Further proof we live in a Rape Culture>

[Survivoreesta]

This was posted on Burlington (VT) Free Press today by Cathleen Wilson:

Sexual violence is a complex social issue and there is no "one solution" to the problem. The public's outrage to the recent UVM Sigma Phi Epsilon survey is completely justified and encouraging to those of us who work everyday to change the attitudes that condone and normalize sexual violence. At HOPE Works (formerly known as Women's Rape Crisis Center) we hope that this incident becomes an opportunity for broader education and awareness and not just another opportunity to finger point.

The Sigma Phi Epsilon survey validates many people's concerns that rape is normalized within the fraternity culture. Rape also happens in work places, churches, schools, and homes. Sexual violence is a crime that is perpetrated against women, men, teens, and children. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2010, recently revealed results that confirm that sexual violence occurs in our communities at an alarming rate. Nearly one in five women surveyed said they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape at some point in their lives, and one in four reported having been beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women reported being the victims of stalking.

Additionally, the report confirmed that violence impacts men and boys as well, with one in seven men having experienced "severe violence at the hands of an intimate partner." The report also indicted that almost half of female victims said they had been raped before they turned 18. Last year, 16 percent of the people we served identified as men or boys and 18 percent of those we served were under 18.

Still there are some who want to characterize the survey as an example of "boys being boys" and that maybe some "sensitivity training" would be helpful. While I completely agree that empathy training is essential for anyone who has never experienced sexual violence, the very fact that this survey was created and distributed indicates that the problem is much larger than one fraternity or one university. Our culture is steeped in images and messages that normalize sexual violence and our criminal justice system is built on the principals of protecting perpetrator's rights well before any consideration to a victim's rights.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20120101/OPINION02/201010321/My-Turn-Fraternity-survey-reflects-society-s-rape-culture?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s

"Boys being boys"? How about men acting like men?

[PeaceNikki]

1. This is a piece I thought was quite good:

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/06/02/jackson-katz-violence-against-women-is-a-mens-issue

Jackson Katz: Violence Against Women Is a Men's Issue

Drawing upon his most recent book, "The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Can Help," Katz shared some strategies with the audience, providing them with what he hoped was a foundation they could build upon in their professional and private lives. "My goal here today is to give you some concrete strategies on how to approach issues regarding violence against women and prevent gender-violence issues among men and young boys."

Katz spent a significant portion of the session driving home his first strategy and why a paradigm shift in thinking is imperative to the prevention of gender violence. At the root of the problem is language and how, historically, language has helped cement and legitimize how people view gender violence.

"In each, the dominate culture is left out of the equation. This is one way that dominant systems maintain themselves in that they are rarely challenged to think about their own dominance," Katz said. "This is one of the key characteristics of power and privilege and why the dominant culture has ability to go unexamined and remain invisible."

Katz admits this is one of the key challenges he faces when working with men, the dominant group in our society. Katz reminds the audience that his focus is on men. "I hope nobody in this room is under the delusion that this is sexist," Katz said. "I know women have made great historical strides in recent history, but when we talk about the dominant group in our society, we are talking about men. I'm also aware that members of dominant groups have been strong supporters of subordinate groups, but let's not be naïve, for there have been members of dominant groups who have resisted reform and responsibility."

If you haven't read it, I think it's well worth a read.

[orpupilofnature57]

2. It's embarrasing to be a man sometimes ,

We should be lightyears beyond casuistries like " boys being boys " .

[seabeyond]

3. breath of fresh air. thank you

Last edited Sun Jan 1, 2012, 10:06 PM - Edit history (1)

[Tansy_Gold]

4. Rape jokes are no laughing matter

http://www.care2.com/causes/rape-jokes-are-no-laughing-matter.html

<snip>

A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?

Rapists do.

They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.

Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.

<end snip>

edited to add -- did you alert on the poster?

[Major Nikon]

13. That is true for some feminists

There is no question that violence against women is epidemic in this country, but some radical feminists have made such wildly riduculous claims, and even though radical feminism represents a smaller segment of feminism as a whole, it has tainted the view of feminism for many and as such has been counterproductive to its goals.

""Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman."
-- Andrea Dworkin

"Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men’s contempt for women; but that contempt can turn gothic and express itself in many sexual and sadistic practices that eschew intercourse per se."
-- Andrea Dworkin

So although Dworkin wasn't calling all men rapists, she was calling the whole of western heterosexual men rapists.

http://reason.com/archives/2005/04/19/womans-hating

[Tansy_Gold]

14. Equating all feminists with Andrea Dworkin

Is like equating all men with Ted Bundy.

Your post attempts, I believe, to ignore the message of the linked essay, which is that there are many good, non-rapist men out there who unintentionally support/encourage those who are rapists simply by laughing at the jokes and giving the impression that they agree with the premise. Whether it is that all women secretly want to be raped, or they really enjoy it, or they deserve it doesn't matter: the rapist has his own motivation and derives affirmation from the shared laughter.

I've told of this experience before, but I think it bears repeating again:

In the spring of 1999, I was taking a course AJS 305 -- Women, Law, and Justice at Arizona State University-West. The professor was Dr. Marie Griffin. http://ccj.asu.edu/about-us/bios/mgriffin
The class was a mix of approximately 3/5 male, 2/5 female. At least half the male students (and maybe more than half) were local law enforcement professionals, either police officers, probation officers, corrections officers, what have you, and most were over the age of 30. The course material covered women as perpetrators of crime, women as victims of crime, and women as participants in the justice system (police officers, judges, lawyers, prosecutors, etc.).

When we got to the subject of rape, there was a lot of heated discussion, specifically around the issue of "consent" on the part of the woman and "rights" on the part of the man. What was surprising and really quite shocking to me -- I was 50 years old at the time, so far from being either naive or inexperienced in the ways of the world -- was how strenuously some of these "men" argued in defense of rapists. Oh, not the dark alley stranger-with-a-knife-to-her-throat rapist, because everyone in the class agreed that's "real" rape and not defensible. But there were other "kinds" of rape that weren't really so bad, weren't really "real" rape, in the eyes of these police officers and probation officers, some of whom were hoping to go on to law school.

No matter how often Dr. Griffin and some of the students, including myself, argued that "No means no," some of the guys insisted that in some circumstances it didn't. Finally, one of the guys, who I believe was a Phoenix police officer, kind of leaned forward, grasping the edges of the desk in his vehemence, and said words to the effect (I can't remember exactly verbatim), "Look, you mean if I take some woman out to dinner and a show and maybe spend a couple hundred bucks on her, and then she says "no," I don't have a right to get something in return? What did she think I was spending all that money for?"

There was an audible gasp from about half of the rest of the class. There were others, however, who kind of, sort of, sheepishly and reluctantly agreed with him, even though they KNEW it was wrong. They were, in effect, protecting their right (as they saw it) to have sex with whoever they wanted to have sex with, even if she said no.

Dworkin was an extremist, but the guy in my ASJ 305 class wasn't. He was just another "normal" guy, who saw nothing wrong with what Susan Griffin had labeled "the All-American crime." He had PAID for his pleasure, he had a RIGHT to it, and his partner had no rights, no power, no voice, no ownership of her self. She belonged to him, body and soul. Or at least her body. She was a whore. She had accepted his payment, and now he had rights.

Is that an extreme point of view, or is it a common one? I suspect it's far more common than Andrea Dworkin's.

Dworkin isn't the only woman who sees all men as (potential) rapists, but she's very easy to find and cite. To counter her, however, there are prominent people like Ron Paul who think sexual harrassment is no big deal. Apparently Dr. Paul has never been a victim of workplace sexual harrassment, of threats from a supervisor to either put out or get out. Apparently Dr. Paul has never worked somewhere where the anti-woman jokes, the leers and pinches and jokes and innuendos are mortifying and humiliating and eventually terrifying. (I've been through that. Twice.)

