http://jezebel.com/5414393/ask-amy-to-rape-victim-first-you-were-a-victim-of-your-own-awful-judgment

Ask Amy To Rape Victim: "First, You Were A Victim Of Your Own Awful Judgment"

In her latest column, advice columnist Amy Dickinson says she hopes a letter from one of her readers "will be posted on college bulletin boards everywhere." After reading Dickinson's advice for said reader, I sincerely hope this isn't the case.

A reader named "Victim? In Virginia" recently wrote into Dickinson's "Ask Amy" column looking for clarification on an event that happened during a frat party she attended, noting that she was intoxicated and agreed to go to a room with a man who promised he would not do anything inappropriate with her.

"Many times, I clearly said I didn't want to have sex, and he promised to my face that he wouldn't," the reader writes, "Then he quickly proceeded to go against what he "promised." I was shocked, and maybe being intoxicated made my reaction time a bit slow in realizing what was happening." Looking for clarification that she had indeed been raped, the reader later asks, "if I wasn't kicking and fighting him off, is it still rape? I feel like calling it that is a bit extreme, but I haven't felt the same since it happened. Am I a victim?"

Here is Dickinson's charming response:

Dear Victim?: First of all, thank you. I hope your letter will be posted on college bulletin boards everywhere.

Were you a victim? Yes.

First, you were a victim of your own awful judgment. Getting drunk at a frat house is a hazardous choice for anyone to make because of the risk (some might say a likelihood) that you will engage in unwise or unwanted sexual contact.

You don't say whether the guy was also drunk. If so, his judgment was also impaired.

No matter what — no means no. If you say no beforehand, then the sex shouldn't happen. If you say no while its happening, then the sex should stop.

She then goes on to quote a passage from RAINN's website regarding drinking and rape and encourages the girl to get tested for STDs and pregnancy, and to "see a counselor to determine how you want to approach this. You must involve the guy in question in order to determine what happened and because he absolutely must take responsibility and face the consequences for his actions, just as you are prepared to do. He may have done this before."

It's incredibly alarming that Dickinson feels the first thing an obvious rape victim needs to hear is "well, you were drunk, so you were asking for it." Closing her advice with a bit about facing the consequences of her actions, as if getting drunk at a frat party is equivalent to RAPE, is also quite disturbing; the language Dickinson uses seems to evenly place the blame on both parties and make light of an incredibly dark situation, as if the girl should just go up to her rapist and ask him to fess up at the counselor's office so that both of them can move on and he can finally stop, you know, raping people, just as she can stop drinking too much at frat parties.

Dickinson may want this letter posted at colleges across the country as a means to scare young women out of drinking at parties; after all, it's their fault if they get raped, right? It's not about a larger rape culture, or a modern masculinity that promotes the notion of "no means yes," or the incredibly tired parade of victim blamers who still insist that rape is the fault of any woman who dares to drink at a party or wear a skirt or walk down a street at night or go into a room with a man she trusts or dance a certain way at the club or, you know, be born with a vagina.

Perhaps Dickinson is right after all. Her advice should be plastered around college campuses. They could even build an entire course around it: Rape Culture And You: Victim Blaming 101.

Rape Question A Matter Of Consent [Chicago Tribune]

[Image via SomeECards]

Does a short haircut mean women have gone off sex?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1092019/Does-short-haircut-mean-women-gone-sex.html

h/t Shauna

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/21/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety

Thongs, implants and the death of real passion

Lap dancers, porn stars, big-lipped, zeppelin-breasted exhibitionists - meet the new role models for young British women. And, says feminist writer Ariel Levy, women are not just accepting this supersexualised culture - they are fuelling it. But are "female chauvinist pigs" really to blame? Interview by Kira Cochrane

• Kira Cochrane
• The Guardian, Wednesday 21 June 2006
• Article history

MULTI-DISCIPLINARY STUDENT CONFERENCE IN CELEBRATION OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S WEEK 2010 AND THE 5OTH BIRTHDAY OF THE SECOND WAVE

Some of you might be interested in submitting your work to this conference. . . Feel free to see me if you want some advice on getting a proposal together. jm

CALL FOR PAPERS:

THE THIRD ANNUAL MULTI-DISCIPLINARY STUDENT CONFERENCE
IN CELEBRATION OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S WEEK 2010
AND THE 5OTH BIRTHDAY OF THE SECOND WAVE OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT

"WOMEN MAKING CHANGE"

FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2010
BRESCIA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON, ONTARIO

Undergraduate and graduate students and community activists are invited to submit proposals (up to 200 words) for paper, poster or artistic presentations related to the theme "women making change." We encourage students of all disciplines to share papers or presentations originally prepared as class assignments or new work based on continuing or completed projects. We also welcome presentations from community activists about their change-making efforts. This year we are especially interested in papers on the struggles and achievements of the women's movement and the new challenges it faces as it marks its 50th birthday.

Your proposal should provide
· a title and a brief summary of your presentation in no more than 200 words
· your name and contact information

Proposals must be received no later than Friday, January 15, 2010 and should be sent by e-mail to iwil@uwo.ca or to Women Making Change Conference, c/o Institute for Women In Leadership, Brescia University College, 1285 Western Road, London, Ontario, N6G 1H2.

This is a refereed conference. Notice of acceptance will be sent to you by Monday, February 1, 2010.

