Just like everyone else, I've been following the Steubenville trial of the two high school athletes that raped a 16 year old girl and then spent the next few days bragging about it through text messages, videos, and pictures. And I've been absolutely appalled at the message that people have been sending out.
While a CNN corespondent was in a broadcast saying how sad she felt for these boys and how their lives were just absolutely ruined by the verdict and people around the country are lamenting this decision, I think these boys got off easy. These boys made the decision to rape a girl. Then they bragged about it. How can anyone feel bad for them. Go ahead and read some of these text messages and tell me they didn't deserve to be tried as adults and convicted of a longer sentence. And that's only a a small part of the 1500 text messages these men sent.
But, other than the "Oh these poor boys" attitude that people seem to have, I'm even more furious about the response of people that this girl should have done something different.
Yes, she shouldn't have been drinking to the point where she was barely conscious especially at 16. But that doesn't excuse what these men did to her. But this happens all the time. Not just this highly publicized case. But all the damn time. Women are raped and its their fault because they should have stopped it.
There's this attitude that apparently women shouldn't dress a certain way or they will be raped. They shouldn't act a certain way or they will be raped. They shouldn't drink or they will be raped. They shouldn't go out alone or they will be raped. Women have to go out in groups and stick together or one of them will be raped. When walking to and from your car, house, shop, garbage bin women have to be aware of their surroundings because anyone could rape them because they weren't paying attention. Women have to take self defense courses in order to prepare themselves for the time a rapist decides to come after them because if they're not prepared, its their fault and they should have been prepared. If you don't explicitly say "No" you are giving your consent.
Not only is this logic absolute bullshit, its also insulting to men everywhere.
Women are taught that they have to be prepared in every circumstance for a man to attack them. If a woman is wearing certain things or acts a certain way, it means that she has provoked a man to attack her. It means that the general position of a man is to have sex with a woman unless he is otherwise told no. It means that men are nothing more than some uncontrollable sex fiend that have to be protected from these women that dress and act a certain way. Its insulting to men to say that they simply can't control themselves when women do certain things.
This society seems bound and determined to make rape a woman's fault. If a woman is raped because she is at a party and is too drunk to say no, it is her fault because she should have stayed with friends that should have protected her and she shouldn't have been drinking so much. This happens to women more often than people would like to believe. I would be willing to bet that you know someone that this has happened to. And when this woman tried to say she was raped, people told her it was all her fault because she got drunk and she should have known better. I know because I've been there.
People don't like to talk about the fact that this standard teaching of "Don't get raped" is offensive to both men and women alike. Instead of teaching that, how about we start telling people "Don't rape." Wouldn't that solve the problem?
We should start teaching that if a person is too drunk to say no, it means no. If a person says "I don't think so" or "maybe not" because they're too afraid to actually say no, it means no. If a person is in any way showing that they don't want to have sex, don't have sex with them. It doesn't matter what they're wearing, what they're doing, what they're saying, or even if they're alone. Don't have sex with people if they don't give consent. If you don't have consent, don't video tape it and post it on the internet. Don't text your friends bragging about it. Don't send pictures of your "conquest."
Just act like a decent human being.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
I finally made another vlog!
I know its been forever since I actually posted a vlog. I'm sorry. I will get better and more regular with posting them. Promise!
Friday, March 15, 2013
Lifescouts Friday: Camping, Niagra Falls and more!
Happy Friday everyone! I hope you all enjoy this week's edition of Lifescouts Friday. Wishing you all a wonderful weekend! DFTBA
Niagara Falls
The summer before I started high school, my parents decided to take my brothers and I on a road trip through the Northeast. This included stops in Maine, Pennsylvania, New York, and a stop at Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls is... huge. And impressive. We took the boat ride that takes you right up to the Falls (even in July it was freezing!) and walked around behind the falls. And while it was great to see, I don't really have any intention of making a second trip.
Archery
Growing up, my parents would send me off to camp almost every summer. No matter where we lived, every summer it was guaranteed that I would be heading off to some sort of camp for at least two weeks in the summer where I would learn something really cool for two weeks to never use it again. One summer, I took up archery (it was either that or some dumb craft stuff). I'm by no means a Katniss when it comes to archery, but it was a lot of fun to learn.
Fencing
Like archery, I took up fencing in summer camp. I was really into fencing since this also happened to be the summer that Pirates of the Caribbean was released and it was fun to pretend to be a pirate for a little while. But I can't help but ask myself what were these people trying to teach us? Were they insane letting thirteen-year-olds spend hours each day learn how to hit each other with swords? Especially considering they were actual swords, just with no edge. Oh well, at least I didn't die.
Plant a Tree
Again, something I've done at various summer camps. I guess in order to balance out all of the ways they taught us to kill each other, camps would often have events at the beginning/end of camp where we would spend time planting trees.
Picnic
When the weather is nice out, I love picnics. There's something really nice about throwing a couple dishes together, grabbing a blanket and going on a picnic. Shortly after Austin and I moved to Dallas, we would go on picnics all the time when we were in the West Village. There was something amazingly relaxing about grabbing our dinner and wine and heading down the Katy Trail. Sometimes I miss being in Uptown because the Katy Trail was great for that sort of thing.