It's easy to pick a couple of Dworkin's more extreme quotes off a googled website, but try reading more than a few quotes. Read Susan Estrich and Susan Griffin, Susan Brownmiller, Emilie Buchwald, Donald Dutton, David Finkelhor, Marilyn French, Patricia Francisco, Ida Johnson, Kathleen Jones, Sue Lees, Lee Madigan, Susan Faludi, and on and on and on. There's a voluminous library of research material, history, personal accounts, and so on regarding rape, and especially how it has been used politically. My personal library contains all the above listed authors and several dozen more, and I haven't even kept it current for 10 years.

I suspect, though of course I can't confirm, that many of the defenders of the rape culture including those on DU, or those who deny it exists, are guys who would never actually resort to "real" rape, but who maybe do feel they still have some inherent right to sex when they want it and might be capable of ignoring her "NO," and don't really want to think of themselves as "real" rapists. But they do feel just a little bit of kinship with the guy who gets his date so drunk she doesn't know what she was doing and he's still sober enough so he has sex with her. Or the guy who spends a couple hundred bucks on his date and then when she decides she doesn't really like him enough to have sex with him, he pressures her, maybe hints she owes it to him, makes her feel guilty or maybe even a little bit afraid that if she doesn't give in to him, doesn't "consent" to going to bed with him, he'll hurt her or tell lies about her. Because that's not really "real" rape.

At the end of that spring 1999 semester, we had to give presentations on our group projects. The group I was in had chosen date rape -- the Christy Brzonkala case was in the news then -- and after the other four or five students (one male, as I recall, the rest female) had made their brief presentations, I made mine. Although the incident in which the male student defended his right to demand sex from a date was many weeks in the past by then, I addressed my remarks pretty much directly to him. And I had printed copies of a hand-out which was distributed as part of the "group project." On bright blue paper, the following text was printed:




“ ‘No’ is a complete sentence.”

“What part of ‘No’ don’t you understand?”

“ ‘No’ means ‘No.’ Period.”

If you have problems with those three lines, you may be a potential date rapist.

Is that a harsh statement? I don’t think so.
When a woman says no, it is up to you to accept her no and stop. At that moment. Unequivocally. If you do not, if you exercise your “right” to pressure her into having sex with you, whether that pressure is verbal, physical, sexual, or any other kind of pressure, you are stating very clearly that her wishes are ignorable. You state that you don’t believe her or that you don’t care if she’s telling the truth. If you persist in your “seduction,” you are saying that your desires are more important than her integrity, her personhood, her wishes, and that you, for whatever reason, have more of a right to have sex with her than she has the right to say no.
You may say that “when she says no, she really means not now,” and that the key to your success is maintaining the pressure until she gives in. That’s force. That’s coercion. That’s rape.
It is also a denial of her integrity as a person. You are saying that her words don’t mean what she says they do. You are also saying that you know her mind better than she does. Would you allow her the same liberties? Would you allow her to persist long after you had lost interest in her?
Many women have been so thoroughly conditioned and socialized by our society to think that they can be held responsible for someone else’s actions that they have lost the ability to say no. They have been taught that saying no doesn’t mean anything. They have been taught that their integrity doesn’t mean anything, because it can be overridden by your desires and you are more important than they are. So they don’t speak, they live in fear, even if it is not a palpable fear. And they allow you, by their frightened silence, to do things to them that they don’t want.
Nothing a woman has done with you in the past, even if she has had sex with you on a regular basis, even if she is your wife, nothing justifies your overriding her simple no. Nothing. You have no more right to continue talking her into something she doesn’t want to do that you have the right to shout “fire!” in a crowded theater. When your “right” infringes upon someone else’s right, you lose that right.
Does this mean you are going to have to give up some of your male privilege, your “right” to seduce and/or rape the women you desire? Yes. That you are going to have to learn that you are not more important than the women you date? Yes. That you have no right to pressure her, to coerce her, to force her? Yes.
“Yes,” in this case, is a complete sentence.
What part of “yes” don’t you understand?
Yes means yes.


