Tristan Taormino has a solid background in promoting radical, provocative feminist sex education. An award-winning author, editor and adult film producer, this busy lady is responsible for gems such as The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women and True Lust: Adventures in Sex, Porn and Perversion. Smart and outspoken, Taormino delivers her latest book, Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships, as "a study and a road map, a guidebook and a manifesto" for people who want to abandon monogamy. In a well-researched relationship self-help manual, Taormino drops the latex gloves, dons a scholar's hat, and takes us into the heartland of her beloved research community: the erotic and intellectual lives of creative, ambitious, polyamorous lovers. Taormino provides history, rationale, challenges and suggestions in her commendable, holistic treatment of open relationships - and demonstrates that nonmonogamy can be a healthy, sustainable partnership style.

A hunk of people who love and live in nonmonogamous relationships have contributed their stories to this book (from the US; not everything translates to over here). Two underlying mottos, however, seem to emerge from these snapshot case studies: More Love is worthwhile, and Unfulfilling Situations can be changed into Something Better. Whereas sneaks and cheats give lovin' a bad name, the purpose of nonmonogamy, it emerges, is to practice ethical, compassionate connections outside of a 'closed' one-to-one amour - whether that's Lena (54) and Gavin (43) who are members of the Unitarian Universalist church and consider sharing a lover together, or Lewis (50), Turner (37) and Ivan (37) who are part of a loving, live-in, gay triad.

The possibilities are of course endless - consent, above-board negotiation and time management pending. Nonmonogamous lovers often wax lyrical about love, sex, emotional needs, spiritual connections, flirting and romance - whatever turns you on and helps you get satisfied; but why do people pursue open relationships? Really, isn't one person enough? Does Taormino and her cohorts convince in this book about the perks of this taboo relationship style?

Click here to read on and comment

But while she was there Robyn needed feeding and when Miss Corbridge took out the milk bottle she was asked to leave.

She told The Argus yesterday: “Robyn started crying, I was rocking her pram to try and calm her down.

“The staff told me I must keep her quiet because she was disrupting the other people and we were in a place of work.

“I apologised and said I thought she was hungry.

“I looked through my baby bag to get a bottle I had prepared for her and suddenly a member of staff rushed over and said: ‘You can’t give her that. It’s classed as food and drink so if you want to give it to her you’ll have to leave the premises’.

“As I took the milk off my daughter she started to scream, which made it even more difficult for me to take her outside. I felt humiliated.”

A Jobcentre spokesman has apologised, but surely the damage has been done. Young mothers should not be humiliated or challenged when they go to look for work, and Jobcentres should be set up to welcome and accomodate parents.

Via Harpymarx, who points out:

The rules and regulations are rigid and show no flexibility yet NL [New Labour] want people to find any old job but without giving good proper support especially for people with kids.

So here is a basic incentive, James Purnell, introduce free childcare to help women like Samantha.

Uglies takes part in a remarkably sterile and ordered world. Scott Westerfeld's post-apocalyptic trilogy followed hot on the heels of the US science fiction writer's highly successful Midnighters series, and the apocalyptic Parasite Positive (also published as Peeps) plus its follow up, The Last Days.

Hanging over this world is the fate of 'The Rusties', a society that predates the world of Uglies, whose people destroyed themselves and their environment through their dependence on oil and raping of the natural environment.

As Westerfeld told the readers of Check Your Pulse, a Simon and Schuster book newsletter for teens, the Uglies trilogy is set a long time later, but "Alas, it's a society that has been made paranoid by its history, and hates human innovation and difference. Which often makes it a less-than-fun place to be a teenager (except for the hoverboards.)"

Uglies

"Is it not good to make society full of beautiful people?"
- Yang Yuan, New York Times, quoted at the start of Uglies

The story begins with 15-year-old Tally Youngblood, a gawky but rebellious teen who can't wait to be 16. But in the Uglies world, turning sweet 16 acquires a sinister connotation, because it is once they are 17 that the 'Uglies' (teenagers up to the age of 15) undergo radical surgery (or "surge") to turn them into 'Pretties'. Once they have "turned pretty" they move out of their dorms in Uglyville and into the more luxurious mansions in New Pretty Town, where life is one long party and everyone is devastatingly, hypnotically, luminously gorgeous.

Click here to read on and comment

I also love that it stocks loads of vegan products and doesn't test on animals, emphasises low packaging, recycling, fair trade, etc. But... is it me, or does this stunt not smack a bit of PETA?

