The Revolution Will Be Trademarked!

I know I've been talking a LOT about Occupy Wall Street, and this actually makes me something of a hypocrite because I was criticizing IrregularTimes.com for getting a case of tunnel vision and only reporting on a select few things, such as Americans Elect to the exclusion of most everything else. Now here I am, reporting on little else besides Occupy Wall Street. However this post, while involving Occupy Wall Street, is less about the movement and more about people using them for a money grab. Capitalism strikes again! The revolution will not be televised! It will be trademarked!

Robert and Diane Maresca of Long Island are seeking trademark protection for the phrase “Occupy Wall Street,” with the intention of placing it on products, according to a report on The Smoking Gun website, which recently obtained a copy of the couple’s application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Robert Maresca said the OWS slogan is “important,” and expressed interest in having the supporters of the movement get the benefit of the trademarked brand, going so far as to say it is his hope to transfer ownership of the trademark to OWS, “if it’s feasible,” CNN reported.

They know damn well that it isn't feasible. OWS doesn't have a central leadership or anything resembling a hierarchy, so there's no entity to transfer the trademark to. This is such a transparent money grab I can't even laugh about it. As reported by CNN.com;

"The goal of OWS is not to become a profitable business," said Tyler Combelic, an Occupy Wall Street spokesman. "Anything that misconstrues it as such, such as trademarking for the sake of profiting, is missing the point of protest."

This seems to be a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. And maybe this guy has all the best intentions of trying to protect OWS (doubtful, considering he wants to put it on T-shirts and bumper stickers and all sorts of shit to sell), but how can one not see the mind-boggling money grab behind this?

He's trying to profit off of people who are protesting income inequality.

Teabaggers Getting Their Lily White Panties in a Bunch

It seems now that the Teabaggers are still huffing and puffing over the Wall Street Protests. Every 'bagger from Glenn Beck to Rand Paul are swarming and eager to paint OWS as a bunch of violent, radical hippies/Commie/Nazis. And we've even got that little pinhead Eric Cantor calling the protest a "mob." I guess only the Teabaggers are allowed to protest things they view as unjust. But what I want to focus on is the vast, vast difference in how these two movements have been treated by the establishment. And there is one picture that can do that best:

Do the Commies Have a Point?

A personal saying I try to follow is; "If advice is good, its good, regardless of where it came from." This is true of quotes, as well. So to that end, I have to ask; do the damn dirty commies have a point when it comes to Occupy Wall Street and the American government's reaction to it? For clarification, I have to point to two clips, one from the Chinese state news agency Xinhua and the other from former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.

Protests reveal US 'messy house'
Xinhua said they showed "a clear need for Washington, which habitually rushes to demand other governments to change when there are popular protests in their countries, to put its own house in order."

Gorbachev calls Wall Street protests just; Flaherty says they have a point

The Americans, he [Gorbachev] said, need to ensure that everything is right in their own country "before trying to put the house in order in other countries."

In Ottawa, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the American protesters decrying the income gap between rich and poor have a point.

Stop and give thought to the dawn of the Arab Spring. Remember when we first started hearing about the uprisings in Iran? The USA told them to listen to the people. Same then happened with Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. When the people there started taking to the streets and demanding a change to their systems, the USA was behind them every step of the way whether they wanted it or not. And now our own people are rising up, demanding change and equality and economic security so loudly and so passionately that the fires of anger we've started have spread to every state in the USA and has kindled on the other side of the Atlantic to spread through Europe...

...and the American government is turning a blind eye to the suffering and demands of it's own people.

No Still Means No Even if The Person Saying It Has A Dick

I was linked to a story that was one of those times where the blatant double-standards risked blowing a vessel in my head. I want to point at the states of Florida and Michigan scream "FUCK YOU!" but I can't really pin the blame on just those state. I also have to fault most everyone who's commented on this story in the main article.

I'm looking at you; Men-can't-be-raped troglodytes.

The story I was linked to is about a young man now 23, who was raped when he was 17 by his then 18 year old girlfriend. That alone would be bad enough, but things seemed to take a turn for the truly bizarre.

On Jan. 6, 2006, when he was still 17 and she was 18, they had sex in the back seat of a car and made a baby she named Joshua.

A paternity test confirmed Kris was the father.

Kris was not present at Joshua's birth.

He did not contribute anything — not time, not money — to Joshua's care.

Jessica never asked Kris for help.

In March 2009, Kris got a letter from the state of Michigan. Jessica had moved there and gone on welfare and Michigan wanted Kris to start paying child support.

