• The city of Richmond, California, is struggling to deal with the horrific gang rape of a 15-year-old girl, which allegedly had up to 20 witnesses, outside a homecoming dance. For some in Richmond, this means blaming the victim and criticizing the “snitches” who put seven of the alleged rapists in jail. [NY Times]
• A study of 13,000 high school students found girls who play team sports are less likely to smoke, be depressed, and use marijuana. Unfortunately, it also says boys who play team sports are more likely to behave violently and binge drink. [ABC News]

Last week, the Huffington Post made our blood boil when they reported on a horrifying trend—that insurance companies are denying benefits for women who’ve been raped, and even dropping their coverage altogether. How can they get away with such a thing? Because, when a woman is raped and it’s unknown whether the assailant used a condom, doctors typically prescribe a month’s worth of an anti-HIV medication (which, uh, I didn’t even know existed) as a precaution. It’s extremely rare that a woman actually contracts HIV this way, but insurance companies view this as a morbid done deal. Susan Pisano, a spokeswoman for the health insurance industry’s largest trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, explains, “If you put down on a form that you are or were taking anti-HIV drugs at any time, [insurance companies] are going to understand that you are or were in treatment for HIV, period. That could be a factor in determining whether you get coverage.”

Faculty and students at Wellington College, a public boarding high school in the U.K., are doing anything but discoing after a school dance went terribly wrong last week. During the “Rumble in the Jungle” dance, two 15-year-old boys allegedly held down a 13-year-old girl (whose identity is being withheld) and performed a sex act on her while other students watched. Anyone else wondering where the chaperones were? Even more shocking to me: the parents of the girl are refusing to press charges, deciding to leave the incident for the school to take care of. What?!?

Most of us who’ve lived in a college dormitory before have had that sexual assault prevention lecture from campus security that’s basically, like, “Women! Cross your legs!” I guess society thinks it’s easier to just make women protect themselves, rather than changing men’s behavior, hence, advice like “cover your drinks so you don’t get roofied” and “don’t walk walk home alone at night.”

You could just stay in your dorm room all year, girls.

Yeah, “rape prevention” advice that makes women have to be on the ball with our behavior all the time is damn annoying. So I’m thrilled a blogger at No, Not You, who did a college RA training last month, wrote up 11 handy-dandy sexual assault prevention tips FOR MEN.

Ew, this is every woman’s worst nightmare happening in real life: a creepy man dubbed “The Georgetown Cuddler” is going around D.C. college campuses, breaking into dorm rooms, and climbing on top of sleeping women. Last week, a female Georgetown student woke up at 4 a.m. to find a stranger in her home touching her inappropriately, just two days after another student woke up with a man believed to be the Cuddler lying next to her on the couch and covering her face. Apparently, this creep also likes to take a blanket from the victim’s bedroom, lay it on top of her, and then he lies on top of the blanket, too. Oh, and occasionally he tries to rape his victims “with varying success.” The Sexist blog, based in D.C., suggested more appropriate names for this creep could be “The Georgetown Entry-Gainer,” “The Georgetown Blanketlayer” or “The Georgetown Rapist.” Gross. Hopefully, some girl bonks this guy on the head with her vibe so police can catch the perv.

Alas, I know exactly how freaky this is, because the weirdo-in-my-bed thing actually happened to me once. Not with the Georgetown Cuddler, though. More, after the jump…

• After a 40-year-old woman was sexually assaulted at gunpoint in the hotel’s parking garage in front of her two kids, Marriott Hotel & Spa in Stamford, CT, has responded to a lawsuit by the victim by saying she “failed to exercise due care for her own safety and the safety of her children and proper use of her senses and facilities.” The victim claimed her attacker, Gary Fricker, 56, had acted suspiciously in the hotel and garage for days prior to the attack, but the hotel says they had not been warned about any suspicious behavior by the man. [Greenwich Time]—This is an all-too-familiar story.

A cheating Guatemalan woman faked her own kidnapping in Barcelona, so she could keep cheating with her Spanish lover. Ay carumba! Mark Sanford, are you taking notes? A woman in Spain texted her hubby in Guatemala that she’d been kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and held against her will with other kidnappees. In truth, the two-timer was boning a guy she met online. Her worried hubby alerted the Embassy of Spain in Guatemala, who called cops in Spain. Police found her in Barcelona, where she claimed she’d escaped her captors. However, when a medical examination found she had no injuries befitting a rape or kidnapping, the woman admitted the whole charade. And she did it all for a little nookie on the side. [Barcelona Reporter, Euro Weekly]

If there’s one thing Mad Men fans know about the show, it is that nothing happens by accident. So I’m sure creator Matt Weiner intended Joan Holloway‘s rape at the hands of her douche-y doctor fiancé to make a point: in the 1960s, the concept of “date rape” did not exist and people scarcely spoke openly about rape.

But even though it’s 2009 now, Christina Hendricks, the actress who plays Joan, has noticed the point still appears to be lost on people. Hendricks told New York magazine:

“What’s astounding is when people say things like, ‘Well, you know that episode where Joan sort of got raped?’ Or they say rape and use quotation marks with their fingers. ‘I’m like, ‘What is that you are doing? Joan got raped!’ It illustrates how similar people are today, because we’re still questioning whether it’s a rape. It’s almost like, ‘Why didn’t you just say bad date?’ ”

“Sort of got raped”? How does one “sort of” get raped? Is that like being a little pregnant?

