Just a reminder that we still need guest student bloggers for April 16-23 to blog about what reproductive justive means to them. If you’re interested, please get in touch at organizers@safercampus.org. Thanks!
Monthly Archives: February 2008
Three amazing posts about statutory rape and men who hit on teenagers
Thanks are due to Laytoya Peterson who posted at length on Racialicious about being harassed by grown men when she was as young as 12. She captures very well the terror and helplessness such an unequal situation creates and demonstrates why statutory rape laws exist.
I did not read the original comments that generated her response, but apparently mock-ups for PSAs against statutory rape were greeted with a lot of comments on feminist blogs about girls misleading men about their ages by acting older than they were. So I’m really grateful to Peterson and Racialicious for bringing some clarity to the matter. As she tells us with piercing precision, the tendency to blame the women in these cases is as misplaced as it is in all other rape cases.
The fact of the matter is while we would like to think that men are only attracted to teenage girls because they don’t know better, the reality is that the men who are willing to court someone drastically younger than they are is because that’s what they want. Some people say it is because they can’t deal with the requirements of adult relationships. Others will say it’s because young girls are dumb in the ways of the world and end up being easy pussy.
Either way, adult sexuality is not something for a child to handle.
She suggests a three pronged approach to attacking the problem of men preying on teenage girls. Go read the post for more details about how you can be part of the solution.
1. Awareness
2. Community Action
3. Take an interest in the young girls you know.
“No Means No. Well Maybe If I’m Drunk”
A big fat congrats to our friends at Feministing, who show that appalled activists can make a difference!
A Feministing Win: Rape shirt pulled!
Via Hear Me Roar, we find out that David & Goliath has pulled the oh-so-funny rape t-shirt (at least online, it seems). First Wal-Mart’s panties and now this – we’re on a roll, folks!But don’t worry, they still have the classic “I’m too pretty to do math” shirt. (Sigh.)
Posted by Jessica at 10:29 AM | in Products , Updates | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)
Iowa to reject abstinence-only funding
Iowa is about to become the 17th state to reject Title V abstinence-only funding. This is a real victory, as more and more state legislators are realizing that sex ed in schools needs to be medically accurate, and based in reality. As Nora has blogged about here before, sex ed is a crucial part of reproductive freedom, which also includes the right to have or not to have sex.
Japan Drops the Latest Rape Case Against U.S. Marine – Reasons Not Specified
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/world/asia/01japan.html
“An American marine accused of raping a 14-year-old girl on Okinawa was released by Japanese police on Friday after the girl dropped her accusation, the police said. It was unclear if the marine’s release could help defuse the furor in Japan over the case, which had led to wide questioning of the military alliance with the United States and the presence of more than 40,000 American troops here.†The Prime Minister of Japan had called the crime ‘unforgivable’ and demanded that the United States take action to prevent crime by its service members.
Frequently survivors of sexual assault choose not to continue forward with criminal cases because of the difficulty of pursuing a long criminal case and the intense personal scrutiny and media attention that will be brought to bear on the survivor. The problem of ineffective remedies and adjudication of rape is not confined to the United States.
Go Georgetown!
A little good news as we go into the weekend! Georgetown University has plans to open a center for LGBTQ students. People wouldn’t usually think of this as part of a “sexual assault policy,” but I think it absolutely is. First off, Queer students are likely targets for violence, but are often afraid of going to the usual crisis services because of the homophobia and transphobia they might encounter. And there’s just no denying that many men who commit sexual assault are doing so in an effort to “prove” their masculinity by demonstrating their heterosexual street cred. If we got rid of the sexual assaults that were hate crimes directed at Queer people and the sexual assaults that came out of weirdo homophobic insecurities, I think we’d see a real reduction in the numbers. This is what real prevention looks like.
How does one respond to rape in distant places?
This week’s Reproductive Justice newsletter from Alternet drew my attention to a longish report about violence against women in West Africa. The survivors stories Ann Jones reports are absolutely terrifying, as are the statistics about how many women have been physically and sexually assaulted in the time since the wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Cote d’Ivoire ended (or supposedly ended, as her point is that the war on women seems to be continuing barely abated).
Besides drawing attention to this article and this issue, I wanted to take this opportunity to think a little bit about what kind of action people in the US, particularly students, can take in relation to events so horrifying but also so physically distant. I thought I’d start by explaining why this blog about sexual assault at American colleges and universities has covered stories about rape in Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda.
Dr. Koss responds to MacDonald
The California Coalition Against Sexual Assault has posted the response that Dr. Koss sent to the LA Times (which, to date, they have not published). Check it out here.
Take that, MacDonald!
Here’s a school doing it right - University of Virginia – they have created a student-initiated Survivor Support Network. But what caught my eye initially was the quote below from George Mason University’s Sexual Assault Services director – take that Heather MacDonald!
About 100 people come into Connie Kirkland’s office at George Mason University each year to talk about being raped, stalked or abused.
For Kirkland, the college’s director of Sexual Assault Services, that number is both too high and too low. Each case is a wrenching trauma, but many other victims are keeping quiet.
The number of people who come to her office is “minimal compared to how many are actually assaulted or stalked,” Kirkland said. She cited a 2000 Justice Department study that found that, over a seven-month period, about 3 percent of 4,446 college women surveyed had been victims of rape or attempted rape, and 13 percent had been stalked.
Help encourage schools to include gender identity and expression in non-discrimination policies
SAFER is working as a partner with GenderPAC to spread the word about its annual GENIUS (Gender Equality National Index for Universities and Schools) survey. From GenderPAC:
“GENIUS (Gender Equality National Index for Universities & Schools) is a national campaign for the inclusion of “gender identity and expression†in non-discrimination policies and practices of colleges and universities. Students are taking action against gender-based discrimination and harassment by raising campus awareness and support, educating school administrators, and demanding real change at the institutional level. The struggle to change school policies is essential for the creation of safer learning environments where all youth are free to express themselves without fear or repercussion.”
This year’s survey is here. Please take a few minutes to tell GenderPAC how your school measures up.