Basically, to illustrate the plight of sharks, Lush had performance artist Alice Newstead pierce herself and string herself up with shark hooks in their Regent Street store. And, also, they're launching a new product called Shark Fin Soap.

In many ways, it doesn't seem as bad as the PETA campaigns - after all, Newstead is an artist who specialises in suspension. But... well... It's still 'selling' the cause based on images of a woman being strung up bleeding from hooks, isn't it? Even more problematic, I suspect, is the way that the Metro in particular has posted such graphic close ups.

Ultimately, I'm still not sure what I think about this one - but maybe Lush should stick to the soaps and stuff.

*Yep, some of it is pretty expensive, but not everything - the solid shampoo!

Over at another blog called The F Word , US student Kristin Herout is interviewed about her project to highlight the body standard issues in advertising.

Herout took photos of volunteer women on campus, staging alternative versions of adverts from women's fashion magazines:

I am hoping to replicate advertisements found in common women’s magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Elle, and others, as closely as possible using actual plus-size women as my models. I plan on juxtaposing the original ad with my version of the ad when the project is displayed. I am hoping that this will show that I am interested in having plus-size women being represented just as thin women are represented, which, is incredibly unusual.

Via Bitch Magazine

First up, Uterus Flags!

The flags were strung up in the town, and you can see more of them on the artists' blog. I am somewhat ambivilent about uterus-based art, but this does make quite an impact.

Uterus Flags is a new version of a work exhibited earlier in various European cities. The flags, in 9 different color combinations, inspired by heraldry and party-flags, bear the silhouette of the female sexual organs; uterus, falopian tubes, ovaries and vagina. Exhibited in the streets of Rovereto, celebrating in the urban public space, the flags become a part of the city´s architecture and life throughout the duration of the exhibition.

The second piece of work was called "caregivers", part documentary, part music video, shows women migrants from Ukraine and Romania, who work providing care to elderly people in the area.

We found the article, describing the recent and rapidly growing phenomenon of Ukrainian women migrating to Italy to work as caregivers, on the internet. The writer is a young Italian-American journalist Davide Berretta. We commissioned the composer Karólína Eiríksdóttir to write music to the article. She wrote the music for a soprano, women choir and an oboe. The music is recorded in Iceland and performed by the soprano Ingibjörg Guðjónsdóttir, the oboe player Matthías Nardeau and the Women Choir of Garðabær.

Unfortunately I can't find the report. However, as the Independent tells it, the report calls attention to violence against women, women's lack of political representation, segregation of women and men in the workplace, pay inequality and the high number of women in prison on minor offences:

The report also highlights the treatment of women in prison. The authors say too many women are being sent to jail for failing to pay their TV licences or committing other minor offences.

The committee urges the Government to "intensify its efforts to reduce the number of women in conflict with the law, including through targeted prevention programmes aimed at addressing the causes of women's criminality."

And more generally:

British women are under-represented in Parliament, paid less than men at work and increasingly being sent to prison for committing minor offences, a report on sex discrimination has found. The report, which was published by an influential committee of the United Nations, paints a damning picture of daily life for women living in the UK who continue to fight for a fairer deal in society.

Calling on Britain to do more to improve the standing of women, the committee argues for "benchmarks and concrete timetables" to increase the number of women in political and public life and to use "special measures" to promote women to positions of leadership. Only one in five members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords is a woman.

The UN's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women is also critical of what it describes as "gender segregation" in the workplace. In its report it says that its members are concerned about the "persistence of occupational segregation between women and men in the labour market and the continuing pay gap, one of the highest in Europe".

The average hourly earnings of full-time female employees amount to approximately 83 per cent of men's earnings, according to the findings. In its report, the UN also highlights the need for greater measures to tackle violence against women and the practice of forced marriages.

In her interview with former national newspaper editor Piers Morgan in the October edition of GQ, Dame Helen also spoke about being date-raped as a student - something she first revealed in a 2003 interview.

She told GQ: "I was [date-raped], yes. A couple of times.

"Not with excessive violence, or being hit, but rather being locked in a room and made to have sex against my will."

Dame Helen said it was rape if a couple engaged in sexual activity but the woman said "no" at the last second.

However, she said: "I don't think she can have that man into court under those circumstances."

She said she had not reported her own experiences to police because "you couldn't do that in those days".

