I was less than thrilled to see this headline: Cincinnati: Sex abuse case not an issue with Lance Stephenson’s eligibility. Lance Stephenson is a star high school basketball player in New York who is awaiting trial for a sexual harrassment case, in which he and a teammate are accused of groping a 17-year old female outside their high school.

While Lance is innocent until proven guilty, the University of Cincinnati should at least consider the consequences of bringing an accused harrasser to campus, where he will be given an even higher social status than he enjoyed in high school, instead of publicly dismissing a sexual harassment case as “not an issue.” If he is convicted, I hope it will become an issue the University addresses.

I fucking LOVE this. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a badass writer/activist/educator who works for a gynecological teaching asssociation, teaching med students how to give pelvic exams that—among other things—take women’s trauma histories into consideration. The piece offers tips for making the pelvic exam experience as painless as possible, as well as info on what your doctor should be doing to make you comfortable. Check it out!!!

(I’ve pasted the text below for anyone who can’t get to it via the facebook link. She originally posted it as a facebook note.)

How to make your pelvic exam not suck
-Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

I’m a teacher at Pussy School, and I love my job! Okay, it’s not my official work title- but I am an educator with Project Prepare, one of a network of “gynecological teaching associations,” and I have the most amazing, well-paid job teaching med students and doctors how to give pelvic exams that are pain-free, empowering and respectful of women’s and trans bodies and trauma histories. Emerging from the second wave feminist health care movement of the 70s, GTAs were started by dedicated feminists and lezzies who were appalled at the shitty standards of care given by most gynecologists, and the fact that back in the day, most med students learned how to give pelvics either on rubber models of the pussy (which can’t really say, “Ow, no, stop,”) or (even worse) on anesthetized surgery patients in teaching hospitals (who also are not awake women and trans people who talk back and have needs.)

In response, GTAs teach med students and medical professionals how to give pain-free pelvic exams in an empowering, respectful way. We are the most crazily empowered patients these students will ever meet- I get paid $75 an hour to be incredibly bossy, tell them they’re doing it wrong and reward them when they’re doing right. As such, I have a grip of tips to make your pap smear much better than the tension ridden, gross experience it may have been in the past. Read on: Continue Reading »

Carnival Against Sexual Violence 73 is up at abyss2hope, and it’s full of great stuff as usual. But I wanted to take a moment to highlight one of the entries in particular, “Reportback from the 2009 SFWAR Walk Against Rape” posted at fem.men.ist. Richard blogs about his experiences at the SFWAR walk, and his discussions with other men of color on how to be good feminist allies. It’s an awesome perspective to hear (a really freshing one) and I recommend checking out his blog for more.

Just came across this list from the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation. It brings together a range of films from the last decade or so that deal with sex trafficking, forced prostitution, and the pornography industry. The list includes both fiction and documentary (heavier on the documentary) and is a great resource if you’re thinking about an awareness raising screening for your campus.

Karen Carroll, Associate Director of the Bronx Sexual Assault Response Team, was kind enough to talk with me last week about the basics of sexual assault forensic exams. You can listen and/or download part 1 here and part 2 here. (The podcast is not that long, under 30 minutes total, but for some reason our server refused to upload it as one file even though it let us upload the previous ones. No explanation. If it ever gets its act together, I’ll replace the two files with one file.)

Carroll helped dispel some of my CSI/NCIS fueled uncertainties about whether sexual assault forensic exams always produce evidence—they don’t—and how fast they provide that evidence—depends on the state and it’s current backlog at the labs, but it won’t be tomorrow like on TV.

She also made a recommendation, which I heartily endorse, that colleges and universities have a sexual assault response team, composed of campus police, medical professionals, student services administrators, counselors, etc., that meet regularly to keep up-to-date on sexual assault crisis responses on campus. Evidence collection and analysis techniques change, and everyone needs to be aware of both the best practices and how to correctly interpret any results. She mentions Montclair State University as one school with such a team in place, and you can get a good sense of how such a program works from their website. She also offers a helpful reality check on the possibility of getting nurses trained to perform sexual assault forensic exams on staff or on call at campus health centers. At the end of the day it seems like it is more a question of will then insurmountable cost—not that that surprises me in the slightest.

