Ending Violence Against Women: Packet 1 - Issue
We will be focusing on two kinds of violence against women: sexual assault, and sexism in the media.
Topic 1: Sexual Assault
Warmup - Myth or not - is it sexual assault?
______You were napping on a bus. You wake up and the guy next to you is touching you under your clothes.
______You go out with someone and try to kiss you. You say you don’t want to. They French kiss you anyway.
______You are making out with someone. You decide to go further, so you take off your clothes. Later on, they start to have sex with you, and you say you don’t want to. They continue.
______ Every time you have to stay with your uncle, he forces you to have sex with him.
(for the correct answers, keep reading...)
What is sexual assault?
- Sexual assault is any forced or non-consensual sex act.
- It does not have to be full-out sex
- A person has the right to say no at any point in the process of intimacy/sex
- Anytime someone doesn’t respect someone else’s limit, that is NOT OK.
Sexual Assault: The facts
- Every 2 minutes, another person in the US is sexually assaulted.
- 10% of girls and 3% of boys will be sexually assaulted by the end of high school.
- 60% of sexual assaults are never reported.
- Many times when someone reports a sexual assault, they are not believed, or it is not investigated.
- Some psychological effects of surviving a sexual assault include anger, depression, self-harm, sleep and eating disorders, trouble with trust and connection, and flashbacks
The cost of silence:
Victims of sexual abuse often do not tell anyone about it. Their abuser may threaten them if they tell, or they may simply be ashamed and overwhelmed by what happened. Additionally, sometimes victims of abuse try to tell their story, and people don’t believe them, or they are told to stay quiet for the sake of appearances. Sometimes people side with the abuser because they are a respected member of the community. This silencing can be extremely damaging for the victim.
Case Study: Vienna Presbyterian Church
The Abuse
This church has a large youth group, and that program is run by a youth minister. Over the course of several years, some girls who had graduated from the high school youth group complained that the youth minster was romantically and sexually involved with them. This is illegal, because for a person over 18 to have sex with a person under 18 is considered statutory rape (unless there is less than a two year age difference, such as a 19 year old and a 17 year old). Additionally, this is breaking the trust of the parents, who sent their children to the youth group for religious education, not for romantic relationships with adults.
The abuser told each girl was told that she was special and individual, and that he loved her and wanted to marry her. He would slowly build trust with the girl and her family, and then get increasingly physical with the girl. The parents often thought they knew the youth minster well, including in one case letting him repeatedly sleep on their couch. Over time, the girls would realize that they were not unique, and that he was not going to have a serious relationship with them, but simply was taking advantage of their youth to get sex. For the girls, this abuse was incredibly damaging to their mind and spirit, and deeply affected them for years after it ended.
The Silencing
After graduating from high school and going to college, two girls got up the courage to confront the situation. They came back to the church and asked to speak to the church leaders. They explained what had happened, and asked for the situation to be investigated and for the youth minister to be fired. The church leaders did not believe the girls, and told them to go home. It is possible the church leaders were worried that if they admitted that the abuse was true, they would get a bad reputation in the community.
For the girls, gaining the courage to confront their abuser and then being ignored and silenced was incredibly painful. They felt that the church cared more about its reputation than about the safety of the children. They felt hurt and alienated. Additionally, in this time other girls were abused, but because the first girls had not been listened to, the other girls were more reluctant to try to seek help.
The Success
A few years later, another group of girls came to the church leaders and told them that the youth minster had abused them as well. This time, they found one church leader who did listen to them, and opened an investigation. It was found that more than 20 girls had been abused by this youth minster over the course of 10 years, and it had been reported at his previous job as well. The minister was fired, and the church received national negative attention – partially for the abuse, but especially for not listening to the girls when they first spoke up. The girls who won the investigation were relieved to finally be believed, and to know that no more girls would be victims to this abuser.
