Last week, Representative Susan Davis introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have permitted insurance coverage of abortion services for rape survivors in the military. Unsurprisingly, the House Rules Committee thwarted the amendment’s advancement to the floor for debate with nary an explanation.

It’s no secret that sexual assault is a problem for the U.S. Military, in particular. Here’s a statistical snapshot of the problem courtesy of The Washington Post:

The Defense Department said there were 3,158 reports of sexual assault involving service members last year. A pending federal lawsuit filed on behalf of victims contends sexual assaults are nearly twice as common within the military as in civilian society, and cites data suggesting that nearly one in three women reports being sexually assaulted during their military service.

The article also quotes a staff person from Americans United for Life who, of course, supports the status-quo policy:

“There exists no lack of access or demonstrated need to force the American taxpayer to pay for women’s abortions whose pregnancies are a result of rape or incest,” she said. “If a woman is a victim of the tragic crime of rape … lawmakers’ priority should be to ensure the perpetrator is not free to assault her or other women again in the future.”

Um, did she say “no lack of access or demonstrated need”? Well, that’s a load of bullshit. Not that I haven’t heard it before. Let’s layer the trauma experienced by 33.3% of female-bodied service people with the risk of yet another devastating violation of their bodily autonomy, shall we? I abhor the Hyde Amendment and everything it stands for, especially these days, when conservative lawmakers will stop at nothing to ensure that abortion services are effectively inaccessible to the people who need them, particularly those people belonging to marginalized populations. So I’m deeply saddened and immeasurably frustrated by the fact that we must still fight tooth and nail for accessible abortion services for military people in cases of rape 38 years after Roe. But what’s new?

There are some great actions that you can take this weekend to support survivors of sexual violence. First of all, Sarah reported that SAFER endorsed the Campus SaVE Act back in April, and now you can head on over to Change.org to tell Congress that you support it, too! Security on Campus has provided a quick run-down of all the ways in which SaVE will make campuses safer places for all students:

SaVE improves safety by having campus authorities both inform and assist students seeking to report a crime to law enforcement or obtain a no contact order. It creates more transparency by reporting domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking incidents along with sexual assault on annual campus crime reports. It also establishes accountability through equal rights for parties in a complaint, prompt and equitable resolutions using a consistent evidentiary standard, and written decisions of all hearings.

Additionally, the Campus SaVE Act requires universities to provide education on primary prevention, risk reduction, consent, reporting, and bystander intervention throughout the school year. Collaboration will also be established between the U.S. Departments of Justice, Education, and Health & Human Services to develop best practices for campuses seeking to prevent violence.

If you’re in New York City, you may or may not have already heard about the protest that’s happening at 5:00 pm today in front of the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse. Despite overwhelming evidence against them, two New York City police officers were acquitted of charges of rape on Thursday. I was saddened and also completely unsurprised to hear that “defense lawyers pounced on the credibility of the woman because she was very drunk on the night in question and did not remember many details.” Consent simply can’t happen when someone is intoxicated to the point of unconsciousness of physical incapacitation. This kind of victim-blaming happens way too often to rape survivors. Join the protest this evening to support this survivor and take a stand against cronyism.

Finally, tomorrow is International Day of Action for Women’s Health (IDAWH), which was started by the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR) in 1987. This year, IDAWH marks the launch of a multi-year campaign called Recognise Reproductive Rights, Organise for Reproductive Rights. Visit WGNRR’s website for more information!

So….this is different. Something I missed this April was the Colorado’s Women’s Marijuana Movement’s effort to frame the marijuana legalization debate around decreasing the rate of campus sexual violence.

“I honestly believe I would not have been sexually assaulted if we had been using marijuana instead of alcohol at that college party” said Stephanie Morphet, a student at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. “Yet my friends and I have been told our whole lives that alcohol is more acceptable, and that we’d face harsher punishments for marijuana.”

Victims of alcohol-related sexual assaults, parents of college students, and supporters of marijuana reform around the country are calling on the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control to examine whether allowing marijuana as a safer alternative to alcohol could reduce levels of sexual violence. The Women’s Marijuana Movement (WMM) is coordinating the nationwide day of action in recognition of April being Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Alcohol Awareness Month. In Colorado, it also marks the beginning of the group’s educational efforts in support of a 2012 statewide ballot initiative to end marijuana prohibition in Colorado.

I’m not really sure what to make of this, honestly. Speaking for myself and not SAFER as a whole, I’m fairly ambivalent about legalizing marijuana. But I am definitely not at all swayed by the argument that making pot legal will decrease the amount of alcohol consumed on college campuses, or make campuses any safer for women.

For one thing, college students already smoke plenty of pot, legal or not. With rare exceptions, college and university campuses are not really places where police spend a great deal of time cracking down on drug crime, making it relatively easy and safe for kids to smoke weed in their dorms, in their apartments, or in the fields of their rural and suburban campuses. And if I remember correctly from my undergrad days, smoking pot and getting drunk were NOT mutually exclusive among students who chose to do both.

