Sexual assault is much more than just a women’s issue. Survivors of sexual violence can be male or female, straight or gay, young or old. Anyone can be a survivor. We also know that attackers have the ability to fit a range of descriptors. Despite this reality, sexual assault is still often portrayed as something [...]
Stories of sexual violence, punctuated by the words “RAPE IS RAPE,” were projected onto the U.S. Capitol building last night in Washington, D.C. Activist groups Luminous Intervention and FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture organized the action with the intent of drawing attention to the discourse around rape culture, noting that “American culture is uncomfortable to the [...]
As president of the University of Maryland’s Feminists for Sexual Health club and a soon-to-be campus sexual assault prevention peer educator, my senior year is going to be dominated by one question: What can I do to stop sexual assault on campus? I’ve been thinking about it a lot this summer and I’ve come to [...]
[TRIGGER WARNING for sexual assault survivors]
After-rape is to be consumed by emptiness, isolation, fear, shame and anger.
After-rape at college is to be confronted by my rapist every day—on the quad, in the library, at breakfast. It is to be ceaselessly reminded of the moments in which power and control were stripped from me, in which I had no option but to let go and resign myself to the fact that this was really happening.
Enough is enough. Under the “fake” VAWA passed by the House this year, 11 million students would be denied the vital improvements to their school’s sexual assault policies that are included in the real VAWA. Authored by Republican members of Congress Eric Cantor and Sandy Adams, this version eliminates protections for students, as well as [...]
Two weeks ago, the U.S. Senate reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The version of VAWA that the Senate passed included new provisions to protect Native American women. While the reauthorization of VAWA itself is significant, equally important are these new provisions because they extend VAWA’s protections to the Native American women living on [...]
Cross-post by Sarah M from the SAFER Campus blog Today finds me crawling out of blog hibernation to point ya’ll to the latest installment of “College Boys Just Want to Have Fun…By Demeaning Women and Making Jokes About Rape.” Today’s episode takes place at the University of Vermont, where a puzzling and revolting survey was [...]
by Bettina Hager, National Women’s Political Caucus One commonly noted sign of progress in the gender equality battle is that women now make up the majority–yes that is more than 50%–of college students. This is an enormous advance and reflects the hard work and dedication of generations of women: Women who have fought to be heard [...]
How would you react if a man approached you at a party and asked, “What’s 10 inches and gets girls to have sex with me… My knife!”? Most would be horrified by this “joke” and I would personally regard the comment as hateful and threatening. Facebook apparently does not agree though. That comment is the [...]
Part 2 of 2: These two blog posts provide two different reactions to Rebecca Traister’s New York Times piece, Ladies We Have a Problem, about the anti-victim-blaming rallies in Canada & the US known as SlutWalks. If you’ve heard any of the public discourse surrounding SlutWalks – from local TV stations, to blogs, personal Facebook [...]
That’s What S(HE) Said…