The punishment isn’t abuse and mistreatment (though that happens.) It is the separation from normal society that is the punishment. But since there are so many inmates, they make their own society and become institutionalized. The punishment doesn’t usually work, and often makes the inmates worse upon release.

Rehabilitation is a joke. Most inmates have taken the counseling classes so many times that they’ve learned all the right things to say, rather than the lessons themselves. They take parenting classes, drug-abatement classes, job interview classes, anger-control classes and so on until they have a stack of useless certificates that prove nothing other than their ability to attend mandatory classes in an environment where you can be forced to attend.

Something should probably be changed in our prison system. The question is, which inmates can be helped and which ones will game the system? The answer? I don’t know, but I do know it’s a tough sell to go up against the “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” mentality that is found on all parts of the political spectrum, but for different criminals.

Ninjanurse, if parents are to be held responsible for aspects of their offsprings’ sexual behavior, I hope you are also in favor of parental-consent laws, those parents who give their children no privacy whatsoever, parents who put their children in “therapeutic settings” to overcome their homosexuality or their refusal to succumb to parental authority, and all the rest. Your suggestion was a stupid attack on all men, and I resent it. The stupid boys who raped this girl are the criminals here, not their fathers. And how likely is it that they had fathers at their homes, anyway?

The issue of power (imbalance) to do this act gets to me. I recently blogged about this anti-rape device in South Africa which feminists opposed for being backwards and putting the burden of “solution” on the women. But like this case proves, if no one can really protect you, even the almighty state, looking for other ways to protect yourself is just as welcome.

the entrapment and mental and physical torture of a conventionally attractive woman.

Badly phrased. Sorry. The fact that she is conventionally attractive (young, slender, blonde, sort of vulnerable-looking) does not in any way intensify how problematic the movie seems to me. Being conventionally attractive does not give her a pass on violence or mistreatment. It’s just that it seems to me to be a further enshrinement of her supposed helplessness–you know how “damsels in distress” are always in that exact mode–delicate and blonde.

I do think that porn has something to do with this and other instances of violent, sadistic gang-rapes.

Yes, I would agree, but I would clarify that as “violent, misogynistic” porn. Porn =/ violence.

Or maybe I should just change my own terminology, and call violent, misogynistic sexual media “porn,” and sexual media that does not dehumanize or promote violence against women “erotica.” B/c there is something pornographic about the fetishization of violence in popular media as well as “porn”… I don’t know. *

Ahem. Yeah. Now that I’ve worked out my own little terminology issues on the internets…

*And speaking of the fetishization of violence in the media, I would love to hear Jill or zuzu’s thoughts on P2–the new stalking movie that’s coming out–b/c every time I see a commercial, all I can think is “who would actually *want* to see that?” For some reason, it bothers me intensely, perhaps because its sole purpose seems to be to glorify the entrapment and mental and physical torture of a conventionally attractive woman.

I do think that porn has something to do with this and other instances of violent, sadistic gang-rapes.

Since they made a dvd to hand out calling it porn and since they knew ahead of time that this is the type of things some cretins like to see in porn (porn indistinguishable from an actual rape and assault), it seems to me to be impossible to deny porn’s influence here. Not with honesty, anyway.

I can’t say anything about the story here. I just want to scrub my brain out with lye and pretend I never heard it. ::sigh::

Yes, in this instance it seems fairly clear that the point of the crime is the video, and the motivation of the rapists (who also charmingly attached a homeless man) is the popularity they gained through circulating their group video project. When so much of the media is violent and degrading gonzo-stype porn, and the trends are, in part toward the “particpatory,” its very difficult, even for a so called “sex-posi” feminist like myself not to draw a direct connection.

If this crime was something other than rape–say, the bastards merely limited themselves to setting fire to homeless people–all of the blog and media coverage would be about how jackass and “bum fights’ on you tube are normalizing violence and breeding sociopathic imitators..