Author Archive

THE LINE is Starting a Blogroll!

As the editor of Where Is Your Line?, I have often written about the unique power of the internet and the bold approach of THE LINE campaign takes toward contributing to various conversations with a loud voice about ending sexual violence, empowering people through their sexuality, and beginning conversations on sex and relationships that have never before been started.

Today, I am writing to unveil more powerful voices. THE LINE is a campaign that is centered on this very blog: a central, open, unique, and diverse place filled with contributing ideas and ideals that open dialogues on sex, relationships, violence, feminism, contemporary culture, and more. Writing and sharing information in this electronic format supports a culture, an internet, and a campaign that is open, affirming, and personal. We do not want to be selfish – and we want to keep up!

THE LINE is building a blogroll, and it will continue to grow. Below is a recent listing of blogs we’d like to include, and short statements as to why. We’re looking for submissions- from organization heads, media professionals, and you.

Leave organization names, blog titles, or even just web addresses for some of your favorite voices online in the comments below. Tell us what you want more of and what you want to hear about. By sharing your interests and your other favorite places to read about the issues underneath this campaign, you’re opening our eyes to new information and new perspectives, as well as feedback on what you like to read and in what style.

You can get insight into what we’re reading in the archives and via our twitter feed. Let us know here, on Facebook, or even on Twitter what you’d like us to be reading.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

Today, I am writing to unveil more powerful voices. THE LINE campaign is centered in this blog, and we know how important voices and the action of speaking out can be. And so, THE LINE is building a blogroll, and we want to use it to give you more: more coverage of information you care about, more frequent updates on people and situations we care about, and more variation of topics in our own blogging cycle. We want to talk to you here more frequently, and we want to give you the ability to trace our information – and more – through our blogroll.

As we develop our list of authors and organizations to listed to, we’re looking for submissions- from you.

Tell us in the comments below what you want us to be reading- your own personal blogs, your favorite news sites, your favorite organization news feeds. If you think it’s important, we do, too, and we’d like to include it. You can get insight into what we’re reading in the archives and via our twitter feed. When we post the list, you’ll be able to see it here – and submit quick! We’re hoping to post it within the next week.

Thanks for being involved. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

Is Hooking Up Hurting Our Heads?

8.18.10 Carmen | No Comments »

Photo via foundphotoslj on Flickr.

A new report, entitled “Sex and School: Adolescent Sexual Intercourse and Education,” is making huge waves in headlines. The study, completed by Bill McCarthy of the University of California Davis and Eric Grodsky of the University of Minnesota (two sociologists, I might add), collected data on youth intercourse, romantic and nonromantic, and youth performance in school.

Some research-style background: the study looked at school attachment, high school GPA, college aspiration, college expectations, problems in school, ever truant, the number of days truant, school sanctions (suspended/expelled), and dropping out. The research was completed with the intention of describing intercourse- which the researchers believe means the survey was primarily completed by those involved in the act of vaginal intercourse. Participants were allowed to self-identify as being in romantic or nonromantic relationships, and were responsible for making the distinction.

If you’ve read some mainstream coverage of the report, you’re probably very confounded by the data: people in relationships and people who abstain from sex do just fine in school (or, at least, do not find that intercourse disturbs their existing patterns academically) and people who hook up simply don’t? That can’t be!

Well, you are right. It isn’t.

Oliver Wang of The Atlantic explains where the coverage went wrong concisely in his article on the report:

Here’s an age-old beef between scientists (social or otherwise) and journalists: the former tend to be exceptionally careful about drawing conclusions from their research. It’s one thing to argue, “Data X and Data Y show a relationship,” it’s another thing altogether to actually argue, “Data X is the cause of Data Y.” This is what’s known as the correlation vs. causality distinction and it is absolutely fundamental to any kind of responsible research methodology and discussion.

The difference between a correlation and a cause may seem minor- after all, why not jump the bridge of conclusions and just make a statement, already?! – but it isn’t. Social scientists would not claim something was a cause if really, data was just correlated. Similarly, they would never call a cause a correlation if it was clear that causality existed. Such is science: you say what is scientifically and methodologically true.

And this is why everyone should actually be reading this report – instead of the coverage. (And why the journalists should pick up a copy, too.) Heather Corrina’s coverage of the report for Scarleteen elaborates on that fine distinction, and why the scientists themselves are not ready to make claims, about hooking up or its effects on student’s academic performance:

This study also can’t tell us much about the academic impact of “hookups” or “flings,” since it doesn’t talk about them nor were those terms used in the study, and adults reporting or classifying teen nonromantic relationships as such may be projecting or making unwarranted assumptions about teens’ nonromantic relationships in doing so. We cannot say what types of romantic or nonromantic relationships intercourse occurred in in the study. All one can state with authority is that the individuals in them either classified them as romantic or non-romantic and/or did or did not mark relationships as meeting the criteria in the list above. Some of the intercourse reported as non-romantic may well have occurred, and probably did occur, in “casual sex” contexts like one-night stands. However, some may have occurred in friends-with-benefits scenarios, via open romantic relationships, or in brand-new relationships which the participants did not yet engage in the above behaviours or don’t yet classify as romantic, or other possibilities. But to classify the non-romantic sex as being about any one kind of relationship, beyond merely non-romantic, is poor reporting and is not supported by the study.