To learn more about the conference, please visit www.iwil.ca or call (519) 432-8353 ext. 28385.

Questions? Contact Rebecca Coulter, coulter@uwo.ca or Kim Young Milani, kimyoung@uwo.ca

http://jezebel.com/5411836/should-feminism-be-about-equality-for-males

Should Feminism Be "About Equality For Males?"

Cathy Young defends men's rights groups in Reason, and her article's subhead reads, "Feminism should be about equality for males, too." So should it?

Young takes aim at Kathryn Joyce's Double X article about men's rights groups, which we wrote about a couple of weeks ago. Young argues that these groups are not misogynistic, but that they are merely challenging "the conventional feminist view of domestic violence-as almost invariably involving female victims and male batterers." She argues in favor of sociologist Murray Straus's research into female-initiated violence — though she does acknowledge that women are twice as likely as men to get hurt in a domestic dispute, and three times as likely to fear their partners — and argues that feminists exaggerate the impact of abuse. Young writes,

Whatever minor successes men's groups may have achieved, the reality is that public policy on domestic violence in the U.S. is heavily dominated by feminist advocacy groups. For the most part, these groups embrace a rigid orthodoxy that treats domestic violence as male terrorism against women, rooted in patriarchal power and intended to enforce it. They also have a record of making grotesquely exaggerated, thoroughly debunked claims about an epidemic of violence against women-for instance, that battering causes more hospital visits by women every year than car accidents, muggings, and cancer combined.

According to Young, men's groups exist in response to real bias against men — she says, "federal assistance is denied to programs that offer joint counseling to couples in which there is domestic violence, and court-mandated treatment for violent men downplays drug and alcohol abuse (since it's all about the patriarchy)." And she winds up her piece by quoting philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards: "No feminist whose concern for women stems from a concern for justice in general can ever legitimately allow her only interest to be the advantage of women." Leaving aside domestic violence for a moment, this statement is actually a complicated one. On the one hand, no real feminist wants to be like the straw feminists Young and others set up — hateful harridans who use lies to further their own selfish ends. But on the other, shouldn't feminism be at least mostly about women's rights? Don't men have their own movement — that is, all of Western history?

It's easy to answer yes to these questions, and some of the time, I believe that answer. But I also think that feminism should set out to change all damaging gender stereotypes, including stereotypes about men. The patriarchy — obviously the only thing my simplistic feminist ass cares about — affects everybody, and though it often benefits men, it also fucks them up. And what's more, it fucks them up in ways that are bad for women. It tells them they need to be sexual aggressors, contributing to rape culture. It tells them they suck at child-rearing and emotional connection in general, which damages their relationships and sticks women with disproportionate familial burdens. And it tells them they need to be big and strong and ready to fight, which makes them both more likely to commit domestic violence and less likely to report it if it happens to them.

All these problems are worth fixing, and feminists — who are experienced at fighting gender stereotyping, and who care about many of the ills created by a rigid social view of masculinity — are well-equipped to help fix them. But we're not going to feel like it if people cast us as the enemy. I'm unlikely to reconsider my view of men's rights groups if writers like Young use them as a peg to insult the supposedly sorry "state of feminism" or to posit some powerful anti-male gynocracy that's promulgating lies about abuse. In fact, Young does such a crappy job of negotiating disputes between the sexes that I'd like to go around her and speak to dudes directly: Hi guys. I am a feminist. I am not an evil bitch who wants to beat you up and take your money. I am your sister, your daughter, your neighbor, your co-worker, and your friend. I support your right to have emotions, to be an involved dad, to feel physically and emotionally safe in your relationships, to hold any job you want regardless of whether it's "masculine," and, if you want, to marry another man. I get that life is hard for you too sometimes, and I want to help you. But only if you meet me halfway.

Note: The image above is a group of male college students marching in high heels to protest violence against women — a "men's group" we can get behind.

Men's Rights [Reason]

Related: "Men's Rights" Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective [Double X]

Earlier: The Misguided Message Of Men's Rights Groups

Send an email to Anna North, the author of this post, at annanorth@jezebel.com.

Rape Culture

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/10/rape-culture-101.html

Rape Culture 101

| posted by Melissa McEwan | Friday, October 09, 2009

[Trigger warning.]

Frequently, I receive requests to provide a definition of the term "rape culture." I've referred people to the Wikipedia entry on rape culture, which is pretty good, and I like the definition provided in Transforming a Rape Culture:

A rape culture is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.

In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. Much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.

But my correspondents—whether they are dewy noobs just coming to feminism, advanced feminists looking for a source, or disbelievers in the existence of the rape culture—always seem to be looking for something more comprehensive and less abstract: What is the rape culture? What are its borders? What does it look like and sound like and feel like?

It is not a definition for which they're looking; not really. It's a description. It's something substantive enough to reach out and touch, in all its ugly, heaving, menacing grotesquery.

Rape culture is encouraging male sexual aggression. Rape culture is regarding violence as sexy and sexuality as violent. Rape culture is treating rape as a compliment, as the unbridled passion stirred in a healthy man by a beautiful woman, making irresistible the urge to rip open her bodice or slam her against a wall, or a wrought-iron fence, or a car hood, or pull her by her hair, or shove her onto a bed, or any one of a million other images of fight-fucking in movies and television shows and on the covers of romance novels that convey violent urges are inextricably linked with (straight) sexuality.

