Chicken Underworld

Price of Admission

by: Tim Vanderpool  |  The Tucson Weekly Thursday 05 June 2008  

Along the border, sexual assault has become routine.  "Rape trees" are symbols of conquest.

Article: http://www.truthout.org/article/price-admission-migrant-women#

This is so horrifying... It is too easy for perpetrators (coyotes and border patrol during immigration and employers/others afterward) to get away with this type of abuse because they know women won't report the crimes due to fear of deportation. It breaks my heart. Clearly immigration laws must be changed in order to facilitate some hope for justice for the millions of vulnerable women who face this type of violence during the immigration process and also are vulnerable for as long as they lack documents. Our "criminal justice" system makes it hard enough for citizens to report rape (with a reporting rate of about 35%), but women who lack documents face nearly impossible chances of justice or protection.  Perpetrators know that undocumented women have no recourse, and are more likely to target them because of it.  U.S. laws do so little to protect these women, that it amounts to implicit sanctioning of this violence.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/28/california.gang.rape.bystander/
Alleged Rape Raises Questions about Bystanders
October 28, 2009

My heart hurts so bad, not just for the poor child, whose entire life will never be the same, but also for the numerous young men who had so much hatred/fear/misogyny in their hearts to stand idly by and participate in this horrific violence. Seriously disgusting and devastating - and not an isolated incident. This points to the sickness of our entire society - around views of women & girls, masculinity norms (men enforce "rules" that facilitate this type of crime), violence, and our responsibility to help someone in need.

“People ask, ‘Are you going to be strong enough? Are you going to be a fighter for us?’” said Rep. Judy Biggert, who beat five men in the initial Illinois Republican primary in 1998. “That’s always the way I’ve been treated.”

Biggert said she was told during her early days in law school at Northwestern University that she was a student by mistake — a man should have been in her seat.

“That has always given me the drive to work two, three times harder than men,” Biggert said.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a rising GOP star and female-candidate recruiter for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said it took several “taps on the shoulder” before she decided to run for office.

“Women seem to wait for someone who plants the idea and gives them confidence,” McMorris Rodgers said. “I had individuals who shared their confidence in me, and it helped erase some of the self-doubt.”

“Running for Congress is no walk in the park,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who has served in the House since 1995. “It’s a tough business, and people who do it successfully stand trial by fire.”

Lofgren entered the 1994 Democratic primary in California as the ultimate underdog against a favored male candidate, San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery. On primary night, television crews and reporters crowded her opponent’s headquarters, awaiting the presumed winner’s victory speech, while a lone photographer sat at Lofgren’s offices, waiting to snap a photo of the loser. But in an upset, Lofgren won the primary and then the election. Despite her victory, she faced additional hurdles on Capitol Hill that have continued to drive her daily work efforts. Her initial committee requests were ignored, she said, and she struggled to break through some of the old boys’ networks.

“There were some older male members who had a tough time accepting that there were women members,” said Lofgren, an immigration lawyer who now serves on the powerful House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees.

However, political science professor Jyl Josephson, director of the Rutgers Women’s Studies Program, cautions not to make too much of gender differences on the Hill — particularly among members who’ve been there for a while.

“We spend a lot time measuring gender differences rather than similarities,” Josephson said. “But there are many studies that show similarities, and they don’t get discussed nearly as much.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27152_Page2.html
Interesting - women politicians may outperform their male colleagues due to the increased pressure they face.

This is infuriating.  Every few years, an African American male professor seems to get arrested, detained, or harrassed by the campus police.  Or I should say it get reported every few years - probably happens much more often.  I've heard of such a case at Stanford with one of my former professors, a very respected psychologist, as well as at San Francisco State few years back. Good thing racism doesn't exist any more (according to North Carolina Senator Jeff Sessions). Grrr.

the recession has done for the government safety net pretty much what Hurricane Katrina did for the Federal Emergency Management Agency: it’s demonstrated that you can be clinging to your roof with the water rising, and no one may come to helicopter you out.

Barbara Ehrenreich is writing a series of op-eds for the New York Times. I'm glad to see she is pushing for the spotlight of the economic crisis to be re-focused from the wealthy & middle class to those who were already facing poverty and who are truly suffering the worst from this recession.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/opinion/12ehrenreich.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=ehrenreich&st=cse

Well said, Anita: "the critical question is not whether the Supreme Court should have seats set aside for women...the question we confront as a country is whether we can let go of the presumption that these lofty positions belong to men."