She's quoted elsewhere saying:

"I guess it is one of the many subtle parts of the men/women relationship that has to be negotiated and worked out between them."

[Edited for clarification purposes] I can only express sympathy for Mirren, and what she's been through. But her statement that date rape shouldn't, in effect, be illegal, is dangerous and wrong. In reality, in this country, right now, men can rape with impunity. And in this country, right now, rapists are getting away with it because of woman-blaming attitudes.

* For some reason they've led on her cocaine use, though!

Update: The Guardian's coverage includes this quote from the solicitor general:

Vera Baird, the solicitor-general, described Mirren's remarks as "dangerous" at a time when rape victims were being encouraged to come forward.

"We want women to report rape with the confidence that - albeit slowly - conviction rates are getting better. It really is a shame to cast doubt at the edges of what she thinks might not be rape."

She added: "It is a pity, because she is a much-admired person."

Loads of praise for Nino's feature, Self harm, and discussion prompted by Sophie Platt's feature on why it's still this big taboo that women masturbate, and the harm that taboo does.

Most debated feature was probably Kit Roskelly's piece on feminism and kink.

This month, as always, there are loads of comments on older features too, which always prompts me to go back and read all that interesting material again. This month's best blast-from-the-past comment was on Catherine Redfern's prescription for How to create a woman's glossy magazine in five minutes, from 2001. Great stuff.

You can read her excellent posts for us so far here in the author archive!

Doris Gibson is profiled on the radio show 'From Our Own Correspondent':

She began with 10,000 soles (£2,066), which her uncle had given her, and a typewriter in a single room.

The magazine was going to be called Caras y Caretas - faces and masks - but as Peru was under a military dictatorship at the time they decided to call it just Caretas to symbolise the repression they were living under.

They planned to revert to the original title after the dictatorship but it never happened.

She got one of Peru's first divorces, and then:

She had a relationship with the artist Servulo Gutierrez to whom she was both a lover and a muse.

He famously painted a life-size nude portrait of her which - following an argument - he sold to a wealthy businessman.

Her granddaughter Diana says she went to the man's house with a photographer from the magazine.

They said they needed to photograph the painting in the sunlight, so they put it outside on the car and promptly drove away with it.

"I don't want to be nude in your house," she told the man when he called to ask for it back.

The BBC says she was also a feminist, but doesn't provide any more details. For Spanish speakers, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas post includes lots of links to responses to Gibson's death in the Spanish-language press.

Elsewhere:

Erika at What we did on our Holy days posts this hilarious skit by voxfeminista:

Bolivian cholitas are triumphing in the usually male-dominated field of lucha libre (wrestling), The Guardian reports:

"There is still a lot of prejudice, violence and physical control over women," said Lourdes Montero, an indigenous women's rights activist. "It will take time. But cholitas know they need to fight [for their rights]. There's a resurgence of pride in the skirt."

The wrestling cholitas reflect the limitations and possibilities of this feminist surge. Conceived in 2001 to spice up traditional male-only bouts, they were presented as a novelty on par with fighting dwarves, with whom they shared billing. But gradually they became the main draw and there are now several dozen semi-professional female wrestlers. The most successful, such as Yolanda "the Loved One", Julia "from La Paz" and Ana "the Avenger", tour abroad.

They lift weights, hike mountains and practise half-nelsons, headlocks, piledrives and other moves under the guidance of coaches such as Daniel Torrico, a former champion known as Mr Atlas. The "skirted ones" earned respect, he said. "They train alongside men and we have seen that they can do a lot."

Over at Comment is Free, Nat Sloane wonders if we'll ever have a second female prime minister, and considers the outlook for women's political representation more generally:

Since 1990, the main three parties between them have had a total of 11 leadership elections (five Conservative, three Labour and three Liberal Democrat). They were contested by 24 men (some of them more than once) and two women - Margaret Beckett for Labour in 1994, and Jackie Ballard for the Liberal Democrats in 1999. Not once in this millennium has a British woman politician felt that she could contest the leadership of her party and, in the New Statesman recently, Martin Bright observed that senior women in the cabinet are "not thought worth of consideration" as possible leadership candidates.

