Excellence

“Ultimately, we will honor Eve Carson by becoming the university that she envisioned when she talked about ‘the Carolina Way.’” -Chancellor Moeser

One in four women are sexually assaulted or experience an attempted assault.

This is a fact we know. We hear it from the administrators, we see the numbers, we nod at the statistic. So, why are we silent? Why do we nod? We drop our heads, feel sad, and say, “How can we help them?” Not, “How can we stop this?!”

On a recent Saturday afternoon, March 28, 2009, Dr. Dorothy Edwards from the University of Kentucky, impassioned, blazing with hope and vision, looked out at the audience of the Sexual Assault Summit in Lexington, Virginia, with a challenge and fight in her eyes and demanded, “How has this resignation come over our collective souls!?” How have we come to the point where we shake our heads and sigh, This is the way it is.

One in four! Can you swallow those numbers? I know I can’t. “One in four” is not the best we can do. This should not be the way it is. The best we can do is not even one in a hundred million. The best we can do is never. If we are to achieve excellence in all our endeavors, if we are to be the best university, to truly live up to our potential and to the Carolina way, we need to raise our voices. Open dialogue. Do away with the shame. We need to be honest about the bad things that are happening on our campus. We need to make it an issue that college aged women are four times more likely to be sexually assaulted. We need to have enough dignity and pride as a student body to stand up and say, “Here’s where we’re failing.” Here’s where we’re silent. Here’s where we’ve looked the other way. Let’s change. Sexual assault is something to be ashamed of—but not for the survivor to be ashamed of—we as a community need to be ashamed that we are resigned to its happening at all.

If that woman is your loved one, your sister, your daughter, your friend, you would not want to lean back as horrible things happen to them. No. If they are in harm’s way, you would want to turn to them, to the world that might hurt them and fight to prevent them from that hurt. But what happens when it is not our daughter, not our sister, not our friend—not even someone we can place a face on. One might say, “I’ve never met someone who has been through that, so it’s not my issue.” However, the truth is, you have met someone has been through it. She is the woman sitting next to you in class. She’s the wild one flirting at the party on Friday night. She’s the student cutting you in line at Lenoir or stopping to hold the door for you at the UL. She’s spilling coffee on the bus, reading the DTH in the pit, passing you on the quad.

Every day you come in contact with someone who has survived a sexual assault. Are you going to be a part of a culture that supports them and listens to their story?

Every day every person you come in contact with is the potential survivor of an assault. Are you going to let them get hurt?

We need to imagine the “one in four” is the person we love most in the world. Then, we will realize how we should be reacting to sexual assault. We cannot retreat, put our hands up in defense, and argue, “Oh, that’s not my problem.” If it happens to our sisters, our daughters, our friends, it is our problem.

Or are we going to empower the perpetrator?

Every time we say, “I’m not going to step in to make sure that wasted student is safe or ask if she needs a way to get home,” we are enabling the perpetrator.

So ask. Step in.

Every time we say, “I’m going to stay out of it,” we are enabling the perpetrator.

So ask. Step in.

Every time we say, “The unconscious woman on the couch is probably with a friend who’ll help her out,” we are enabling perpetrator.

So ask. Step in.

And when we doubt the story, question the experience, ask for proof, we are unconsciously encouraging survivors to stay silent. We are enabling the perpetrator.

Survivors can’t be the only ones fighting or trying to raise their voice. They need to know they are not alone. Courageous men, especially, need to speak up. We need to empower the good men by acknowledging that they are not in the minority. If they feel uncomfortable with porn, jokes that demean women, sexism, sexual assault, the “score” mentality of sex, jeering or catcalling women—they are in a majority. Yet, such behavior is so much a part of culture (there is so much pressure in society to behave that way) that men are not necessarily saying anything about it when it happens—even if they are uncomfortable with it—because they don’t want to be criticized or ostracized.

They must be motivated to change. Resist. Society is trying to sell us ideas of masculinity and femininity that we shouldn’t want to buy.

The reality is, once we get the information (the facts, the one in four) we must change. We are now accountable for it. The problem is that people simply avoid consciousness of an issue in order to keep themselves from being held accountable for it. We don’t want to say that sexual assault happens to us, for if we do, we are responsible for the fact that it happens.