On a positive note for New Yorkers, it turns out the New York City offers better crisis services and evidence processing than many other places in the country—no L.A. backlogs here—but there is always more to do to make sure that everyone has access to the best possible services. Carroll collaborates with the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault, which runs an extensive set of programs to increase access to highly-trained, survivor-sensitive crisis services across the city; check them out.

I hope this interview will answer a lot of your questions—if more pop up for you, leave them in the comments and I’ll see if we can get answers for them! Thanks again to Karen Carroll, and I hope you all enjoy what she has to say.

Hello internet! Sorry for the weekend absence. Here’s some of what was going on while I was being a neglectful blogger…

This is why reproductive rights and sexual violence are connected. Alternet published this disturbing piece by Lynn Harris on a different kind of intimate partner violence: forced pregnancies/contraception refusal. The article discusses the phenomenon at length, detailing the many ways in which some men exert their control over their partners bodies, and the stories range from straight-up rape, to contraception sabatoge, to an aggressive refusal to use contraceptives. The piece draws a lot on the research of Dr. Elizabeth Miller, whose work with low-income teen girls in Boston uncovered a shockingly high proportion of girls in abusive relationships where pregnancy manipulation was apparent. This seems to me to be a clear example of violence being done to a woman’s body, coercing or tricking a girl into becoming pregnant. From the article:

“It’s clearly out-and-out control of a woman’s body. Control for control’s sake,” says Miller. It’s an urge that stems, experts say, from an inability to manage their own fears and insecurities.

In one 2007 study, some boys acknowledged outright that they insisted on condomless sex as a way to establish power over female partners. (There is evidence of analogous male-on-male sexual violence, but it hasn’t been studied in depth.)

Other research found that some men took a woman’s request for a condom as an accusation of cheating, or an admission that she had slept around or strayed. And for some, yes, the goal is fatherhood — but not so much of the “involved” variety; rather, it’s a desire — as with Janey’s ex — to mark one woman as “mine” forever. Or, according to Patti Giggans, young men in gangs say, “I’m not gonna be around forever. I’ve gotta leave my legacy.

It’s an important piece. Check it out. Cara has more on this.

I’ve talked about fraternities before. And though I hate to keep harping on the point, I couldn’t ignore this article about the investigation of hazing at Sigma Phi Epsilon on the University of Arizona campus. Continue Reading »

From CALCASA and the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence comes this good news:

The Senate Appropriations Committee past its FY 2010 appropriations bill for the Departments of Commerce, Justice, NASA, the National Science Foundation and several independent agencies. Overall, the bill totals $64.9 billion in discretionary spending for FY 2010, an increase of about $7.3 billion over last year and $200 million above the President’s budget request.

The Committee provides $435 million for the Office on Violence Against Women INCLUDING $15 million for the Sexual Assault Services Program. This is $2 million more than in the house bill.

There is also $9.5 million for Campus Grants and $3 million for Engaging Men and Boys.

As I understand it, these numbers could change before the President signs the bill, but it’s a good sign! Thanks to all the advocates who worked hard behind the scenes to make this happen!

h/t abyss2hope on Twitter

The Supreme Court has taken the US public school system one tiny step back from the brink of total insanity by deciding that a school principal was wrong to order a 13 year old strip searched (down to her underwear and then made to move around and shake out her bra and panties) on an unsubstantiated accusation that she might have - duh, duh - prescription strength ibuprofen. Shockingly, several lower courts have ruled that this was, in fact, legal, and Judge Clarence Thomas even agreed.

I mention this on this blog because (a) it is nice to see even this tiny (and the decision, at least from early reports, is the opposite of sweeping) bit of respect granted to the importance of bodily autonomy and privacy for children. When we say over and over “your body is your own,” but then “but any adult with even a smidgen of authority or cause can make you do something that makes you feel exposed and embarrassed,” we help set children, and the adults those children become, up to be afraid to report abuse. and (b) I used this case, and the early word that the Supreme Court was likely to uphold the school’s behavior, as an example in a discussion with one of the other SAFER members about how limited high schoolers’ rights to protest their administration were in relation to those of college students (which is one of the major reasons SAFER does not work directly with high school students). This decision going the right way certainly doesn’t change all the other ways in which that is true, but it does keep a tiny dividing line between high school and prison when it comes to personal bodily autonomy.