Tansy Gold, who never apologizes for being a radical feminist

[Major Nikon]

16. Many did, and that's the problem

When Dworkin would try to reel in her statements later when they proved too controversial(which was her intent in the first place), she was wholly unbelievable. Yes, Dworkin tried to claim later that what she meant was all men are potential rapists, but don't have to be that way. I read the book. There was no way you could derive any other intent from what she wrote. What Dworkin meant was that the western idea of heterosexual sex (which she called "fucking&quot was essentially rape. A good part and perhaps the entire book was her idea of a proof of that assertion. So yes, perhaps that doesn't really mean that "all men are rapists", but it's close enough to be effectively the same. As a literary major, Dworkin would have or should have known that. Furthermore Dworkin wasn't alone as she had quite a number of disciples that preached her gospel just as if it were the inspired word of god. Certainly there were feminists who didn't hold such views, and lots of them. The problem was not enough spoke up to contradict her and even if they did they weren't getting nearly the press she was because the blowhards of our society always get more attention than the intellectuals.

The example of the man who thought men should be entitled to something in return for their $200 subscribe to what I call the "all women are whores" mentality. I'm not going to argue that attitude is not pervasive in our society. Yes it is wrong. Yes that attitude is extremely destructive. Evidence of this is easy to find. Rape is epidemic. Rape convictions account for about 5% of all rape, by some accounts. Perhaps the number isn't that low and perhaps it is, but I don't think you'll find anyone who will say the number isn't extremely lopsided and this includes a great number of cases where arrests are involved, but never reach conviction and the number of cases that go to trial and result in acquittal. So it's pretty evident (at least to me) that the "all women are whores" mentality is pretty well entrenched in our society. And yes you are right in that this attitude is very extreme, however it is far closer to the mainstream mentality and as such far less controversial. If a man wrote a pseudo-scientific book with this as the theme it's doubtful he'd ever get published. Regardless of all this, the counter to that mentality is not "all men are rapists".

So yes, Dworkin might have been calling attention to a very serious problem, and yes she was right in that much of our culture needed to change in order to address that problem. However, she also held very extreme views that were very far removed from reality, much less the mainstream. I suspect that much victimization in her past helped form those ideas. She was perceived by the public as a man hater, and that's exactly what she was. As such it was her most extreme statements and ideas that made the press and turned her into a very controversial figure. It also made her a target, and a very easy one. It also made her the face of feminism, whether she represented the whole of them or not, and in that way she set back the cause of feminism significantly as extreme radicals often do. It caused many women to not want to be associated with feminism of any kind. It caused many to believe that the conservative idea of how women should be treated wasn't all that bad. It gave half-wits like Limbaugh and Coulter(themselves blowhard extremists) an endless stream of material to draw from. It didn't even matter to them that Dworkin crawled in bed with Ed Meese. To them she was the poster woman of what was wrong with feminism, and it was very easy for them to put all feminists on board with her.

[Tansy_Gold]

21. And I would say that you were contributing to that problem

with that post. You didn't qualify it, you just threw it out there as if Dworkin were in fact representative of "feminism." That you followed it with an "explanation" is fine, but it comes after the damage has been done, as if you were saying, "Oh, I didn't mean that, not really." (smirk, smirk).

Dworkin's extremism didn't make her "the face of feminism," but rather the anti-feminists who labeled her as such, who compared all feminsts to her (as, in fact, you did), and who berated all feminists as a result. Did the media make Ted Bundy "the face of masculinity"? No, of course not. But Dworkin was made "the face of feminism" because it suited the misogynist dominant culture's agenda to do so. Compare her extremism at one end to Phyllis Schlafly or Christina Hoff Summers, Katie Roiphe, Christine O'Donnell or even Michelle Duggar at the other, and you'll see that they *are* considered extremists at their end while Dworkin was not. In other words, her extremism was presented as the norm and all feminists were lumped in with her, while on the other side no such "lumping" occurred.

Seems to me you did some "lumping" of your own.


TG

[seabeyond]

24. in ALL my years i never heard one woman say all sex was rape. never. heard. one. woman say it. BUT

i have been accused by man after man tell me, that is what i believe, because i am a feminist.