The authors do not ever, in presenting their results, use the word “cause” to connect sex & academic outcomes – they use “relationship” or “association” or “correlation.” This study does NOT show that any kind of sex causesanything to do with academic outcomes, only that some academic outcomes or attitudes do or do not occur when teens are also having intercourse or not having intercourse in certain contexts. Something else McCarthy explained to me was that “the GPA and other outcome data are form the subsequent year so they do have temporal order and correct for selection into sex; however,that selection is not random so we can’t really talk about cause.”

The truth about hooking up and school is that nobody knows how hooking up will effect our performance in the classroom, because that isn’t what this study was about. But in the coverage of the piece, it has become obvious that preconceived notions about sexuality and relationships are present in the pens of journalists.

I may not be a scientist, but I’d like to make some suggestions based on the findings of this report: get some, and get smart.

Hey, Bill O’Reilly, Tune In!

8.12.10 Carmen | 3 Comments »

Photo via Fox News.

Jennifer Aniston’s new film, “Switch,” is a tale with a provocative beginning: a turkey baster. Her character in the movie uses artificial insemination to have a child alone. That’s right – alone. No boyfriend, no, girlfriend, no partner, no husband, no wife.

“Switch” is about a single mother (and, even though it is a love story, attempts to encompass the theme of choosing to be a mother, alone). For real. And that’s why Aniston did it. In a recent interview, she said:

“Love is love and family is what is around you and who is in your immediate sphere. That is what I love about this movie. It is saying it is not the traditional sort of stereotype of what we have been taught as a society of what family is.”

It’s important that we realize, firstly, that pregnancy, motherhood, and sexuality are closely related. The same gender injustices that plague the openly sexual, the sexually “deviant,” and those affected by sexual violence also impact our understanding and cultural perception of pregnant and parenting women.

And single mothers are always under attack: reports each day, month, and year blame children’s drug addictions, killing habits, and gang violence on single-parent families; the government is constantly snipping away at the economic security of women who aren’t dependent on men, but do need assistance (and recently cut diapers from the Food Stamps list); and now, Bill O’Reilly has some choice words for Aniston and “Switch.” According to ABC News, he thinks Aniston’s film is to blame for destroying the “American Family.”

In O’Reilly’s eyes, Aniston’s comments make her a threat to the American family.

“She’s throwing a message out to 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds that ‘Hey, you don’t need a guy. You don’t need a dad.’ That is destructive to our society,” he said on Tuesday’s “O’Reilly Factor.”

Fox News contributor Margaret Hoover and Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson chimed in on the topic, agreeing with O’Reilly that teens and tweens can’t understand the difference between a mature woman raising a child on her own (Aniston is 41) and a teen having a baby.

“She is glamorizing single parenthood,” Carlson said.

As usual, I’m going to break this down for you: Bill O’Reilly, a conservative white dude from who-cares-where America with a talk show and a sexual harassment suit under his belt, thinks that the film “Switch,” a light-hearted piece about single parenthood starring a fully adult woman, is going to destroy the American family, encourage teen pregnancy, and diminish the importance of fatherhood. He also asserted this while giving single moms about .05 percent of that screen time, filling it with lip service about how “abandoned” mothers do great things every day (presumably, like finding new husbands).

To that, I have much to say.

I was raised by a single mother from the age of four on. This has made me appreciate the importance of love in families, of close-knit and open families, of talking and of appreciating the ones you’re with. I am hardworking because my mother was hardworking, and how: she works a humble job and sent my brother and I to immensely prestigious private colleges, all with relatively no money or power to ease our growth. We grew up simple and humble. We studied hard and we had a lot of support and a strong sense of values. We are ambitious and intelligent. We stand head-and-shoulders above many of our peers from married families.

My father, on the other hand, is about as in-tune with my family as Bill O’Reilly himself. Normally, this isn’t something I talk about or throw out there, but it’s necessary now. Right now. Right when movies are finally being made that don’t show single mothers shooting drugs and fucking up their lives. Right when actresses who are single adults are unafraid to admit that they will still pursue families. Right when the stigma and shame of being a single parent remains threatened by people like Bill O’Reilly- by straight, white dudes who treat women like shit and want to ensure that all families make room for men, no matter how violent or unloving those men are.