Rape culture is treating straight sexuality as the norm. Rape culture is lumping queer sexuality into nonconsensual sexual practices like pedophilia and bestiality. Rape culture is privileging heterosexuality because ubiquitous imagery of two adults of the same-sex engaging in egalitarian partnerships without gender-based dominance and submission undermines (erroneous) biological rationales for the rape culture's existence.

Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to "cure" queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and "the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms."

Rape culture is 1 in 33 men being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is encouraging men to use the language of rape to establish dominance over one another ("I'll make you my bitch"). Rape culture is making rape a ubiquitous part of male-exclusive bonding. Rape culture is ignoring the cavernous need for men's prison reform in part because the threat of being raped in prison is considered an acceptable deterrent to committing crime, and the threat only works if actual men are actually being raped.

Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women's daily movements. Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you're alone, if you're with a stranger, if you're in a group, if you're in a group of strangers, if it's dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you're carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you're wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who's around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who's at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted and if you are and didn't follow all the rules it's your fault.

Rape culture is victim-blaming. Rape culture is a judge blaming a child for her own rape. Rape culture is a minister blaming his child victims. Rape culture is accusing a child of enjoying being held hostage, raped, and tortured. Rape culture is spending enormous amounts of time finding any reason at all that a victim can be blamed for hir own rape.

Rape culture is judges banning the use of the word rape in the courtroom. Rape culture is the media using euphemisms for sexual assault. Rape culture is stories about rape being featured in the Odd News.

Rape culture is tasking victims with the burden of rape prevention. Rape culture is encouraging women to take self-defense as though that is the only solution required to preventing rape. Rape culture is admonishing women to "learn common sense" or "be more responsible" or "be aware of barroom risks" or "avoid these places" or "don't dress this way," and failing to admonish men to not rape.

Rape culture is "nothing" being the most frequent answer to a question about what people have been formally taught about rape.

Rape culture is boys under 10 years old knowing how to rape.

Rape culture is the idea that only certain people rape—and only certain people get raped. Rape culture is ignoring that the thing about rapists is that they rape people. They rape people who are strong and people who are weak, people who are smart and people who are dumb, people who fight back and people who submit just to get it over with, people who are sluts and people who are prudes, people who rich and people who are poor, people who are tall and people who are short, people who are fat and people who are thin, people who are blind and people who are sighted, people who are deaf and people who can hear, people of every race and shape and size and ability and circumstance.

Rape culture is the narrative that sex workers can't be raped. Rape culture is the assertion that wives can't be raped. Rape culture is the contention that only nice girls can be raped.

Rape culture is refusing to acknowledge that the only thing that the victim of every rapist shares in common is bad fucking luck. Rape culture is refusing to acknowledge that the only thing a person can do to avoid being raped is never be in the same room as a rapist. Rape culture is avoiding talking about what an absurdly unreasonable expectation that is, since rapists don't announce themselves or wear signs or glow purple.

Rape culture is people meant to protect you raping you instead—like parents, teachers, doctors, ministers, cops, soldiers, self-defense instructors.

Rape culture is a serial rapist being appointed to a federal panel that makes decisions regarding women's health.

Rape culture is a ruling that says women cannot withdraw consent once sex commences.

Rape culture is a collective understanding about classifications of rapists: The "normal" rapist (whose crime is most likely to be dismissed with a "boys will be boys" sort of jocular apologia) is the man who forces himself on attractive women, women his age in fine health and form, whose crime is disturbingly understandable to his male defenders. The "real sickos" are the men who go after children, old ladies, the disabled, accident victims languishing in comas—the sort of people who can't fight back, whose rape is difficult to imagine as titillating, unlike the rape of "pretty girls," so easily cast in a fight-fuck fantasy of squealing and squirming and eventual relenting to the "flattery" of being raped.

Rape culture is the insistence on trying to distinguish between different kinds of rape via the use of terms like "gray rape" or "date rape."

Rape culture is pervasive narratives about rape that exist despite evidence to the contrary. Rape culture is pervasive imagery of stranger rape, even though women are three times more likely to be raped by someone they know than a stranger, and nine times more likely to be raped in their home, the home of someone they know, or anywhere else than being raped on the street, making what is commonly referred to as "date rape" by far the most prevalent type of rape. Rape culture is pervasive insistence that false reports are common, although they are less common (1.6%) than false reports of auto theft (2.6%). Rape culture is pervasive claims that women make rape accusations willy-nilly, when 61% of rapes remain unreported.

Rape culture is the pervasive narrative that there is a "typical" way to behave after being raped, instead of the acknowledgment that responses to rape are as varied as its victims, that, immediately following a rape, some women go into shock; some are lucid; some are angry; some are ashamed; some are stoic; some are erratic; some want to report it; some don't; some will act out; some will crawl inside themselves; some will have healthy sex lives; some never will again.

Rape culture is the pervasive narrative that a rape victim who reports hir rape is readily believed and well-supported, instead of acknowledging that reporting a rape is a huge personal investment, a difficult process that can be embarrassing, shameful, hurtful, frustrating, and too often unfulfilling. Rape culture is ignoring that there is very little incentive to report a rape; it's a terrible experience with a small likelihood of seeing justice served.

Rape culture is hospitals that won't do rape kits, disbelieving law enforcement, unmotivated prosecutors, hostile judges, victim-blaming juries, and paltry sentencing.

