So the question now is, what are we protesting?  What needs to change so that raping women is considered legal if the victim behaves in an unladylike fashion?

illegal I hope

Not that I have an answer.  Time if nothing else, we slowly progress forward.

“She was drunk. I don’t believe she would have gotten into this situation if she wasn’t . . . She was blasted. She was a mess.”

And they wouldn’t have gotten into this situation if they hadn’t chosen to commit rape.  I think making the decision to violently assault a fellow human being is a bit worse than making the decision to toss back enough appletinis to make the world swim off to the harbor for awhile—-how people manage to think that the latter “crime” (while legal) is bad enough to deserve rape as a punishment, while the latter crime deserves to go unpunished.

Meanwhile, these two individuals who have assaulted this woman are still walking free as birds, and a great many women have to share the same general vicinity with them—-which is true pretty much wherever you go. Someone who considers it acceptable to rape is a hell of a lot more of a danger than someone who considers it acceptable to drink-drink-drink-pass-out.

I agree with everything Amanda said, but I want to add a twist to the analysis.  We live in a rape culture, but we also live in a culture that loves punishment and has little to no sympathy for people who are victims or make mistakes.  Most Americans don’t give a rat’s ass about rape in prison either, even when the victims are men.  Why not care about male rape victims?  Because they committed a crime and deserved to go to prison.  While excusing men who rape a woman because she was drunk is a lot of slut-shaming, it is also just writing off people who make mistakes or don’t do what we think they should have done.  For example, and maybe this is just anecdotal, but a lot of anti-drug people I have talked to don’t particularly care about individual pot users with just a joint or so that get sent to jail under minimum sentencing.  When I’ve asked why someone with only possession of enough to get themselves high should spend years of his or her life in jail and probably face being raped, the response is always “well, they should have known better and not done drugs.”  I think that this is one of the most lasting effects of puritanical culture on America, where “sinners” (which means anyone who does something I don’t approve of and I can disapprove of anything, no matter how small…) deserve punishment.  And, of course, this way of thinking brings up the reserve: if someone gets punished in some way, they must have been sinning, so let’s pick apart their actions and figure out what they did to bring this on themselves.  This thinking only applies, though, if the “punishment” is not somebody else’s sin.  As in, if a woman got drunk and got robbed, the jury might have thought she was stupid for being drunk, but they would have found the thieves guilty because stealing is a serious crime.  But since she was just raped, oh well, sex isn’t a crime so let’s just let them go and not ruin those poor men’s lives.  I think if this woman had been drunk and just beaten to a pulp but no sexual activity, the jurors would have thought the cops were atrocious monsters.  But throw sex in there and they can justify it to high hell since men being sexual predators is considered the normal course of business in the patriarchy.

I don’t know, linz. These cops are getting lots of sympathy for their “sin”, “mistake”, and let’s face it, crime. I agree with you that there’s not a little neener-neener-couldn’t-happen-to-me thinking going on, but it’s telling whose bad choices are considered punishable and whose aren’t.

Yes, it is telling whose “sins” are considered crimes.  I think a lot of our cultural hang-ups about sin and punishment work both ways.  As in, if someone makes a mistake, they deserve to be punished.  But if someone doesn’t seem like the kind of person who should be punished, then maybe they really didn’t commit a crime.  What the rape trial really came down to was the jury deciding whether or not they wanted to punish some nice cops for just “being boys”.

I think that it’s more that our country doesn’t like “weakness.” She was drunk and unprepared…“weak” and so the cops (clearly “strong”) got to do what they wanted to. Her fault.
I see this with bullying in schools. The kid who gets bullied is the one who nearly always has to leave. He’s a mark, he’s weak. The bullies are protected for being “strong.”
I reckon the “nice guys” who view themselves as weak in some way (as opposed to the studs with game, they perceive getting the chicks) have to push that view of themselves away and so make the weakness about the women, the “bitches” etc.
It’s a highly militaristic culture, a police state. There is so, so much work to be done.  But it gets down to this split between people who find peace, sex, sensuality, joy and play to be the true strength and the other guys who don’t.

Fuck it.  That damn juror says he believes “that she believes she was raped” but that’s not enough?  She was drunk enough to black out, therefore unable to give consent to officers who know the law, yet that’s not enough?

