Yesterday, we posted Tran’s Bill of Rights, a piece that summarized her summer of learning and discovering. Today, we wanted to post a link that was sent to us from Ross Wantland- a 2007 piece called “We the Women.”
Posts Tagged ‘sex’
A Bill of Rights for Women This September
8.30.10 Tran | 1 Comment »
This summer, I gained a new perspective on relationships and women’s empowerment. There are two main reasons for the feminist thoughts in my head – a teacher and the internet.
In the beginning of summer, I was talking to a teacher about relationships and the term “whipped.” (I had told her stories about friends who had let their partners control their every move because they felt that they were “too in love to care.”) Being the amazing teacher she is, she said:
“You have the vagina in this relationship. A man needs you. Regardless if it is for sex, love, or procreation.”
As raunchy as it may be, it’s true: it takes two to have a successful relationship (or more, depending on your own style). There must always be a division of power in order to have a relationship, and when your partner begins controlling every move, it’s more of an imprisonment. When people respect each other, the foundation is set for a strong partnership.
The Y Factor: Getting Men Involved in the Movement to End Rape
8.23.10 Miranda | 14 Comments »
Men Can Stop Rape poster via TCADSV.
Here’s a scenario: I’m out to dinner with a group of sophisticated, professional-type couples. Someone asks me what I do and everyone politely pauses to listen to my response. I respond that I’m a rape crisis intervention counselor and advocate for rape victim’s rights, and I can literally watch 50% of the group turn off, click, and nonchalantly start to chat amongst themselves about something else. Meanwhile, the rest of the table will either make sympathetic sounds, perplexedly question why I would choose to “spend my time doing that,” or get wide-eyed and stare at me like I’ve cornered them and they’re planning an exit strategy.
The second group is usually comprised of the women. The first group – the group of people that seems to think the topic of rape is irrelevant to their lives – consists of men.
By and large, rape prevention education is targeted towards girls and women, implying that rape is a “woman’s issue” and therefore, of no concern for boys. This strategy has the damaging auxiliary effects of: 1) promoting the antiquated and dangerous belief that a woman is solely responsible for putting on the breaks during sexual activity, 2) communicating to boys and men that they need not concern themselves with such frivolous matters as consent, mutual fulfillment or sexual autonomy, and 3) thereby condoning sexual violence because, you know, boys will be boys.
What we need is a more holistic and comprehensive strategy to end rape. And it starts with men speaking out and stepping up. To be clear, I’m not suggesting paternalism- I’m talking about being a decent person and not letting your buddies step out of line. A groundbreaking study by psychologists David Lisak and Paul Miller provides a lot of compelling reasons as to why this is necessary.
Lisak and Miller interviewed almost 2,000 male college students about their sexual behavior, hoping to gain some insight into the frequency of rape. They found that, out of the men interviewed, only about 6% admitted to raping. But out of those men, about 76% admitted to repeatedly raping at an average of about 6 rapes per person. And 4% of the men surveyed committed over 400 rapes and over 1,000 violent acts between them.
So what we have here is a very small group of the population that commits the vast majority of rapes and otherwise violent acts against intimate partners (ie, slapping or choking). But the most significant finding is that most rapists are serial rapists. What this means for men is that, if you think that someone has done it once, chances are that person will do it again – and again, and again. If we can get past blaming the victim or pretending that it’s none of your business or that it’s just a matter of good guys making bad decisions, and if we can really focus on the fact that men who rape are criminals and predators, I think that our society can stop rape.
Amazingly, the research also suggests that men who rape don’t think that what they’re doing is rape. When the men surveyed were asked questions like, “Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to resist your sexual advances,” they’d answer “yes” as long as the word “rape” wasn’t in there. Lisak spoke to CBS News about his 20 years worth of interviews:
“A lot of these men, especially the serial rapists, are very, very narcissistic, there is nothing they enjoy more than to sit down in a room with a guy like me and impress me with all their sexual exploits. And that’s how they view them.”
Rape doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is perpetuated, justified and promoted by a culture that rejects the idea of women’s humanity. Every time you encourage or sit silently through a story about some “sexual exploit,” you’re contributing to this culture at the expense of women everywhere. Rape will not stop until we successfully teach our men that the systematic abuse and denigration of women is not a necessary, joyful component of manhood.
And who can deliver that message better than men themselves?
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.
My Own “Red Flags”
8.17.10 Ashley | No Comments »
Meeting new romantic interests is often full of mystery. Whether you prefer dating or hooking up, everyone should have ‘red flags.’ These are my top three turn-offs when I’m meeting new flames:
1. The person wants you to act unintelligent- This person might or might not appreciate your individual intelligence, but the end goal is they want you to know how much smarter they are than you, and they want other people to know, too. This is someone who undermines your opinion and intelligence. They are assholes. These actions can lower your self esteem and make you second guess every little thought and action.
2. The person attempts to keep you from spending time elsewhere- This is actually an all-too-common occurrence: how many of us give up friends and family, even temporarily or only slightly, for a new flame? A lot of us have, and many of us could name friends who have sort of drifted after beginning a new tryst. There is a difference, however, between being pre-occupied with a new romance and the person you are with trying to isolate you from people who care about you. This is a classic red flag of an abuser: they want you to be completely isolated and in their control.
3. They only show interest in physicality- I tend to like it when people acknowledge the fact that I have a brain and personality. Some guys treat me like a trophy or new toy, and it’s disconcerting. I understand flattery, but sometimes it’s hard to believe there’s anything underneath.