Rape culture is the fact that higher incidents of rape tend to correlate with lower conviction rates.

Rape culture is silence around rape in the national discourse, and in rape victims' homes. Rape culture is treating surviving rape as something of which to be ashamed. Rape culture is families torn apart because of rape allegations that are disbelieved or ignored or sunk to the bottom of a deep, dark sea in an iron vault of secrecy and silence.

Rape culture is the objectification of women, which is part of a dehumanizing process that renders consent irrelevant. Rape culture is treating women's bodies like public property. Rape culture is street harassment and groping on public transportation and equating raped women's bodies to a man walking around with valuables hanging out of his pockets. Rape culture is most men being so far removed from the threat of rape that invoking property theft is evidently the closest thing many of them can imagine to being forcibly subjected to a sexual assault.

Rape culture is treating 13-year-old girls like trophies for men regarded as great artists.

Rape culture is ignoring the way in which professional environments that treat sexual access to female subordinates as entitlements of successful men can be coercive and compromise enthusiastic consent.

Rape culture is a convicted rapist getting a standing ovation at Cannes, a cameo in a hit movie, and a career resurgence in which he can joke about how he hates seeing people get hurt.

Rape culture is when running dogfights is said to elicit more outrage than raping a woman would.

Rape culture is blurred lines between persistence and coercion. Rape culture is treating diminished capacity to consent as the natural path to sexual activity.

Rape culture is pretending that non-physical sexual assaults, like peeping tomming, is totally unrelated to brutal and physical sexual assaults, rather than viewing them on a continuum of sexual assault.

Rape culture is diminishing the gravity of any sexual assault, attempted sexual assault, or culture of actual or potential coercion in any way.

Rape culture is using the word "rape" to describe something that has been done to you other than a forced or coerced sex act. Rape culture is saying things like "That ATM raped me with a huge fee" or "The IRS raped me on my taxes."

Rape culture is rape being used as entertainment, in movies and television shows and books and in video games.

Rape culture is television shows and movies leaving rape out of situations where it would be a present and significant threat in real life.

Rape culture is Amazon offering to locate "rape" products for you.

Rape culture is rape jokes. Rape culture is rape jokes on t-shirts, rape jokes in college newspapers, rape jokes in soldiers' home videos, rape jokes on the radio, rape jokes on news broadcasts, rape jokes in magazines, rape jokes in viral videos, rape jokes in promotions for children's movies, rape jokes on Page Six (and again!), rape jokes on the funny pages, rape jokes on TV shows, rape jokes on the campaign trail, rape jokes on Halloween, rape jokes in online content by famous people, rape jokes in online content by non-famous people, rape jokes in headlines, rape jokes onstage at clubs, rape jokes in politics, rape jokes in one-woman shows, rape jokes in print campaigns, rape jokes in movies, rape jokes in cartoons, rape jokes in nightclubs, rape jokes on MTV, rape jokes on late-night chat shows, rape jokes in tattoos, rape jokes in stand-up comedy, rape jokes on websites, rape jokes at awards shows, rape jokes in online contests, rape jokes in movie trailers, rape jokes on the sides of buses, rape jokes on cultural institutions…

Rape culture is people objecting to the detritus of the rape culture being called oversensitive, rather than people who perpetuate the rape culture being regarded as not sensitive enough.

Rape culture is the myriad ways in which rape is tacitly and overtly abetted and encouraged having saturated every corner of our culture so thoroughly that people can't easily wrap their heads around what the rape culture actually is.

That's hardly everything. It's merely the tip of an unfathomable iceberg.

20 days to end violence against women campaign

http://www.canadianlabour.ca/action-center/20-days-20-days-end-violence-against-women

20 Days - 20 Ways to end violence against women

Send a postcard a day to the Prime Minister to remind him that for 20 years women have been waiting for action. Each year, women across the country commemorate the fourteen young women who were killed on December 6, 1989, at the École Polytechnique in Montreal and all the other women who have died as a result of male violence.

Twenty years is too long. Government attention to violence against women is long overdue. A law and order agenda is not the answer. Women need economic and social security to be safe at home, at work and in our communities. We need support for women's services and equality. Now is the time for action.

On November 16th, send the 1st of 20 postcards to the Prime Minister from our action centre.

Related News and Events

Postcard campaign targets violence against women - Thousands of cards being sent to prime minister

Posted: Thursday, 12 November 2009

OTTAWA – The Canadian Labour Congress is asking Canadians to send 20 postcards in 20 days to the prime minister telling him to take action now to end violence against women. “On December 6th it will be 20 years since 14 young women … Read More

A2 Kaylee's Creative Project: Video Games and Gender

http://www.ualberta.ca/~bohaychu/

Hi all,

Kaylee asked that I post a link to her website where she's posted a survey on video games and gender for her final project. Check it out.

jm

Issues: Samarasekera Response Team Putting the 'boy crisis' in context

Issues: Samarasekera Response Team

Putting the 'boy crisis' in context

Derek Warick / warwick.derek@gmail.com

Since the middle of October, my life has been consumed by an article in a local newspaper and some comments in it put forward by University of Alberta President Indira Samarasekera. The article in question addressed the post-secondary gender gap—the fact that women's enrolment in post-secondary institutions is increasing at a higher rate than men's. Those concerned about this trend typically slip into the claim that feminism has gone too far, that we're now facing a "feminization" of education and boys are being left behind in grade school.