I guess if you drink, you should expect rape.  Sure can’t expect the cops to HELP.

Locally, we recently had a teacher plead no contest to sexual assault charges.  He’d preyed upon 11 of his female students in the past 8 years while acting as a coach.  The no contest plea deal was made in part to avoid forcing these young women to testify in what would be a highly publicized case.  Yet in the comments section of my local online news source, there were plenty of guys willing to wager that ALL of these girls “came on to him,” because everyone knows how sexualized teens are these days.  Eleven victims weren’t enough for them to accept that this guy is rotten and a predator.

Same thing with another case recently of an 18 year old who raped two girls under the age of sixteen.  Before their ages were publicized, comments in the article alleged that obviously they were 17 years old, his girlfriends, and their “bitch” mothers were the ones pushing the statutory rape charges against him.

This attitude makes me want to give up on humanity.

#7 - I hope to Cthuthlu that juror doesn’t have daughters.

Before it takes off, can I ask us to avoid feeding the trolls?

Well said.  And linz is right also and I don’t think it’s just our puritanical origins that perpetuate this line of reasoning.  This kind of thinking benefits those at the top of our society, so it’s in their best interest to prop up myths like the whole bootstraps/American dream bullshit (what, you’re poor?  you clearly just aren’t WORKING hard enough!) and it’s just amplified when related to women and sex, because of our deep-seated issues with that.  If we’re all constantly taught that everything that happens to us is our own fault and we have no one to blame but ourselves when shit happens, it’s harder to foment any type of meaningful rebellion against the powerful few that actually are responsible for a great deal of shit happening to the rest of us.

Out here in lovely San Luis Obispo, CA, (the city Oprah Winfrey calls the “happiest place in the USA”) we recently had three rapes reported in one week, each of them involving college girls who’d “had too much to drink.”  When two of the cases were dropped for lack of evidence, the victim-blaming in the comments at the local paper was just fucking unbelievable:

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2011/05/24/1614307/cal-poly-alleged-rape-cases.html#storylink=misearch

I put my thoughts on this issue down here:
http://scatterhome.blogspot.com/2011/05/so-predictable.html

Have you signed up for a drivers license in NY Amanda? Because I hope you get picked for the jury handling the civil case that this victim has brought against the NYPD. She is suing for $55 million and it’s too bad that she can’t include the jury in her lawsuit as well.

#6 Jules, I work near an alternative high school where “troubled” kids are sent to finish their education. More than half of the students at this school were put there because they were the victims of bullying. Of this group 2/3 are lesbian, gay or transgendered. Because you know it is ALL their fault that the kids at the other four high schools don’t like them. I can’t convince people in my supposedly liberal community that victim blaming won’t end the cycle of bullying and abuse and that we need to make the schools a safe space for everyone.

Yes, SB, they are “troubled” because they are in pain. From being treated like shit.  We’ve got a long, long way to go.

Like every other non-misogynist in the world, I find it deeply disturbing that it’s only rape if you’re sober.

I’ve been thinking recently that changing ideas about rape in this culture won’t happen easily until there’s more acknowledgement that men, too, are raped/sexually abused frequently, that rape isn’t a “men do this to women” sex thing, but is part of a violence culture that affects everyone.  Recently, for example, NPR did an interview with a woman reporter who had recently been detained/released in the middle east and the reporter asked “we’ve heard a lot lately about abuse of women reporters, were you abused.” and my thought was, well, you should be asking the male reporters she was with, too, because rape of males is also happening there, as we’ve learned from male refugees from Libya and elsewhere.

- I hope to Cthuthlu that juror doesn’t have daughters.

Or sons, worse yet. They learn it somewhere.

One of the classic turn-the-tables rhetorical flourishes of the rapist defenders out here in SLO goes something like this: “What were those drunk girls thinking?  After all the guys were prolly drunk too, and everyone knows drunk guys can’t be expected to control themselves!” [wink, wink, nudge, nudge.] 

Here’s another good one: Apparently two of the rapes occurred in the girls’ own dorm rooms, access to which requires two separate keypad passwords (e.g. front door and elevator) plus the key to the room.  Clearly, so the thinking goes, the girls let the rapists in and…wait for it…“they had to know those guys weren’t coming up to play Scrabble.”  [That last quote is verbatim from a particularly venal (and female) rapist defender.]

