Monthly Archives: April 2008

Disappearing Male Violence

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If you want to see just how completely our culture normalizes male violence, take a look at how we react when a woman is the perpetrator.

A female suicide car bomber attacked an Iraqi security forces checkpoint in eastern Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least three Iraqis and wounding 14, an Interior Ministry official said.

When a woman is violent, the gender of the perpetrator is immediately front and center. But the gender of male perpetrators is often simply assumed and made invisible.

Now, I’m not interested in talking about the fact that men are committing most violence just for the sake of it, or for demonizing men. Men are great. Some of my best friends are men! This isn’t about blaming men, but about pointing out the way in which our culture normalizes and accepts male violence, while reacting significantly more negatively to female violence. If you have a rudimentary understanding of cause and effect, I think it’s fairly easy to see that this is a big part of the reason women choose to be less violent.

That leads me to my next point. The most important function of this disappearing act is to prevent us from analyzing why we have a problem with male violence in our culture. By degendering male violence, the media leaves us without a meaningful way to understand what is going on. Jackson Katz has written extensively on this subject, and he’s often the lone voice of sanity when the media starts talking about one more (genderless) “school shooting.”

When we make male violence invisible, what we don’t discuss is how our cultural definitions of masculinity and our expectations of men might be flawed, and what it is we need to change if we’re going to stop the epidemic levels of male violence we currently see.

Harassment of Yale Women Ignored

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From Female Impersonator:

At the beginning of the semester, there was an incident here at Yale involving a “fraternity prank” and the Women’s Center where 12 members of the Zeta Psi frat stood in front of the Women’s Center chanting “dick dick dick dick” while holding a sign saying “We Love Yale Sluts.” Quite the incident.

On Monday, the Executive Committee of Yale College found the members of this group not guilty of intimdiation and harassment charges. No charges of sexual harassment were ever filed, even though complaints were issued with the Sexual Harassment Grievance Board.

A Yale student discusses the disciplinary procedure at Yale in more depth here:

This incident constitutes sexual harassment. It is defined in the Undergraduate Regulations as conduct that “has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work or academic performance or creating an intimidating or hostile academic or work environment.” Blocking the entrance to a campus space, the brothers of Zeta Psi made it both difficult and dangerous for me to conduct my life as a student, and they did so by using sexually denigrating words and actions.

The Executive Committee, as it stands, fails to address a large number of sexual-harassment cases. It is unusual for a student to come forward and file a complaint. Yet it is rare when students who perpetuate sexual harassment receive a harsher punishment than a mere reprimand.

The Zeta Psi case is emblematic of the University’s flawed justice system — it continues to avoid punishment rather than risk University liability. Would Zeta Psi have been punished if ExComm knew that this “scavenger hunt” was an annual initiation rite? Would they have disciplined the men who shouted in front of the center, “No means yes, yes means anal”? Did ExComm even reprimand the brothers who donned T-shirts commemorating rape as a part of their fraternity initiation? The harassment of female students occurs on this campus time and again, yet due to ExComm’s confidentiality requirements, the community can never know if censure has occurred.

Sexual harassment isn’t SAFER’s focus, but the similarities between this case and the way sexual assault is handled on most campuses are striking. What it comes down to in the end is that administrators do not recognize women’s fundamental right to attend school without being harassed and assaulted.

(Nora wrote a more optimistic post about this earlier this year. Here’s hoping she’s right, and things will get better.)

Rape, race, and the importance of shutting up

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From the INCITE! newsletter comes a link to this important essay by Melissa Harris-Lacewell about the experience of watching and discussing the documentary NO! at an event organized by a group of black men.

Monday night’s event helped us to remember that rape is complicated by race. For many black women there is a sense of betrayal that exists alongside the personal humiliation, pain and fear. Intra-racial rape can feel like a rift between a woman and her people. The survivor is cast into silence not so much a by a desire to protect those men who perpetrated, but to protect the black men in her life who she loves, respects and trusts. As Simmons’ NO! reminds us, survivors often feel that by fingering the attacker we might somehow accuse our own fathers, husbands, friends and sons of possessing this same capacity for violence.