Bill O’Reilly said that single mothers do great things. He was right. Single parents, and especially single mothers, do great things every day. But Bill O’Reilly doesn’t mean it, and he should. I’m interested in how many of the following things O’Reilly knows: that single mothers on welfare complete their Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees, JD’s and Ph.D.’s every day; that single mothers feed entire families while working full-time jobs, often without a hitch; and that when there are hitches, single moms everywhere have proven, year after year and budget cuts after budget cuts, that they have no time to wait on anyone else, and that they will accomplish what they need to – no matter what the time spent, effort involved, or obstacles thrown.

As someone who has been working to empower women in her local communities for some time (not a long time, but certainly longer than Bill O’Reilly), it is hard for me to watch anyone incorrectly summarize what empowerment looks like. There are many routes to empowering women – especially single mothers, who are caught at many intersections of oppression.

For example, single mothers are going to be more likely to be poor than married women, no matter how many children those married women have. Why? The wage gap. If women are already paid less than men, how can women without men in their lives even dream of competing on equal footing? So we need economic empowerment: financial literacy, equal pay, flex-time, and family-friendly workplaces that do not punish working parents.

Similarly, teen mothers (who, unbeknownst to panelists on the O’Reilly Factor, become adult women in no time) face hurdles in completing their educations, and therefore often slip into poverty. So we need educational empowerment: equal access to educational resources, increased scholarships, outreach to women in non-traditional fields of interest, and networking opportunities for everyone in the working world.

Lastly, single mothers also need supports that all women, regardless of familial status, need: cultural equality, healthy and non-violent relationships, workplaces that embrace female leadership, and full equality under the law.

It is hard to believe that “Switch” will actually destroy the American Family, but it may change some minds. It is giving single mothers a voice, and it may alter the way we, as a culture, perceive women who raise children by themselves. It may help us understand their unique situations and it will finally give people everywhere the chance to applaud their accomplishments. And that, I daresay, is not dangerous. Rather, I think it is very important.

It is also hard to believe that “Switch” is going to convince anyone that fatherhood is unimportant. It is hard to believe women at any time in our current economic and cultural state will choose to embark on a road of discrimination and oppression that is known as “single parenthood.” But it is just as hard to imagine that the problems women face have a solution called “fathers” or “husbands.” The solution is empowerment, and the ability to be heard.

Bill O’Reilly may work for a television network, but he’s tuned out to the realities of single motherhood – and it’s offensive.

Abstinence, Coming to a Store Near You

8.4.10 Carmen | 4 Comments »

One of the most consistent problems with technology is how we use it. Culturally, we’ve been known to abuse virtual and digital technology for social purpose – we are, after all, the Americans that played “The Sims” without batting an eyelash at the absence of homosexuality, and the Americans that released, re-released, and updated “Grand Theft Auto” without removing the violence against women. And now, we are going to use new, modern video game technology to scare women out of their sexuality – and reinforce that unwanted sex is their fault.

According to Gizmodo:

The University of Central Florida has developed a full-body motion-control video game that promotes abstinence. It lets tween girls control avatars that are placed in social situations that may lead to making out and, gasp, sex.

HOLD ON A MINUTE. So a new video game that depicts women in sexual situations – well, that isn’t exactly new. But this is certainly a spin on the situation: players, female players of course, are outfitted in motion-tracking bodysuits (think those fancy green-screen suits they use now to make accurate animated character movements) and placed into situations where “sleazy guys and sparkly vampires approach them to make out and pressure them to have sex.”

And, you guessed it- girls get points for saying no.

The premise of the game is to put presumably younger women into sexual situations that are scary and intimidating, and encourage abstinence based on an actual fear of sex. (I’m pretty sure a better game would have sleazeballs wearing suits and not harassing, assaulting, and coercing the women in their lives.) The main messages include: Sleazy men exist and will harass you, and that is okay. Sleazy men exist, and that is okay. Sex is not okay.

Casey Chan ends her Gizmodo piece with the remark, “I’m not saying it’s not going to work, but…it’s probably not going to work.”

Here’s to hoping she’s right.

DC Premiere Screening of THE LINE!

7.19.10 Carmen | No Comments »

Join director Nancy Schwartzman and Men Can Stop Rape on Thursday, July 22nd for the Washington, DC premiere of the documentary film THE LINE!

THE LINE is a 24 minute documentary that explores the intersection of sexual identity, power and violence. How do we negotiate our boundaries as sexually liberated women? How much are we desensitized to sexual violence? Through conversations with football players, educators, survivors of violence, sex workers at the Bunny Ranch, and attorneys, this personal film explores the “grey area” and the elusive line of consent.

Following the screening, THE LINE director Nancy Schwartzman, AEquitas and Men Can Stop Rape will facilitate discussion on how to use the film as a teaching tool among advocates, prosecutors, and college men.

THE LINE is the first film to join the Men Creating Change (MCC) Film & Speaker Series. Men Creating Change is the nation’s most comprehensive strategy to engage college men in creating sustainable programming on campuses to create cultures free from violence against women.

THE LINE Washington, DC Premiere & Discussion