March 9, 2010
by Jillian Hewitt
Following a year-long investigation, the Center for Public Integrity and National Public Radio recently published a series of articles (complimented by on-air stories) about sexual assault on college campuses. Given the recent dialogue at Princeton about sexual assault, I wanted to bring this particular issue to light because I think it gives us some much-needed perspective regarding assumptions about men who commit sexual assault on campus.
Based on some of the recent discussion in the Prince, one might get the impression that every innocent guy who has sex with a girl who isn’t sober might be a rapist. Moreover, as the CPI/NPR article notes, the perception of rapists on campus is that they are regular guys who “made a one-time, bad decision.” However, to maintain these assumptions is to trivialize the issue—it’s difficult to take date rape seriously if our vision of a date rapist is so radically different from our vision of a “worse” kind of rapist.
In fact, the Center found that most college rapists who have not been convicted (or even charged, in most cases) closely resemble those rapists who are in prison for their crimes. A psychologist, David Lisak, spent twenty years surveying college men, asking questions like “Have you ever had sexual intercourse with an adult when they didn’t want to because you used physical force (twisting their arm, holding them down, etc.) if they didn’t cooperate?” or “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 advances?” 1 in 16 respondents said yes to these or similar questions, and 9 in 10 rapes on college campuses are committed by repeat predators.
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March 9, 2010
The 2010 Census is upon us! According to the U.S. 2010 Census Bureau:
“Census information affects the numbers of seats your state occupies in the U.S. House of Representatives….the information the census collects helps to determine how more than $400 billion dollars of federal funding each year is spent on infrastructure and services like Hospitals, Job training centers, Schools, Senior centers, Bridges, tunnels and other-public works projects, and Emergency services.”
For the first time in history, the Census will count both unmarried same-sex partners and legally married same sex spouses. But, it will not count unmarried, non-partnered LGBT individuals. Which means that when it comes to decisions on federal spending for the next ten years, the needs of many members of the LGBT community will once again not be counted.
Brenda Jin is organizing a group of students for the Queer the Census campaign, organized by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The Task Force is distributing stickers that allow people to check off “Lesbian,” “Gay,” “Bisexual,” “Transgender,” or “A Straight Ally” and can be checked off and used to seal envelopes before being mailed back to the Census Bureau. She has ordered 5,000 stickers to be distributed to the undergraduate community and will be delivering them to individual dormitories along with a personal letter signed by the students involved that explains the campaign and the importance of getting counted in the Census. The students who are helping out are not affiliated with any group or official organization on campus…they’re just a group of concerned students who are raising awareness and visibility for LGBT issues to the broader campus community.
Please contact Brenda (brendaj@princeton.edu) if you’re interested in helping out with drafting or signing the letter, stuffing envelopes, getting funding, or otherwise helping out!
March 9, 2010
Motivated by interest expressed by students across campus in the issues of sexuality and pornography, the student organization Let’s Talk Sex has chosen to sponsor a lecture by feminist pornographer Tristan Taormino on April 29, 2010. The goal is to begin a productive and intellectual discourse about a controversial subject.
The event will be held at 4:30 p.m., location TBA, and will be open only to members of the Princeton community. Because of the event’s adult content, the event will be open only to PUID holders ages eighteen and older. The event will consist primarily of a lecture, but will include a brief showing of various film clips.
In her lecture, Taormino will openly share her experiences as a feminist within the porn industry. She will engage with the question: “Can we really create sex-positive, empowering pornography?” She will show a 10-15 minute clip reel from her films at the end of the program to illustrate what she believes feminist pornography can look like.
Taormino’s talk will be preceded, earlier in April, by a contrasting lecture that will explore the damaging and oppressive aspects of pornography.
“We hope that students, faculty, and staff will make an effort to attend both events, as we intend for the two to be in conversation with each other,” said Let’s Talk Sex co-leader Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux ’11.
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March 7, 2010
by Lisa Conley
The above video discusses the troubling trend of maternal mortality increasing among US women. The two main causes mentioned are obesity/preexisting health problems and planned (Cesarean) C-sections. The Sentinel Event Alert mentioned in the ABC news clip lists the following as the most common preventable errors in hospitals “failure to adequately control blood pressure in hypertensive women, failure to adequately diagnose and treat pulmonary edema in women with pre-eclampsia, failure to pay attention to vital signs following Cesarean section, and hemorrhage following Cesarean section.” While The Joint Commission makes recommendations for prevention of maternal mortality, they also grimly noted the findings of the Hospital Corporation of America who said the majority of maternal deaths are not preventable.
