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Happy blogging!
Welcome to WordPress.com! This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it.
Happy blogging!
I’m listening to the news Tuesday morning of the NCAA sanctions of Penn State. It’s mostly good news for those of us who work for victim rights and an end to sexual violence. But what does this say about all the sexual assaults that go un-reported and pushed under the rug under the guise of college athletics at many, many universities?
At a conference on Title IX and sexual assault two years ago, one of the keynotes, David Lisak, a Professor at UMass Boston who researches rapists, showed us a video, which is available on You Tube, on how to get a woman drunk so that you can have sex with her. Dr. Lisak stated that if this was a video on how to get a child to submit to sexual abuse them it would be taken off the internet immediately by the Feds.
Do you see where I am going here? What happened at Penn State was horrible. The abuse of children is horrible. And our reaction as a culture to this horrific crime is appropriate. But rape of women is JUST AS HORRIBLE as sexual abuse of children. Until we, as a culture, begin to change our mindset that this is the case, the statistics I will quote below will continue to be relevant and perhaps worsen.
“The National College Women Sexual Victimization Study estimated that between 1 in 4 and 1 in 5 college women experience completed or attempted rape during their college years (Fisher 2000).” ~www.feminist.com
“Also disturbing is the lack of prosecution for those who commit rape; according to RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) only 9% of rapists face prosecution, and a mere 3% of rapists ever spend a single day in jail. 97% odds of evading jail time are not significant enough to deter sexual violence.” span style= font-family: Georgia, serif;”>These statistics should HORRIFY the NCAA. Imagine the cultural change that could occur should national collegiate organizations like the NCAA were to take plain-old-every-day-sexual-assault and treat it with the same concern as what happened to those boys under Jerry Sandusky.
So, yes . . . I consider this blog The Feminist Critic on all things pop, political, etc., however this week I thought it would be fun to critique our first outing for Providence Restaurant Week. I may be a feminist, but I am also, most definitely, a foodie!
To learn more about restaurant week, check out www.goprovidence.com We took my husband’s parent’s out to dinner on Sunday, the kick off of restaurant week, for their 33rd wedding anniversary. We looked at numerous menus on the list and decided on four places we liked. Two of them, when we called for reservations, were not open on Sundays. So we ended up at the Waterman Grill. I had just had drinks there over a week ago, which I thought were good.
We sat inside, with a water view, because it was quite warm outside. We were given the Prix Fixe restaurant week menu and their regular menu, which also has a Sunday through Thursday Prix Fixe menu for only $24.95. Restaurant week’s price is $29.95.
They brought us water. The server came over and took our drink order.Then they brought us amazing fresh baked herbed bread. I thought that was a good sign. After fifteen minutes, he came back to take our dinner order as our drinks were still being made. Jeff and his parents ordered off the restaurant week menu and I ordered off the regular Prix Fixe menu. I ordered the mussels, salmon with beluga lentils, and the flourless chocolate cake.
Twenty minutes after we arrived we got our drinks. I thought mine was a martini so I sent it back because it came served on the rocks. The server told me I should have told him I wanted it up even after I told him that was how it was served to me a week ago. I don’t take too kindly to debates with the servers.
The mussels came and they were a little underdone, kind of slimy. I had Jeff eat one to make sure I wouldn’t get sick. The broth they came in was very bland, just some onions and a little butter. Jeff’s mussels are MUCH better. But I shall try for the sake of restaurant week not to compare everything to Jeff’s talented culinary skills. His mom had the coconut shrimp and he and his dad had the fresh mixed greens with goat cheese.
I asked for a wine list so that I could order a glass of wine with my dinner. I ordered one. He brought me the glass and over 15 minutes went by before he returned with my wine. I said to the server, “the bar services is extremely slow.” He went on to blame it on the bartender, saying something like “she’s a nice person and all . . .” I also noticed the manager stop at the table near ours, with the upscale looking foursome and ask how everything was. I turned to Jeff and said “he should ask us.”
Our meals came. My salmon was excellent . I loved the beluga lentils. Jeff had the pork tenderloin with apple slaw and baked beans. My mother in law had the linguine and clam sauce. She thought her pasta was a bit too al dente. My father in law had the pan roasted fluke. During dinner, Jeff ordered another glass of wine and it came right out.
Dessert was simple. The flourless chocolate cake had a ganache on top that I felt ruined the richness of the torte. Jeff had a banana cake with butterscotch topping. His dad had cheesecake.
When we got our bill, I saw I was charged twice for my drink as I had sent it back to have it made up. We decided not to mention it when we noticed one of our entrees was not listed. I figured it was a bonus. But the server came over and said he thought he’d charged us twice for the drink. He brought the bill back and it was exactly the same. So we paid it and left. When we looked it over at home, we were charged for the fourth entree but it wasn’t listed. And we were charged for my drink twice, so we paid $8.50 more than we should have.
All in all, the food was pretty good but the whole process was slow and the drinks took forever to get to us. I am not sure if I will go back there. It also seems like a nice place to go in the winter as they have a fireplace and a lot of wood grilling.
By deciding who gets to talk, what shapes the debate, who writes, and what is important enough to report, the media shapes our understanding of who we are and what we can be. The Women’s Media Center works to create a level playing field for women and girls in media through our monitoring, training, original content, and activism.” We spent almost three hours talking about becoming media experts in our fields and having a mini-workshop which mimics their Progressive Women’s Voices training. I hope to apply to this in 2013. Their website is chock full of statistics on the lack of women in the media. I’m also planning to invite their Vice-President to be part of my Feminist Media Literacy conference in Fall 2013 as part of the Zuckerberg Leadership Award I just won!
critical reflections on my feminist praxis: activism, motherhood, and life
Providing weekly critiques of theatre, film, books, politics and pop culture from a feminist perspective.