I sat, bewildered as I read the article and Samarasekera's expression of concern that we won't have enough male CEOs in 20 years. And that she's going to be an advocate for white men. And that no one is going to question her.

If Samarasekera's words were taken out of context or she had been misrepresented—as some of us had hoped—then she had a responsibility to make that known. She didn't. Enter the Samarasekera Response Team.

The Samarasekera Response Team (SRT) is the name some friends and I eventually went by in the process of launching a campus poster campaign addressing her comments and the general fear-mongering generated in the article. Her comments and the ideas presented in the article were so public that it was only fair that our action be just as visible. That, and the fact that this action was bigger than Samarasekera; it was addressing the general ill-thought that prevents a reasonable analysis of the so-called "boy crisis."

It is true: women's enrolment numbers are increasing at a faster rate than that of men. According to Statistics Canada, women make up roughly 58 percent of students in universities across Canada. Here's where men's rights activists and university presidents come in saying, essentially, "Great job feminism! Now you and your angry compatriots can retire early—here's proof that equality has been achieved, so can't we all move on already?" Many of these same people become upset when we tell them there are other issues that aren't being addressed, to which they respond that feminists are just selfish, and that it isn't about equality anymore; feminism is now about dominating men. (When it's a man putting forward feminist arguments it forces them to get a bit more creative.)

It's easy to forget in the midst of all this concern for men in the education system that when women began seeking to increase their post-secondary participation rates, education was a means to an end—namely the end of wage discrimination and the ability to lead lives independent from men. Women are doing what they can to achieve these goals—like enrolling in universities in higher numbers—but to no avail. The wage gap between women and men with a university education in 1991 was down to 12 percent. By 2001, it had grown to 18 percent. For women of colour, it's even worse: with a post-secondary education, they make just 55 cents to a university-educated man's dollar. Women of colour without a university education will make 65 cents to a comparable man's dollar.

Combine this with the very real fact that women are often sexually harassed in the workplace and are less likely to be hired or be given promotions, and suddenly the absurdity of the claim that women will be ahead of men in the workplace in 20 years is revealed.

Now, Samarasekera's original vow (she's since clarified her position in a letter to the editor) to be an advocate for white men is another issue. The original claim was a racist one, plain and simple. It decontextualized the issue of male enrolment in universities to the point that racialized and classed peoples were effectively erased. Male enrolment is an issue, yes, but it's not limited to white men, whose enrolment is second only to white women.

The context is slightly different, but statistics from the US Department of Education indicate that among white, black and Hispanic people, women's rates of enrolment are increasing at higher rates. Across every race, men's enrolment is lagging behind women's; this problem isn't limited to white men, and in fact it's worse for people of colour, whose enrolment numbers are lower in general. In fact, Hispanic men's rates of enrolment are the only ones that have decreased. Unfortunately the statistics don't go into economics, but the study indicates clearly that meaningful discussion around this issue cannot be divorced from race and class.

What the SRT wanted to achieve with this action was to address these issues publicly, to generate discussion around them and to hold our president accountable for her comments. In almost every facet, we think we've succeeded. Despite having been conceived and developed in someone's living room, word of our campaign has spread nationally. Professors are discussing it with their students in classrooms. We've added to the barely audible feminist voice in Alberta. These are important accomplishments, but we need to be sure we don't lose this ground; we need to keep these issues in public discourse. That need is even stronger in our current political climate, in which Prime Minister Harper assures us women have achieved equality.

We need to move further, push harder, be louder and put these concerns on the political agenda. We, the SRT, have kick-started what should be the real concerns: the ongoing sexism women face in the workplace, the race- and class-based barriers both women and men must confront when seeking a post-secondary education and the continued marginalization they face upon graduation. The solutions are out there: national, publicly funded child care, pay equity laws, more effective initiatives to end violence against women. It's up to us to make these solutions realities. V

Derek Warwick is a women's studies major at the University of Alberta and a member of the Samarasekera Response Team.

Child Pageants Through A Feminist Lens

http://jezebel.com/5401596/high-glitz-exploring-child-pageants-through-a-feminist-lens/gallery/?skyline=true&s=x

Overview of High Glitz, a book that explores child pageants through a feminist lens. Some interesting articles here and some disturbing photos, imo.

http://jezebel.com/5402302/why-men-should-learn-to-like-period-sex?skyline=true&s=x

Why Men Should Learn To Like Period Sex

An article in Cardinal Points, the SUNY Plattsburgh student newspaper, confirms what we've always suspected: that dudes who won't have period sex kind of suck.

Here's the horror story that begins Jon Hochschartner's recent "Sex in the SUNY" column:

I woke up slowly, pushing the naked girl beside me for more covers. Eventually it was time to get up, so I reluctantly rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.

That's when I realized I was wet. I threw the sheets off myself and saw I was covered in blood - from my chest to my dick. I started looking for some kind of mortal wound but couldn't find anything.

So finally, I looked down at her and she was covered in it too. Then it dawned on me: menstrual blood.

I don't remember if we were drunk the night before, but clearly there was some serious miscommunication. I mean, damn, scarred for life.

