Thursday, November 27, 2008 - Posts
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The economy is on life support, yesterday's bloodbath in Bombay has thrust terrorism suddenly back to the forefront of the international agenda, a record number of Americans are on food stamps…well, here is something I for which I am thankful: that I am not Lois Feldman of Carroll, Iowa. Who says she does not recall stumbling drunkenly into the men's room during a football game at the University of Minnesota Metrodome last weekend, having sex with a stranger 12 years her junior in a stall as a crowd assembled to watch and cheer or even being subsequently arrested by the police, to whom she could not even recall her correct middle name, for indecent exposure. "What Lois Feldman, 38, will remember," writes the Des Moines Register, "is the humiliation afterward." She's been prank-called by all manner of trolls and fired from her job as a receptionist, but credits her husband Kelly, who regrets not accompanying her to the bathroom, for being "supportive."
Uhhhh, yeah, maybe he's supportive because it sounds like she was…raped? Not that Feldman is using that term. Nor does she seem like the, er, "type." Nor is it clear just how drunk her partner in misdemeanor crime, Ross Walsh -- who came to the game with his girlfriend, for Chrissakes -- was when Mrs. Feldman showed up in his stall, or however it happened.
But I'll be interested to see how this news plays out on the feminist blogosphere, which does not seem to have yet seized upon it. Because it's possible Feldman was the victim of what Cosmo last year controversially termed gray rape -- a term I halfheartedly endorsed, because I think it captures the fogginess of circumstance that enables people on both sides of an unintentional incident to understand, make sense of and ultimately get past what happened.
It's also possible, of course, that she was the victim of a predatory overgrown frat boy with serious mental issues. I don't know, and I don't have a strong view on this; my inclination is to hope it's the former, and that one day the Feldmans can joke about their Larry Craig incident -- but either way, she doesn't remember. What is true is that it wasn't so much the event that traumatized her: it was the aftermath. And while it is clear that whatever the case, Feldman was the victim of a lot more than her own inebriation, her own employers won't stand by her. It's sickeningly reminiscient of a depressing Modern Love last year written by a woman who'd been publicly date raped by a frat boy her freshman year, only to find herself a pariah in her own sorority, an event she blamed for turning her into a misogynist. Ugh. Well, the bad news is that crap like this doesn't stop happening after one deactivates from one's sorority. The good news is that Feldman, a married mother of three, is courageous enough to tell the media exactly what happened. She has nothing to be ashamed about, of course -- beyond being a lightweight, which I find admirable -- but there a lot of societies that don't see it that way.
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