I think the point here is not just that some bad judge did some bad stuff in the UK (though his comments in the sex abuse case are certainly icky and make me glad the kids I work with don't have him overseeing their cases). There will always be assholes. And there have been instances of female judges doing some pretty outrageous things too, which incidents were covered pretty substantively on a lot of feminist blogs that I read (I'm thinking specifically of the judge who suggested a fat woman must have appreciated the attention when she was raped because, you know, what else makes you feel more beautiful than some sexual assault?). Sexism is something we all learn and we all perpetrate.

The point that I gather from this issue is about how our larger culture - the one in which all of us participate - helps fuel this type of problem. Girls in the West are increasingly being placed in a double bind, marketed to as a demographic interested in adult-type clothes and makeup, which cause them to look older and more sexually suggestive, then denied justice when they are abused because the abuser can claim they looked too, you know, adult and sexually suggestive. This is not something that some asshole judge started; we are all complicit in this to the degree that we support the corporate culture that sells sex to children, particularly female children.

What I would like to see in response is not just anger at this judge (however deserved it is), but the names of companies that design and market things like thongs and makeup to ten year olds. If I buy any of the products made by the same company, I've lined the pockets of people who are doing serious disservice to our children.

I agree it's a great discussion (else I wouldn't have posted on it multiple times). I just don't want to let the issue of how this country treats non-heterosexuals fall by the wayside at the same time. Sometimes as a culture we have a difficult time sustaining conversations about oppressed groups, so I try to make a shout out when it looks to me like they're getting relegated to invisible status, even when it's not on purpose or it's because of a very valuable tangent.

And if you want to talk about groups left out of the discussion of lesbians (and feeling rather invisible in the process, too), let me add bisexuals to the list. Then again we are usually left out of discussions of LGBT issues (despite being right there in the acronym). So I have some notion of what a gay man might feel about the way the issue is handled here. And as for the "T," I wonder also how transgender individuals, and for that matter intersex individuals, figure in to the Broadsheet mission statement.

And to be clear, I'm not suggesting we censor anyone, just that Broadsheet take the points you and others are making seriously enough to give us a dedicated space for discussing them (i.e., to write about it themselves and invite said discussion). Like I said, I'm not responsible for how well Broadsheet lives up to its own mission statement. People have made some great points here (and also some good points on another thread about the way social science studies get used here) and I'd love to see some of the Broadsheet contributors respond to them.

I'm torn, in a way, because I feel on the one hand that women tend to get short shrift when it comes to serious discussions of issues in the media, including discussions of gay rights (which right away signifies men more than it does women, since "gay" is an ambiguous term that is sometimes used to signify men only). I understand why Broadsheet attempts to counterbalance that trend. To that extent, I support their purpose, if not always their execution.

On the other hand, when it comes to really looking at gender in context, and feminist though I still happily claim to be, I'm not sure it's helpful to always start out with the male/female binary. For example, is the experience of immigration discrimination primarily one that is determined by gender, or is the experience of being non-heterosexual much more essential to understanding the issue? What, if anything, is there about experiencing this problem as a woman that is different from experiencing it as a man? What other factors (class and national origin especially!) might be as or even more important to take into account. It's a great question that would never have captured my attention were it not for the discussion here.

Not that I believe for a second that he'd actually govern this way, but I do like his statement that a government that is honest and peaceful is the one upholding Christian values. Christianity could use a good dose of that these days. Then again, so could our government. Moreso even.

And let's not assume that evangelicals actually vote in lockstep. There's more diversity in their ranks than we think.