1. Many times, survivors of sexual abuse do not tell anyone about what happened. What are some of the reasons that they might not tell anyone? (Bullets)
2. Unfortunately, when survivors of sexual abuse do tell, sometimes people tell them to stay quiet about it. What are some of the reasons that people would want survivors to stay quiet? (Bullets)
3. How might it cause further damage to a survivor to be told to stay quiet? (Bullets)
4. What are some ways that survivors can overcome being silenced?
5. What are some ways that other people can help survivors who are being silenced?
Part 2: Sexism
Sexism
Sexism is the belief that men are better than women. This belief is part of why many women are abused. Sometimes, a man will think that he is superior to the woman so he has the right to abuse her. Other times a woman will think that she doesn’t deserve to not be abused.
Sometimes, boys are taught that it is always good to be assertive, even aggressive. They are also sometimes taught that it is the girl’s responsibility to say no if she doesn’t like what he is doing, rather than both of their responsibility to make sure both people are happy. Sometimes people think it is a sign of manliness to have sex with girls, not paying attention to that sex needs to be respectful and consensual (consent is a legal term that means both people agree to it). Additionally, people don’t know that having sex while someone is drunk is automatically considered to be not consensual (i.e., rape), because it is impossible for a drunk person to give consent. All of these things lead to boys thinking that what they are doing is acceptable, while actually they might be sexually abusing others.
Sometimes, people’s ideas of what it means to be a good man, or a good girl, contribute to sexual abuse and the silencing of abuse.
What are some of the ways that boys are taught to be masculine, that might contribute to sexual abuse?
There are many female survivors that do not tell anyone when they have been abused. What are some of the ways that girls are taught to be feminine that might cause them to not speak up?
Additionally, the way that women are shown in the media contributes to sexism.
Watch the video below. Write 5+ bullets on the main points of the video.
Title: Five Minutes on What the Media Actually Does to Women
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xAbAeZ-Gog
Watch the video, using the link below. Then fill out the below questions.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/05/how-far-we-havent-come-all-of-the-terrible-ways-the-media-treated-women-in-2013-in-one-video/
What are three ways that women were given respect in the media in 2013?
What are the 3 most awful ways that women were disrespected in the media in 2013?
In many music videos, TV shows and movies, women are hypersexualized. This means that the women characters are primarily seen as objects that are good for sex, instead of whole people. How might that kind of video, show or movie contribute to the idea that it is okay for men to mistreat women?
Watch the following video from Two Chains. How are the women seen only as objects, instead of people?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y34jC4I1m70
How might this video cause people to think it is normal for women to be treated as objects?
What are other videos or TV shows where women are not viewed as whole people?
Watch the following video from Janelle Monet and Erykah Badu – especially the end. How are women in this video shown differently than the women in the Two Chains video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEddixS-UoU
On average, how many music videos do you think young people view per week?
Do you think seeing one of these images of women over and over would influence girls? Would it influence boys? Explain.
Sexual Assualt 2016 additions
1. What types of action/strategies are discussed and/or shown in the video?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/22/health/campus-sexual-assault-new-large-survey/
A new survey of college students, one of the largest ever focusing on sexual assault and sexual misconduct, has reignited the debate over just how big a problem sexual assault on campus really is.
Among female college students, 23% said they experienced some form of unwanted sexual contact -- ranging from kissing to touching to rape, carried out by force or threat of force, or while they were incapacitated because of alcohol and drugs, according to the new survey by the Association of American Universities (AAU). Nearly 11% said the unwanted contact included penetration or oral sex.
"I think one takeaway is that this problem is a broad problem within society as well as on campus, so I think it's something all of us have to be concerned about," said AAU President Hunter Rawlings in an interview.
While the survey's findings are fairly consistent with those of other recent studies, the significance of this latest effort is its size: More than 150,000 students participated from 27 universities, including some of the most prominent schools across the country. All the members of the Ivy League took part with the exception of Princeton, along with schools such as Iowa State University, the University of Florida and the California Institute of Technology.