• “Big Ben” Ben Roethlisberger, the Pittsburgh Steelers QB and Super Bowl-winner, has been accused of sexual assault by a woman in Nevada. The accuser is a casino employee who says he assaulted her last year after she came upstairs to fix a TV in his hotel suite. [NY Post] — Uh, oh. Will this be the Kobe circus redux?
• A female construction worker in New York City is suing JP Morgan Chance and others for sexual harassment to the tune of $20 million. She says they did not adequately respond to her when she complained about being groped and propositioned by a coworker. [NY Daily News]
• The vote on Sonia Sotomayor‘s confirmation to the Supreme Court is expected to take place on July 28, and she would be confirmed shortly afterward. The court is supposed to reconvene in early September. [Washington Post]

One of the first things you learn about alt-girl favorite Tori Amos is that she was raped when she was younger. Anyone who listens to her chilling song, “Me And A Gun,” off her Little Earthquakes album knows that and Amos has been honest about her assault for years.

Recently, Amos bravely opened up to London’s Guardian newspaper for their “What I Know About Men,” feature, in which a famous woman shares her secrets about the opposite sex. But Amos’ heartbreaking piece may as well have been titled “How Being Raped Affected My Life.” It was only after giving birth to her daughter that she “claimed [her] body back” and through the love of her husband that she could have a healthy relationship with men.

Ah, horror films. If you found the corpse of a dead woman in a mental institution basement, you’d totes have sex with it, right? Then chop up the body parts…until she comes alive and eats you.

Such is the plot of “Deadgirl”, a new horror flick, whose movie poster even looks vaginal! Looks like conservatives and feminists can finally find some common ground…to freak the f**k out.

Alas, “Deadgirl” leaves us horror-film loving feminists grappling with many serious questions. Is having sex with a zombie necrophilia? Or is it rape, because she’s actually partially alive? Can necrophilia also be rape?

And also, what the hell is wrong with people?

A NYC cop allegedly punched a woman, grabbed her breasts and told her he was going to “treat her like a woman.”

Chrissie Brodigan, 32, tells Gothamist she exited a NYC subway with her pet pug, who was throwing up, when a cop tried to issue her a ticket for not carrying the dog inside a container. She became upset when the cop allegedly said, “If you’re going to act like a woman, I’m going to treat you like a woman.” Brodigan says the officer punched her in the back, leaving her bruised, as well as grabbed her breasts and pinched them. (This photo, pulled from Gothamist, shows her alleged bruises.)

After being convicted of raping a four-year-old girl, ex-convict and Oklahoman native David Harold Earls is being sentenced to only one year in prison. He reportedly “struck a deal” in which 19 out of 20 of the years he was supposed to spend in jail were suspended.

So, how on earth did this happen? Supposedly, the rape victim (now five), made “contradictory statements during pretrial hearings.” At one point the toddler even left the court room and ran down the hallway. Can you believe that!? I guess that means her rapist is innocent!

Men don’t always know how to keep their hands to themselves on crowded, rush-hour subways. In Tokyo, Seibu Holdings—the company that operates their trains—has set up women-only cars to prevent the morning commute from becoming a gropefest. But now, Seibu shareholders are asking the company to designate men-only cars, too. Why? So that women can’t falsely accuse guys of copping a feel. “While measures against groping, such as setting women-only carriages, have been effective to a certain extent, no measures have been taken against false charges of groping,” said the shareholders who’re requesting a vote at the annual meeting next week. “In the spirit of gender-equality, a male-only carriage must be introduced.” Seibu’s board of directors, however, isn’t so into this idea since only a few customers have made requests for male-only cars. [Reuters]

Even though model Sara Ziff has walked for Chanel and Marc Jacobs and has been the face of Calvin Klein, Gap, Stella McCartney and Dolce & Gabbana, she strips the modeling industry of its glamour like she’s ripping off false eyelashes. Mentorship from Twiggy? Coddling from Miss Jay?

Actually, the life of a professional pretty face means fending off a scuzz-load of pervy photogs, according to Sara’s documentary “Picture Me” about the behind-the-scenes of modeling.

OK, we know the following characterization is NOT 100 percent representative of all fraternities in this country.

But still, the stats about sexual assault and tales of misogynistic behavior in the essay, “Bros Before Hos,” published by history and gender studies professor Nicholas L. Syrett on the National Sexuality Resource Center’s web site, are beyond scary.

You’ll have to read the essay yourself for his particularly eloquent argument about how the closeness of men in frats fosters misogynistic behavior and a fear of homosexuality—it’s worth a read for anyone who has known or loved a frat boy. Synett’s certainly not arguing frat boys are worse than other men, but they do live in a unique environment that has an affect on them. Frat boys don’t sound like they’ve ever not had a weird relationship with sex, masculinity and power.

Six scary things we learned about frat boys from reading his essay, after the jump…

Confession. Sometimes when I go on a really successful shopping binge at, say, a store like Charlotte Russe, where I literally pilfer the racks of all their amazing awesomeness, I’ll declare, “I totally raped the Russe today.” Yes, raped.

I am not the only person who uses the word “rape” to describe something other than sexual assault. Mikki Halpin says the word is rapidly becoming a popular term within pop culture, from Taylor Kitsch on “Friday Night Lights” using it to describe a bad audition and viewer assessments of Jon Stewart’s critique of Jim Cramer’s financial predictions. She writes:

“Increasingly, rape is used to describe experiences such as a sports loss, a poor score on a video game, or being on the losing end of a business deal. Again, these are all unpleasant experiences, but none rise to the level of what rape truly means.”