The logical contortions they clearly had to go through to take that evidence and wind up at that verdict is astounding. And it’s on display in all their interviews. One of my “favorites” is the juror who says that since the cop on the recording said he didn’t do it more times than he admitted to it, that meant he didn’t do it.

So keep that in mind when you give a confession. Just make sure you say didn’t do twice or more before admitting it and you’re clearly innocent.

elisabeth, every single victim of sexual violence ever doesn’t have to be a woman for rape, and the anxieties and burdens of living in a rape culture, to be overwhelmingly a “men do this to women” phenomenon—the majority of the time, men do.  That doesn’t mean we are only interested in helping women, or only see women as victims, nor does that mean anyone here sees all men as rapists or even necessarily as complicit.

I’m about to leave work now and so can’t dig up links, but David at Manboobz often points out that men’s rights activists who claim more attention needs to be paid to male rape victims actually do very little about it themselves other than complain on the Internet.  Feminists, on the other hand, have repeatedly stuck up for male victims of sexual violence on this very blog, and their real-world work supporting rape victims benefits men too.  When you think of the contexts in which male victims are most often raped e.g. prison, war, or abusive relationships, progressives are the ones who want to end or reform those things, rather than shame men for being supposedly feminized victims.  The answer, as Amanda often points out here, is more feminism.

Don’t forget that in New York City the police regularly get away with shooting and killing unarmed black men: Sean Bell, Patrick Dorismond, Amadou Diallo, to name just a few. I think that in addition to the cultural misogyny on display in this case there is also the attitude (exemplified by Rudy Giuliani and the editors of the New York Post) that police officers are never, ever wrong.

I echo what #7 said: she was drunk enough to not be able to give consent.  Another thing about the article is that someone is quoted saying the woman’s emotional testimony was “credible” and very convincing, and even brought tears to their eyes.  But then about 2 paragraphs later someone else is quoted as saying that a “major factor” in Moreno’s acquittal was his emotional response when she confronted him: “he just wanted to get away from her” and he “didn’t know what she was talking about.”

Brilliant.

I posted my thoughts on the case here, if you wanted to know: http://suluisgay.tumblr.com/post/5907314300/tw-can-i-just-say-something-about-this-cop-rapist

He obviously did rape her, then tried to make it seem like it was consensual by telling her that he was “helping” her, and that he would be her boyfriend if she would quit drinking.  Yeah, right. 

Sorry, but the jurors WERE incompetent, and that pig deserves to be locked up…where nobody will believe him when he says he was raped by other inmates.

I like your violence analogy, Amanda, but I wonder if we shouldn’t just go all-in when trying to explain this to thick-headed rape apologists.  Make them imagine a man in the same situation.  Maybe throw this at the male apologists:

“What if it was YOU who invited a male friend up to your apartment while wearing nothing but cutoffs and a muscle shirt, got shitfaced drunk playing beer pong, and realized when you woke up the next morning that he raped you?  Do you think you were asking for it?  Do you think any of those things are a mitigating factor in his guilt?”

Substitute “your husband/boyfriend/brother/father”, if the rape apologist is a woman.  Make it personal.

Not a magic bullet, but it might make a few of the apologists think twice.

And just how screwed up is it that you couldn’t substitute “your wife/sister/mother” in that mental exercise above and get the same effect?  I imagine the response from most rape apologists, if you used a female as an example, would be, “That would be asking for it, and my wife/sister/mother would never ask for it!”  Whereas most of them could imagine their “husband/brother/father” in the exact same situation (minus the rape, of course) and think it’s just harmless guy fun.  I bet they’d even think it was emasculating if someone suggested that a man shouldn’t get drunk and wear sexy clothes, for fear of rape, whereas they give that advice to women without a thought.

I’m not sure what my point is, except that I’m pissed about it.

Privilege makes people fucking stupid.

Can’t there be a mistrial based upon juror misconduct, ignoring judicial directions?

Re above points:  Someone who was raped previous will be excused from a jury pool for a rape-related case, just as someone who has been run over by a drunk driver (or a close relative or friend) will be excused from the jury in a drinking case.

It sucks, but that’s how it is.

I am still stunned that in my lifetime, I have seen conditions go from at least some people seemingly agreeing that it’s not right to “take advantage” of the intoxicated woman, to it’s practically compulsory to nail the drunk girl.  And apparently women believe this, too.

