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.
Then we went to AOL to see the trailer for the upcoming three-part PBS movie Makers. This documentary chronicles over 100 women who were instrumental in the women’s movement (all of them alive). Their website http://www.makers.com/ is amazing. You could spend a day just watching all these interviews with amazing women. The first one we watched was Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. Most of us teared up. Her story truly is one of women pushing the boundaries of patriarchy and changing the world forever. It was kind of cool to be in a very corporate NYC office, like AOL, although one of the members of our group called their 3 story office a “sad Google.”
From AOL we went to Women’s eNews. If you don’t subscribe you should. They are an excellent source of honest news reporting on women around the world. I love the “Cheers & Jeers” section. They cover topics related to women that one would rarely find in the patriarchal news media.
From there we were off to dinner with at Gloria Steinem’s lovely home with Marcia Ann Gillespie, the former Editor of Ms Magazine, and random houseguest of Gloria’s, Sheila Tobias.
“Marcia Ann Gillespie is a trailblazer in the magazine industry, a leader in the women’s movement, a champion of gender of racial justice. A provocative writer and thinker, hers has been a consistent eloquent voice affirming the human potential for good, challenging inequality, pushing herself and others to hope, dare and strive for a better world. She is the author of Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration, an authorized biography published by Doubleday in April 2008, and is currently writing a memoir titled When Blacks Became Americans. She has been a driving force behind two of this nation’s most important women’s magazines, as the editor in chief of Essence from 1971-1980 and most recently as the editor in chief of Ms. from 1993-2001. Marcia is the current Professor of Diversity in Residence for the Johnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute at Bennett College.” I was thrilled she remembered me from coming to campus in 1997, I think, as our keynote for Women’s History Month
“Gloria Steinem is a writer, lecturer, editor, and feminist activist. She travels in this and other countries as an organizer and lecturer and is a frequent media spokeswoman on issues of equality. She is particularly interested in the shared origins of sex and race caste systems, gender roles and child abuse as roots of violence, non-violent conflict resolution, the cultures of indigenous peoples, and organizing across boundaries for peace and justice. She was a cofounder ofMs. magazine as well as Voters for Choice, the Ms. Foundation, the Women’s Media Center, the Women’s Political Caucus and many other pioneering feminist organizations. She is the author of several best-selling books, including Revolution from Within and Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.” She remembered coming to Woodland Commons five years ago and being in the strange concrete building.
What resonated most from our talk with these amazing women, for me, was her focus on female friendship and how this is such an important aspect of organizing and feminism in general. If we can’t support each other, how can we even begin to change the world.
What resonated most from our talk with these amazing women, for me, was her focus on female friendship and how this is such an important aspect of organizing and feminism in general. If we can’t support each other, how can we even begin to change the world.
The Feminist Critic 