Oh Daria! I was too young when it was on to fully appreciate it.

Daria was really the greatest show!!

I hope they come up with DVD's soon.. It really sucks that they have DVD's of shows like "Rock of Love" but no Daria!

o my god the 19 hr rape article is literally making me shake and cry.
And you think that violence against womene portrayed everywhere as e legitimate aspect of masculinity is not a problem and "just a joke".
dear. lord.

Omg Omg Omg. I just watched the Abstinence Video. I seriously doubt any comprehensive sex ed manual (it says its called "Be Proud! Be Responsible!") is nearly as odd as they make it out to be. I mean really "It's ok to take a shower with a boy" is t3h 3vi1!!!! And how to pleasure your parenter is OMG SATANISTIC how dare sex be fun.
The woman was also like "OMG THEY ARE TEACHING MY KID HOW TO HAVE SEX!" because you know on her wedding night her new husband might try sticking his penis in her ear.

A quick google search will tell you that that particular manual is to prevent HIV/AIDS in Inner City African-American Kids. Hmmmm.

I still have major love for Daria. I enjoyed re-watching it when it was on the N. They haven't released the DVDs because of those damn music licensing rights, which cause a lot of problems for a lot of older shows.

is it just me, or is the income warped map nearly identical for both genders?

Thanks so much for linking to Heba's blog.

Please correct this:

A Florida teenage girl and her friends were shot at by a group of men for rejecting their catcalls and advances. They had refused to give the men their phone numbers. Now one of the girls could be paralyzed.

Unfortunately, Mildred died from her injuries, I believe on June 3.
Here's the link.

I loved Daria so much. I don't think there was an episode I didn't see. I hope they get the licensing mess under control so I can FINALLY get it on DVD.

Thanks for linking to the MADRE article; they do great work. To use resources effectively requires an analysis and understanding of the deeper structural roots to the problems women face globally. MADRE seems to always see the bigger picture, which is why i support them.

Mildred's death is tragic. I confront men on the street almost daily, but now feel that I shouldn't be so brave after all. It only takes one to pull out a gun. My prayers are with her family.

Am I the only one who doesn't understand why they would publish the horrific details of that rape? I had to stop reading because I felt like I was going to throw up, not just because what they were describing was so awful but because they described it in a newspaper. Is there any reason other than titillation to publish such a complete description of her ordeal? Is it not enough to have the short sentences near the beginning that quickly explain a few of the terrible things that happened to her?

Wow. After reading the 19 hour rape I'm happy she survived, and they caught the rapist. Sickly, catching the rapist is rare.

Good lord when are they going to fire Chris Matthews?

Waxghost, I'm with you. I don't want to downplay the sexual assault aspect, but "19 Hour Rape" isn't the most accurate title. "19 hours of torture" would have been a lot more accurate - but a lot less "titillating." God help me, it almost read like porn - no plot or purpose, just sheer gory details.

Christ, how horrifying.

Oh, and Daria rules. I have the whole fucking series on videotape. Videotape!!! From the sound of it, I should convert to DVD and sell it on the black market.

I'm amazed at that woman's strength. I hope she is able to recover, both physically (if possible) and emotionally (if possible).

Feministing ladies - if you find any info on where we can send support (emotional? psychological? financial?) to the victim, please let us know. While she is (and hopefully will remain) anonymous, it would be nice to know that some message of support gets through to her.

As horrible as that description was (which I won't repeat for anyone who does not wish to hear it), I'm glad that the NYT published it. While many rapes are not that brutal, it is all degrees of brutality, and it's good for the public to understand that rape isn't about sex - it is about power and torture and doing the utmost harm to another human being. Rape is often called "unfinished murder" by survivors of it; the description of this woman's torture underscores the truth of that characterisation.

I love Daria! I always used to watch the reruns on The N...

