I'm so confused

Did Mark Foley want to fuck little boys because he was molested or because he is gay? The most recent "break" in this story really leaves that issue up to the reader.

Attorney David Roth said Foley was molested between ages 13 and 15...He also acknowledged for the first time that the former congressman is gay, saying the disclosure was part of his client's "recovery."

I can't help noticing that it seems the former representative is being portrayed a strong gay child sexual abuse survivor, maybe one we should find some small sliver of admiration for because, according to his attorney, "As is so often the case with victims of abuse, Mark advises that he kept his shame to himself for almost 40 years."

As another survivor (who once tried to make out with a fourteen year old boy when I was fifteen but got completely turned off by the fact that, despite his being a cute funny smart little bad ass skate rat, I probably could have tossed him over my shoulder and run a 50 yard dash without breaking a sweat), I have to admire the former congressman's ability to have kept his SHAME to himself for so long. I am not even close to as strong as that, choosing instead to express my SHAME all the time and in numerous different ways.

Hey now, here's a thought. Maybe what former Congressman Boyfucker was ashamed of wasn't that he was abused. Maybe it was that he himself had some pedophile tendencies.

I guess we should all be thankful he didn't shoot a schoolroom full of little boys to take revenge for it.

Honestly, I am so sick of the media perpetuated ignorance when it comes to this shit. "The shame!" Fuck their shame. The only shame is the shame that is laid on us by a continuous flow of shit like this. Foley disclosing now that he was molested, what the fuck is that? A defense? The number of people who have been sexually abused as children far outweighs the projected numbers of pedophiles. Look it up, I'm busy and can't get you the references right now (I'm writing a lecture, presumably). But it's a convenient myth for Foley and his lawyer to use at the moment. Something to explain it, to make it all part of a larger crime in which Foley is the victim and not the nasty old fuck that he seems. And the media is happy, oh more than happy, to perpetuate this shit.

It's not just the mainstream media who are pushing my buttons these days though. A quick review of current news at some of the more prominent feminist resources (NOW and Feminist Majority Foundation) shows a complete and utter lack of awareness about the recent gendercide school shootings. Not even a friggin' mention on their news pages.

For example, at feminist.org you can find a link to The feminist perspective on U.S., global and campus news stories this week. In this page, they're on the Foley story too, just like the mainstream media. They have breaking reports about bride kidnapping and domestic abuse in Kyrgyzstan and underrepresentation of women writers at Harper's and Atlantic Monthly. But there is not even ONE single sentence of "feminist perspective" on the recent gender based attacks on girls in two different US schools this week. Nothing on how prior school shootings have had a tendency to have been boys hunting girls and women. Where's the feminist perspective? Or is two men planning to rape and kill little girls in one week not enough of a feminist issue for them? I'm guessing the PACs don't give much of a shit, because the elected officials that be (and that might be) don't give much of a shit. And major mainstream feminist groups are, these days, just packaging for their political fundraising committees. I get the need for them, I do. I worked for one briefly one summer. But what the fuck is the point in electing "pro feminist" officials if the feminism exists only in terms of token gestures, bumper stickers, and dangerous daily instances of misogyny represented only as a mythically far away and foreign event?

I know there's not much I can do alone. I'm working with my campus women's center to try to do something local in the next week. I also know that a candle light vigil or cleverly composed quarter sheet fliers will not change the world. However I simply refuse to be a part of the masses of people doing and saying absolutely NOTHING other than reading the dwindling mainstream media news reports of official handwringing over how to classify the apparently brand spanking new criminal concept of males violently attacking females.