(Not that I don’t think prisoners should have the right to personal bodily autonomy, see Sarah’s links on prison rape below and check out Just Detention International for more.)

Bad study of the week indeed! Discover Magazine’s blog takes on the “women who dress slutty get raped” study so we don’t have to.

Marcella on the terrible news that LA County has run out of money for processing rape kits and California state isn’t far behind

Rachel at The-F-Word (one of my favorite bloggers!) reflects on catcalls.

Charlotte Hilton Andersen writes at Alternet of her (triggering!) experience as a peer counselor dealing with rape victims, and the media’s glamorization of sexual assault.

J writes an awesome post about breaking the bystander effect on I’ll Follow the Sun.

Two different stories on sexual assault in prison: one study says that corrections officers are now more sensitive to sexual assault issues, while Renee at Womanist Musings posts about the 60,000 sexual assaults that occur in prisons each year.

The past week has been filled with news on college crime and drinking statistics. First this federal report let us know that alcohol abuse and associated crime are up on campus, despite attempts to curb drinking. Then the case against Dominican College over their misrepresentation of assault statistics opened the door for the states to prosecute schools who don’t report or report incorrectly for violations of state fraud laws. Today we have an article in the Daily Record, aptly named “Campus Crime Stats Don’t Tell the Whole Story.”

Fairleigh Dickinson and Drew universities stand about a mile apart, have similarly small student populations and, yet, looking at the crime data each reports, they couldn’t appear more different.

Drew University in Madison reported 10 sexual offenses on campus during the past six years, while FDU’s College at Florham campus reported just three between 2002 and 2007. Drew reported 19 burglaries on campus in 2007, while FDU reported just six. And Drew cited students for 402 liquor-related offenses in 2007, while FDU had just 104 liquor violations.

The data, self-reported by colleges to the U.S. Department of Education, is required each year under the Clery Act.

Parents preparing to send their high school graduates off to college this fall may get the wrong impression just by looking at statistics provided by colleges, campus security experts said. Parents and students need to look beyond these numbers and ask college officials about what services and enforcement policies are in place.

YES! The Clery Act is super important, and schools need to be held accountable for accurately reporting crime statistics. But the focus of every incoming parent and student is better placed on services, not numbers—does the school have a comprehensive assault prevention program in place? Do they have confidential reporting for assault victims? Do they offer free counseling for assault victims? Does their health services offer emergency contraception? The answers to these questions have a lot more to do with the reality of how a campus culture treats assault because…take it away Daily Record!

While parents may be encouraged by low numbers of reported crimes or disciplinary action for alcohol and drug violations, security experts say that is not always a good sign. Higher numbers reported, especially for sexual offenses, generally indicate a more open climate on campus that is supportive of students reporting crimes.

“Generally, institutions with a greater support system are those schools with higher numbers, sometimes dramatically higher numbers,” said S. Daniel Carter, director of public policy for Security on Campus, a college watchdog group based in King of Prussia, Pa.

In the case of sexual offenses on campus, the problem is broad-based and occurs on every campus, Carter said. Even those institutions that have the best reporting systems in place have understated data, Carter said.

A 2000 U.S. Department of Justice survey found that fewer than 5 percent of sexual assault victims reported the crime to police. The survey also reported that between one-fifth and one-fourth of women may experience rape or attempted rape during a five-year college career.

The study found that victim underreporting is due to several factors, such as embarrassment, blaming themselves for the attack, not understanding the legal definition of rape or not wanting to call someone they know a rapist. The majority of college victims — 90 percent — knew the offenders.

(Emphasis mine. I know we push those statistics a lot…but they’re still important, so I’m gonna keep publishing them until everyone believes them)

This is not a comment about Drew or Fairleigh Dickinson, or—again—is it meant to downplay the importance of campus reporting. But the fact is that no school is going to have accurate reports on the number of rapes and sexual assaults that occur on their campus if the crimes are rarely actually reported. And it does stand to reason—since we know that assaults are occurring on campus—that the schools with the higher reporting rates are the ones who offer the most support to survivors and have the strongest sexual assault policies (although I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule). So there’s some food for thought about campus stats. If you want to see how your school’s sexual assault policy stacks up, check to see if it’s on SAFER’s College Sexual Assault Policies Database. If it isn’t, get it added!