Twenty six per cent (six) of our cabinet ministers are women, but this is still behind countries such as Spain (53%), France (47%), Chile (45%), Liberia (37%) and New Zealand (35%). Despite David Cameron's promise that, if he is elected, a third of his cabinet will be female, only 23% (seven) of his 31-strong shadow cabinet are women - and three of those are in the House of Lords. Liberal Democrat women fare even worse, holding a mere 18% (five) of Nick Clegg's 28 shadow cabinet posts.

Sarah Haskins considers 'chick flicks' in the latest Target Women (via Dorothy Surrenders):

Penny Red has started a weekly webcomic! See part one here, and part two here.

Feministing links up a trailer about the film At Your Cervix. The trailer begins with some disturbing stories about how medical students are taught to do cervical exam on unconscious women who've gone into surgery for other things, without their consent. (How is that not assault?!) According to the film's website, students are sometimes required to carry out the exams on each other, in front of other students and faculty. Pretty fucking outrageous, yeah? Luckily, there is an alternative, and the movie features some women who volunteer as instructors, teaching medical students how to do exams:

Heather Corinna recounts her experience teaching sex-ed to street kids. This one's a must-read:

Without really meaning to tell a personal anecdote — or rather, because I think I so often take fro granted that my whole life history is right there on my face — I said something about remembering that a few times when I was on-street in my teens, when I’d agreed to an exchange of sex-for-place-to-sleep, how that was probably the toughest spot I’d ever felt with negotiation since my having shelter was on the line. ALL the eyes got big then, and ALL of the girls jumped off the couches and came into a close circle around me on the floor. We then talked some more about how being on-street makes a lot of these issues different and more difficult before it turned into a two-hour long very random Q&A about everything from who’s fallen for the blue balls whine, how their gay male friends can use female condoms, why you shouldn’t use flavored condoms vaginally, where their uterus actually was, some talk about sex readiness and age, the works.

Shirin Ebadi has applauded the Iranian women's movement. Change for Equality quotes her thusly:

"the Iranian women’s movement does not have a leader. The true place of the women’s movement is in the homes of every Iranian committed to equality. Leaders can be arrested or killed, and as a result their movements come to a halt. But the Iranian women’s movement does not come to a halt because it does not have any leaders, and its activities rely on each and every individual [involved in the movement]."

Also, check out this gallery of photos from the One Million Signatures Campaign Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws.

Sinclair followed up the post on butch hair & shaving with another on femme hair & shaving. Comments are particularly worth reading...

Is it possible that Sarah Palin's youngest child is actually not her child, but her daughter's child? I hesitated good and long before posting this link, and I'm still not sure how I feel about this, or, indeed, how I feel about the speculation about the story (the dissection of the way Palin looked during her pregnancy/not pregnancy, etc...) But at the same time, if true it's yet more evidence of her troublingly retrogressive views on, well, pretty much everything from abortion to polar bears.

Photo by rrho, shared under a Creative Commons license

Actually, according to the Huffington Post someone registered the domain name www.vpilf.com two months ago. (VPILF, as in MILF, as in "vice president I'd like to fuck").

Warning note: the HuffPo post is celebrating this as a moment of "sheer genius", see Hoydon About Town for more.

Shakesville is already on Palin Sexism Watch #3

One of the commenters there points to this quote from a pundit on CNN, about Palin's ability to be vice president and take care of her small child with Down's syndrome:

The baby is just slightly more than four months old now. Children with Down's syndrome require an awful lot of attention. The role of Vice President, it seems to me, would take up an awful lot of her time, and it raises the issue of how much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?

I'll finish with a quote from Melissa at Shakesville:

We defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because we endorse her or her politics, but because that's how feminism works

And if that seems bad, consider that only 65 cases were actually prosecuted. This gives Scotland a rape conviction rate of 2.9%, even worse than England's, which hovers at around a shocking 5-6%.

And the postcode lottery effect can be seen north of the border, too:

They also show huge regional variations in the proportion of cases that end up in court, from 19 per cent in Dumfries and Galloway to 1.7 per cent in Tayside.

The only bright spot is that some efforts are underway to address the problem - notably, no fiscals (prosecution lawyers) will be allowed to try rape cases until they have been retrained.

The two-day course will offer refresher training on rape law and teach lawyers how to support victims.

It will include discussions with forensic examiners, senior police officers, victim support workers and High Court prosecutors.

Lord Advocate Eilish Angiolini said: "This training is a vital part of ensuring there is a professional, determined approach to gathering evidence and bringing prosecutions before the court."