Privilege Unexamined privilege makes people fucking stupid.

Fixed that for you.

As a straight white guy, I have privilege to spare (really! I am keen to share it around). That doesn’t make me an idiot.

Drunk is not always drunk: The suddenly-drunk girl I was talking to in college, who was taken home by a solicitous couple —to their home, as it happened—turned out to have been roofied, and the couple likely intended a threesome. But she woke up downstairs, and called a friend, who took her to the emergency room.

But the idea that a woman undergoing significant stress would want to take off her underpants before cuddling with Officer Overlyfriendly—that is beyond absurd. And yet the jury swallowed it.

Someone should investigate why NYPD miscreants are effing Teflon, by the way. It was just three years ago that three cops were acquitted of all charges for putting 50 bullets through Sean Bell’s windshield, as he was driving out of the parking lot after his bachelor party. Do cops ever get convicted of anything in NYC?

Matthew,

It’s a fair cop.  I hereby renounce my umbrella denunciation of your overprivileged but admirably self-reflective white ass.

@Hector B., I dunno, but prosecutors are starting to have a fair case for change of venue motions.

Something bad happened in American culture a little while back, and we’re just pro-rape in general.  It’s stopped being wink-wink and become really overt.  I really can’t explain to you the look conservatives (and most apolitical folks) get in their eyes when sexual assault is discussed.  They are, to a person, very very excited by the idea.  Men raped, women raped, children raped, whatever.

As a straight white guy, I have privilege to spare (really! I am keen to share it around). That doesn’t make me an idiot.

Maybe the fact that you are so self-defensive when reading a relatively benign generalization that you need to try to make it all about how you are so very special and enlightened makes you an idiot instead?

Hector (@31): Good point, and it’s not just the acquittals.

Some years ago, cops in a Brooklyn precinct house shoved the handle of a plumbers helper (IIRC) (1) up the ass of a man who was being held in custody. They perforated his colon; he almost died. There were a few cops in on it—somebody held him down, someone else did the actual assault, somebody was the look-out, several somebodies turned a blind eye—most of whom had a least a few minutes to think about what they were about to sign on for.

Now, once the ambulance was called, their careers were basically over—an outcome that couldn’t have been more predictable. Anyone else would have known that the minute the man credibly told his story to anyone other than a cop (and a torn rectum is pretty credible), shit would begin to rain down on these guys.

And yet, the cops in this story never gave it a second thought. Just another day at the office.

Which brings me to the question that bothered me then, and does now, with the case that was just acquitted:

If these guys thought they could get away with sexual assault, what the hell else are they getting away with?

That’s what I want to see investigated.
_______________
(1) I’m sorry to be so skimpy with details—successful Googling, in this case, would require the name of the victim, which I can’t recall for the life of me.

I think the biggest woman’s issue right now is the attack on abortion.  I’m no expert on the science of political organization, but it seems to me that single issue out to dominate all progressive women’s agenda for the time being.  Bad as I feel for the Saudi women who can’t drive, or the never-ending grope-age of unsuspecting or uncooperative women here and abroad, it all pales in comparison to the damage being done, and the plans to do more, in the area of female reproductive rights.  You may now begin to bash me about the head and shoulders mercilessly for not truly understanding the full horror of modern feminism.

Here’s something you might like.  I did it awhile back, but with Sarah Palin jumping into the race, it seems worth sharing again.  It’s a special flashlight app I made and am giving away.  It works on all mobile devices.

http://thetimchannel.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/free-while-supplies-last/

Enjoy.

@Molly, NYC: The victim was Abner Louima.
  I couldn’t think of a single positive answer to Hector above @31.  Just googled “nypd convicted” and all the convictions I found were relatively minor cases.  When the stakes matter, the thin blue line walks.  NYC is also exceptionally bad for street harassment as readers of this blog know.

@Hector, and of course we all wish it was just NYPD cops. Here in the Ottawa/Toronto/Montreal corridor, there’s another case every few months of police brutality (RCMP as well as municipal departments). Every month or two, the wagons circle, the investigation joke-ifies, and the cops walk or gets wrist-slaps. It’s infuriating.

Meanwhile we still wait for justice for Djeikanski, such a heartbreaker, and in Canada the posterboy for police brutality/thin blue line bullshit, now.