Obviously we can't expect opinion columns in college newspapers to be models of enlightened views — if memory serves, my college paper once ran a screed on why no one should ever have to take English classes, and another on how gross it was to have to stand next to poor people at Wal-Mart. Still, Hochschartner does deserve a wake-up call: the "naked girl" taking up space in his bed was actually a living, breathing — and yes, bleeding — human being. I'll admit that stained sheets are an annoyance, but getting menstrual blood on oneself is a monthly occurrence for women, and yet we somehow manage to avoid PTSD. Understanding this, and accepting that the vagina is part of the female reproductive system and not just a sterile hole for your dick, is an important step toward becoming a man worthy of fucking. Hochschartner did talk to some women for his column — their recommendations include towels, shower sex, and, Dr. Ruth's favorite, diaphragms. I'd advocate that these ladyfriends involve him in regular discussions of menstruation, at least until he's desensitized. Because there's really no excuse for a guy to be afraid of a little blood.

Yesterday I recommended that women quit treating periods as a female-only topic, and I'd like to reiterate that recommendation now. Last year I had to teach a 25-year-old man — who had previously lived with a long-term girlfriend — that women do in fact need to use more than one tampon per period, and I think it's high time that guys started getting this information early. Comprehensive sex ed can help — while the girls in my fifth grade class were getting our first "changing bodies" lecture, the boys were watching The Mighty Ducks or something, and there's no reason boys shouldn't get the opportunity to hear the gym teacher say "uterine lining" too. But more than that, if boys and girls and men and women would all stop treating menstruation like some ultra-private phenomenon, the world — and the vagina — would be a happier place.

It's true that not every woman likes period sex (especially on heavy days, there can be cramping issues). And guys' tastes do deserve respect — if they really prefer to abstain until a woman is ritually pure, that's up to them. But I'd argue that learning to like period sex is worth some initial discomfort, both because it adds three to seven days per month when you can bone, and because it represents a level of comfort and familiarity with the actual female body, not the sanitized version pushed by "lad mags." And while I wouldn't advocate kicking a guy to the curb just because period sex isn't his favorite, I would wager that someone for whom menstrual blood triggers "post-trauma flashbacks" may not be a keeper.

If It's That Time Of The Month, Go On Vacation [Cardinal Points]

Earlier: Dr. Ruth Personally Advises Us On Period Sex

Poster campaign on TV

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Canada/Edmonton/ID=1320501528

Posters continued . . .

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2009/11/05/edmonton-university-posters.html

Student won't be punished for satirical posters

Last Updated: Thursday, November 5, 2009 | 12:42 PM MT Comments5Recommend11

CBC News

A University of Alberta student whose satirical posters had him facing probation or expulsion learned Wednesday he won't be punished after all.

Derek Warwick, a fourth-year women's studies student, said the posters were supposed to be a humorous way to get people talking about comments from the university president about a decline in male enrolment.

University of Alberta student Derek Warwick says a misunderstanding led campus security to tell him he had violated the student code of conduct by putting up posters that poked fun at comments made by the university president. (CBC)The posters carry slogans like "Only white men can save our university" and "Women are attacking campus."

"Our posters were in no way hateful or malicious," Warwick said. "I think that we were again using humour to create dialogue, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that."

Warwick said he was called to the security office at the university and told he was being charged with the distribution of malicious material under the Code of Student Behavior and that he could be put on probation or expelled over the incident.

"We were told that there had been complaints about the posters that had been put up — that some people had interpreted them as being sexist," he said.

"I think there are very few people who would agree with campus security's decision to press charges."

'Clever and creative'

"I thought the posters were clever; I thought they were creative," said University President Indira Samarasekera.

She said the discipline threatened by security did not come at the instigation of her office.

One of the satirical posters that got student Warwick into hot water. (CBC)"I was flattered that somebody actually read what I said in the newspapers," Samarasekera said. "So, I thought, that's what the university's all about, expression of people's ideas and opinions. I didn't find them a problem at all."

Samarasekera's comments referred to the decline in the proportion of male students at universities across Canada. She says she stands by those remarks.

"They were based on emerging facts," Samarasekera said. "If you look at the last 15 years, for example, there has been a much more significant growth of women attending university relative to men.

"Society needs the best of both genders to develop passions for a particular area and to come into a university and contribute."

The Now Famous Poster Campaign

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2009/11/02/edmonton-samarasekera-white-male.html?ref=rss&loomia_si=t0:a16:g2:r5:c0.043861:b28727449

Posters take swipe at U of A president

Last Updated: Monday, November 2, 2009 | 11:34 AM MT Comments41Recommend25

CBC News

A satirical poster campaign has sprung up on the University of Alberta campus in reaction to comments made by the president, Indira Samarasekera, about the issue of attracting more men to universities.

About 400 posters were put up. One states: "Only White Men Can Save our University!" Another reads: "Women: Stop! Drop! Men: Enroll."

This is one of the posters that was put up at the University of Alberta last week by a group of students protesting comments made by university president Indira Samarasekera. (Tina Faiz/CBC)

The posters are in response to comments made by Samarasekera in an interview on Oct. 21, when she said: "Presidents of the major universities are very concerned we are not attracting young men in the numbers we should."

"I'm going to be an advocate for young white men, because I can be. No one is going to question me when I say we have a problem," she said.

Samarasekera made the comments in response to new statistics that show females make up about 58 per cent of the student body in Canada.