It is no surprise that with rising obesity in the US, come obesity related health complications from hypertension and diabetes. But how do c-sections fit into this increase in maternal mortality? A 2008 article from Syracuse, NY stated, “The local increase [in C-sections] reflects the national trend. Thirty-one percent of births nationally — the highest on record — are through C-section, compared to about 5.5 percent in 1970.” In her book The Purity Myth, Jessica Valenti discussed the forced c-sections of women who wanted to deliver vaginally but were made to have the surgery since they had c-sections for a previous birth. In one extreme case, Laura Pemberton of FL who refused a forced c-section, returned home only to be brought back to the hospital by a sheriff who shackled her feet. The c-section was performed against her will.
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March 6, 2010
by Nick Cox
Kim Elsesser, in a recent New York Times article, raised the question of why there should still be separate Oscars for male and female actors, and makes a compelling case for making the acting Oscars gender-neutral. She pulls out all the punches, pointing out what an outcry there would be if the Oscars were racially segregated, claiming that the separate Oscar for Best Actress insults women by implicitly suggesting that they could not hold their own in a competition against men, and noting that even term “actress” has fallen out of favor. I admit that the possibility of gender-neutral Oscars never really occurred to me before I read her article, but in retrospect it seems obvious. It seems, in fact, almost impossible to disagree with her—there is scarcely any argument I could mobilize against hers that would not fundamentally contradict my own beliefs as a feminist.
Nonetheless, I still somehow feel compelled to try. The reason, if I had to name one, is probably nothing more than my instinctive mistrust of anything that seems manifestly obvious. I do not deny the validity of any of Elsesser’s claims. The idea of gender-neutral Oscars is certainly something I could get behind—although, to be perfectly honest, I don’t have a terribly strong opinion on the matter either way. Unlike other feminist issues, such as abortion, this one has no practical consequences for any real women other than movie stars, who make up a very small fraction of the population—it is more or less completely symbolic. The question, then, is about the meaning of this symbol. On the surface, as I have already acknowledged and as Elsesser argues so well, it would be an unqualified step in the right direction. Everything is a mixed bag, though, and even the most seemingly positive changes always come with hidden dimensions of ambiguity, and it is these subterranean problems that I want to probe here.
The question of gender-neutral Oscars might not be all that important in itself, but it actually has enormously far-reaching implications that cut right to the heart of feminism. The reason it is so important, even without any properly practical significance, has to do with the singular importance of movies in American culture. Movies are, simply put, the closest thing our pluralistic and secularized society has to a national religion—they provide us with the stories that we use, for better or worse, to shape our lives. The world of movies is much more than entertainment; it is a formative influence on the fundamental symbolic structure of our society. And one of the most important elements of that symbolic order is, of course, gender—movies define for us what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. The annual ritual of the Oscars is even more important: it consolidates the movies of the previous year into a coherent narrative and determines for posterity what stories were the ones that really mattered.
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March 5, 2010
by Kelly Roache
Yesterday, 18 US Senators – including New Jersey’s own Frank Lautenberg – petitioned the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner to lift the standing lifetime ban on blood donation by gay men. Led by Senator John Kerry, the legislators are fighting a statute that bars men who have had sex with men (MSM) since 1977 from donating. My first reaction upon reading the headline was admittedly one of surprise – not regarding the repeal, but rather the fact that this law was still on the books. More surprising yet was the discovery that similar laws exist in Canada, Denmark, Finland France, Germany, Iceland, and the Netherlands – more socially liberal countries with a better record on LGBT rights.
One might be able to argue that the law was passed in an era where the origins and methods of transmission of HIV/AIDS were still uncertain, something to be feared. But today, donated blood must undergo two extremely rigorous – and accurate – tests for the virus before entering the transfusion pool. According to the CDC, thanks to this new technology, less than one percent of all new HIV/AIDS infections are transmitted via blood donation. The American Red Cross and a host of other leading authorities have called the MSM blood ban “medically and scientifically unwarranted.”
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March 4, 2010
by Laura Smith-Gary
In January, in the capital of Mauritania a group of thirty-four Muslim scholars and clerics came together to issue a fatwa against female genital mutilation. In a country where over 70% of girls under 15 undergo genital mutilation/cutting and the CIA factbook reports that 100% of the population is Muslim, the scholars declared partially or wholly excising a woman’s genitals to be an unhealthy practice and therefore against Islam. According to Reuters, Cheikh Ould Zein, the secretary general of the Forum of Islamic Thought in Mauritania, said, “Are there texts in the Koran that clearly require that thing? They do not exist. On the contrary, Islam is clearly against any action that has negative effects on health. Now that doctors in Mauritania unanimously say that this practice threatens health, it is therefore clear that Islam is against it.”