Like Amanda, I’m wary of law enforcement, even though I’m steeped in privilege and have never run afoul of them or committed more than a minor traffic misdemeanor. If the decent officers and officials would actually turn their backs on the roughnecks and eject them from the force when the evidence demands it, my impression of the trade would be very different.

Are things different in the US?  Because one of the first things I remember learning in sex ed was that drunk people cannot consent to sex.  Sex with a drunk person is therefore, by default, rape.  A 12-year-old should not understand this case better than the jurors.

“Because one of the first things I remember learning in sex ed was that drunk people cannot consent to sex.  Sex with a drunk person is therefore, by default, rape.”

In a country where too many Americans have figured out how to justify calling “waterboarding” something other than torture, and believe access to medical care is a privilege reserved only for those rich enough to afford it, and accept starvation and misery as a just “reward” for “choosing” to be poor, and believe being disabled or getting old and feeble are not justifications for an adequate social safety-net, is it any wonder that our ability to recognize moral wrong has gotten so far out of whack many of us can’t perceive something as straightforward as understanding that non-consensual sexual violation is truly rape?

We’re a sick society becoming sicker every day, and our attitude toward rape is just one of a plethora of indicators…

While Abner Louima was assaulted by police with a plunger, I actually believe that Molly, NYC is talking about Michael Mineo, who was more recently assaulted by NYPD officers with a retractable baton.

That there are enough of these types of cases to make, “Are you talking about the guy they anally raped with a plunger, or the one they anally raped with a retractable baton?” a valid question, is pretty damning.

Ah, on second reading, it would appear that Molly WAS talking about Abner Louima, since Michael Mineo was assaulted in public, not in a police station.

Your second point stands, amplify, and stands hard.

<blcokquote>If the decent officers and officials would actually turn their backs on the roughnecks and eject them from the force when the evidence demands it, my impression of the trade would be very different.</blockquote>

You’re fighting basic human psychology, however.

I work closely with the local police as a firefighter/EMT, and when you do you see the complete shit they put up with even when it’s an upstanding individual doing an upstanding job. Drunk wants someone arrested for the crime of being mean to them, and the police explain they just can’t arrest someone on that basis? Fucking useless cops. Police wade in to break up a domestic dispute? Fucking cops butting in on a family affair. Pulling someone over for DUI and getting their license suspended? Fucking cops interfering with someone just trying to go somewhere. You say you don’t trust cops even though you, personally, haven’t had a bad experience? You don’t think that a cop dealing with you wouldn’t pick up on the fact that, despite never have met him before, you’ve already decided on your view toward him?

You do that often enough, day after day, and eventually it’s basic human nature that a person will turn to other people for psychological support, and that will be other people who know what it’s like. Which means other cops. The “us versus them” mentality consolidates, and when you hear people shitting on someone else in the group, the first reaction is likely to go to you peer’s defense because you’ve likely had all sort of accusations hurled at you too, even if you’ve never done anything wrong. And if it turns out they did do something wrong, well, they’re family, and people give family members all kinds of slack.
Add in the fact that cops have to rely on each other in life-threatening situations,and that bond just grows stronger.

It’s not right, and it’s something that should continually be challenged, but it’s entirely comprehensible.

None of this surprises me. The fact that the cop went back three more times to her apartment says that violating unconscious women is a major thrill for him, and the fact that his partner stood guard says it wasn’t any kind of moral dilemma for him.

I’m a recovering alcoholic and almost every woman I know in AA has a story about being assaulted while drunk or passed out. Often by groups of men, who probably never would consider themselves rapists; it goes back to the concept of rape as her kicking and screaming, but an unconscious woman is some kind of loophole. I don’t see this changing until the misogyny and male supremacy at the root of our culture is changed, because it’s just as much about men impressing each other and covering for each other as it is about violating the woman. I had an exboyfriend admit he was at a party where an unconscious girl was gang-raped but was terrified what would happen to him if he spoke up. I think this is why people twist themselves into logic knots defending this shit, because they don’t want to face their own culpability or have to challenge the men around them.

O Keith@44, tell me something I don’t know. That’s kind of where the rub is, isn’t it? I’m glad you agree it needs to be challenged because, yes, we need benchmarks to aim for, individually as well as culturally, and it’s important we remind ourselves of them. Inertia isn’t something to roll over and accept, ever.