When the terrible rape-conviction rate is raised in discussions here in the UK, there's often quite a bit of flapping about how rape cases are impossible to prosecute in many cases - so this little bit of info from the Mail's story is really worth taking note of:

The move follows calls from Scotland's chief police officers and victim support groups for the introduction of specialist rape prosecutors. The United States has used specialists since the 1980s with some states achieving conviction rates of more than 80 per cent.

80%!!!

Yes, the legal system is different. However, this is surely evidence that it's possible to design a system which actually puts more than a vanishing fraction of rapists in jail.

(Via womensgrid)

Abyss2hope has some questions about how the case has been framed:

What stands out to me in this case versus other rape cases against teenage girls I've read about is:

1) Her rape in particular was "horrific."

2) She was accompanied by a male friend.

3) She was raped before 9 pm.

4) She wasn't grabbed in an isolated or otherwise "dangerous" location.

5) Because an accomplice stayed with the victim's friend this was clearly a premeditated sex crime.

6) It is noted that this victim was traumatized.

These contrasts seem to highlight how other sexual assault victims aren't viewed as being blameless and their rapes are neither horrifying nor traumatic. What this does is fault the 2 men involved not for being involved in a sexual assault, but for where and how they committed this type of crime.

Guest blogging at Feministe, Latoya from Racialicious talks about life before feminism, and the role hip-hop played in her feminist awakening:

On one hand, hip-hop keeps throwing misogyny in my face like it’s supposed to be there, promoting people with no message, no clue, people who would be happy to keep a hyped-up version of gender roles as the predominant cultural narrative.

But on the other hands, hip-hop also gives me the space to develop my skills and the room to bomb back.

Though I didn’t realize it then, that day was my awakening as a hip-hop feminist.

People were always going to try to stick me with something I’m not, misread me, underestimate me, oversexualize me, minimize me, force me to fit into their view of the world.

But I’m not going out like that.
And y’all better recognize.

Meanwhile, Daisy's Dead Air goes on a trip through some feminist country music.

Davita at PDDP posted about white privilege and colourblindness, through black women's experiences with hair salons.

Sinclair at Sugarbutch posts about hair, shaving, gender:

Sometimes I even like my five o’clock shadow. I’ve developed the habit of scratching my chin like the boys do. Feeling when I need a shave. Letting it grow on weekends, on weeks when I don’t have work. When I was in Mexico I didn’t touch it once. Ten days without shaving, I am sure a personal record. I didn’t even know my hair would grow that long, that dark, that thick.

Sometimes, I even like it.

In the workplace - DollyMix reports on a dodgy survey done by Gumtree:

Classifieds website Gumtree.com conducted the covert study in July. You may not explode with surprise at the news that a young, attractive woman posing as a cleaner attracted 16 times more job offers than an older, larger lady - despite offering the same qualifications and experience. Similarly young, attractive female applicants for nanny and PA jobs both outperformed their older, and arguably less attractive counterparts in sourcing interest.

Makeup not enough? How about airbrushing your face! From Twisty:

Sure, it costs $269.95, but it comes with “eyebrow stencils” and “body shimmer.”

Check out the awful before and after shots - of course, the 'before' photos are all posed like mugshots.

And, finally, via Fem.men.ist, Sonya "The Drama" Boom Renee on choice:

Martin and Lyon were among the founders of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian rights organization [in the US], in San Francisco in 1955.

Over the years they worked for causes including gay rights, advocacy on behalf of battered women and issues facing elderly Americans and wrote three books.

And some more background on the work she did:

Del was a founding member of the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club and the Lyon-Martin Health Services, a primary healthcare program specifically designed for very low-income and uninsured women with HIV.

Del was a true hero in the struggle for LGBT rights and this is indeed a sad lost for all of us.

Some of the reaction on the feministblogosphere:

• Feministe ("She also co-authored several books, one of which, Lesbian/Woman, was read outloud to me by my best friend in her bedroom when I was 13 and was trying to figure out what being queer was all about.")
• Shakesville ("Sigh... At least she got to marry her love before she passed.")
• Pam's House Blend
• Feministing

SAT 13 Sep, 13.15pm, Hackney & Islington Amnesty Group presents Oscar nominated Persepolis (12A). Artist and novelist Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical tale of a young girl's coming-of-age in Iran during the Islamic revolution. PERSEPOLIS is an enthralling tale of a spirited young woman who has to deal with the consequences of her nation's history.

