Today, the ACLU announced that it is filing a federal lawsuit on behalf of prisoners at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, a private prison in Meridian, Mississippi. The suit alleges that EMCF is "hyper-violent, grotesquely filthy and dangerous." One example of the jail's dangers: this handwritten letter from an inmate describing his own rape.

According to the new lawsuit, the EMCF— a prison that holds "hundreds of mentally ill prisoners"— is rat-infested, poorly managed, hazardous to life and limb, and rife with inhumane conditions. Lights and toilets are broken; suicide attempts are "frequent"; medical care is poor; official supervision is lax. The lawsuit alleges that the staff "sadistically brutalizes" prisoners, and are "deliberately indifferent" to acts of violence against inmates.

That includes acts of sexual assault. The specter of prison rape is frequently raised as a risk of incarceration, but rarely talked about directly. This letter is one inmate's story, in his own words. The letter was sent from an EMCF inmate to the ACLU last year. Also included

are excerpts from an investigative report from the Lauderdale County Sheriff's office, as well as an EMCF internal investigative report with more horrific details of the prisoner's ordeal at the hands of knife-wielding, cocaine-sniffing gang rapists. That report finds that the allegations of rape are substantiated by video and physical evidence. The letter, in other words, is true. Names in the letter and reports have been redacted at the ACLU's request.

After thanking him I asked him “Besides acting, what are you most proud of that you have done in you life (that you are willing to share with us)?”. Sir Patrick told us about how he couldn’t protect his mother from abuse in his household growing up and so in her name works with an organization called Refuge for safe houses for women and children to escape from abusive house holds. Sir Patrick Stewart learned only last year that his father had actually been suffering from PTSD after he returned from the military and was never properly treated. In his father’s name he works with an organization called Combat Stress to help those soldiers who are suffering from PTSD.
Just before moving on, Sir Patrick asked Skye if she was "okay," prompting the moderator to ask if she wanted a hug.

Then this happened:

Sir Patrick didn’t even hesitate, he smiled, hopped off the stage and came over to embrace me in a hug. Which he held me there for a long while. He told me “You never have to go through that again, you’re safe now.” I couldn’t stop thanking him. His embrace was so warm and genuine. It was two people, two strangers, supporting and giving love. And when we pulled away he looked strait in my eyes, like he was promising that. He told me to take care. And I will.
If Helen Mirren is Britain's One True Queen, Sir Pat is its Once and Future King.

The #FBrape hashtag is currently petitioning brands to put pressure on Facebook to remove images promoting rape and sexual assault. WARNING: This post contains graphic content.
posted on May 28, 2013 at 11:25am EDT

British author Nick Ross insists that “I’m not saying rape isn’t rape” – except when he says, “Rape isn’t always rape.”

He says things like, “Rape is one of the most defiling crimes and there is never excuse or justification for it.” Then he says, “In any other crime we take account of provocation and contributory factors. Even in murder. Why not with sex?” And he wonders why readers are a little confused.

In the U.K., Ross, the former host of a show called “Crimewatch,” has been making headlines with his new book, “Crime” — especially the chapter on sex crimes. In a controversial excerpt that ran in the Sunday Mail, Ross declared that:

“The main argument of my book is this: we can aggravate crime by tempting fate, and we curb it by playing safe. We have come to acknowledge it is foolish to leave laptops on the back seat of the car. We would laugh at a bank that stored sacks of cash by the front door. We would be aghast if an airport badly skimped on its security…. Our forebears might be astonished at how safe women are today given what throughout history would have been regarded as incitement … they would be baffled that girls are mostly unescorted, stay out late, often get profoundly drunk and sometimes openly kiss, grope or go to bed with one-night stands.”

It’s a theme he expands upon in his book, in which he says research reveals that “half of all women who have had penetrative sex unwillingly do not think they were raped and this proportion rises strongly when the assault involves a boyfriend, or if the woman is drunk or high on drugs: They led him on, they went too far, it wasn’t forcible, they didn’t make themselves clear … For them rape isn’t always rape.” He adds, “We should not forget, of course, that women can sometimes turn sex to their own advantage, which occasionally has other implications for crime.”

In other words, if a woman blames herself for her rape, that’s just dandy, because ladies are always using their feminine wiles anyway.

In 2010 Stephen Hawking, in The Grand Design, announced that philosophy was "dead" because it had "not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics". He was not referring to ethics, political theory or aesthetics. He meant metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that aspires to the most general understanding of nature – of space and time, the fundamental stuff of the world. If philosophers really wanted to make progress, they should abandon their armchairs and their subtle arguments, wise up to maths and listen to the physicists.