Niagara Falls
The summer before I started high school, my parents decided to take my brothers and I on a road trip through the Northeast. This included stops in Maine, Pennsylvania, New York, and a stop at Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls is... huge. And impressive. We took the boat ride that takes you right up to the Falls (even in July it was freezing!) and walked around behind the falls. And while it was great to see, I don't really have any intention of making a second trip.
Growing up, my parents would send me off to camp almost every summer. No matter where we lived, every summer it was guaranteed that I would be heading off to some sort of camp for at least two weeks in the summer where I would learn something really cool for two weeks to never use it again. One summer, I took up archery (it was either that or some dumb craft stuff). I'm by no means a Katniss when it comes to archery, but it was a lot of fun to learn.
Like archery, I took up fencing in summer camp. I was really into fencing since this also happened to be the summer that Pirates of the Caribbean was released and it was fun to pretend to be a pirate for a little while. But I can't help but ask myself what were these people trying to teach us? Were they insane letting thirteen-year-olds spend hours each day learn how to hit each other with swords? Especially considering they were actual swords, just with no edge. Oh well, at least I didn't die.
Plant a Tree
Again, something I've done at various summer camps. I guess in order to balance out all of the ways they taught us to kill each other, camps would often have events at the beginning/end of camp where we would spend time planting trees.
When the weather is nice out, I love picnics. There's something really nice about throwing a couple dishes together, grabbing a blanket and going on a picnic. Shortly after Austin and I moved to Dallas, we would go on picnics all the time when we were in the West Village. There was something amazingly relaxing about grabbing our dinner and wine and heading down the Katy Trail. Sometimes I miss being in Uptown because the Katy Trail was great for that sort of thing.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
ARTC 1353 - Self Portrait
The second project in my computer illustration course has been to create a self portrait and color it in. It was supposed to be a bit a of a pop-art type of self portrait. Since I realized that I really don't have any recent pictures of myself, I decided to use one of my bridal portraits. I had a lot of great shots, but this is the one I decided to work on. I decided to leave the background from the original, I think it looks kinda cool with the background.
I had a lot of fun working on this project. When it was first assigned, I couldn't imagine being able to take a photograph, turning it into a vector and tracing over it to create some as cool as this. While it did take a long time to get it done, I enjoyed every moment of it.
.jpg) |
| Original |
 |
| Vectored self portrait |
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Get mad, but get informed first
I'm absolutely fucking sick of hearing people complain about the government when it seems like they don't know the basics of how our government works. I get that people dislike the President. I get that people dislike the cuts that are being made. But lets get one thing clear:
The President isn't the one that decides these cuts.
What's that? You didn't know that? You thought that the President had full power? No. Wrong. Don't you remember learning about a little system in place called "checks and balances"? It means that while the Executive branch (aka our President) is the one to sign a bill and pass it, the Legislative branch (aka Congress) is the one to actually write it up and create it while the Judicial system (aka the Supreme Court) make the ruling on a laws legality. It means that while the President can make speeches and statements about various things that he thinks should or should not happen, it ultimately comes down to what those 535 members decide on doing.
Get used to the fact that while the President is the one to sign a budget into law, Congress is required to pass a budget every year in October that decides where funds will be distributed and cut. Various committees in both the House of Representatives and Senate decide on what is put into the budget. And if they can get a budget put together and agreed upon by the majority (which hasn't happened since 2009), it gets sent to the President to be signed into a law. But you say he can veto a law which means this is all his fault? No. It can get sent back down for a 2/3 vote. And if that doesn't pass? Then the House and Senate can make appropriation bills and set up a time when automatic cuts will be made if they can't agree on a budget.
If you want to get mad at someone, get mad at the people that are sitting in Congress, writing laws and setting the budget and deciding what should be cut. Maybe you should get mad at the fact that there are certain aspects of the budget that can't be touched, while roughly 36% of the budget is open for our wonderful leaders to manipulate. Things like Social Security (22%), Medicare/Medicaid (23%) and the interest on the US debt (6%) are areas that generally can't be cut, they're mandatory spending. The "discretionary spending" that can be cut (17%) covers things like education, NASA, and departments that regulate food and health safety while the defense budget (19%) covers the military and wars and homeland security, this is where cuts are going to be made.
Maybe you should get made that the reason Social Security is such a financial drain on the country is brought about by leaders in Congress deciding some 30-odd years ago to use this money as their own personal bank while never paying it back. But guess what? Those people that paid into it are now retiring. And those people deserve to get their Social Security checks because its their money. Its not an entitlement, it is their money in the first place! Maybe you should stop getting mad at the 70-year old couple that draws a check every month that doesn't even cover half of their monthly living expenses. Maybe you should realize that there are simply more older people retiring than there are younger people working. So of course its going to cost more to give them Social Security. Maybe you should realize that people are living longer, Social Security was made to help people from retirement to when they die, which used to be around age 70 and is now around age 80.