Naturally, I have a wisp of a wish he’d also said that women have a right to sexual pleasure, too, and FGM/C is wrong for that reason, but assertions in favor of women’s health deserve applause. (And of course, it’s possible that had he acknowledged female sexual pleasure as a factor he would have lost credibility with the community and been less effective in condemning the practice.)
This fatwa is no magic bullet, and is not likely to immediately end female genital mutilation/cutting even within Mauritania. As Reuters warns, a fatwa is only binding to those who follow a particular imam, so the Mauritanian clerics’ decree is not universally binding to Muslims. Irin News points out that poor communication throughout Mauritania, especially in rural areas where FGM/C is most prevalent, means many may not hear about the fatwa for some time. Even if they do, some may not take it as the last word on the subject — Irin News reports that many believe that an uncut woman is ritually “unclean” and cannot pray, marry, or participate in other aspects of religious life. In addition, the tradition of FGM/C is rooted in more than Islam: while I have not been able to find many interviews with Mauritanians on this topic, those who practice FGM/C in other countries (for example, Uganda and Indonesia) tell reporters that circumcision makes a woman more attractive to her husband, more likely to be faithful, and even more stable in her “psychology.”
However, religious authorities publicly stating their opposition to FGM/C is an important step in undermining the practice, as it deeply undermines the idea that FGM/C is imposed by Islam. Hopefully, the scholar’s proclamation will also add weight, in the minds of the public, to assertions that FGM/C is detrimental to women’s health.
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March 3, 2010
by Jillian Hewitt
About two weeks ago, the Utah legislature passed a bill that will allow the state to “charge a woman with criminal homicide for inducing a miscarriage or obtaining an illegal abortion.” So far, though, the media has given it little attention. Given this lack of publicity⎯in addition to the fact that Utah’s governor still has to sign the bill⎯I thought I’d discuss it here.
The bill would make women legally responsible for miscarriages caused by “reckless” behavior, regardless of whether or not the woman was actively trying to end her pregnancy. At first glance I understand why the legislature would think of creating such a law; the bill itself has roots in a recent case, where a 17-year-old pregnant girl paid a man $150 to beat her, hoping the damage would cause her pregnancy to end. Certainly we don’t want pregnant women running around hiring people to purposefully—but without proper medical procedure—terminate their pregnancies. That being said, this bill is problematic in so many ways; it will be a tragic step in the wrong direction for pregnant women if it gets implemented.
First off, the bill says nothing about any third party that might help with inducing a miscarriage; that is, the man who actually beat the 17-year-old would be unaffected by the law. Second, the bill lacks the language necessary to prevent the prosecution of pregnant women who accidentally miscarry. For instance, if a pregnant woman drove without a seatbelt and crashed, ending the pregnancy, she could be charged with homicide due to her recklessness. Same goes for a woman whose husband abused her, if she chose not to leave the man. In this sense, the bill is so sweeping as to be reckless itself, allowing for the possibility that women whose miscarriages already devastated them could end up serving long-term prison sentences.
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March 3, 2010
by Josh Franklin
Hey all! I’m working on a longer post with a few thoughts I’ve had for a while now about consent and how sexual violence prevention campaigns work, which seems especially appropriate given the discussions we’ve been having recently about consent here and in the Daily Princetonian. For now, I want to just let you all know about two exciting opportunities on campus to get involved in this discussion.
First, tonight is the “What is Consent? (And how to ask for it)” dinner discussion at Campus Club, co-sponsored by SHARE, SpeakOut, Let’s Talk Sex, Equal Writes, Pride Alliance, Sexual Health Advisors, Center for Jewish Life, and the LGBT Center. The dinner will be at 6pm:
Come join SHARE for a dinner-based discussion on the importance of consent in relationships of any kind. We will be feature small group discussions facilitated by SHARE peers about the recent articles and the debate surrounding them, followed by a larger group discussion, and we will close with a workshop – facilitated by UHS educator Laura Rubinstein – on the importance of clearly establishing consent in any sort of relationship. We invite everyone to come and join us – free T-shirts and food (kosher and vegetarian options) will be available!
I urge you to go to this event! I think that too often, an article like last week’s op-ed in the Prince creates a general commotion, but we forget about the issue. Sexual assault and a culture of sexual violence is the issue, and it would be sad if we lost sight of that for the sake of an important but short debate about one article. This problem hasn’t gone away just because people are starting to forget about that op-ed, so I urge you to get involved in a real discussion!
Also, I’m going to be organizing a men’s group dealing with issues of masculinity and sexual violence. The plans aren’t totally finalized, but the general idea is a meeting for an hour or so once a week or once every two weeks, possibly over dinner, to discuss experiences of masculinity and sexual violence. I think that it’s important that men have a space to work through these issues with other men. I’ll have more information soon, but if you’re interested send me an email at jbfrankl@ !
by Jillian Hewitt