This is really fucked up, and I even hate saying it.  But what needs to change is there need to be more men who are raped while they’re drunk and then come forward to press charges.  It’s sick that it’s pretty obvious that this is the case.  However, it just doesn’t seem like people are going to take seriously the fact that you’re raped if you’re drunk unless it’s a man defending that assertion.

Re above points:  Someone who was raped previous will be excused from a jury pool for a rape-related case, just as someone who has been run over by a drunk driver (or a close relative or friend) will be excused from the jury in a drinking case.

It sucks, but that’s how it is.
Comment #27: Crissa on 05/27 at 08:20 PM

Only if you say you were, at least where I live. 

A summary of the case is given to the jury pool and then they say, if you have a reason you don’t believe you can be a fair juror in this case because of reason, raise your hand.  Then they call you up individually to the judge while playing white noise so others can’t hear, you give your reason to the judge, the judge decides if you are excusable or not, and by no means does the judge always excuse you.  Then they give the next reason, lather rinse repeat. 

Reasons can include “I or a family member was a victim of [this kind of crime],” or “I know one of the defendants or plaintiffs or lawyers or prosecutors or the judge, or one of their family members,” or “I am related to a police officer,” or “I have a reason to give extra weight or lesser weight to a police officer’s testimony,” or “I cannot judge another person by the precepts of my religion,” and so on.

Eliminating all rape victims from rape cases would be absurdly impossible, given how many rapes go unreported.

Well, that’s what rape is.  It’s a violent assault that uses sex as a weapon instead of fisticuffs.

I saw someone bring up the idea of rape as bullying. That metaphor fits scary-well for me.  See, bullies aren’t just randomly hurting people; they’re doing it because it feels good to them, in some way. And I think one of the big problems is that bullying *is* accepted in society, to a large degree - and not just children bullying other children, but with adults it manifests in other ways.

I understand, and agree, that rape *is* a violent assault - but sometimes, the metaphor falls flat for me because the intent of the rapist is not always to cause harm. Often, it’s to pleasure himself without any concern or regard for the rights or desires of the other person.

The bullying metaphor works so well that it hurts.

We definitely live in a rape culture, and I’m glad that people are protesting.

But this defines the problem too broadly:

<quote>We grow up, after all, in a society that treats sexuality as a commodity that women possess, and that men try to “get” from women – by charming them into “giving it up,” by buying it directly or indirectly (by going to a prostitute or paying for dinner), or simply taking by force.</quote>

If this is the problem, then we won’t overcome our rape culture until there are no gold-diggers or sugar daddies, no strip clubs, no pornography, no “rules” girls, no quasi-“chivalrous” customs on dates, no women who sleep their way up the corporate or entertainment ladder, no gigolos, and no people who are attracted to people of the opposite sex with wealth and power.

In other words, good luck!

It isn’t that many of these things aren’t quite worthy of condemnation. They are. But I don’t think they are part of the rape culture. Indeed, the fact that sex is often a transaction between consenting adults is a reality and is quite possibly a semi-permanent feature of human society. I’d prefer that people try to alter the terms of the transactions to make them much fairer to women then try to do the impossible and make sexuality completely non-transactional.

Consensual sexual transactions shouldn’t have anything to do with rape. A guy who buys dinner for women he dates may be caught in traditional patriarchal gender roles, or he may be perfectly willing to NOT do this but have found that the women he dates expect it. But he’s not a rapist or anything close to a rapist, and this is true even if in some sense he is “paying for sex” with those dinner checks that he picks up.

That’s interesting Dilan. Do you think all interactions (human to human) are transactional? Some people believe so.  I myself am not sure, though I do think we live in a highly transactional culture right now where it appears everything can be bought and sold and corporatized.
Primate, particularly the bonobos, are observed “trading” sex for treats like apples, rather than utilizing violence. Using sex as a soothing agent against aggression and so forth.  Is that type of trading and accomodating a built in? A bug or a feature?
If a feature, yes how can we make it less problematic, and more fair.
If it’s a bug, I’m pretty convinced it’s gonna take thousands of years of evolution to weed it out.
Link to article on chimps-http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/01/06/what-triggers-a-bonobo-orgy