Monthly Archives: January 2008

Better late than never

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Meant to post on this article “OSU among big-campus leaders in reported crime” a while ago, and then lost the link. But I found it again, and better late than never, right?

In 2006, Ohio State reported the most forcible sex crimes among large colleges. Bad idea to go there, right? Not necessarily. OSU’s numbers probably just mean they are doing a better job of getting people to report sexual offenses, and that is actually a marker of a campus that is actively trying to keep their students safer.

From the article:

OSU officials attribute the high numbers to an anonymous reporting policy implemented a few years ago and the practice of soliciting information from a broad range of faculty and staff. And experts caution that high crime numbers don’t necessarily mean a campus is unsafe.

…

High crime statistics aren’t always an indicator that one college is more dangerous than another, says Alison Kiss, of Security on Campus, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit dedicated to safe campuses. Instead, she said, it’s more likely that the college has created an environment in which students are encouraged to report crime.

Kiss said parents and students actually should be more concerned when colleges report little or no crime, especially when it comes to sexual assaults.

“That raises flags,” she said. “Because, we know that one in four college women is sexually assaulted.”

…

Safety advocates say families need to dig deeper into the college’s policies and services such as its alcohol and drug abuse policy or sexual assault services. It also means asking questions about the types of prevention programs available and looking for signs of good security: electronic key card systems and video surveillance in public areas.

We provide a list of questions parents and students should ask when choosing a college, as thousands will be in the next few months, and I really want to reiterate that just seeing low numbers is not a good sign if the college can’t prove that those low numbers come from a great sexual assault prevention program.

All sorts of fun possibilities

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A British article about Random Acts of Feminism. From the article:

I leave you with news of a famous toyshop, where a women’s page reader (who shall remain nameless) spent a busy afternoon with her best friend and their daughters. Seeing a large pink plastic castle, she took pity on the blonde in the highest turret. Taking a card from her handbag and inscribing it neatly in black ink, she slid her small sign next to the princess’s head. “Please let me out,” it read, “I gotta get to work!”

Although the particular suggestions in the article may not inspire you, the generally impetus to talk back to the rape culture around us might. Who didn’t want to talk back to those awful Captivity ads or the Target billboard with the woman’s crotch right in the center of the bullseye?

And there are lots of feminist prankster precursors to look up to. My favorite are the Guerrilla Girls, who even a have sticker campaign you can download and print out. (Or which could inspire you to create your own.) Although they now have so much art world cred they got their own show at the Venice Biennale, they started by pasting up posters around the gallery district of New York in the mid-1980s.

If you google feminist graffiti, you get all sorts of goodies. One of my favorites was here, apparently part of a big installation (I wish the person who posted the photos knew the name of the artist(s)). Great idea for a campus installation.

When I volunteered with NARAL in Georgia on their Back Up Your Birth Control Day campaign, I carried little wallet sized flyers in my purse that I’d leave in any women’s restrooms I visited. Easy way to spread the word, for whatever campaign you want to create.

Just remember, when choosing your acts of feminist randomness, that those who clean up after the world usually have a lot less privilege than you do. So, personally, I try to avoid scrawling on walls that someone else is going to have to scrub.

The Civil Rights Act of 2008

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Last week, a new civil rights bill was introduced in Congress. (Reclaim Civil Rights also links to the other organizations that support the bill and you can track the status of the bill and read the text on Thomas (S. 2554 and H.R. 5129)). The bill is intended to clarify a number of previous civil rights bills in light of recent court decisions that placed serious restrictions on their efficacy. I am blogging about it on SAFER’s website because the bill would make it easier for students to sue schools (K-12 and colleges) at which they were sexually harassed, abused, or assaulted if the school did not reasonably responded to their concerns. As the law currently stands, students have fewer protections than employees and so schools have less incentive than workplaces to curb their employees and educate against hostile environments. This excellent position paper explains why the changes are absolutely crucial. (Found via a Feminist Law Professors link.)

The changes of this law being passed under the current president are probably slim, but worth fighting for. So check to see if your Representative and Senators are sponsors (Senate sponsors) (House sponsors) to the bill, and if not, call and ask that they sign on. Mention the student sexual harassment provisions specifically – our elected officials need to know that we care and that we’re paying attention. If this bill were to pass, it could be a powerful tool for fighting administrations that turn a blind eye to sexual assaults and rape culture on their campuses.

Try not to vomit when reading

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The Seattle Times ran a pair of articles today that detailed just how much football players get away with the University of Washington, in the NFL, in our criminal justice system, and it seems like pretty much every where else. The whole story is horrifying, but in terms of the campus culture SAFER tries to change, the University of Washington in particular should be ashamed of how horribly it treated the woman who accused football player Jerramy Stevens of rape. No consequences for him and an attempt to out her name when she later sued Stevens for the rape (the county decided not to prosecute, and you don’t have to read very far between the lines to know what a load of football worshiping b.s. that decision was) and UW for creating a culture where football players thought they were invulnerable to prosecution. She was a student just as much as Stevens was and they equally deserved the university’s protection. Too bad she wasn’t perceived as able to bring in a couple of extra million for the university.

Article one is on Stevens, article two covers some of Stevens’ teammates that year.

Affirmative, no, Negotiated Consent – Part 2

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Michelle Anderson, now the Dean of the CUNY’s Law School, published an article several years ago calling for changes to rape laws to require negotiated consent in order for penetration not to be rape.