When I was in college (oh so many years ago), this was an issue I struggled to understand as a white woman. I was part of a group organizing to increase anti-sexual assault education resources. I think we failed miserably to make it a broad, inclusive movement because those of us who were white did not listen to what women of color were telling us. We did not get it. Part of SAFER’s work is to help student activists, of any background, experience, etc., shut up, listen, get it, and speak out. This essay is extremely helpful in making clear what perhaps I would have understood years ago if I had just shut up for a minute.

Human rights and sexual assault at Connecticut College

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I had the pleasure last week of visiting with the fantastic students in the Connecticut College Gender and Women’s Studies program’s senior seminar. Emily DeClue, Carolina Denham, Yalidy Mato, Kaitlin Morse, and Sarah Trapido are co-writing a paper arguing that their school functions as a quasi-state in terms of its authority over their lives and their surroundings, and as such its actions can be analyzed through a human rights framework. They specifically analyze a school’s responsibilities to end sexual assault on campus, arguing that the demands of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and other international agreements around human rights require that all students feel equally safe on campus. Currently, the students note a “gendered discrepancy between senses of ‘security of person’” on college campuses. The threat of sexual assault is felt much more strongly by female students and sexual assault is experienced much more often by female students, leading female students to feel much less safe on campus then male students. If the school fails to proactively address and improve this situation, they are failing to see sexual assault as “an inexcusable violation of human rights.”

I met the professor who teaches the class (and chairs the department), Dr. Mab Segrest, at V to the 10th (so you know she’s cool). When she told me what her senior seminar was on this year, I was really excited and very honored to be invited to attend one of the seminars and speak about SAFER’s work and how I thought their new intellectual framework could be useful. They will be working on getting the paper published and possibly also setting up a website to make their work available to other students. We will keep you posted about where you can find their work.

**Note to activists** This Connecticut College class offers a fantastic model for how you can lay some of the groundwork for your school campaign (and possibly bring a SAFER trainer to your campus at your school’s expense). Find a faculty ally you trust, be she or he in Gender Studies, History, Sociology, Anthropology, or any number of other fields, and get them to offer a class on the history of activism, human rights and sexual violence, theories of human rights in the U.S., etc., or, if they are a very strong ally, something as specific as Prof. Segrest’s class. Use that class time to develop your background in the area and to put together a working group on the topic among your fellow students. Nothing impresses a good professor more than seeing the class material put into action in a student’s immediate context, and I’d probably give such a final project an A+.

These students don’t just stop at setting out a theoretical framework; they are also writing about how it might be used in relation to their own campus. Their paper is still developing, so I don’t want to comment too much, but they are looking at how important demands from the human rights framework – consciousness, freedom, security, education, and power – are or are not being met and supported by their campus in terms of the prevention of sexual assault. Are all students being educated with a goal of “the full development of the human personality,” a goal which requires both a consciousness about sexual assault as harm we all have a responsibility to end and a security from sexual assault for all students so they can focus on learning other things. Are students being given (or demanding) power to help determine how the school responds to sexual assault allegations? And are all students equally free – to go where they want, do what they want, be who they want to be – in a way that does not impinge on any other student’s freedom but is also never forcibly lessened by some other student’s desire to be more free than others? I’m really looking forward to the final product.

A truly thoughtful and responsible campus newspaper responds to sexual misconduct on campus

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Wow. The Minaret, the student newspaper at the University of Tampa, has a really impressive response to a major on-campus rape accusation. They did an entire section of the school’s paper, clearly requiring weeks of work, trying to move the campus conversation beyond the specific details of the incident into a broader investigation of rape on college campuses.

Start with A Challenge to Our Readers, which lays out the decisions that the student staff made in terms of how they reported on the allegations and their aftermath and in terms of how they tried to frame the larger issues at stake.

Therefore, we challenge our readers to grapple with the many issues involved with this story as we’ve grappled with them. We made a prolonged and conscious effort to engage with all aspects of the story, and not to rush to judgment. We hope that our readers will do the same.