[Nikia]

28. When I read "Intercourse" by Dworkin, I did get a little different message than you

The message that I got was coercion, like Tansy Gold described above, was widespread and considered "normal". It did not say that all men did this, but that doing so was "normal". That "normal" needed to be challenged

[seabeyond]

17. that is exactly what that poster was saying. only men defended him saying he was not saying all

women are whores. we have all heard men say, even here on du, there is no difference from the woman who has sex from money and a date, or marriage. we know what they are saying, regardless of their denial when called on it.

to say, " No more so than some feel hooking up and expecting dinner or a movie then a jump. In the end they are both pay to lay."

this was a major reason when dating i NEVER let a man pay my way. it was split or no date. i had heard this "joke" enough to know i was never going to be in that position.

[DeathToTheOil]

12. Yes

Excuses don't excuse.

[randome]

22. Not trying to deny the "men's culture" that exists.

But don't be embarrassed. There are mothers who kill their own children and there are men who rape.

Let's keep the focus on horrible behavior, no matter the gender.

[seabeyond]

25. here is the problem. this is not mere "horrible behavior". it is an undercurrent

that needs to be discussed for awareness. if a person is not aware, it cannot be addressed. what you suggest is burying head in sand.

a woman killing her children is not an undercurrent of society. it is an event. men, too, kill their children. less under one years old, slightly. more as the children age. that really has nothing to do with the subject.

[riderinthestorm]

27. Statistically your post is bullshit. Depending on the study, approximately 25% of women are raped

or sexually assaulted (+/- up to 1/3 or even 1/5 depending on the study as I said). Which means approximately 70 - 80 million in the US are affected by rape.

According to the American Anthropological Association 200 murders of children by their mothers occurs every year +/- a few.

There is absolutely NO correlation statistically with the number of women getting raped vs the number of women who are killing their children. It's a grotesque comparison imho and utterly unsubstantiated (although if you have numbers that show me wrong which I found extremely doubtful, I'll retract)

I REALLY hate it when people try to diminish our rape culture within this patriarchal society by trying to come up with the most ridiculous analogies. This IS about gender and trying to minimize it is a huge part of the problem.

[getdown]

6. needs pinning at top of Forum

"Our culture is steeped in images and messages that normalize sexual violence and our criminal justice system is built on the principals of protecting perpetrator's rights well before any consideration to a victim's rights."

[riderinthestorm]

7. We live in a patriarchy and it permeates every facet of our lives

It enshrines the dominant male and does nothing to discourage violence and oppression against those who are inferior. The article only touches on this in the most generic way and then quickly veers off....

"It is easy to point the finger at a fraternity and say that they are the problem but in reality the problem is much larger."


However the secondary point from the article is still valid and deserves reinforcing...

"Many people are quick to question the victim's actions well before they will question the perpetrator's choices -- they ask victim blaming questions, question victims' sexual history, clothing choices, substance abuse history, mental health status, etc. If a perpetrator is found guilty, their prior victims are blamed for whatever choices they may have made, as if their actions had the power to convict a criminal and spare other victims.

"The media continues to use the term "accuser" when referencing a victim, ignoring the reality that it is only the state that can bring charges against an individual in criminal court. People are so uncomfortable with rape that they often place judgment on the victim in order to reassure themselves that such a crime would never happen to them or their loved ones. It would only happen to "those kinds of people ... who make those choices." There are those that would even turn their backs on the most vulnerable victims, our children."

[Odin2005]

8. +1,000,000,000,000,000,000

[BlueJazz]

9. I can't truly imagine how a Woman feels that is raped. It brings up...

...severe sympathy, extreme empathy and hot purple rage...all at the same time, which
causes me to be very uncomfortable.
Imagine how the Woman feels.....I never want to know that experience.

[jimlup]

10. I would disagree with you generalization of title for the thread

And I will state my position carefully and accurately least it be misunderstood. I think sexual violence and yes rape are a very serious problem in our culture. I do not believe that we live a "rape culture".

The idea that we live in a "rape culture" in my opinion deludes the rather significant point that we need to put an end to sexual violence. It is absolutely not OK. Nevertheless to generalize to our whole "culture" is naive at best.

As a student of anthropology I believe that our culture is in a very unstable non-equilibrium state. Evolutionarily speaking we have just barely stopped being an agrarian culture and even that was hardly adapted from our hunter-gatherer true evolutionary heritage. We have entered an age where sexual roles are changing faster than our psychologies can adapt to them. This point is not intended to forgive "rape" in any way. I am only pointing out that sex roles in our society are very badly adapted to our positions and structures.

