When I reflect on the various statements and ideas that, repeated throughout my adolescence in one way or another, really impacted who I became today, it’s sad but true that I mostly remember the negative ones. Not because I had grew up surrounded by unsupportive family, friends, educators, etc….in fact I have no idea why. But something about the stuff that hurts makes it stick, and forms you, perhaps not more but just more consciously, than the good stuff. I was reminded of this power that seemingly benign words and messages can have this morning when I hopped online.

The first story that caught my eye was this new report from the AAUW on the under-representation of women in math and science. This issue has a long, controversial “nature vs. nurture” history about whether women are biologically predisposed to being worse at math and science or if they simply face a ton of gender bias in those fields. The AAUW report doesn’t solve the debate, but it does include many examples of bias. More importantly, it finds that women are unlikely to succeed in math and science if they’re simply told they won’t:

The university women’s report cited research showing that girls’ performance suffers from any suggestion that they do poorly at math. In one experiment, college students with strong math backgrounds and similar abilities were divided into two groups and tested on math. One group was told that men perform better on the test, the other that there was no difference in performance between the sexes. Their results were starkly different: in the group told that men do better, men indeed did much better, with an average score of 25 compared with the women’s 5. In the group told there was no difference, women scored 17 and men 19.

These results are really striking. But after thinking about it for a few minutes I realized I shouldn’t be all that surprised, since the very same premise holds true for what I write about here all the time (albeit in a different way).

Today a friend was telling me about a particularly shitty and extreme street harassment experience she had recently. And she admitted that even though she knew in her heart what happened to her wasn’t her fault, she couldn’t help but stop to question the way she was dressed; wonder if maybe it wouldn’t have happened if she just wasn’t wearing a short skirt…the same self-blaming, shameful feeling that women are consistently taught to feel by a society that consistently blames them for what happens to them instead of the folks responsible for harassing and assaulting them.

No where is this victim-blaming more clear then in comments sections on the internet. I rarely read comments sections, as I know by now what to expect and would rather save myself the grief. But this piece in the Missourian, coupled with the AAUW report and my friend’s story, reminded me why what a bunch of anonymous creeps on the internet actually matter. Writer Roseann Moring reflects on the comments posted to a Columbia Daily Tribune article about two the rapes of two young women, which range from blaming the women for their drinking (even though it’s likely that one of them was drugged), to imploring them to use more “common sense,” to straight-up saying that one of them “wanted it.” All of these commenters were anonymous. Moring reminds her readers of what anti-violence advocates discuss all the time, but can always use repeating:

So when victims hear from their friends or from their community, that they must have been at fault, some start to believe it. Then they don’t go to police, or they don’t want to follow through with prosecution, a process that is difficult in the best of times.

What that means to me, or to you, or to your sister or mother or friend, is that an overwhelming number of rapists go free, knowing there are no consequences for their actions. Or, worse, they don’t learn that what they’ve done makes them a rapist.

…You might be anonymous, but your words still have an effect — and not just on people struggling to recover from a sexual assault. The words keep alive the central myth about rape: that victims ask for it and that assailants can’t be expected to tell a “no” from a “yes.”

So I may write off anonymous internet commenters are jerks in the ether because I just don’t want to have to think about them or give them credit, but they ARE undoubtedly part of the problem. They add to the malicious chatter that, over time, makes women second-guess themselves, discourages reporting, and allows the cycle of violence to continue. Just as if you hear over and over again that girls don’t do as well as boys in math, you might psych yourself into doing poorly and become an English major, if you hear over and over again that you deserve whatever happens to you once you take a drink or wear a short dress, you might convince yourself “it” wasn’t “rape” and never deal with/report the assault. We have to collectively recognize that what we say matters—that we don’t speak into a vaccuum, but to and about real people, and as part of larger important cultural dialogues that shape who we become.

Sarah pointed me to a disturbing article titled ‘Men who Batter think other guys do it, too,’ which highlights a study done at the University of Washington. The study resulted in men who abused their partners tended to overestimate how many other men do it, too. The more physically severe their abuse is, the MORE they overestimate how prevalent abuse is.

This is groundbreaking because this is the first study that shows that intimate partner violence overestimation is relevent to other behaviors such as drug abuse and gambling. In short, why does this mean?

“Social norms theory suggests that people act in a way that they believe is consistent with what the average person does,” adds Denise Walker, research professor of social work and co-director of the Innovative Programs Research Group.

So how is this relevant to SAFER’s beliefs about Better Sexual Assault Policies on campuses? Well it is all about prevention, prevention, prevention. Schools need to go above and beyond an optional skit for freshman the second day of orientation. If we educate students not only about what abuse is, but also that it is not the norm, then we can fight the notion that many abusers have that everyone is doing it. A professor at UWash agrees,

“With sexual assault the more a man thought it was prevalent the more likely he was to engage in such behavior. If we can correct misperceptions about the prevalence of intimate partner violence, we have a chance to change men’s behavior. If you give them factual information it is harder for them to justify their behavior,” Neighbors says.

So this means that not only schools (society as a whole) need to bring more attention to educating everyone about domestic and sexual violence. That education then turns into prevention and creating a better, safer community for everyone.

For more info on the study, check out some info here and here. The full study will be released in the Violence Against Women journal.