Earlier this year, we covered the case of a veteran who - despite raping several girls and women and attempted murder - was still buried with full military honors. It looks like Canada isn't too far off, where a recent story gives us a middle aged man who is still receiving the Governor General's Star of Courage award despite pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a teenager:

Guy Armand Raes of Airdrie was recently named a recipient of the Governor General's Star of Courage award. On Wednesday, a week after the announcement, Raes was in front of a provincial court judge pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a teen he befriended through an RCMP investigation. He will be sentenced next week.

Raes, 50, helped rescue a young couple and guided other residents to safety during a massive row house fire in Airdrie, a residential community just north of Calgary, in August 2005.

The court case has no bearing on Raes's award, according to the Governor General's office. "He is being recognized for an act of bravery that happened in 2005," said Marie-Paule Thorn, spokeswoman for the Governor General's office.

Now this is obviously a different case than a serial rapist, but it brings up a broader issue about the dismissal of sexual assault and failure to hold people accountable by military and governmental authority.

Thoughts?

Gloria Steinem penned an op-ed for the LA Times on Sarah Palin and why she's the "wrong woman" with the "wrong message."

Amazing. (Told you it was video Friday!)

Thanks to Matt for the tip.

Maybe I should give up on complaining about this, but it still irks me every time I see an article that is about women's issues (and now we can add trans women's issues) in the NYTimes in the Fashion and Style section. Articles about health, doulas, women, etc. It seems like every article that interests me is in this section and it pisses me off. Ok, rant over.

Despite the placement of this article, it's actually a quite positive piece about trans women's experience transitioning in the workplace.

Breanna L. Speed waited four years before announcing to her co-workers that she would not be Wendell anymore. She was concerned that the revelation that she felt more comfortable living life as a woman than in the male body she was born with would jeopardize her job at Hewitt Associates, an outsourcing company in Lincolnshire, Ill., where she had worked as a database administrator for seven years.

But since Feb. 26, 2007, when she walked into the office as Breanna (with a company ID and a workplace paper trail that carried her new name), Ms. Speed said she has received nothing but support.

What's really great about the article is it puts the onus of guaranteeing a smooth transition on the employers and managers of the companies, rather than the employee themselves.

Looks like it's video Friday (we have a couple more coming up), but that's okay with me. Especially when it's Sarah Haskins.

That's right. On the PETA website, a schoolgirl-outfitted woman strips herself down topless in undies as you answer the ABC Striptease Quiz on animal birth control. The intro says:

Hi, I'm Amber, and today, we're going to be going over our ABCs. Here's your first lesson: "ABC" stands for "animal birth control," but it can also stand for "Amber's bored with clothes" if you have the brainpower to answer these 10 quiz questions correctly.

There's nothing that gets me hotter than an intelligent person who's also compassionate, so let's see if we can't get me hot enough to remove a few pesky items of clothing--if you're up to the challenge, that is ...

As regular readers know, this is not the first of PETA's offensive actions. But this is straight up soft porn for your ass. Contact PETA and let them know that their sexist (and recently racist) asshattery is severely played out.

h/t to all the readers who alerted us to this!

Last week I watched the DNC with great interest, but since the RNC started, it has been hard to watch for a number of reasons (I disagree with their politics, their defense of McCain/Palin insults my intelligence, knowing the the rest of my family was loving every minute of it, etc). But then I watched "The Daily Show" last night, and it was all worth it. Here are a few clips from last night:

In the first clip, Stewart points out that Republicans use the "gender card" and sexism when it suits them.

In the second clip, Stewart talks with Newt Gingrich about Sarah Palin. My favorite part takes place about 4 minutes in when Stewart asks about Bristol's choice to keep her child and yet Palin wants to take away other women's right to that choice. (Ann had a great post earlier about the issue of Bristol's choice.)

Lynn Paltrow, the Executive Director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, published an open letter to Sarah Palin yesterday that was too good not to mention:

Many Americans agree with your position regarding abortion -- they do this as a matter of faith, ethics, personal experience and sometimes politics. I am just wondering though, if you have thought about what would happen if you succeeded in getting your position -- that fetuses have a right to life -- established as the law of the land? Did you know that it not only threatens the lives, health and freedom of women who might want or need someday to end their pregnancies, it would also give the government the power to control the lives of women -- like you who -- go to term?

Read the whole thing; it's not to miss.

Let's count the ways that this gem from AllPosters.com makes us feel icky.

I was interviewed last week by Newsweek reporter Jesse Ellison about my thoughts on the new MTV series "Exiled." I'm not a huge fan of the concept, to say the least. Latoya Peterson from Racialicious was also interviewed. The show takes girls from the "My Super Sweet Sixteen" series and sends them off to a foreign country for a week.

In the first episode of "Exiled," which aired last week, our girl Amanda, who is now 19 and seems to spend her days sleeping and sunbathing, is surprised by her family and friends (and, presumably, MTV's film crews), with the news that they are sending her to Africa. Amanda is whisked away to Kenya, where she spends a week with the Masai. She sleeps in a dung hut, is asked to touch cow dung (which she refuses to do), carries water for hours and watches the slaughter of a goat.

Several posters noted that the host families on the show seem like props. "The show falls into the theme of using other countries and cultures as teaching tools for people in the U.S." says feministing.com blogger Miriam Perez. "These people are being used as a teaching tool for mostly white, privileged girls. Why was this girl honored? Because she stopped crying after a few days? She was offensive. She wasn't appreciative."

Latoya Peterson, blogger for Racialicious.com, has a similar objection. "They're taking these extremely spoiled kids and going, 'OK, what's the worst thing we can do to them? Send them to Africa!" she says. "That's a terrible mind-set to have. It's the First World balking at the Third World."

Read the rest of the piece here.

What do you all think about the new show? You can watch the first episode for free online.