Yes. We are responsible for the fact that it happens. Men and women. Every day. And the only way we can respond to that responsibility is to act on it. Refrain from the behavior that enables sexism. Stand up when the talk around you makes you uncomfortable. Tell your friends that you disagree with their jokes or vocabulary. Even when we use words like “bitches” and “hoes,” we are enabling a culture that says it’s ok to demean and degrade women. That culture is the culture that enables sexual assault.

So say something. Step in. Otherwise you are empowering the rapist. Can you live with that?

We must say, this is a problem. Our campus is not fine. We do have that problem here. We need to rise to the bar that we hope other people will rise to in the case of our loved one; we need to create the culture change, the epidemic that spreads from individual to individual. Each person can choose to make an active and visible stand in their everyday life.

I’m not going to say what you have to do in particular. This isn’t mandated. This is simply a question of ethics, of right and wrong, of respect.

I just want you to do something.

Begin.

Ask the wasted woman at the party if she needs help getting home. Don’t laugh at the sexist joke. Stop calling your best friend a “whore,” because you think it’s cute. For when we begin to say, “We’re not ok with this,” we are allowing people to see that we want to create a safe place. A place where sexual assault is not happening to one in four women, a place where survivors feel wholly and completely validated and supported and are not afraid to speak, not afraid to say, “This happened, and it was wrong.” No one should have to go through the trauma of an assault. No one should feel that empty and violated and destroyed. This is wrong, and we cannot be resigned.

http://speakoutunc.blogspot.com/

NOTE: Project Dinah is obviously amazing and doing so much to make changes. Can the ENTIRE university care?

Posted by Carolin F.

Waxing on Feminism

The third wave of feminism may not be for the faint at heart.  And not just because of it’s apparent openness in discussing private issues like whether one can be a feminist and still get a bikini wax.

No, the main reason it makes some people uncomfortable is that it demands our total commitment to the cause and it isn’t big on excuses.  Not only are we expected to challenge the status quo, but we must remain ever critical of our own perspective in order to (excuse the cliché) become the change we wish to see.  This revolution starts with us.

According to Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, the third wave (which refers to the late ‘80s up to the present) is not about following a certain feminist rulebook or even venerating a younger, hipper Gloria Steinem-equivalent (though they themselves certainly fit the bill); instead, it is about listening to our inner-voice, remaining true to ourselves and to our choices, and taking full responsibility for our actions.

Admittedly, this is not always easy.  In their talk at the Hanes Art Center on Tuesday night, Baumgardner explained the discomfort many people—not just feminists—feel when asked to assume total responsibility for their lives.

“The decision to either bring a life into this world or not bring a life into this world – that’s huge,” says Baumgardner, who is also the creator of the I Had an Abortion project and author of Abortion & Life (Akashic Books, 2008).  While she certainly does not suggest that women would prefer to have their reproductive options limited, what she does mean is that the weight of our choices can often be overwhelming.

Though most feminists would gladly accept the label pro-choice, Baumgardner and Richards suggest that the word choice can often serve to water down the values of feminism.  Instead, they argue that we should accept and engage with the complexities of a variety of issues, as opposed to blindly following one immutable philosophy.  Rather than resisting what can seem like contradictory stances—like whether a bikini wax is sexually liberating or sexually oppressive, for instance—we should focus on broadening our dialogue and continuing to challenge the way we think about feminism.

Perhaps the most moving part of the talk was when Richards shared a story of meeting a civil rights activist whose words of wisdom for her were to “believe it.”  After some clarification, she came to understand what this meant for women: That we must believe we are worth the fight.  In a culture where we are brainwashed to believe that “We’re worth it” mainly in terms of external appearances, the third wave offers us an alternative vision:  That our value—as women, as feminists, and as human beings—does not depend on the size of our waists, the color of our skin, or the length of our pubic hair.

And for us all to truly believe that would indeed be revolutionary.

The F-word, day 2

Last night continued the dialogue we are hoping to nurture about feminism’s meaning and future. Third wave activists Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards gave their take on what third wave feminism means, what they think makes it unique, and how it continues or diverges from previous feminist movements. Their analysis, largely based on the work they did together in Manifesta and Grassroots (among other projects), was rooted in their personal experiences developing and negotiating a feminist consciousness.

They also addressed the conflicts and contradictions they think prevent young women today from self-identifying as feminists. Their talk was followed by an extensive Q&A period, which offered the audience a change to probe, challenge, and otherwise engage with Baumgardner and Richards’ ideas. Overall, it felt like a really engaging and productive discussion!