For college women seniors, the number reporting nonconsensual sexual contact of any kind carried out by force or while incapacitated was even higher than the 23% for all female college students: 26% of female seniors said they had experienced it at some point during their four years in college. At some of the country's most elite schools, that number climbed even higher: 34% for University of Michigan female seniors, 32% at Yale and 29% at Harvard.
For many years, the "one in five" statistic -- that one in five women are sexually assaulted on college campuses -- has been widely cited by advocates and policymakers. The number stems from a 2007 Department of Justice study, which faced some criticism for being limited in scope since the survey involved only two colleges.
The 2007 study, along with the newer survey by AAU, incorporated a broad definition of sexual assault to include activities such as unwanted kissing and fondling, along with rape and attempted rape.
That is a problem, said John Foubert, national president of One in Four, an organization that is dedicated to the prevention of rape through education and research.
"Many of the statistics that are widely cited in the public about sexual violence are of 'rape or attempted rape' -- I believe rightfully so," wrote Foubert, who is also professor of higher education and student affairs at Oklahoma State University, on the One in Four Facebook page. "Those are the most serious types of sexual violence, and also, based on my experience, those most likely to result in PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder]. When we throw 'unwanted sexual contact' into the mix, we risk equating a forced kiss (which is a bad thing obviously) with rape (which is a fundamentally different act)."
The survey, developed by a group of researchers, program administrators and methodologists, was emailed to nearly 780,000 students. More than 150,000 completed the online questionnaire, which is a response rate of just over 19%, lower than several other surveys on sexual assault and misconduct, which Foubert said was another issue with the survey.
It is possible that the results could be slightly biased since students who didn't participate may have been less likely to report they experienced any unwanted sexual contact.
Sofie Karasek, director of education and co-founder of the advocacy group End Rape on Campus, said the significance of the survey is that it provides evidence for many of the things she and other advocates thought were happening on campus, including how many students are reluctant to come forward after they are a victim of sexual assault.
More than 50% of the women who reported some of the most serious incidents, including forced penetration, didn't report it because they didn't think it was "serious enough," according to the survey. Others said they didn't come forward because they were embarrassed, ashamed or thought it would be too emotionally difficult or that they didn't think anything would be done about it.
Transgender students and others who do not identify as either male or female had higher rates of assault than women. Experts said this was the first large-scale study they knew of to measure the extent of the problem for transgender students.
"I think that evidence is really important to have in terms of specific policies that we would use to combat this type of victim blaming mentality," said Karasek.
Topping that list would be widespread education, she said, as early as middle school, in the areas of affirmative consent, healthy relationships, respect, what constitutes sexual assault and how and where to go to report it.
"It was clear before but now it's even clearer that campus sexual assault is widespread and we need to be tackling it from a variety of standpoints."
1. Roughly what percentage of women reported sexual assault while at college?
2. Why do some women choose to remain silent or not come forward about their assault?
3. How might it cause further damage to a survivor to be told to stay quiet? (Bullets)
“At least one in six male students said he’d commit rape if he could be certain of getting away with it.”
For two decades, the UCLA psychologist Neil Malamuth has surveyed students using an “attractiveness-to-sexual-aggression scale,” which measures respondents’ inclination toward sexual aggression, as well as the likelihood that they would consider using such aggression. He’s found that between 16 percent and 20 percent of male students said they’d commit rape if they could be certain of getting away with it. That’s at least one in six. When he used the phrase “force a woman to have sex” instead of “rape,” the percentage jumped to between 36 percent and 44 percent—that means for nearly two out of every five guys, the key deterrent seems to be the fear of getting caught.
Listen to one of interviews at the below site:
http://www.npr.org/series/339884470/a-closer-look-at-sexual-assaults-on-campus
What did the interview/report talk about?
What is something new you learned?
Why do you think the sexual assault is so common? Why might people think it is OK?
Further reading:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/08/what-makes-a-campus-rape-prone/402065/