Maybe instead of blindly blaming the President for the cuts being made to our education system you should get mad at the fact that the US defense budget is more than the top 12 countries combined and then the decision is made to cut their education assistance programs instead of cutting outdated programs and systems in place. Maybe you should get mad at the fact that the military has no problems spending money to update their computers and systems every year because if that money isn't spent, it means they have too large of a budget (which they do) and their budgets get cut the next year. Maybe you should start to realize that the three wars we were in cost a lot of money and we're going to be paying for them for quite a while. And those wars? Guess what? The current President wasn't the one to get us into them.
Maybe you should stop blaming a single individual for the Sequester and start blaming the people that actually thought it would be a good idea for automatic spending cuts to happen March 1, 2013. The people that thought this would be a good idea? Oh yeah, they're the same people that couldn't agree on a budget for a year and thought that in two years when things were really bad, they'd be able to come together and reach an agreement. Maybe you should take the time to actually learn about what the hell our government is doing instead of waiting until shit hits the fan and complaining about everything. Maybe you should take your opinions to the place where it actually matters, start participating in your elections that happen all the time instead of voting once every four years for a man that really doesn't have that much power.
Get mad at the government, that's fine. If you're mad, it means you're taking an interest. It means you're involved. But don't just sit back and get mad when things that we all knew would happen eventually happen. Before you start blaming a single individual for an entire country's problems, it might be in your best interest to actually learn how things work and how laws and budgets are made.
The President isn't the one that decides these cuts.
What's that? You didn't know that? You thought that the President had full power? No. Wrong. Don't you remember learning about a little system in place called "checks and balances"? It means that while the Executive branch (aka our President) is the one to sign a bill and pass it, the Legislative branch (aka Congress) is the one to actually write it up and create it while the Judicial system (aka the Supreme Court) make the ruling on a laws legality. It means that while the President can make speeches and statements about various things that he thinks should or should not happen, it ultimately comes down to what those 535 members decide on doing.
Get used to the fact that while the President is the one to sign a budget into law, Congress is required to pass a budget every year in October that decides where funds will be distributed and cut. Various committees in both the House of Representatives and Senate decide on what is put into the budget. And if they can get a budget put together and agreed upon by the majority (which hasn't happened since 2009), it gets sent to the President to be signed into a law. But you say he can veto a law which means this is all his fault? No. It can get sent back down for a 2/3 vote. And if that doesn't pass? Then the House and Senate can make appropriation bills and set up a time when automatic cuts will be made if they can't agree on a budget.
If you want to get mad at someone, get mad at the people that are sitting in Congress, writing laws and setting the budget and deciding what should be cut. Maybe you should get mad at the fact that there are certain aspects of the budget that can't be touched, while roughly 36% of the budget is open for our wonderful leaders to manipulate. Things like Social Security (22%), Medicare/Medicaid (23%) and the interest on the US debt (6%) are areas that generally can't be cut, they're mandatory spending. The "discretionary spending" that can be cut (17%) covers things like education, NASA, and departments that regulate food and health safety while the defense budget (19%) covers the military and wars and homeland security, this is where cuts are going to be made.
Maybe you should get made that the reason Social Security is such a financial drain on the country is brought about by leaders in Congress deciding some 30-odd years ago to use this money as their own personal bank while never paying it back. But guess what? Those people that paid into it are now retiring. And those people deserve to get their Social Security checks because its their money. Its not an entitlement, it is their money in the first place! Maybe you should stop getting mad at the 70-year old couple that draws a check every month that doesn't even cover half of their monthly living expenses. Maybe you should realize that there are simply more older people retiring than there are younger people working. So of course its going to cost more to give them Social Security. Maybe you should realize that people are living longer, Social Security was made to help people from retirement to when they die, which used to be around age 70 and is now around age 80.
Maybe instead of blindly blaming the President for the cuts being made to our education system you should get mad at the fact that the US defense budget is more than the top 12 countries combined and then the decision is made to cut their education assistance programs instead of cutting outdated programs and systems in place. Maybe you should get mad at the fact that the military has no problems spending money to update their computers and systems every year because if that money isn't spent, it means they have too large of a budget (which they do) and their budgets get cut the next year. Maybe you should start to realize that the three wars we were in cost a lot of money and we're going to be paying for them for quite a while. And those wars? Guess what? The current President wasn't the one to get us into them.
Maybe you should stop blaming a single individual for the Sequester and start blaming the people that actually thought it would be a good idea for automatic spending cuts to happen March 1, 2013. The people that thought this would be a good idea? Oh yeah, they're the same people that couldn't agree on a budget for a year and thought that in two years when things were really bad, they'd be able to come together and reach an agreement. Maybe you should take the time to actually learn about what the hell our government is doing instead of waiting until shit hits the fan and complaining about everything. Maybe you should take your opinions to the place where it actually matters, start participating in your elections that happen all the time instead of voting once every four years for a man that really doesn't have that much power.
Get mad at the government, that's fine. If you're mad, it means you're taking an interest. It means you're involved. But don't just sit back and get mad when things that we all knew would happen eventually happen. Before you start blaming a single individual for an entire country's problems, it might be in your best interest to actually learn how things work and how laws and budgets are made.
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