face for hours. But, as it turns out, the traumatic on-set incidents were the symptom, not the cause.

HBO's upcoming movie The Girl divulges the full range of abuse that Hitchcock put Hedren through on the set of The Birds and Marnie, which escalated to full-on blackmail: when she refused his sexual advances on-set, he guaranteed that she would never work again by holding her to a contract with him. Because of the studio system of the time, contract players were bound to their directors, and it effectively ruined her career. Hedren, now 82, spoke at a panel discussion for The Girl, starring Sienna Miller and Toby Jones and based on a book about Hitchcock and herself entitled Spellbound by Beauty.

Hedren said at the panel discussion:

I think he was an extremely sad character. We are dealing with a brain here that was an unusual genius, and evil, and deviant, almost to the point of dangerous, because of the effect that he could have on people that were totally unsuspecting.

She added that if this occurred in today's Hollywood, she would be "a very rich woman," and Sienna Miller confirmed that shit would never fly between an actress and a director now. (Mind you, just a few days ago, Russell Brand harassed a wardrobe girl to show him her tits. Yes, different situation, but still, worth noting in this context.)

Even Hedren's daughter Melanie Griffith (who appeared in The Birds as a child) had been unaware of what her mother had gone through, and, upon rewatching it, "jumped up and said, 'Now I have to go back into therapy," recalls Hedren. Finally, she says that she survived it beautifully. "He ruined my career," she said, "but not my life."

'Tippi Hedren recalls sexual harassment while working with Alfred Hitchcock' [Today/MSNBC]

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John Scalzi Helpfully Explains Just How Not Okay It Is to Sexually Harass Someone at a Sci-Fi or Fantasy Convention [Sexual Harassment]

Author and and President of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America John Scalzi affixed his blogging sheriff's badge on Tuesday to remind everyone that it is a) decidedly shittastic to harass anyone at a science fiction or fantasy convention, and b) pretty frustrating that women are still being harassed at these conventions.

Scalzi was addressing an incident that occured at this year's Readercon, which, he notes, has a very explicit "zero tolerance" policy about sexual harassment.  Genevieve Valentine first blogged about being harassed at Readercon by a guy named Rene Walling, who, Scalzi points out, had been "banned from the convention for two years, an amount of time which is less than ‘permanently' would be."  A cavalcade of outraged responses followed Valentine's post, many of them speculating that Walling had been "let off easy" because he's a well-traveled fan who's run conventions himself.  Dismayed commenters ultimately concluded that Readercon, tripping clumsily over its own sexual harassment policy, seemed to side with the harasser over than the woman he harassed.

As President of SFWA (and hugely popular writer of the hot new sci-fi book Redshirts), Scalzi was pressed for a response to the incident, which he provided in the concise, bulleted litany that follows:

1. No one should have to fear sexual harassment at any science fiction or fantasy convention. The fact people still do - the fact women still do, let's not dance around that little fact of life - is deeply embarrassing to all of us in this community.

2. It doesn't matter whether the person sexually harassing someone else is a big name in the field or is well-liked or is otherwise a decent human being or feels really bad about it in retrospect.

3. Conventions should have policies and procedures in place to deal with sexual harassment. Those policies should be unambiguous and clear. They should apply equally to everyone.

4. If a convention has a policy on sexual harassment which it then does not follow, then it has failed - failed the person who was harassed by not living up to its obligations to them, failed its guests by not following the rules by which it purports to run, failed the community at large by continuing to allow exceptions and exclusions and excuses to those who harass, and failed itself by not being the convention it claims to be.

Everybody clear on that?  Scalzi goes on to address the fact that harassers often profess ignorance, as in, "I had no idea that the woman gritting her teeth and backing slowly away from me wanted me to stop talking to her about the mating habits of adult hyenas.  Really, I swear."  Scalzi explains pretty bluntly that being clueless about harassment "doesn't matter.  At the end of the day, everyone at a convention should be free to enjoy themselves without being sexually harassed."  People who willingly enter huge social stews of strange fellow humans shouldn't be prepared to deal with harassment — they should be prepared to interact with other people decently.  That means not getting up in a stranger's personal space and making that person cringe.  If such social nuances elude any prospective attendees, then it'd probably be best for them to stay indoors and wait for some social awareness to bludgeon them across the forehead.

Readercon, Harrassment, Etc. [Whatever]

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Sexual Dissatisfaction Found to Be Common in Diabetic Women [Health]

Poor Paula Deen might be mourning more than just the loss of butter. :(((

A group of over 2,000 ethnically-diverse women between the ages of 40 and 20 were studied by the University of California at San Francisco's Women's Health Clinical Research Center, comprised by insulin-treated diabetics, non-insulin-treated diabetics and non-diabetics.

Researchers discovered that an outstanding number of the diabetics, particularly the 139 receiving insulin treatment, cited lubrication issues and were 80% more likely (FUUU) to report difficulty achieving orgasm during sex, culminating with a low overall satisfaction rate that's twice as high in insulin-treated women and 40% higher in non-insulin-treated diabetic women than the rate of non-diabetic women. The sexual desire rate, meanwhile, remained equal for all of the women.

Lead researcher Kelli Copeland released the data along with a statement:

Based on this research, clinicians may want to consider assessing diabetic women for sexual problems, particularly among those taking insulin, and counsel them that prevention of end-organ complications may be important in preserving sexual function.

The study didn't distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, but researchers say that the kind of insulin being taken by many of the subjects suggests that a fair amount of Type 2 women were in the fold.

'Diabetes May Cause Sexual Dissatisfaction in Women' [Medical Daily]

Photo via Arkady/Shutterstock

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