Some men are evil and use sex as a weapon of power. This is wrong. But it isn't a defining aspect of our culture. There are many serious problems with our culture - this is one of many.

You may have an argument that many male power structures are illegitimate - in fact I would agree with this. But to characterize our culture as "rape culture" undermines credibility and alienates people like me who feel that men are also very seriously oppressed in our society.

[Remember Me]

11. Of course men are oppressed in our society -- thanks to the very patriarchy that oppresses

women MORE, but rewards men enough so that they'll endure their own oppression (and in fact think of much of it as benefits).

But that doesn't mean that it's not ALSO a rape culture.

AND, pointing out that ours is a rape culture in no way means it's not also many other things. It's not, in other words, the SOLE denominator for our society.

[Tansy_Gold]

15. Suggested reading and viewing

Buchwald, Emilie, Pamela Fletcher, and Martha Roth. Transforming a Rape Culture. Minneapolis: Milkwood Editions, 1993.



Jean Kilbourne "Killing Us Softly 4."
http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=241

I suppose I could have embedded the clip, which is from "Killing Us Softly 3" but you can easily click on the link. The point is, violence against and objectification of women is and has been rampant in ALL of our culture, and rape is just one part of it.

The fact that Kilbourne has been compelled to update the original 1979 "Killing Us Softly" not once but three times ought to be enough evidence that the culture of violence has not diminished.


(Ooops, don't know my own strength! I didn't realize the link itself would embed the video. Oh, well, have a look anyway.)

[seabeyond]

19. this shot of the video is another point. for a year or two, i have noticed many videos

where there is a sexualized near naked woman like this video.

so i click on the video to find out what it is showing. inevitably, there is little to nothing in the video about or with naked or near naked sexualized woman but a second, or not even a second a flash of cleavage, bikini, or what not. a fuckin ten minute video that has nothing to do with it. but ALWAYS the shot on the front of it is provocative woman.

i have seen it so much of late with all these embedded videos, and being computer illiterate, i was going to ask, do people find the shot to put on front or does the embedding grasp a shot for the front. i couldn't believe that it would always be the second of provocative woman.

i got an iphone from hubby for christmas. was playing with video. and saw all the clips to pick up top. and i got my answer. these videos that have the screen shot works hard to get any shot of a woman sexualized.

just a point i have noticed of late.

[Tansy_Gold]

23. No, I have no control over what's shown in the imbedding.

I didn't even intend to embed it.

[seabeyond]

26. interesting. i wonder if that is true with all embedding, and it is always a provocative shot of

female, even in a video that has only one flash of a picture that might, just might, be construed as provocative.

thanks.

[seabeyond]

20. by the way, i watched this before. she is very good. the video is very good. nt

Last edited Mon Jan 2, 2012, 06:18 PM - Edit history (1)

[getdown]

18. "naive"

what a perfectly patronizing word choice

btw the word you wanted for delude is "dilute"

all your points fit into the overarching "rape culture" - they don't disprove it

[Survivoreesta]

29. Just posted this in LBN>

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's recent decision to update its narrow definition of rape could correct what advocates have described as chronic undercounting of the crime in communities nationwide.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told a U.S. Senate panel on Dec. 14 that he would accept a recommendation to update the agency's definition of rape, according to a video of the hearing aired on C-SPAN. He said he expected the change to go into effect "sometime in the spring."

For about 80 years, the FBI has defined rape as "the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will," officials said. Only sexual assaults that fit the narrow definition are counted as rape in the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Reporting program ---- the crime data that policymakers and the public most often see.

"That definition was in some ways unworkable, certainly not applicable ---- fully applicable ---- to the types of crimes that it should cover," Mueller said of the definition during the senate hearing.

Read more: http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/region-fbi-to-expand-definition-of-rape-to-include-more/article_e994cb9f-06cd-5c32-9199-b75eb84bca95.html#ixzz1iL1ztIZN

I'm posting it here just in case some nitpicker has a hissyfit and gets it locked over there!