The film screening will be followed by a Q & A with Diana Nammi, Director
of Kurdish and Iranian Women's Rights Organisation, and Chair of
International Campaign Against Honour Killings and a Amnesty representative
who will talk about the Stop Violence Against Women campaign.

£7/£5 Concs & Under 15's

You can book tickets on the Rio Cinema website.

And a quick reminder - if you spot an event anywhere in the UK that you think could be of interest, please do let us know

The International Boxing Association (AIBA) will press for the introduction of women's boxing at the 2012 London Olympics, AIBA president Wu Ching-Kuo said on Monday.

"We will make a proposal and submit it to the International Olympic Committee," Wu told reporters after a meeting of the AIBA's executive committee in Beijing.

"Boxing is the only sport in the Olympic programme without women and we believe we are ready," he added.

The AIBA was expecting a decision by December, said Joyce Bowen, who chairs the ruling body's women's commission.

Interesting side note, via the Reuters blog - women's boxing featured in the 1904 Olympics.

Also check out this interesting history of women's boxing. If this account is believed, it would be particularly apt for women's boxing to make it into the 2012 London Olympics - almost three centuries after the first staged fights took place in this very city.

Photo from Women's Boxing Archive Network

Is this a real Heinz ad? Only a few months after pulling their ad for mayonnaise showing two men kissing, they decided to just let go and aim full tilt at the 'women are meat' section of the sauce market?!

Or maybe it's a fake - it popped up on reddit without much context, labelled "Girls are chickens?". (Warning, comments may cause fury.)

It's really interesting (and fantastic) that right from the offset, Mexico DF placed an emphasis on legal abortions for all, not just wealthy citizens who probably already had ways and means to access terminations in relative safety. Access, not just a theoretical choice.

However, it's not been a smooth ride:

Since the city’s legislature voted for the law in April 2007, some 85 percent of the gynecologists in the city’s public hospitals have declared themselves conscientious objectors. And women complain that even at those hospitals that perform abortions, staff members are often hostile, demeaning them and throwing up bureaucratic hurdles.

The city government took action:

After so many doctors refused to perform abortions, the city hired four new doctors to help handle the load at the 14 city hospitals where the city initially offered abortions. Now 35 doctors offer the procedure in city medical facilities.

Because the city determined its service was not fast enough, it has trained doctors to use abortion pills when possible and perform speedier surgical procedures.

Sounds pretty good, huh? Unfortunately, the NYT reports that women are still having to turn to backstreet abortion, in the face of lack of facilities and hostile, abusive attitudes at clinics which do offer terminations:

Alejandra, 24, who works for the city’s women’s institute, said that when she went to get an abortion last year at a public hospital, a social worker there told her that she would need to pay for her own ultrasound, which is supposed to be free, and that she would need to be accompanied by a family member. Scared off by the description of the risks and the procedure, she fled the hospital.

She ended up taking pills to induce an abortion, without seeing a doctor, and developed a serious infection. She asked that only her first name be used because she said she recently received a death threat for speaking at a city event celebrating the new law. Another woman, a 27-year-old high school literature teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said her friends told her that they were treated like prostitutes at public hospitals. She also took abortion pills but said they were ineffective, requiring her to visit a doctor to complete her abortion.

(Via Reproductive Rights Prof Blog)

Photo by Teseum, shared under a Creative Commons license

Kyle Payne has been sentenced to six months in prison, for "invasion of privacy". You'll remember Payne as the blogger who described himself as a radical feminist, and yet exposed and filmed an unconscious female student. He has avoided charges of sexual assault, but instead "received 360 days, with 180 days suspended on each of two counts of invasion of privacy, a serious misdemeanor charge. He was also given one year of probation on each count. On the charge of 2nd degree attempted burglary, a felony, Payne received an indeterminate term of prison not to exceed five years, with incarceration suspended. He will placed on probation for three years".

He has also been put on parole for 10 years, under legislation on, as the Iowa Independent puts it, "sexually-related" crimes.

Hoydon About Town has the full details. As Lauredhel says:

We thought that his plea bargain was all about avoiding official “sex offender” registration, and I guess this particular sex offender succeeded in that. I hope, at least, that every rape counselling and women’s assistance service in the country knows his name and face, and knows not to take him on as a “volunteer”.

There are some interesting details about how the feminist blogosphere's wholesale condemnation of Payne was raised in court, as well.