Apparently, it’s been a bad week for college football players in Georgia staying on the right side of the law – we have allegations of rape, touching a pregnant woman’s stomach and making obscene comments, and sucker-punching a man who dared to talk to a player’s girlfriend. The article also mentions the Clemson football player/student who seriously injured his girlfriend in late June after the two had a disagreement. I know that claims about men’s sport teams creating a culture around possessing, controlling, and using women are old news, but when I see it so neatly illustrated in a single week, how can I resist calling it out yet again? I really hope, although I have little optimism about it happening, that UGA, Georgia Tech, and Clemson see these high profile cases as an opportunity to talk to all of their players (and all of their students) about healthy relationships, personal boundaries, and the right of women to be treated as people, not possessions. Underlying all four of these incidents is a belief that a man can and should control a woman’s sexuality – whether doing so involves isolating her from other people or touching her against her will for his sexual gratification – and the problem goes well beyond any particular football team.

Kacie Versaci, University of Georgia, Magazine Journalism, Dirty Rotten Feminist

Reproductive justice and freedom from sexual violence are two sister concepts from the same parent. That parent is the radical notion that women should have complete and total control over their sexual and reproductive organs.

The rapist ethic/support system and the anti-choice philosophy are so deeply intertwined; it is hard to see the difference sometime. For example, just the other day I got into a debate with my student supervisor at work (bad idea) about abortion rights, and he kept repeating that women had the choice to “keep their legs closed” and that getting pregnant is part of consequences of the action of having sex. Compare that to what plenty of people say about rape victims, about how they were asking for it because they were flirting, dressing provocatively, or they have any sort of sex life. In my mind, neither a baby nor a rape should be used as punishment for women who are (or perceived as) sexually active.

Sex is a human right. To be able to have and enjoy sex with the person of your choice is a wonderful part of the human experience. That said, another human right is to be able to refuse sex. When someone takes that right away from you, he is essentially stripping you of your autonomy and humanity.

Closely tied to this is the human right to have children; on the flip side, it is a human right to choose to not have a child. Maybe no anti-choicers say it so overtly, but they imply that an unwanted pregnancy is a form of punishment, a scarlet letter for a woman’s supposed sin. Bringing a punishment baby into the world is bad for both the mother and the child, and if so-called “pro-lifers” would think about that, they would realize they are attempting to ruin lives, not save them. I strongly believe at the heart of this is not the respect for a fetus’s “life,” but rather, a hatred, fear, and desire to condemn women’s sexuality. Anti-choicers use “culture of life” rhetoric as a façade to these deep-seated feelings, but it sneaks out in language such as “consequence” and “think before you act” all coloring the woman’s situation.

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