This is extremely cool

Himself woke up this morning, read this, and turned green.

He loves the Wrath of Khan! He would totally have gone to that. This is what I meant when I said Austin is a cool city.

I told him he can't complain when there's new Doctor Who and Red Dwarf this weekend. We are going to be in geek heaven!

Mouse Wars

I first saw him at the weekend. He stuck his mousey nose out from behind my exercise bike. I didn't panic. I'm much bigger than him, after all. As far as household pests go, a mouse is infinitely preferable to almost everything else. In New York, we had roaches. Eurgh. A mouse is nice compared to that.

I roused Himself from bed, and we chased him around the sitting room, from couch to armchair to bookcase to exercise bike again. He was too fast for us. So the next day, off I went to the hardware shop around the corner.

"Have you any humane mousetraps, please?" I asked the nice youngfella who, I had learned the week before, knew very little about electric drills and probably even less about mousetraps.

Ten minutes of searching through the piles of hardware merchandise later, the youngfella had located some ordinary mousetraps and some poison. Ethical dilemma time. Obviously, I had wanted one of those 'capture' traps. When I caught the mouse, I could release him outside, to meet his slow and messy end at the claws of the rats along the canal, or the cats who sunbathe on the roof of our shed. You know, the humane option.

I took half a dozen ordinary traps home. The Internet informed me that cheese was a myth, propagated by Tom & Jerry. No, you want to bait your mousetraps with peanut butter. So I did. Little globs of peanut butter went on each of the traps, which were secreted around the place - behind the exercise bike, in the kitchen.

Nothing was heard or seen of the mouse for four days. I thought, ooh, we scared him off with our ineffectual chasing. Good riddance. Until last night.

The mouse was spotted scarpering across the kitchen counters. Eww! Thank Jeebus for my love of plastic containers for foodstuffs, and my Monica Gellar habit of always wiping the counter before and after I cook. I baited two traps with peanut butter and placed them next to the gap behind the dishwasher into which the mouse had dived.

This morning, I came down to find both traps sprung, upside down, and mouseless. The peanut butter was gone. What the hell? Right, my fault, maybe I hadn't set them properly. I re-set one, more carefully this time, moved the other, and went about my day.

This afternoon, I checked them again and found this:

Apologies for the blurry crappiness.

That's right. The trap had been dragged across the counter, and the peanut butter removed without springing the trap. Yes, those are teeth marks, or claw marks, or whatever, in the peanut butter.

The trap definitely works. I know this because the first thing I did was incredulously test it, and it sprang closed immediately on my fingers. It hurt like hell. Himself was caught by one as well, when we first set them. It's clear that the mouse is cleverer than both of us.

I am dealing with a goddamn CARTOON mouse here. How the hell did he do that? What am I going to do now?

Drug rape doesn't happen... oh wait

Rohypnol rape is a myth, did you know? It never happens.

Except, of course, when it does.

John Worboys has been found guilty of sexually assaulting over a dozen women. Other victims may number in the hundreds. Rape is 'he said, she said', though, isn't it? Apparently it takes the testimony of 14 women to contradict one man.

And is it any wonder rape convictions are so low then cases are handled like this:

It emerged in court that Worboys was arrested and questioned in July 2007 following reports by a number of women, but he was released on police bail without further action. A further seven of the women who gave evidence in court were assaulted after his initial release.

Following the verdict, the Independent Police Complaints Commission announced it will review the Metropolitan police's handling of the case and examine how Worboys managed to slip through detectives' fingers after the July 2007 attack. Scotland Yard referred itself to the watchdog and the officers involved could face misconduct charges if found to have acted negligently.

Credit to the Guardian, they have two excellent pieces on low conviction rates and how we can start taking rape seriously. Go read them.

One final excerpt to cheer you up for the weekend:

The reality of rape in Britain, that it is an almost cost-free act of crushing aggression, makes us look backward. No country in Europe has a lower conviction rate, other than Ireland.

SXSW

SXSW 2009 kicks off today. I'm jealous. Austin is a cool town.

Let's look on the plus side. I'm finally home for Paddy's Day. Um, yay. Who needs the film lineup of SXSW when you have... Darby O'Gill at the IFI.

Seriously, some of the rest of the programme looks quite interesting. I might try the 5k Road Race. We'll see.