Furthermore, while the effects of drinking a lot and smoking a lot of pot are definitely different, I’m not sure I would say that the latter are “safer” when it comes to sexual violence. I wonder sometimes what people are talking about exactly when they talk about the links between alcohol and sexual assault. When I think about those links, I mostly think about students being raped or assaulted because they are so incapacitated that they cannot consent or are actually blacked out.

Sure, I don’t know a lot of people who become unconscious after smoking too much weed, but can you get so stoned that you aren’t in a state to consent? Definitely. Does being high change the way you perceive situations and respond to your partner? Yes. Does everyone respond the same to marijuana? No. So I think this implied idea that people who smoke pot are “chill” and thus rape won’t be a concern is kind of absurd. Especially when you add in that piece about people being stoned AND drunk…

But more than anything, I agree with a community educator at the Lubbock Rape Crisis Center, who said said that the WMN was “grasping at straws” and:

“We don’t know that it would make a significant impact on the rates of sexual assault,” she said. “The way to prevent sexual assault is to teach respect to the perpetrators. Our prevention is focused on reaching people at a young age before there’s a chance they turn into perpetrators by teaching them respect and tolerance and conflict resolution.”

This all goes back to the “alcohol doesn’t rape people, people rape people” discussion. I’m sure there are a number of good arguments for legalizing marijuana. But to decrease rates of sexual violence, we don’t need legal weed, we need education about consent and honest conversations about sex and sexual violence. I’m curious about other people’s thoughts on this though.

It’s that time again, that time where I get totally incredulous and belligerent. Why, you ask? Oh, no big thing, only that New York City is thinking of CUTTING THE SEXUAL ASSAULT RESPONSE TEAM PROGRAM.

Wait, back up. What’s a Sexual Assault Response Team (SART?)

All HHC acute care hospitals have been designated by the New York State Health Department as SAFE Centers of Excellence, where sexual assault victims receive sensitive care within one hour of their arrival. At these hospitals, Sexual Assault Response Teams (SART), composed of specially-trained forensic examiners and rape crisis counselors, provide immediate state-of-the-art forensic and counseling services. SART programs, which operate around the clock, can minimize trauma to the victim and reduce the risk that evidence critical to law enforcement will be lost, damaged or overlooked. HHC SAFE Centers of Excellence are staffed by SART staff who have gone through intensive training, approved by the New York State Department of Health, and include properly identifying, collecting and packaging forensic evidence, accurately documenting injuries and attending to the emotional needs of rape victims.

So, to clarify, the proposed cuts would end these programs at city hospitals. This would save the NYC Health and Hospital Corporation (HHC) $1.2 million out of the $100 million HHC President Alan Aviles says they will have to cut this year.

I just can’t wrap my head around cutting these programs. (Which, by the way, are recognized for their excellence and Bloomberg approved). Yes, I have never planned a multi-hospital budget. And my good friend points out to me that the HHC cuts are likely due to the cuts made to Medicaid over the past few years (since many of their patients are Medicaid patients) and thus they are between a rock and a hard place.

But we are talking about providing victims of violence with care that decreases the trauma they are likely to face and helps facilitate a stronger criminal case, if the victim should choose to pursue one. Not to mention the fact that people are more likely to get care if they are guaranteed competent and supportive providers. So this is where you choose to cut the 1 out of 100 million? One Brooklyn councilman asked, “What kind of message are we sending victims of sexual assault?” Well, it’s the same message that NYC sends when the city council eliminates sexual violence from the budget, and when police downgrade sexual assaults to misdemeanors, when women have to add the possibility of being raped by cops to their long list of concerns. That message is: sexual violence is not a priority of ours. We will not be providing you with the care you deserve. End of story.

I will update as I hear more.

Loveisrespect.org is looking for young people between the ages of 13 and 22 to sit on their National Youth Advisory Board. Break the Cycle and the National Dating Abuse Helpline collaborated to create Loveisrespect.org, a comprehensive online resource which aims to “educate and empower teens and young adults to prevent and end abusive relationships.” The National Youth Advisory Board will provide essential feedback in order to ensure that Loveisrespect.org is meeting the needs of teens and young adults. The application deadline is June 1, 2011.

If you’re interested in applying, please email me at and I’ll connect you to the right folks!

The following post was written by Jennifer Babos, the Vice President of the student government at Colorado State University (CSU). Jennifer and her colleagues innovatively created funds for improved survivor services and preventive sexual assault programming at CSU by advancing evidence-based recommendations and drumming up support from student constituents. This article details her journey and acts as an excellent and inspiring case study for student organizers across North America who are working toward eliminating sexual violence on their campuses.

In Fort Collins, CO, the students of Colorado State University have voted to implement a brand new student fee to address interpersonal violence on campus. The fee is $4.00 a student/per semester, equaling around $189,600 a year, and it will be administered by the Women and Gender Advocacy Center on CSU’s campus to: increase awareness campaigns and educational programming, hire a Men’s Program Coordinator, hire an additional full time advocate, bring in consultants and training for campus staff, and also increase peer-to-peer education.