Samarasekera said her concern is that in 20 years, there will not be enough male talent at the heads of companies and elsewhere.

Men can be their own advocates

Derek Warwick, a women's studies major, spearheaded the poster campaign to protest Samarasekera's assertion that young white men need help.

"They don't need advocates, they can be their own advocates, it's a white man's world," he said Monday.

"White men are the most privileged group in the world, if we say they have problems then, well, other groups in the world have a whole heck of a lot more problems." Warwick said.

"Women CEOs aren't the issue ... because women are facing a plethora of other issues such as sexual harassment in the workplace. They're not making as much money as men ... those are the issues we should be looking at," he said.

Agricultural student Carly Huvenaares thinks Samarasekera has a point.

'Women had to work that much harder to get up to those positions, and to say that now it's a trend towards more women, I feel that's a good thing.'— Mehek Mather, student

"In our classes there's about 10 girls and one guy," she said.

There are also many scholarships available only to females, Huvenaares said.

Dietetic intern Mehek Mather views the comments as a throwback to the times when women were rarely seen on university campuses.

"Women had to work that much harder to get up to those positions, and to say that now it's a trend towards more women, I feel that's a good thing," she said.

If the university president feels the need to advocate for someone it should be women and people of colour, Warwick said.

Samarasekera was not available to comment on the poster campaign.

What if we did as much to prevent rape as we do to prevent h1n1?

http://www.bitchmagazine.org/post/swine-dandy-what-if-we-did-as-much-to-prevent-rape-as-we-do-to-prevent-h1n1

Swine & Dandy: What if we did as much to prevent rape as we do to prevent H1N1?

Science and Politics blog post by Meg Stone, November 3, 2009 - 8:05pm; tagged H1N1, Health care, pandemic, prevention, rape, swine flu.

I spent most of this past spring and summer rolling my eyes every time I heard a news story about the swine flu. Almost every day local reporters got hysterical about 5 or 10 or 20 confirmed cases. Entire schools closed in response to a handful of kids with fevers, and as if there were no war in Afghanistan, no economic crisis, and no other epidemics claiming ten times as many lives, newscasters talked about H1N1 (the proper name for swine flu) for hours.

I have a degree in public health and my work focuses on preventing rape and other acts of violence and supporting survivors in healing from abuse. When I see all the attention swine flu is getting, I’m jealous. Other than intermittent news stories about sex offenders on the loose or why women who accuse professional athletes of rape are lying, sexual violence rarely gets any widespread coverage. Certainly no state of emergency declared by the President of the United States.

Now, I don’t want to diminish the grief of those who have lost loved ones to H1N1. I don’t even want to question the scientific validity of the Center for Disease Control’s decision to declare it a pandemic. But the fact remains that the impact of H1N1 is far less than that of other public health crises that receive a fraction of the attention and resources. The CDC reported just over 43,000 cases of H1N1 between April and July of this year and estimates that it will affect a million people, or 0.3% of the total population of the United States. Compare this to the 2.5% of women and 0.9% of men who reported being raped or sexually assaulted in the past year. The most recent statistics about rape available from the CDC are from last year. Swine flu? Last week.

What would our media, our public discourse, and our institutional responses look like if people cared as much about rape as they do about H1N1?

I imagine the federal government urging colleges to stop the epidemic of rape by developing protocols for quarantining students who have tried to use drugs or alcohol to incapacitate women who would otherwise not consent to sex. Or university officials directing students to stay off campus or out of public areas until they are free of the belief that they are entitled to sex any time they want for a full 24 hours. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

I dream of public health departments so inundated with the demand for educational programs that teach kids about healthy relationships that they can’t keep up. Of public outrage that there are not enough doses of self-defense training to inoculate everyone against rape, and of medical experts having to go on television to reassure people that more of these self-defense vaccines are on the way.

Then I wake up to a phone conversation with a principal who tells me there is no dating violence in his school and another with a teacher who desperately wants to offer rape prevention resources to her high school classes but can’t because the entire budget for health education in her district was cut. So much for the dream.

But if I stop resenting H1N1 for getting so much attention for a moment, I realize that what I’m complaining about is actually public health at is best. It is probably true that the coordination of government urgency, media attention, medical system mobilization, and common sense precautions will succeed in thwarting a pandemic. We will probably not look back at 2009 and say it was the beginning of a swine flu crisis that devastated a generation.

What feels like hysteria or over-emphasis is actually the way prevention is supposed to look. It is supposed to be widespread and coordinated. Messages about the importance and seriousness of the public health threat are supposed to be so pervasive that they are almost impossible to ignore. I’m so used to caring about public health crises that don’t get the attention and resources they deserve that I almost can’t recognize what the public health system looks like when it does work.

This kind of focused attention is my wildest dream for our society’s response to HIV, rape, domestic violence, drug addiction, racial health disparities, cancer-causing corporate pollution, food system injustice and every other area of public health that is marginalized.

So why is the public health infrastructure working so well? Because it’s not being undermined by shame, stigma, and denial (you know, the way rape and sexual assault are). Even in the highest drama evening news stories there is almost a complete absence of victim blaming. Personal choices and individual behaviors spread the flu, but our government, our health workers, and our media understand that this crisis is too serious to waste time arguing over whether people who don’t wash their hands or share cubicles with co-workers who fail to stay home from work the recommended 4 to 7 days deserve what they get.