I found this story featured in the NY Times to be interesting:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/us/09land.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
(I hope the link works!) It's about how a community is going to raze a house where six young people were murdered. A senseless crime? Yes, and no, it's a crime that happens every day in America: a young man kills the young woman who has broken off with him, then kills himself. This story was only unusual in that five friends of the young woman were also murdered. In most cases of domestic violence, the only other victims are the children of the victim or sometimes other female relatives. I realize that this is a column, not a news report, but there's no mention of domestic violence, no mention of how common this sort of murder has become these days. That in itself frightens me. The relationship between the couple is described as merely "rocky." We need to change this attitude or more lives will be lost! Stop talking about the house, talk about how we can prevent other murdered Jordannes, other murdered young people.

I feel like a skeeze for this, but I see the insurance companies' point about providing insurance coverage to a pregnant woman. The business plan of an insurance company is to earn enough money from all their policyholders in order to offset the cost of actually paying for healthcare so that they make a profit. This is why insurance companies will dispute claims and refuse to pay for certain tests, treatments, etc. Most hospitals have a team of people who spend their days reading charts to figure out what tests need to be done or what the doctors need to write in their notes in order to get further compensation for a particular patient's care.

Unless you use a midwife (which is, unfortunately, not too common), birth is expensive. Doctor's visits are expensive, and pregnant women have far more than the average of those visits. An insurance company, under its business model, clearly won't see the financial benefit to themselves of providing coverage for a person who will automatically cause them an increased expenditure.

I think this girl's story is a sign that healthcare in America is messed up because insurance shouldn't be a for-profit venture.

I was so pleased when I heard about Deval Patrick recognizing domestic violence for what it is. As another plug for Massachusetts, we have a law here against "Criminal Harassment" which would definitely cover stalking, and even covers when men watch your house and call creepily whenever your husband's car isn't in the driveway (not that this happened to anyone I know or anything). I think this law is a really good way to protect women, as long as the chauvinists don't run wild with the "cause fear in a reasonable person" clause. The only problem is that members of the law enforcement don't always know about it (?)- in the aforementioned instance, no one brought it up until I did, and I was 14. So I would definitely recommend checking personally to see if you have a similar law in your state!

So...who wants to take bets on how long it'll be before one of the major studios approached that survivor for the movie rights to her experience?

I am so sad to hear that Mildred died from her injuries. I am trying not to cry here at my desk.

Anyway... someone said I reminded them of Daria just last week. Hah! Love that show.

oenophile, I do see the value in publishing the brutal details. It was horrifying, as it should be, and exposes a lot of ugliness in our society that people try to pretend doesn't exist. Accounts like this need to be exposed.

However, the rape was only a part of the attack, and somehow overtook the title - as much as "rape" is OBVIOUSLY not the same thing as "sex," there is an element of sexuality to it, and sex sells. I'm having a hard time deciding if I agree with the title or not - on one hand sexual assault is so downplayed and glossed over in the media that I'm glad to see it take front and center, but I doubt that's what they were going for.

Ultimately I'll give the NYT credit for the effect of the piece, but not their intentions, which were clearly less than admirable. No analysis, no feminist commentary that might help readers understand why things like this exist in a patriarchal society and what needs to be done to end it, just lurid details that read like a disgusting movie script - the kind of movie script that Feministing readers would object to (like Capitvity). Double ugh. Again.

I agree that I am conflicted about the NYT article describing the Columbia student's horrible ordeal at the hands of that sick rapist and torturer. I was disturbed by the way the piece was written: I did not take issue with the fact that they described the acts, per se, but more the way in which they were described. An above commenter who compared it to a porn script or something took the words right out of my mouth. The story stops so abruptly after the rape and torture is over- no mention of the victim's report to police, the investigation afterwards, etc. I was disappointed that that was the ONLY aspect they paid attention to.

While rape is a serious issue and should be talked about openly in publications such as the NYT, I am pretty sure we could do without the "isn't this so sick... but so titillating!" undertones I get from that piece.