In this article she argues for the idea of negotiated consent as preferable even to affirmative consent. I agree with her, although I think the affirmative consent standard I presented in the last post is pretty much the same thing. From the article:

“Specifically, the law should define “rape” as engaging in an act of sexual penetration with another person when the actor fails to negotiate the penetration with the partner before it occurs. The law should define “negotiation” as an open discussion in which partners come to a free and autonomous agreement about the act of penetration. Negotiations would have to be verbal unless the partners had established a context in which they could reliably read one another’s nonverbal behavior to indicate free and autonomous agreement. Force, coercion, or misrepresentations by the actor would be evidence of a failure to negotiate.”

Read the rest of the article if you can; Anderson extensively analyzes why this model is preferable to other consent models. In particular, she points to the importance of psychological research that indicates high frequencies of paralysis and confusion during a rape situation. In such cases, the victim may not be able to say no, and her inability to speak should never be construed as consent. Thus a law that defines an act as rape only if the attacker proceeded over his victim’s “No!” is not sufficient. Moreover, research has demonstrated that men consistently attribute sexual intent and consent to women’s body language when none was intended or was perceived by a woman watching the same cues. Thus a consent requirement that allows for nonverbal consent (particularly among partners not well known to each other) still does not protect rape victims from perpetrators who see what they want to see.

Negotiated consent is pretty powerful stuff, and would utterly do away with claims that “I know she wanted it…” on no evidence but wishful thinking and misogynist assumptions about women. This strikes me as exactly the kind of thing we should be teaching in sex ed (as well as fighting to get it made into law). Encouraging men and women to talk to their partners about their desires and their boundaries, insisting that you shouldn’t be having sex with someone you can’t or haven’t or won’t talk to about sex, that’s what healthy sex ed should be about, none of this abstinence only crap.

To quote Anderson’s concluding sentence, “Under the Negotiation Model, he may not penetrate her, notwithstanding the kissing and necking shared, nor his hopeful interpretation thereof, until he breaks out of his solipsistic universe and engages the girl – another human being whose desires and boundaries matter – in a conversation.” Is that so much to ask?

Letter on Jones goes to Rice and Gates

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A Congressional letter of inquiry has gone to the Departments of State and Defense, demanding to know what these departments are doing to prevent and investigate sexual assault by U.S. contractors. Did your Congressperson sign it? Representative Slaughter guest blogs on Feministing today.

The letters are a step in the right direction, but we need to keep the pressure on. And, as I said below, we need to make sure that contractors are being prosecuted for crimes against Iraqis too. If US contractors can gang rape a US citizen with impunity, what are they doing to Iraqis? Just today the White House announced that they are seeking immunity from Iraqi law for US contractors — I wonder why?

Gee, why don’t I find rape funny?

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Great post (with unusually good comments, particularly from Zuska, the blogger) referring to a Chronicle of Higher Ed article about a comedy contest for New Jersey undergraduates where rape seemed to be a favorite topic for jokes. Blech.

To recap, briefly, jokes about rape are thinly veiled reminders to women and prisoners (the most common categories of rape jokes) of their vulnerability to assault by those with more societal privilege. They are funny only to those who share in that privilege. There are theoretical exceptions to this rule, as there are to any blanket statement, but the only joke I can remember having heard that involved rape and was funny is Wanda Skyes detachable pussy routine. The difference is instantly clear; she is joking from the side of the oppressed about the burden of fear we all sometimes wish we could just “leave at home,” and that’s a very different kind of humor than the rape jokes being told by these undergraduate men.

So go ahead and challenge jokes that you don’t think are funny. And if you need ammunition for your argument, dig more deeply (and very amusingly) into the power of jokes to reinforce and subvert the dominant social order, by reading Ted Cohen’s Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Margaret Cho has also written about her use of offensive language and stereotypes, as have lots of theorists of race, including Ralph Ellison, bell hooks, and Eric Lott. (An off the top of my head list, and by no means authoritative.)

Sexual Violence Around the World

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So I just signed Katha Pollitt’s Open Letter from American Feminists, reminding the media and the rest of the country that American feminists do think internationally and are deeply concerned about women in the rest of the world. This failure is one for which they usually get bashed by those looking opportunistically to criticize feminists, and certainly her letter shouldn’t be taken as a claim that American feminism doesn’t have blind spots and weaknesses in terms of race, class, and thinking internationally. Reading it made me self-conscious me that I haven’t blogged at all about rape and sexual assault in an international perspective. This has been a conscious choice; SAFER’s mission focuses specifically on organizing college students in the U.S. and I’ve tried to focused on our mission.

At the same time, misogyny everywhere has common consequences and flourishes in silences. And I’m sure that many of you are also concerned about international issues, as I am in other non-SAFER-blog areas of my life. So I will try to add international action updates from time to time, and in the meantime what follows is an incomplete list of organizations fighting violence against women in an international context.

Americans for UNFPA has a strong focus on fighting violence against women internationally.

V-Day currently has a campaign fighting rape in the DRC.

Amnesty International has launched a campaign to stop violence against women (hopefully they will have calls to action posted soon).

You can also support the International Violence Against Women Act, which would change US policies that impact women around the world.

Women Living Under Muslim Laws fights for changes in rape laws, among many other issues.

UNIFEM has launched a new anti-violence campaign. Simply signing the petition helps them raise funds.

Equality Now has a long list of anti-violence organizations all over the globe. Some of the links are out of date, but it could be a useful resource if you’re looking for a specific national or regional organization.

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