Feminist Weddings

So, in my introductory post, I mentioned that I am getting married this year. It's on my mind a lot, and at the moment, much of my feminist thought is directed towards the marriage process (much as, when I was immigrating to America, much of my focus was on feminism and immigrant rights).

Hey, I'm in good company. Via Feministe, I learned that Feministing's Jessica is also getting married, and guess what, she's getting bullshit sexist criticism for it. "What a fucking idiot... Who is this... guy, the ultimate Beta male pussy or what... Why the hell would anyone marry that annoying bitch i'll never know... As far as the groom goes, this is already a same sex marriage" says the first six fucking comments. (Not linking, fuck them).

I don't have much to say at the moment. My wedding day is six months away, and I have a shitload of feminist thought about it. This post is to say, it's coming. Feministe's criticism of the 'Bridezilla' trope is spot-on. Go read it. I particularly enjoyed:

Women are still largely charged with organizing the wedding, because it’s supposed to be their day. Wedding planning, for a lot of couples, is a huge endeavor — for a lot of women, it’s the equivalent of a part-time job on top of whatever they already do for work. But if all that pressure ends up making them crack just a little, they’re crazed selfish biatches.

Not that I’m defending the bad behavior of some women in planning their weddings. Assholes are assholes, and there are a fair number of assholes who eventually get married and, unsurprisingly, act like assholes in the process. The ability to even freak out about your wedding is a function of socioeconomic and cultural privilege.

But when we get to the point where all we need as evidence that a woman is a selfish jerk who thinks of her wedding as Princess’s Special Day is the fact that she’s a woman, I think we’ve gone a little too far down Misogyny Lane.

Star Trek

A bit of geeky subculture, to lighten the tone around here somewhat.

Himself, the Feminist Househusband, loves Star Trek and one of our new TV channels shows The Original Series (TOS) and The Next Generation (TNG) almost every day.

A few days ago, the announcer before the show said 'Next, the crew of the Enterprise encounter a planet run by women... but all is not as wonderful as it first seems'.

Good gravy, I said to myself, I'm not sitting here watching Shatner bed dozens of dictatorial Amazons. Thankfully, it was TNG, so the episode was mostly about touchy-feely issues of personal sovereignty. And Ryker having sex with a dictatorial Amazon, but I can put up with that.

Rape and RTE

One of the key ways a rape culture is cemented is through the media's lens. How a news outlet reports on and describes sexual violence is critical. Sometimes, the mainstream media's refusal to take rape seriously is overt, such as when they report on a victim's sexual history, clothes, or alcohol intake.

In the case of today's bulletin from RTE, 'Gang attacks couples in Co Louth', about a shocking attack on two couples last night, it's a little more subtle. Behold the opening paragraphs:

Two couples were injured when they were attacked by a gang in Co Louth in the early hours of this morning.

The incident occurred in the Townley Hall area between Slane and Drogheda at around 4.30am this morning.

The two couples had been in a car when they were attacked by a gang and beaten up. One woman was allegedly raped.

When somebody is mugged on the street or robbed in their home, when they are pickpocketed in a bar or glassed in a nightclub, the incident is reported as fact. But a woman is allegedly raped. Because she might be lying, of course. Never mind that the rate of false reporting for rape is roughly the same (2%) as for all those other crimes.

I'm not talking, just to be clear, about describing someone accused of a crime. Until a conviction is obtained, it's only right and proper that someone should be reported as 'the alleged mugger' or 'the alleged rapist'. But that's not what went on in this article. In almost the same breath, RTE presented the violent attack on two men and two women as questioned, while the sexual assault of one of those women is only 'alleged'.

We don't pretend that people who are hospitalised by violent non-sexual attacks have made up their assault, or inflicted their injuries themselves. Sexual attacks should be treated the same way.

If one were to be as charitable as possible, it could perhaps be hoped that the RTE newsroom only had confirmation from the hospital of the non-sexual violence, and that the rape had not been confirmed. But this is not a particularly reasonable explanation. Why would the hospital, or the gardai, not confirm all details of the attack at the same time? If the story of the rape is just a rumour, why publish it at all until confirmed? Why permit it to be written about in the fashion above, which suggests that the non-sexual aspects are certain but the rape only an 'allegation'? Treating sexual violence in such a hamfisted manner is inexcusable.