I’ve been noodling over the Ben Roethlisberger story myself, Emily, and there are two things I can take away from it so far. First, regardless of his guilt or innocence, Roethlisberger’s a giant dumbass. While it’s easy to say there is a “pattern” of sexual assault accusations against him, the two cases are very different. Which I point out not to defend him but to indict him.

Yes, he’s been accused of rape in a civil suit filed against him by a woman in Lake Tahoe. But that woman didn’t go to the police and waited a year to file her civil complaint against him. A former colleague ratted her out for “bragging” about having sex with him. Roethlisberger, while unable to persuade a judge to dismiss the case, had the court of public opinion on his side and got through the NFL season seemingly not distracted by the claims.

Even if what happened at Lake Tahoe was consensual and he did nothing wrong, it should have been a wake-up call for him. Perhaps make him think twice before going on a pub crawl in a college town. Instead of making him more cautious, though, it’s almost as if it made him overconfident—that he could do anything and get away with it. Now he has put himself in a much more difficult situation. His accuser reported the incident to the police immediately. The Steelers, who pretty much ignored the civil suit, are “concerned.” The police want to talk to him—and to his Nevada accuser. The sport is waiting for commissioner Roger Goodell, who’s notoriously tough on NFL miscreants, to weigh in.

Which brings me to my other takeaway. There’s an important lesson for women in this story (besides the obvious “beware of celebrity athletes”): If you are raped, report it. Call 911, find a cop (as the Georgia woman did), go to a hospital. It’s not a guarantee that your attacker will be caught or prosecuted or convicted, but it’s going to help your case far more than waiting a year and then lawyering up for a civil suit. Certainly this woman is being taken more seriously because she’s not the first one. But at least some of it has to be that she filed a criminal complaint and isn’t looking for money.

It’s not easy, and I’m not speaking abstractly of something I know nothing about. I’ve been there. You have to tell multiple people what happened to you, multiple times. You have to share personal and awkward details that you probably haven’t had time to cope with. You might have to undergo an exam that forces you to surrender what little is left of your dignity. But it’s the only way to prove, without a doubt, that something terrible happened to you and to give authorities what they need to find your attacker. And it’s the only way to keep him from doing it to others.

Tags: ben roethlisberger, Rape, sexual assault

Maybe March will be remembered as the month of the nasty text. First the tattoo lizard who slept with Sandra Bullock's husband, Jesse James, released James' bon mots. And now the full Tiger Woods sexting oeuvre has come to light. All I can say is: Someone should read these Tiger texts aloud as a one-man show. The combination of the expected cock/golden shower talk with all the boring logistics is priceless. For example: "I want you to beg for my cock,"  is followed shortly by, "No turkey unless it's a club sandwich" and "Parent hood melt down:)." And then that spy-thriller ending involving the sudden appearance of "the guys from dubai." Who are the guys from Dubai? And finally, "oh my god, i cant believe what just happened." What just happened?

Tags: Tiger sexting

Jess, I must confess I found this Daily Beast story on Jihad Jane, who will be arraigned today in Philadelphia, quite interesting. Even the headline makes sense to me. Although it’s a tease, “feminist,” in this case, does not mean the American definition of feminist. You could put together a cultural riff about how Jihad Jane and Amy Bishop represent the outer edge of the new American feminist power. (See the Lady Gaga video: Lady killers are hot right now.) But the “feminist” label here refers to surprising changes within the terrorist organizations. Richard Miniter convincingly makes the case that the women have been pressuring Jihad leaders to let them be bombers, and that the leaders were at first reluctant but eventually relented.

Nasser Shawish was the Fatah commander who ordered Dareen Abu Aisha to carry out one of the first female suicide attacks. Shawish told Israeli investigators that he didn't like the idea of using women—especially ones with bright futures: "I felt that she was a pretty and successful girl studying at the university, a future mother, who should marry and bear children, and help her people in other ways. But she wouldn't stop pressuring me."

Surely the women are misfits and confused, lost souls, as you call them. But they seem to find meaning and power in a budding new movement which could rightly be called, in that twisted context, feminist.

Tags: feminist terrorists, Jihad Jane

—Friends and family bristle as couples fight via Facebook status update. [New York Times]

—A Virginia infertility clinic sparked international controversy by giving away American eggs to British women. [Washington Post]

—“JihadJane” and the rise of female jihadis. [The Daily Beast]

—A federal appeals court rules that parents can block sexting cases. [New York Times]

—Is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Washington’s only grown-up? [The Daily Beast]

—A maligned hipster foodie defends his rarified tastes. [Salon]

Tags: congress, egg donation, Facebook, food stamps, hipsters, infertility treatment, JihadJane, marriage, Nancy Pelosi, oversharing, politics, sexting

The Daily Beast chose a provocative headline for their article on "Jihad Jane," aka Colleen LaRose, who allegedly plotted to kill a Swedish cartoonist: "The Feminist Jihad." The author, Richard Miniter, points out that LaRose is a recent, highly radicalized convert to Islam, and that she wanted to help kill the cartoonist because he portrayed the prophet Mohammed as a dog. Miniter argues that feminism is causing women to want to participate in jihad. "Terror leaders might want to take the world back to the 7th century, but they have to contend with a feminist revolution," Miniter writes.

In the case of LaRose, this is a supremely illogical read of her behavior. He compares Jane to highly educated Pakistani Aafia Siddiqui, who was born Muslim and seems to have been radicalized through her marriage to Ammar al-Baluchi, the nephew of one of the orchestrators of 9/11. A better comparison would be to Susan Atkins, a follower of Charles Manson—or really, any other person, regardless of gender, who has joined a cult. LaRose has been divorced twice and had many scrapes with the law. Atkins was raised by alcoholics and was sexually abused as a child. These lost souls are easy targets for extremists, no matter what variety of extremism they're peddling. It's tempting to apply a facile explanation for their behavior—but it doesn't really make sense.

Tags: aafia siddiqui, colleen larose, cults, daily beast, Jihad Jane, susan atkins