It would be unthinkable for a person to avoid seeking treatment for swine flu because s/he’s afraid that if s/he tells her/his doctor s/he’ll be blamed for touching her/his eyes and nose or lose her/his housing because no parents want to raise their children in a neighborhood where people don’t sneeze into their elbows

As if invoking the finale of High School Musical, when it comes to H1N1, we’re all in this together. Swine flu is not concentrated in any population that people already hate or devalue, so raging debates about whose immoral lifestyle caused it don’t get in the way of an effective public health response. (Even Fox News is posting stories that are sympathetic to people whose jobs don’t have paid sick leave and the hardship they face in missing work as the authorities direct.) Wouldn't it be nice if other health crises were treated the same way?

In watching the rapid mobilization against this virus I know that the public health infrastructure works when our government, our media, and our medical leaders are motivated to mobilize it. H1N1 is not getting any attention it shouldn’t – it’s getting the attention all public health crises should.

The Good Wife Charter

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article6892447.ece

Women Have Never Striven More for Less

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/style/women-have-never-striven-more-for-less/article1345668/

Women have never striven more for less

Females are willing to do more work than men for less credit, a reality that will always keep our daughters down no matter how diligent they are in school and work. And it isn't a new story

Leah McLaren

Published on Friday, Oct. 30, 2009 4:16PM EDT Last updated on Sunday, Nov. 01, 2009 1:02PM EST

Good news, girlfriends: It was a banner week for women.

According to the University of Alberta, the salaries of recent female business graduates narrowly exceeded those of their male counterparts for the first time. In the U.S., a recent study called the Shriver Report found that half the American work force is now composed of women.

Women, the report said, currently make up an amazing 40 per cent of the country's breadwinners. On this side of the border, Statistics Canada also reports a dramatic increase in primary female income earners over the past four decades.

So, my sisters, it's time to pop the champagne, put on the Beyoncé and do the Single Ladies dance until ... hey ... wait a second. If you stop the pelvic-thrusting long enough to read the fine print of the 400-odd-page Shriver Report, which was conducted by California first lady Maria Shriver with the help of a think tank, the Center for American Progress, the news is actually not so great.

Despite working harder and in greater numbers than ever before, women are still earning less than men in the same jobs over all and taking most of the responsibility for housework and child care.

In essence, the plight of women is like that old morale-boosting management trick: the no-compensation promotion (also known as the non-raise raise). It's all very flattering until you realize that you have just taken on twice as much work and responsibility for no extra pay or respect.

It's a raw deal. And here's another bitter pill: Working harder than men is not going to help us renegotiate the terms.

If you want proof, just look at the plight of women in the developing world. Of the roughly one billion people who live in extreme poverty, 70 per cent are women and girls. It's a situation that has prompted Plan International to launch its new Because I am a Girl campaign, a global initiative to change to the lives of women through education and community development work. According to the mission statement, “investing in girls is the key to wiping out the cycle of global poverty.” This is because women are the donkeys of the developing world. You don't need a statistician to tell you that African women on balance work much harder than their male counterparts and have far less to show for it.

Of course, there are fewer opportunities in the developing world – it's estimated that 20 million poor women never go to school or learn to read. But when we do get a chance at education, we work our tails off. For every 100 women enrolled in a U.S. university, there are only 77 men. In Canada, a similar gender gap exists.

The question is: Where is all this hard work actually getting us? As one perennially exhausted breadwinner/mother of three young children recently said to me, “As the mother, you just have to work harder at everything. You might as well accept it; otherwise you'll just be miserable.”

No wonder the Shriver Report found that women “feel increasingly isolated, stressed and misunderstood.” We have cast off our patriarchal shackles, but in exchange for enforced hard labour.

In this new world order, women get to support their partners, remain the primary child-care givers and earn less money for doing the same jobs as men. See? Promotion without compensation.

At least in the 1950s, middle-class women got to stay home and drink martinis like on Mad Men. Maybe they were miserable, but they could wallow in it. Most working mothers I know wouldn't even have the time to register if they were on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

While women around the globe are working more in exchange for less, what are we worried about here in Canada? Boys. Apparently, they're struggling so badly that we need to dismantle the public education system to accommodate them. In Ontario, experts are recommending extra recesses and special “active learning” classrooms where boys can swing from the rafters while learning long division. We're concerned not enough of them are going to university and that, by extension, girls are going to take over the world.

But don't fret, all you protective parents of hyperactive boys, that will never happen. Because what the Shriver Report really tells us is that women are willing to do more work than men for less credit, a reality that will always keep our daughters down no matter how diligent they are in school and work. And it isn't a new story – just ask any African woman.

I'm not saying that men don't work hard – just that, when they do, they are much better at reaping the benefits of success. While men work toward outward status – the double brass ring of power and success – women tend to be driven by intrinsic reasons: duty, loyalty, the need to be “good.”

Joanne Lipman, the former deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and editor-in-chief of Portfolio magazine, recently wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times responding to the Shriver Report. In it, she revealed that, during her years as an editor, “many, many men have come through my door asking for a raise or demanding a promotion. Guess how many women have ever asked me for a promotion? I'll tell you. Exactly… zero.”

Maybe while we're letting the boys out at recess, we should take the girls aside and teach them how to demand a raise. If our daughters are going to get a promotion, they might as well get compensated for it.