This view has significant support among philosophers in the English-speaking world. Bristol philosopher James Ladyman, who argues that metaphysics should be naturalised, and who describes the accusation of "scientism" as "badge of honour", is by no means an isolated case.

But there could not be a worse time for philosophers to surrender the baton of metaphysical inquiry to physicists. Fundamental physics is in a metaphysical mess and needs help. The attempt to reconcile its two big theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics, has stalled for nearly 40 years. Endeavours to unite them, such as string theory, are mathematically ingenious but incomprehensible even to many who work with them. This is well known. A better-kept secret is that at the heart of quantum mechanics is a disturbing paradox – the so-called measurement problem, arising ultimately out of the Uncertainty Principle – which apparently demonstrates that the very measurements that have established and confirmed quantum theory should be impossible. Oxford philosopher of physics David Wallace has argued that this threatens to make quantum mechanics incoherent which can be remedied only by vastly multiplying worlds.

Beyond these domestic problems there is the failure of physics to accommodate conscious beings. The attempt to fit consciousness into the material world, usually by identifying it with activity in the brain, has failed dismally, if only because there is no way of accounting for the fact that certain nerve impulses are supposed to be conscious (of themselves or of the world) while the overwhelming majority (physically essentially the same) are not. In short, physics does not allow for the strange fact that matter reveals itself to material objects (such as physicists).

In January 1968, young feminist antiwar activists in the U.S temporarily broke with a long tradition of protesting war as mothers. At an all-women’s protest against the Vietnam War, they symbolically buried “Traditional Womanhood” and claimed the right to protest as independent citizens. Does it matter what language women use to protest war ?

Throughout history, women have often leveraged their legitimacy and status as mothers—or even as grandmothers—to protest war and violence. In the United States, for example, Carrie Chapman Catt and Jane Addams founded the Woman’s Peace Party in 1915, which eventually became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Like so many other women of their generation, they argued that women’s special life-giving and preserving role as mothers gave them a unique right to seek universal disarmament in the 1920s.
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That tradition was dramatically challenged on January 15, 1968 by American young feminists. On that day, about 5,000 women peace activists from two generations gathered in Washington D.C. to demand the immediate withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. They called themselves the Jeanette Rankin Brigade, in honor of the first woman elected to the U.S.Congress, a pacifist, who had voted against both world wars.

Interspersed among the crowd were approximately 500 young feminists, who, in a controversial act of defiance, decided to symbolically bury “Traditional Womanhood” at the protest. The ritual was hardly spontaneous. After months of consciousness raising, they had decided that “the Brigade was playing upon the traditional female role in the classic manner. They came as wives, mothers and mourners; that is, tearful and passive reactors to the actions of men rather than organizing as women to change that definition of femininity to something other than a synonym for weakness, political impotence, and tears.” They demanded to be heard as citizens, not as mothers.

But while states give such solicitous attention to women planning to have an abortion, they ignore the needs of women planning to give birth. Bringing a child into the world is also a life-changing decision. Too many women have to make that choice without similar protections. It is time to demand equality and tell our legislatures to enact the Defense of Motherhood Act.

. . . . .
Physicians would have to inform pregnant women about the risks of childbirth and motherhood. They would have to note that childbirth, compared with abortion, is roughly 14 times more likely to result in maternal death and is more often associated with depression and other forms of mental illness. They would also have to emphasize that working women in the United States can expect to see their wages drop 9 to 16 percent for each child and that having a child makes it significantly less likely that an unmarried woman will ever marry.

To ensure that women are not being coerced by partners, family members or clergy into bearing a child, DOMA would require that all women be interviewed about the circumstances of conception and their motives for continuing with pregnancy. Did a husband sabotage birth control? Was a woman unable to afford contraception because her employer refused to comply with the Affordable Care Act?

And, finally, pregnant women would be required to view a two-hour video featuring a colicky newborn, a toddler having a tantrum and a sulking teenager.

The young women in this video believe in making a difference. It was astonishing to see that each mainly deployed two words: equality and empowerment. What if these four women began to spread the idea that women deserve to be empowered and have equality? I know it’s just four people, but millennials just might begin to disintegrate the skewed view of feminism that currently exists, even if on a small scale. When recruiting people for this video, I asked some millennials if they knew of a word that resonates with feminism. Some of them didn’t even have words to say; they couldn’t think of any. On a Local level, young millennials don’t know enough about feminism because they haven’t been taught. My hope is to create a student-run feminist group at my college, which will raise more awareness about it to people in my age group. Everyone should be educated about feminism. We need it in our lives! By working on this at a local level, hopefully millennials, all genders, will begin to see their experiences and the rest of the world through a feminist lens. Having a different perspective changes everything. Feminism isn’t bra burning or man hating. It’s about equality and empowerment for all.