The journey to create this fee began with the President and Vice President of the student government, the Associated Students of Colorado State University, Cooper Anderson and Jennifer Babos respectively, and in conjunction with the Chairs of the ASCSU Interpersonal Violence Response Task Force, Joe Howard and Stephanie Tanny. The task force spent time collecting qualitative and quantitative data about interpersonal violence on campus and forming a document of recommendations for improvement to CSU administration. At the same time, Anderson and Babos ran on a platform promising to address interpersonal violence on campus through increased educational programming from within ASCSU and also through the implementation of a student fee to the Women & Gender Advocacy Center. The Women & Gender Advocacy Center was chosen because of data collected from the ASCSU task force that showed on paper what general student knowledge held as true—that the Women & Gender Advocacy Center supports survivors better than any other entity on campus, and they do the best educational programming and prevention work.  Survivors utilized their office more so than any other office, received the most support in terms of full disclosure of their options, empowerment, and positive support and empathetic treatment. With budget cuts to the Colorado State Higher Education system, the office was continuing to lose staff and funding- resulting in higher demands on the office with less people power and resources. When Anderson and Babos were officially elected into their offices, the process began of lobbying the Student Fee Review Board in a nine month process. Anderson and Babos’ proposal of a new fee for the Women & Gender Advocacy Center began by proving the idea was student initiated—which was easily met because it came from Taskforce Chairs Tanny and Howard, and Vice President Babos. There was no administrative influence. It then had to be proved as student supported to pass the second vote. This was proven by a survey conducted by the ASCSU taskforce in which 84% of 465 respondents said they were in favor of some type of monetary support for increased survivor services. This was also proven by Vice President Babos presenting at student organizations across campus and gaining feedback on their support of the fee. Of nearly 150 students in CSU student orgs— ranging from the Resident Hall Association to the Microbiology Student Association—not a single student objected to the raising of their student fees by $4 to support more education and resources around interpersonal violence. After SFRB established that it was student supported, they then heard a final presentation and took a final vote. This vote was 12-0-3 and the decision then had to be approved by the ASCSU senate, as all Student Fee Review Board decisions then get voted upon by the Student Government Senate. After two votes in the Senate, the official recommendation to the Colorado State University System Board of Governors from the students was to implement a new student fee of $4; the money was voted to be administered by the Women & Gender Advocacy Center to work at preventing acts of interpersonal violence and simultaneously support the numerous survivors and secondary survivors of this violence.

The Board of Governors of the Colorado State University System will vote in the middle of June, 2011 to implement this student fee for the fiscal year of 2012 and onward.

The entire process not only resulted in the establishment of a self-voted student tax to address interpersonal violence, but it provided for a large-scale peer-to-peer educational opportunity. The process involved patience and bravery by all of the students pushing this, as ignorance, hatred, oppression, prejudice, and trauma were all present in the journey. Their bravery and patience resulted in the re-education of large groups of students, correcting stereotypes, and addressing mass apathy and prejudice. This accomplishment purely belongs to the students of Colorado State University who fought tirelessly and courageously for a change they believe in.

There’s a good chance you’ve already heard about French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who allegedly sexually assaulted a New York City maid on Saturday. The woman’s lawyer, Jeffrey Shapiro, spoke to the isolation and stigma that survivors often feel in the wake of an incident of sexual assault. He says:

They are very much alone in this world. … Her life has now been turned upside down. She can’t go home, she can’t go back to work. … This has been nothing short of a cataclysmic event in her life.

SAFER’s heart goes out to this survivor and her daughter. Jerin of the NOW Young Feminist Task Force (YFTF) points out that this woman’s experience of sexual assault is further compounded along the axes of race, class, and immigration status. And now it’s being played out on the international stage.

You can help make this woman feel less alone. Show your solidarity by emailing the NOW YFTF at with words of support for this survivor. The NOW YFTF will be compiling the messages they receive and forwarding them to Jeffrey Shapiro’s publicist.

Gwen Washington founded the Leila Grace Foundation in order to work toward reducing rates of campus sexual assault via educational initiatives that dispel rape myths and raise the voices of student survivors. This month, the Leila Grace Foundation is accepting photo submissions as a part of their awareness-raising national photo campaign. Here’s a bit more information from Gwen on this great project and how you can get involved:

The Leila Grace Foundation is starting a photo campaign for students in an effort to raise awareness of sexual assault prevention across all college campuses across the nation. Starting May 2011 any student interested in preventing sexual assault through education can star in our photo campaign “Start the conversation”. Send us your photos and a written statement of how you can start a discussion of preventing sexual assault on your campus. Photos and statements chosen will be placed on our students in action section of our website.

For more information contact:

Gwen Washington

President of Leila Grace Foundation

gwen@leilagrace.org

If you’re interested in participating in this awesome campaign, contact Gwen at the above email address!