More Good News (and I am really, really being sarcastic)

[trinityvixen]

I have to give these "trigger warnings." Most of the time I post things and I'm all cool with making people uncomfortable, but these even made me uncomfortable, and I'm not easily provoked.

Just FYI. They're also behind cuts so I can goggle and go WTFWTFWTFWTF'ingF!?!?

A pregnant woman was murdered and her baby was cut out of her body.

I can't even express horror to a sufficient degree over this one. Some mentally unbalanced woman set up a pregnant woman to be murdered and then cut into her body to hack out the near-term baby. Which she then tried to pass off as her own. This is the stuff horror tales are made from. Only it's real. What the fucking fuck. No, really, seriously, someone tell me: WHAT. THE. FUCKING. FUCK.

Eleven year-olds cannot, in just about any country, grant consent. Therefore, a pregnant eleven year-old has been raped. No question.

It's not a matter of "was she asking for it." It's not a matter of "the accused is innocent until proven guilty." The accused doesn't come into this at all. No matter who got this girl pregnant, that person is a rapist. The girl was raped. I make a big deal about language, about the sorts of subtle reminders of how women are held in inferior positions without (necessarily) conscious thought on the parts of the people doing it. This? Is proof of that right here. Whether you think this girl is the sluttiest pre-teen since Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver, even if you want to argue that maturity-wise she was, even at eleven, entirely capable of consenting, legally any girl under a certain age who has been penetrated vaginally HAS BEEN RAPED.

Scare quotes are so abused, I could scream, but this makes me want to issue Banshee-like howls until eardrums rupture. Scare quotes. You put scare quotes around something that is undeniable...to what end? To imply doubt? THE GIRL IS PREGNANT. Unless you're nuts or stupid or her name is Mary, you cannot possibly, not if you are a remotely human being, think that she is pregnant by any other means except rape. Because it was rape. RAPE, GODDAMNIT.

I'd like the shit-faced coward who put up the word "rape" in scare quotes to defend him/herself. I'd like their editor to give a reasonable explanation for why that punctuation, which is grammatically and ethically, and legally indefensible, passed muster. They're hiding behind the cover-my-ass, don't-shoot-the-messenger, I'm-only-repeating-what-someone-else-said libel excuse. "'Raped'" was said by someone else, you don't want to take credit for it! However, unless you're putting every incidence of the word "rape," "raped," and "rapist," in quotes, that's the most hollow bullshit excuse ever. Which usage is quoted, which isn't? Why can't we assumed that "raped," as a word, is a word that is fair use when talking about, oh, I dunno, A GODDAMN RAPE, as opposed to its belonging to one person who mentioned a girl being raped? For fuck's sake, I hate people.

Comments

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

Oh God.

And at first, I thought the two stories were related; that someone had set up someone to be raped, then killed her and cut her baby out. Not that I feel any better that these are separate incidents... :(

I'm not sure which is more sad...

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

...these headlines or the fact that I remember similar or worse headlines being in the news in the last 4 years. Scary no? I remember a case a few years back where someone posing as a realtor who cut a baby out of a women and left her to bleed to death. And 11 is messed up, but 9 (yes nine) makes you question the nature of humanity.

[viridian.livejournal.com]

D:

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

None of my icons convey fury enough for how I feel about these things! I feel like we are moving backward and women are being reduced to property again. I feel like all the work that has been done to make women legally equal is being undone. I feel that people need to be more educated about rape - that preteen boys need a special sex ed class that spells out exactly what rape is and that it is wrong - so that people will stop thinking this is an okay thing.

And OMG, I am so upset about the baby thing, too! And, truthfully, that is actually the nightmare that was most shared by the other pregnant moms I talked to when I was expecting - which I guess indicates that we had all heard about that shit happening before. People are so fucked up, and they visit it upon others, and I want to smite them. >:(

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Random question -- doesn't cover this case, obviously, since this was supposedly her uncle.

But would you still call it rape if she was pregnant from having sex with an 11-yo boy? It would seem that he's equally unable to give consent, and without getting into the legal territory of the teenage girl who was deemed a child pornographer for putting nudie pics of herself on the Internet...