Halloween...It's complicated

With the Halloween season upon us, I feel it important to discuss costumes.  That's right, costumes.  And not the costumes that are insensitive to other races and ethnicities.  That is a topic for another day (and class).  But rather, the sexy costumes.  The costumes that are worn during this time of year when (almost) anything goes. 

To contextualize, I'm a nontraditional (older) student with a husband and kids.  In this way, I am not in the same circles as my peers and definitely don't go to parties.  So, what I'm about to say is, in a way, far removed from the actual culture of college life.  But attending a university and having co-workers that are younger and attend these parties, you tend to hear what goes on with college students.  Just today a co-worker showed me a picture of her friend 'dressed' in a extremely revealing costume (She was wearing a skimpy top and a thong--no joke).  And just last night, I saw several young women dressed as Tom Cruise from Risky Business.  You know the famous scene.  Tom Cruise in nothing but a collared white business shirt, underwear, socks, and sunglasses.  So, yeah---that was what these young women were wearing.

And then my co-worker shared that many other girls that she'd seen at some of the parties were wearing even less (try, lingerie with wings--Victoria's Secret model-inspired).  I've even heard stories of individual's just walking around in the nude.

How does this relate to the scope of this class, you ask?

Well, this made me think of some of our discussions on whether a woman could dress how she wanted without eliciting sexual assault and/or rape.  And I still don't know how to feel on this one.  On one hand, a woman should be able to wear whatever she wants without retribution.  Yet, our society recognizes that Halloween is the one night of the year that women 'dress as hoes'.  I've heard countless talk show hosts, comedians, etc. make this point.  There seems to be a sexual excitement when women dress in this way.  Even walking into the Halloween store and you can see the vast amount of sexualized costumes for women.

And there still remains the context of when alcohol is involved.  That is, when I think of the college costume parties that are occurring where women are dressed provocatively, I can't help but think that this is a recipe for sexual assault and/or rape.  Of course, I recognize that the male gaze is strong during Halloween.  This is why we do see all of the sexualized costumes.  But, in this same regard, for a woman to be unaware how these costumes elicit sexual behavior that may be unwanted would be naïve. 

While the issue is much more complicated than what I've covered here, I have become sensitive to how women are treated.  And I feel that by wearing sexualized costumes to parties in which alcohol is involved could have a tragic outcome.  I just don't know how to approach this.  Like I said, a woman should be able to wear what she wants.  And a man should be accountable for his own actions.  I just think it's complicated.

Sexual Assault and Privacy

I just finished reading an article on CNN about how the University of Kentucky is handling a sexual assault case.  While I don't know the details of the assault, this university associate professor is accused of sexual assault by two individuals.  He was allowed to voluntarily resign, maintain his tenure, and collected salary until the end of August.  And while we can discuss the various ways in which this professor received no punishment to the actual assault, this case does enter an interesting conversation.

The University of Kentucky is attempting to keep the documents about this case private.  That is, UK is suing their independently run student newspaper (who is attempting to access the open documents) so that they don't have to release the documents.

On one hand, keeping the documents private (as the university argues), protects the targets from humiliation, including citing that future targets (unrelated to this case) would be discouraged from coming forward if they felt their identity would be revealed.  In addition, the university looks to the FERPA and HIPAA laws as their argument for keeping the documents private. 

On the other hand, those that argue for the release of the documents say that all names and identifying markers can be removed from the documents.  They are only trying to inform the public about how the case was handled, including its outcome.  In addition, they say that the FERPA and HIPAA laws that the university are citing are only related to education-related information. 

But let's discuss this idea of privacy around sexual assault cases.  The standard that I have seen when reading about sexual assault/rape cases is that the targets names are not released (unless the target chooses to publicly release their name).  In this way, the target is protected from retribution from those that may support the perpetrator (among many other important reasons).  (One need only look to recent high profile cases that have been in the news to see how dividing sexual assault/rape cases can be). 

But is there harm in releasing the details of a case?  I can see that, if the target(s) approve of the release of information--even with names and identifying markers removed--that releasing the information of the case would be beneficial.  The public would be informed to what is occurring in their community.  I've been trying to think of a reason why releasing the information would be a poor idea and I keep coming back to the reasoning that UK is just trying to protect itself.  Did they handle something improperly?  Just what are the details of the case?  And why the secrecy?

And the university maintains that if the information is released, it will discourage other targets from coming forward.  Really??  While it may discourage some targets, I see it as empowering others to come forward. The word 'precedence' comes to mind.  If a target that is hesitant to come forward sees someone else come forward, I have observed, that the one that is hesitant will come forward.  Of course, I must contextualize that this observation comes from what I have read and seen in the media (and yes, I recognize that even the media has an agenda in the way that they present the story).

But the UK case has brought up an interesting aspect when considering the ramifications of sexual assault--that the protection of the target is vital, but the community also has a right to know what is going on.

Trump and Rape Culture

Given the recent news on Trump's highly offensive comments made last Friday, I thought it poignant to make this post about the reaction surrounding this subject while relating it back to what we've been discussing about rape and rape culture this semester.