Kris hired a lawyer. He said he shouldn't have to pay child support because he never wanted the baby.

Jessica, he said, raped him.

Stop and try to picture this for a moment or three. You're going about your business, doing your best to put that time of your life behind you, wanting little more than to forget The Night when you find a piece of mail in the box addressed to you from the government of another state. They're wanting you to pay your attacker. Wow. Honestly, I can't imagine anything more surreal than that.

Well, no...there is something more, also from the same article.

Around the country there are plenty of cases of underage boys who got a woman pregnant and then tried to avoid paying child support. The 15-year-old in California who was seduced by the 34-year-old mom next door. The 13-year-old boy in Kansas who had sex with his 17-year-old baby­sitter. The 15-year-old boy in Florida who impregnated a 20-year-old.

It baffles me that the courts would actually order minors to pay child support. I'm sure the 13-year-old's school lunch money will pay for a few bottle of apple sauce.

But that aside, let's go back to the issue at hand. Let's reverse the genders, shall we? If this was a man who was fingered as the aggressor and it was a woman who was being coerced, would we even be debating whether or not it was even rape? No, of course not. But, you see, men suffer from a mind-boggling double-standard. See, because a male has Tab A to insert into Slot B, somehow that means that only we can insert Tab A into Slot B but never, ever can Slot B be wrapped around Tab A without Tab A's permission. That's just for guys in general, but what about this kid? While the public at large may dismiss his claims, surely his parents would support him or at least give him the benefit of the doubt...right?

In February 2006, Kris said, he and Jessica sat down on the soft brown couch in the living room of his parents' home in Brooksville.

They told his parents that Jessica was pregnant.

How did this happen? his mother asked. The doctor had told them to be careful. They had agreed to refrain from sex.

Kris, his mother and his father all say that at that moment, Jessica admitted that she forced Kris to have sex against his will.

"I made him," Connie Bucher recalls her saying.

Kris' dad, Steve Bucher, was initially skeptical, but he didn't say anything.

"How does a girl rape a guy? I just couldn't see that," he said in a recent interview.

Well...hmm...you know, that's a good point dad. Let's see...how could a woman rape a teenage male? I must be a freak of nature, but I could remember back then it would seem to come up on it's own. I mean, I didn't look at those old National Geographic pictures of the Honkin' Hooter Tribe of East Africa and think "Wow, look at those cans!" in fact, I wasn't ever really attracted by those pics but I'll be damned if pinky didn't pop up anyway for a look. Surely it must be a purely voluntary thing, right? Here's let's preform an experiment;

"ARISE, PENIS!"

...huh, nothing. Odd. Let's try something else.

"GO, GO, GADGET GIGGLE STICK!"

Well I'll be damned...nothing. Okay, one more.

"PENOR! I CHOOSE YOU!"

Well shit...maybe it's not voice activated. Maybe it's touch activated. Let's see, they call it a Belly Button, maybe if I press it I can trigger the Cock Up ability...surely that's the key. Hmm...no, nothing. Well, I kinda gotta pee now. Oh, wait, what's this?

Experts say it is physically possible for a man to be raped by a woman, or, put another way, to get an erection without wanting to have sex.

"Teenagers, in particular, often have an uncontrollable genital response," says Debby Herbenick, a research scientist in sexual health at Indiana University and author of Because It Feels Good.

"Many men, for example, recall getting erections when they felt scared, angry, or even nervous — like having to go up to the chalkboard to write out a math problem," she said. "And certainly seeing someone naked could lead them to get an erection."

Well, fuck me sideways. You mean a cock coming up isn't always within the man's ability to control? Why, shocking! Scandalous! Unheard of! That time I got hard looking at the tile in the bathroom wasn't because of some involuntary bodily function that just happened to strike when I was washing my hands, it was because that tile was trying to seduce me! It's nothing but a white hexagonal hussy, I tell you! Or, maybe, just maybe, guys get hard for no fucking reason, so it's not a stretch to see a guy can get it up when someone's pawing at his crotch, even if he doesn't really want to. Still want to debate it? Let's see the fucking definition of rape:

Rape
[reyp]   Origin
rape
1    [reyp] IPA noun, verb, raped, rap·ing.
noun
1. the unlawful compelling of a person through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse.
2. any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person.
3. statutory rape.
4. an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: the rape of the countryside.
5. Archaic . the act of seizing and carrying off by force.
verb (used with object)
6. to force to have sexual intercourse.
7. to plunder (a place); despoil.
8. to seize, take, or carry off by force.
verb (used without object)
9. to commit rape.
Origin:
1250–1300; (v.) Middle English rapen < Anglo-French raper < Latin rapere to seize, carry off by force, plunder; (noun) Middle English < Anglo-French ra ( a ) p ( e ), derivative of raper

Okay, okay, so, why didn't he fight back? Well...

