Joel Mathis

"Believing women" doesn't mean we have to accept accusations as evidence. So what might it mean in real life?  • When a woman makes an accusation, it would mean pursuing all available lines of evidence to weigh the truth of her claims. In the matter of Brett Kavanaugh's SCOTUS nomination, it would mean calling Mark Judge, Kavanaugh's buddy, to testify under penalty of perjury. So far that's not happening. That the Senate Judiciary Committee is not taking such a step suggests they don't have much interest in trying, as best as we poor humans are capable, of making a genuine attempt to determine the truth of the matter.  • When a woman's accusation is proven, the person convicted of abusing or assaulting her will be given more than a slap-on-the-wrist punishment.   • And women a woman says she has been traumatized by sexual assault, we don't wave our hands and t ell her to toughen up instead of being such a victim.  None of this m

I'm shocked, shocked that a National Review writer has decided to take issue with the "Bechdel test." The test, as I'm sure you know, is a very simple way to check if your movies have even a moment in them that isn't dude oriented. Here's Wikipedia: The Bechdel test asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added. And here's NRO's Kyle Smith: In the past few years, the Bechdel Test has begun popping up casually in reviews like a feminist Good Housekeeping Seal of approval. Take this appreciation last month of the 1992 film A League of Their Own, published by Katie Baker on the site The Ringer: “It is, in my possibly blinded by love but also correct opinion, one of the best sports movies there is. And it is an honest ode to women and sisters and friendships, with a story that breezes through the Bechdel test b

This is the Facebook status of a friend. I'm so angry on her behalf that I can barely hold back the tears. I've just had a conversation with my son. He's a good kid. But he lives in this stupid, fallen, fucked-up world. We told him Never touch a girl or woman without her permission. Never call her names. Never act disrespectfully in any way to a girl or woman. There will be times when it might seem like the fun thing to do. When you see other boys acting that way. That doesn't make it right. There will be peer pressure. Resist. And talk to us, if you will. I realize that there's only so much we can do. He spends so much time in this stupid, fallen, fucked-up world already without us. So it's imperative that we use the remaining time to affirm, and reaffirm, and reaffirm again, what those values are. Look at Donald Trump, son. Do the exact opposite.

That's what Ben and I talk about this week in the Scripps column. My take : Religious liberty is a paramount American value; it's even written into our Constitution. A woman's right to make her own health choices doesn't explicitly appear in the document, it's merely a common-sense human right no less deserving of protection and consideration. So the Obama administration is right to mandate that employers include contraceptive coverage in their employee health insurance programs. And the administration is also right -- if a little late -- to offer an accommodation that ensures access to birth control while permitting religious institutions to adhere to their own teachings. If only that were the end of the debate. Unwilling, it seems, to ever take "yes" for an answer from President Barack Obama, Republicans are now pressing ahead with proposals to exempt any employer from having to pay for contraceptive coverage. GOP leaders say this is about "r

It's not just the Mummers club. Apparently, it's really, really hard to get arrested for buying sex in Philadelphia—and really easy to get arrested for selling it. Our latest example is a bust at the Penthouse Club in Port Richmond , where seven dancers and one manager were arrested Friday night on prostitution charges. And the johns? Off scot-free. Once again. Some interesting details: The investigation and subsequent raid by the LCE and the police Citywide Vice Unit had been prompted by community complaints, i ncluding those from the spouses of men who'd blown their family's grocery money at the club, said Sgt. Bill LaTorre of LCE.  At the Penthouse Club, on Castor Avenue near Delaware, men would pay $300 for 30 minutes in the champagne room or $250 for a skybox, police said. There, guys could partake in any number of sexual acts with the dancers , including "the front door, the back door and the upstairs," LaTorre said.  State Police did not immedia

I'm clearly a bit cranky that the criminal burden of the Mummers prostitution party has fallen upon the female prostitutes involved. Here's a question for Philadelphia police and prosecutors: Why not bring criminal conspiracy charges against some of the Mummers' leaders? Here's how the Inquirer describes the investigation : The investigation into the club began almost two months ago, after police received tips that women were soliciting sex on the second floor of the building every second Tuesday of the month between 7 and 11 p.m., Blackburn said. Lt. Charles Green of the citywide vice unit said an undercover officer gained access to one of the parties last month after wrangling an invitation from Crovetti. Inside, the officer saw women walking around wearing next to nothing, as well as about 50 men. About 7:30 Tuesday night, two undercover officers made a repeat visit to the party. As the officers made their way around the building, they saw a man pulling his p

Lawrence Crovetti, charged with promoting prostitution—the only man to face sex charges in the case. We get a bit of an explanation in today's Inquirer : John Murray, 56, of Deptford, the club's financial secretary, and Alfred Sanborn, 44, of South Philadelphia, its steward, were arrested on liquor violation charges. The two acted as bartenders during the parties, and the clubhouse did not have a liquor license, police said. Murray and Sanborn were aware of the prostitution, said Deputy Police Commissioner William Blackburn, but police did not have enough evidence to charge them with prostitution-related offenses. The dozens of men seen interacting with the women were not arrested, either. "We weren't privy to the conversations between the males and the females, where there was a price and a particular act that was identified," Blackburn said. "Our main targets were the females." The main targets were the females? Why? If the police are correc

Here is the opening of Jenice Armstrong's column in today's Daily News: "IF PROFESSIONAL women really want to get ahead, then they have to stop acting like bitches." No really. It gets better from there. To be fair, this isn't Armstrong speaking for herself. Instead, she's quoting Susan Tose Spencer, former vice president of the Eagles—her father owned the team—who has a new book full of advice for business women. Like: Use your "feminine wiles" to your advantage. But don't complain about sexual harassment! That's whining! The best thing to do is just ... add more sexiness to be harassed. At least that seems to be the lesson here: In her book, she shares an anecdote about the time she ran into a problem with her biggest customer's male buyer. He was the touchy-feely type and kept reaching for her leg under the restaurant table. (If it had been me, I would have had that loser's hand twisted up behind his back and slammed his fac