Though we apologize that a prolonged investigation has caused further anguish to those involved, we hope we’ve put forth our best effort to present a holistic package that encourages reflection and introspection rather than stereotyping and rash judgments. But it will be all for nothing if the greater issues are lost in a wave of name-calling and choosing sides.

Try to reflect upon the broader picture, and what it might mean for UT if 162 of its students are indeed sexually assaulted this year, as national averages imply. The person on whom you are passing judgment is likely to be a friend, a loved one, a classmate or even yourself.

The Editor’s Note on the article about what sexual assault is suggests the seriousness with which these students approached understanding rape on college campuses.

In preparing for this special investigation, The Minaret obtained a copy of the police report from public records, and interviewed the victim by e-mail and once in person, though she remained anonymous throughout the process. We also interviewed Callaway in person, but he declined three follow-up attempts. Additionally, we interviewed dozens of students, a prosecutor, a former TPD officer, the athletic director, Monnie Wertz, Gina Firth, Mike Gilmer and Dean of Students Bob Ruday. We read through hundreds of pages of related student newspaper and academic articles. However, we recognize that there are still untapped and underutilized sources. Therefore, we encourage people to post thoughtful comments on our website, theminaretonline.com and also to utilize our discussion boards.

Then please go on to read the rest of the article. It makes me want to cry, it is so thoughtful, careful, nuanced, respectful, and well-done. This is what college is supposed to be, a chance to really stretch your intellectual muscles and grapple with the hard questions slowly and in-depth. After carefully laying out the relevant Florida state law and the University of Tampa’s policy on consent, Steve Knauss comes to the real conclusion

Our students, and men in particular, should be motivated to act respectfully with women not because of a fear of punishment or as a nod to an antiquated patriarchal system, but rather because of a dignified ethical standard, simply the way one good, decent human being should treat another.

Continue reading →

Random Thought

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Can everybody please stop using the term “date rape?” And please, can we stop calling them “date rape drugs?”

Please?

Rape.

Rape drugs.

First of all, who goes on dates anymore? And second, we all know what conservatives are implying when they talk about “date rape” instead of “rape” (especially when they put it in bleeping quotation marks). They’re purposely using language that implies a kind of rape that somehow isn’t as serious, that maybe was the victim’s fault… that maybe wasn’t really rape at all.

Solidarity

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Our girl Kacie at Dirty Rotten Feminist is taking a lot of beyond nasty bull**** from her fellow students at the University of Georgia.

The basics of the story—an alleged rape occurred at a UGA frat house. When this was reported in the school’s online version of its newspaper The Red and Black, people started posting about how this couldn’t possibly have happened because the guys at the frat were such “good guys.” Mmmm. Yeah.

Anyhoo, Kacie called commenters on the site on their victim-blaming, slut-shaming, and general assholery, and some of them have turned on her, even going so far as to blame her for her own rapes (klassy).

I’d say that Kacie could use some backup right about now. Who’s with me?

The “Ethnic Studies” Fight Goes to Public Schools

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Double Consciousness has a great post up about Arizona SB 1108, a bill to deny funding to schools with courses that “denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization.”

I kind of did a Scooby Doo take when I saw that wording. I mean, really? Someone thinks that statement makes some kind of sense? What exactly are “American values?” Eating at McDonalds and bombing the crap out of brown people?

The idea that a country as diverse and complex as America could or should have one set of values is precisely the problem with conservative ideology these days.

The bill also bans teaching practices that “overtly encourage dissent.” Because children are meant to be mindless drones and not heard.

Anyway, what all that vague fascisty language is REALLY getting at is an attempt to get rid of certain programs within Arizona schools that teach Chicano history. This has been a big fight on lots of college campuses—students organize to get some kind of token recognition of the history of people of color included in their curriculum, conservatives go on a racist tirade about how we need to preserve the “great teachings of Western civilization,” and either the schools give students one professor who they later deny tenure, or it pretty much gets forgotten until a few years later. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

If I had to guess, I’d say we’ll see more of this coming up, particularly in the borderlands. Conservatives have made a very concerted effort to prevent colleges from implementing gender studies and “ethnic studies” programs, and they’re particularly interested in stirring up anti-immigrant sentiment right now. Coming soon to a public college near you.