What happened in the weeks after the miscarriage, and specifically on the night of Jan. 6, 2006, is where the couple's stories begin to diverge. Kris told his version at a child support hearing in Brooksville in 2010. Jessica was not present.

Kris testified he wasn't ready to be a father. And the doctor told them Jessica would now be particularly fertile, so they decided to avoid sex.

On Jan. 6, 2006, Jessica and Kris fought and she broke up with him again. He was in love, he said, and he begged her not to leave him. So she invited him to her church youth group meeting that night.

Their friends drove, but the church was closed, so they headed to Hudson Beach in Pasco County. The other couple went for a walk.

Kris and Jessica sat in the back seat. He said he was looking out the window at the smooth water when she got on top of him and said: "You know you want me."

The passenger seat in front of him was tilted back at a 45-degree angle. She used one arm to pin him down, he said, the other to unzip his pants. At the time, he said, he was 5-foot-7 and 150 pounds and she was heavier.

"At any time do you make a statement to her about you will not have sexual intercourse with her?" asked his lawyer, Kerry O'Connor, at the hearing.

"I told her, 'No, I do not want this.' And that's when she said, 'It's going to happen.' "

"And did you specifically use the word 'no'? "

"Absolutely . . . several times."

He said he tried to push Jessica off. He said he tried to pull the door handle to open the car door. He said she slammed her hand over the lock. He said it was over pretty fast.

He got out of the car, sat on the tailgate with his head in his hands. Their friends returned and he said nothing. They dropped him at his house.

Okay, sure, but why didn't he go to the cops? Well...

Did you go to the police immediately? his lawyer asked.

"No, I did not," he responded. Kris said he called the Sheriff's Office a few weeks later and spoke to a deputy. The deputy seemed to doubt him but said he would follow up. He never did and neither did Kris.

"At this point, I was a senior in high school. I didn't want to lose respect amongst friends. I was in a respected position in JROTC. I didn't want to lose that. I didn't want any kind of unwanted attention drawn to me."

Now, I feel I must provide a little background as to the effects of rape on men. I could paraphrase an articlefrom the National Center for Victims of Crime, but for fear of botching it up, I'll simply quote it;

Male Rape
Victims' Response

It is not uncommon for a male rape victim to blame himself for the rape, believing that he in some way gave permission to the rapist (Brochman, 1991). Male rape victims suffer a similar fear that female rape victims face -- that people will believe the myth that they may have enjoyed being raped. Some men may believe they were not raped or that they gave consent because they became sexually aroused, had an erection, or ejaculated during the sexual assault. These are normal, involuntary physiological reactions. It does not mean that the victim wanted to be raped or sexually assaulted, or that the survivor enjoyed the traumatic experience. Sexual arousal does not necessarily mean there was consent.

According to Groth, some assailants may try to get their victim to ejaculate because for the rapist, it symbolizes their complete sexual control over their victim's body. Since ejaculation is not always within conscious control but rather an involuntary physiological reaction, rapists frequently succeed at getting their male victims to ejaculate. As Groth and Burgess have found in their research, this aspect of the attack is extremely stressful and confusing to the victim. In misidentifying ejaculation with orgasm, the victim may be bewildered by his physiological response during the sexual assault and, therefore, may be discouraged from reporting the assault for fear his sexuality may become suspect (Groth & Burgess, 1980).

Another major concern facing male rape victims is society's belief that men should be able to protect themselves and, therefore, it is somehow their fault that they were raped. The experience of a rape may affect gay and heterosexual men differently. Most rape counselors point out that gay men have difficulties in their sexual and emotional relationships with other men and think that the assault occurred because they are gay, whereas straight men often begin to question their sexual identity and are more disturbed by the sexual aspect of the assault than the violence involved (Brochman, 1991).

To say it simply, there are many factors as to why this wasn't investigated; not the least of which was being met with disbelief by the fucking authorities. There's also the very real feeling that he not only wouldn't be taken seriously by others (as was evidenced by the sheriff and his own fucking father) but the real chance of facing ridicule from his peers, a possible own engrained belief of his own in the old Men-Can't-Be-Raped bullshit among other things. To be honest, after all this, I find it amazing that not only could he move on, but have gotten married to a woman with two kids of her own. And he's trying to support them on about $21K a year.

And now he's being hit with an order from another state to pay child support to his attacker.

Wow.

Just...wow.