learning lessons
I'm adding a couple of new blogs to my blog roll tonight:
Marktd is "a library of marketing articles weighted in importance by users". I think I get most of this content from some of the other blogs I read, but I like the idea, so I'm adding it for now.
A View from a Broad (which I found via Andrew Sullivan) is written by ginmar (aka Alanna?) who is a feminist and a former soldier in Iraq. She's all over the place (so am I, of course), but I generally like her perspective. Glad to see her write about the Duke women's lacrosse team and their bullsh*t decision to show their solidarity with the men's team by wearing "innocent" sweatbands today at the NCAA Final Four.
I don't know if the alleged victim in the rape case is telling the truth, but neither do the lacrosse players and turning your back on another women like that is just wrong. On top of that -- according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) -- one in six women is a rape victim. I checked and there are 30 women on the Duke lacrosse team roster, which would suggest that five of them have been victims themselves. In their effort to present a united front, they may be turning their back on one of their own.
Kevin Sweeny over at Salon (whose daughter goes to Duke) thinks the team might want to reconsider their word choice:
"I'd like to suggest a different term: 'Respect.' It would likely mean different things to different people, and that wouldn't be so horrible. Some might take it to mean respect for the men's team. Others might see it as a request for women to be treated with respect. Others still might see it as a plea to respect the process. I'd look at it with a bit of hope, and a sense that, finally, lessons might actually be learned."
P.S. The women's team lost yesterday. But apparently the pain of losing was not as bad as what has been going on for the past two months, since the rape accusations were first made. Nope, said the team's coach,
"Any attention we got for the wristbands paled in comparison to having the media staked outside of our practice and the girls' dorms; of watching your friends be arrested; watching your fellow students not support fellow students; watching professors not support students."
What, did you feel VIOLATED? Cry me a river.
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6 comments:
I wish there were a way to generate statistics about how many women lie about rape. I feel like until there's conclusive proof that lying about it is an aberration, people will continue to act like arseholes about this issue.
What always bugged me about colleges and rape rules, even back when I was a peer educator and abuse counselor in school, was the emphasis that administrations put on alcohol as the demon that ushers in sex crimes. There's something about alcohol and drug education that's distinctly unfair. The burden is put on women to watch out for themselves. Boys will be boys. If you're going to drink around boys, be prepared for nasty consequences. Everyone's always trying to educate the potential victim instead of the potential perp.
Anyway, getting back to your point - a friend of mine told me a law school horror story in which people in her class were divided over whether or not it was OK for guys to watch hard core porn on their laptops during a law class about sex crimes. My friend was very outspoken about how wrong and disrespectful this activity was. She made a lot of female enemies because of her stance. Nobody wore bracelets, but they came awfull damned close.
I was on an Amtrak train this year and looked over and saw two guys watching a porn movie on their laptop (woman with large breasts titty f*cking some guy). I was a little appalled and, after a pause, I yelled out, "THAT IS REALLY NOT OKAY WITH ME!" I was actually a little astounded by the way I felt. I was FUMING. It was not that the image itself was offensive. It was that these guys were just so damn oblivious to the notion that a crowded Acela train just isn't the place to watch a porn movie with your buddy. Then, in a situation that somewhat mirrors your friend's situation, I brought it up in front of a woman who said something asinine like "cool" when she heard about it as if watching a porn movie on a train made total sense and I was just some uptight c*nt. I was so angry with her and told her that she was full of sh*t, knowing that she was just saying something stupid like that to portray herself as being one of the boys. (I know, I have BEEN that woman in my lifetime.)
Infuriating.
Ayuh. The "one of the boys" is infuriating. While we continue the cross-pollination... maybe you read this already, months ago, but here it is again:
http://kristenhavens.typepad.com/my_back_pages/2005/09/female_chauveni.html
And here's another one while I'm at it:
http://kristenhavens.typepad.com/my_back_pages/2005/10/why_is_feminism.html#comments
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