The 19 hour rape article is horrifying. I hope she can emotionally recover from this.

How did the woman's neighbors not hear anything? I can't believe that she didn't scream bloody murder when he tossed boiling water on her. New Yorkers are such bastards.

Rape story.

That is one of the most disturbing things I have ever read and is one of the few cases where I would wholeheartedly support the death penalty.

Rape story.

That is one of the most disturbing things I have ever read and is one of the few cases where I would wholeheartedly support the death penalty.

How the cost of infertility treatments effectively shuts low-income women out of motherhood.

It's not "shutting them out of motherhood".

This whole statement bothers me. If you're infertile, you adopt, or you don't have children. If you can't afford children, you don't have children.

Yes, pregnancy is a woman's issue, but just because it's a woman's issue, doesn't make the government responsible for paying for it.

That's what adoption is for.

If you can't afford children, you don't have children.

Elitist much?

Low income =/= bad parent. (It sure as hell doesn't make someone with a higher income a better parent!) And it doesn't mean that someone can't provide for their child if they're "low income". My grandmother raised 5 children by herself on a low income. Should my father not have been born?

Just because someone isn't in a certain income bracket doesn't mean they shouldn't be denied children.

"Low income =/= bad parent. (It sure as hell doesn't make someone with a higher income a better parent!) And it doesn't mean that someone can't provide for their child if they're 'low income'."

Right on!

This is especially true when the lines between "low income" and "middle income" can be vague, don't line up with what it takes to keep a child healthy, etc.

"Should my father not have been born?"

BTW, you made great points about your grandmother and other low-income mothers but this isn't a good argument for them. Arguing against X because it would have prevented a birth can lump together too many bad Xs and good Xs. For example, the daughter or son of a man conceived during rape could also say "should my father not have been born?" in favor of rape. Your grandmother definitely shouldn't be lumped in with rapists!

"Just because someone isn't in a certain income bracket doesn't mean they shouldn't be denied children."

At least not if that soemone has real consent from the other person/people whose body/bodies or baby she or he would need to have a child.

It's another thing when A feels "I don't want to [donate my eggs to you/donate my sperm to you/be your baby's surrogate mother/have unprotected sex with you/let you adopt my baby]" about B. If no one else grants B that much access, it could pit A's right to say no for whatever reason against B's right to have a child for whatever reason.

I'm not sure how accurate this still is, but here's an example:

"IVF donor sperm shortage revealed" by Jane Dreaper,
Health correspondent, BBC News, 9/13/2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5341982.stm :

"Almost 70% of fertility clinics either have no access to donor sperm, or find it extremely difficult to obtain, a BBC survey suggests.

"Specialists say infertile patients are becoming desperate and more resources are needed for campaigns aimed at recruiting donors.

"But the government said some clinics had managed to recruit new donors and the rest should follow suit..."

I disagree with the characterization of the NYT article as "titillating". They touched on the sexual aspects of the crime only long enough to let the reader know that there were sexual aspects to the assault; mostly they focused on the violence, the woman's anguish, and her escape. Afterwards, they described the reaction of the accused sitting in the dock.

To me, the article didn't read like it was supposed to be titillating -- it read like it was supposed to be horrifying. Which, considering the nature of the crime, is entirely appropriate.

While printing the details of each and every case would be counterproductive, I do think that the general public needs to be reminded now and again what forms misogyny can take.

Well, I am not going to read the 19-hour rape account right now. Maybe some other time, but not today.

I just wrote a long letter to a reporter of my hometown newspaper about this very thing. Her article about a man accused of raping a 12-year-old in whose house he was staying did indeed "read like porn" in that it gave all the details and offered no illumination. Not to mention that it was about a child, and it basically told you everything you need to know who she is, without giving her name.