Back in my home state of Kansas, the Shawnee County District Attorney has decided to stop prosecuting domestic violence misdemeanors including domestic violence (see comments below) because of budget cuts. The city of Topeka—the county seat, and state capital—has responded with an ordinance to repeal its own domestic violence law so it doesn't get stuck with all the domestic violence cases. Seriously. I outsource my commentary to my friend Notorious PhD : Of the many things that counties and states have shoved off on municipalities (just as the federal governement offloads its responsibilities onto the states), why is it women* whose bodies are being put on the line? That was a rhetorical question. Poverty and frustration with long-term unemployment increases the incidence of domestic violence (especially male-on-female domestic violence). There are complex cultural reasons for it tied up with American notions of masculinity. But the point is that the same thing that is

Under the law, American women are not allowed to serve in combat roles in the military. In practice, of course, wartime necessity has meant something different.  Officially, though, the discrimination still exists—and with good reason, defenders say: Women tend to be smaller and weaker, and changing combat-ready standards to include them would diminish the readiness and roughness of our armed forces. My response has always been: Don't change the physical standards. Just change the discrimination. And now I see that's what is happening in Australia : In a landmark move for the Australian military, women will be allowed to risk their lives alongside male soldiers and serve on the frontline. In a move described as "a significant and major cultural change" the Australian army will remove all  gender  barriers over the next five years and women will be able to take up roles that previously were considered too dangerous. Women who met the same stringent physical and

This Andrew Klavan blog post , I think, expresses a certain kind of conservative mindset about as succinctly as possible. To sum it up: the dangerous sexism of the Muslim world makes the sexism of American-Christian conservatives charming, benign and even desirable . Let's break it down. I am a sexist. I believe men and women are inherently different and that it’s therefore appropriate to treat them differently. I continue to open doors for women, curb my occasionally profane tongue around them and stand when they leave the table. Feminists have occasionally berated me for this, believing such manners display a patriarchal and protective attitude toward them. I'm not going to begrudge Klavan's door-opening for women. But. Even if one accepted, broadly, that "men" and "women" were different, that in no way accounts for all the millions of individuals who might not fit those norms and who deserve to be treated on the basis of their own individual qual

Via Andrew Sullivan , linguist Mark Lieberman gets into the Kathleen Parker "Obama is a woman" column that got me so irritated yesterday. Parker suggested that the number of "passive voice" sentence constructions during his big oil speech were proof that he lacked a certain "rhetorical testosterone." Lieberman makes an observation similar to one I made: The first thing to say is that there isn't the slightest evidence that passive-voice constructions are "feminine". Right. But if Parker does want to play that game, well, there's some unsettling evidence: Women don't use the passive voice more than men, and among male writers, number of passive-voice constructions doesn't appear to have any relationship at all to real or perceived manliness. The "passive is girly" prejudice seems to be purely due to the connotations of (other senses of) the term passive, misinterpreted by people who in any case mostly wouldn't r

Seems like it was just last week that Kathleen Parker was complaining that conservative women can be feminists too, darnit ! Since then, of course, she's agreed to host a TV show with America's most famous patron of prostitutes. And today she offers up the theory that President Obama is a bit of a girl . I say this in the nicest possible way. Well, sure. She just doesn't mean it in the nicest possible way, though she tries like the dickens to act like she's not being, well, terribly sexist. Generally speaking, men and women communicate differently. Women tend to be coalition builders rather than mavericks (with the occasional rogue exception). While men seek ways to measure themselves against others, for reasons requiring no elaboration, women form circles and talk it out. Well, that doesn't sound so bad does it? But that's not really what Parker's getting at. Obama's not like a woman because he talks things out. He's like a woman because he's

Byron York prints plenty of disturbing details from the police complaint against Al Gore , but this is the one I find most infuriating: Finally she got away. Later, she talked to friends, liberals like herself, who advised against telling police. One asked her "to just suck it up; otherwise, the world's going to be destroyed from global warming." To that "friend" let me offer up a piece of advice: Go to hell. Snarky folks at The Corner are treating this revelation as being run-of-the-mill Democratic politics, but honestly the problem here -- as is often the case -- is of power generally. You can see an almost carbon-copy dynamic at play when people angrily defend the Catholic Church against accusations of widespread child molestation. Victims are urged to hush up, to go away, because their truth threatens The Mission of whichever person or movement or institution is involved. And while it's often true that sacrifices must be made in order to advance a

You don't have to be a Flyers fan or a feminist to think this Chicago Tribune "pullout poster" is simply stupid: Get it? HE'S A GIRL! Hahahahahahaha! Jeebus. Flyers play the Blackhawks tonight. Now I doubly hope the Flyers win.

Christopher Hitchens almost makes sense with his defense of the French burqa ban : The French legislators who seek to repudiate the wearing of the veil or the burqa—whether the garment covers "only" the face or the entire female body—are often described as seeking to impose a "ban." To the contrary, they are attempting to lift a ban: a ban on the right of women to choose their own dress, a ban on the right of women to disagree with male and clerical authority, and a ban on the right of all citizens to look one another in the face. The proposed law is in the best traditions of the French republic, which declares all citizens equal before the law and—no less important—equal in the face of one another. Hitchens appeals to my humanist-slash-libertarian side here, briefly, by casting the proposed burqa ban as a blow for women, letting them cast off their subjugation by forcing them to remove the veil from their faces. But that's not what the proposal does -- at