I really disagree that newspaper articles need to be written in this way. "What forms misogyny takes"? This is not just a story about a sexist ass of a husband, or intsitutional oppression of women in the business world, or the reduction of women to body parts... all of which are forms misogyny can take.

Rape, like this one, is more than just plain old sexism or heven hatred of women. And the victims are people, for chrissakes, not an illustrative example of misogyny. Why should they have to suffer the detailed repetition of their own brutalization in the public media? (No longer jsut a courtroom ordeal, this.) Why can't these effing lazy reporters do their jobs and decide what and how to write the stories, instead of just copying the details in all their mind-numbing glory, straight from the charging documents?

For G-d's sake! Rape needs to be brought to light, not silenced. But is throwing a clinical, glaring spotlight on the acts themselves, and on the pain and suffering of the victim, really going to help the victims and stop rape?

Or is it going to have the effect of making it all seem like just another flat, caricatured version of "life" which is not life at all but media?

If you're infertile, you adopt, or you don't have children. If you can't afford children, you don't have children.

Um, just a guess...but I'm willing to bet it's not exactly easy for low-income women and families to adopt children. And as Malaika already pointed out, money does not a good parent make.

I'm with you - if you can't have kids, adopt. But the bottom line is that's not my choice to make for other women, and low-income women clearly have fewer choices when it comes to motherhood. And that's not right.

Elitist much?

It has nothing to do with being an elitist. Children are incredibly expensive, and not something you do on a lark.

Would you like me to call it elitist when women demand child support? Kids. Are. Expensive.

If you barely make enough to pay your own bills, you shouldn't have children. That's not elitism, it's common sense. It costs upwards of what, now, a quarter of a million dollars or more to raise a child to 18?

That's a lot of money.

It's also why if you can't provide necessities for your children, social services has the right to take them away from you.

Just because someone isn't in a certain income bracket doesn't mean they shouldn't be denied children.

The people who can't afford IVF and other treatments aren't being "denied children". There's thousands of unwanted children waiting for adoption.

Just because you want something, doesn't mean it should just be provided to you. Fertilization treatments are above and beyond, expensive, and require expertise to perform. That's why they aren't given out for free.

It's not as if people have a need to reproduce. Saying that women do, would be a 180 on what most feminists like to say: That there is no biological drive for women to reproduce.

Ergo, it's a want. Some people are infertile. That's life. Some people aren't athletic, some aren't geniuses. Should someone of low intellect be granted a position at NASA, simply because it's not fair to deny them a job they want because they're unable to do it?

They touched on the sexual aspects of the crime only long enough to let the reader know that there were sexual aspects to the assault; mostly they focused on the violence, the woman's anguish, and her escape.

There were no sexual "aspects" to the assault - the entire assault was sexualized. Just because it didn't always involve sex organs doesn't mean this sick fuck wasn't getting his jollies - it said right there in the article he got off on her helplessness, lack of control, and humiliation! In this particular attack, I don't believe sex and violence can be separated.

Sexualized violence and "anguish" is nearly inescapable in this culture (and completely normalized, from the looks of horror flicks), and recounting it in a story-like format in a national newspaper only serves to normalize it more. If sexual assault was only "part" of the attack, as you claim, why would the NYT categorize the entire attack as a "rape" in the title?

I'm surprised this passage from the rape & women of color article didn't attract any attention here. Of all the reasons women don't report rape, I would think "battling historical racial stereotypes" would be pretty low on the list.

Unfortunately, because many African-American female rape victims do not want to perpetuate racial stereotypes about the black male rapist (created and used by white mobs to justify the lynching of economically and politically mobile black men) and the black male criminal (now used to maintain racial disparities in the criminal justice system), they often do not press charges against their assailants because they fear further criminalizing African-American men.

You're right. Cringing as I was reading that rape article (I was forewarned) I did not stop to ask, why am I hearing this? and what happened later? That story could have been helpful in so many ways instead of simply sounding like something inspired by recent gore movies (my impression).