First, it must be established that what he said definitively perpetrates rape culture.  And it was encouraging to see that the majority of major media embraced this aspect.  There is always a concern on how the media will present a story, but there was no denying that Trump's comments were in reference to sexually assaulting women.  And the media was right to call Trump's comments what they were.  But not only did they recognize it as rape culture, there even seemed to be vitriol and disgust in the commentators voices (at least the various ones that I heard) when they spoke about the video.  This, also, was encouraging to see for we should be outraged when someone speaks about women in this way--let alone actually treat a women in this manner!

But this situation also brought on something that was unexpected.  Enter Kelly Oxford. Just a simple tweet about her first sexual assault and then a call-to-action for others to share.  Expecting only a few hundred at most, but igniting 27 million (!!) women to respond.  And this number says a lot.

In class, we were given the statistic that about 6% of men will commit a sexual assault or rape.  I brought up in class, and I believe it's important to reiterate here, that I question that number.  Rather, I challenge that number.  Knowing that a majority of women do not speak up about any experiences from inappropriate touching to rape, that number is already higher than what we estimate.  But in context of 27 million women responding to and sharing their first sexual assault, I feel that the number of men that commit sexual assault of some sort is even higher that we would like to admit to.

And this gives cause for concern--and to question, once again, what are the circumstances that make sexual assault/rape an acceptable choice? Why is it that some people accept his "excuse" that it's just "locker room talk"?  Why does framing it in that way allow for some people to accept his comments as normal behavior?

And let's look at that fact that he contextualized his comments as "locker room talk."  I find myself once again seeing this relating to hyper-masculinity in sports.  (Especially given that many of the cases that we have discussed have involved sports athletes**.)  There was a sense of entitlement in the way that he spoke; a "matter-of-fact, this is what I do and nobody complains" attitude. 

This is simply not acceptable.

**I must note, though, that this also negatively effects sports athletes that do not (and will not) engage in sexual assaulting or raping a woman.  Just look at the response from athletes that are pushing back at the rhetoric that Trump is spewing about his comments about women.




  

This past weekend...

I've been reflecting on an incident that happened this past weekend and I can't help but post about it since it's (somewhat) related to this class.  This past Saturday night, my ride home after work was delayed.  So, I began to walk home.  (As some context, our football team had a home game occurring at the same time). While beginning to walk through campus, I noticed that a couple was fighting loudly at the bottom of a hill by a building.  (I assume that they had been drinking, but I don't know)  Seeing the girl walking after the guy and him kind-of pushing her away, I decided to hang out to make sure that everything was fine.  They moved under a bridge and I was unable to see them (but I could still hear them).  I walked to the other side of the bridge and saw them come out.  She was still chasing after him and he was still tossing her hand off or pushing her away.  At this point, I became concerned.  After everything that we have been discussing in class, I was worried for this young woman.  Then, they walked into the dark shadows of the building.  At this point, I was worried that this fight could escalate (dark shadows hide dark secrets).  So, I hurried down to where I knew some security guards would be to let them know about the couple.  When we arrived back, the young man had his hands around the girl (on the tree) with her pinned to a tree.  She pushed against him and he used his chest to push her back.  The guy, probably noticing the cops observing them, let her off the tree and then they spoke a few minutes and left with his girlfriend putting her arm through his.  The cops said they didn't see anything so they let them go.

Some thoughts: The cops did have a point, in a away.  The guy wasn't physically assaulting her.  That is, I don't think that a guy throwing a girl's hand off of him would be considered assault (or would it?).  Perhaps my fears did misinterpret what was going on.  BUT I can't help but feel like I did the right thing.  Perhaps by them seeing the cops, the fight de-escalated from something that would have been more physical.  And that is what makes it worth it.  Of course, I ask myself why didn't I act sooner, did I over re-act, was there a bigger issue than I thought there was...

Yet, I am most disheartened by something else.  No one else that was walking by (there were MANY people) cared about what was going on.  It seemed there was no awareness of their surroundings.  The couple could be heard fighting over the noise of everyone walking by, yet no one stopped or glanced towards the couple fighting.  Would they stop if there was an assault happening?  Would they help someone out?


Would those that were walking past the couple I saw fighting do the same? Would I have engaged the couple if necessary?

This had me thinking about the two Swede men that helped out the target in the Brock Turner case.  They engaged, helped, saved, a young woman.  And, in this, they are to be admired.

I think the problem that people struggle with (me included) is whether to get involved.  It's hard to know if something needs to be done.  But this may be why there are problems with assault--people don't engage or ask if someone is alright or just walk on by...

I just hope that the young woman is alright.   

Brock Paper

Thursday I presented the facts of the Brock Turner case as well as discussed possible approaches for my paper.  For those that are unfamiliar with the facts, Brock Turner is a swimmer from Stanford that was convicted of rape of an unconscious woman.  He was charged on three felony counts, but Judge Persky dropped two of those.  He served three months (out of six) and will have to register as a sex offender for life. 

In my initial research on this case, nothing new stood out that wasn't conveyed through television media accounts (in what I saw).  However, I did come across a striking article that peaked my interest.  In the article, the author shares that, according to the legal classification of a rapist in CA, Brock Turner is not considered a rapist.  He's a sex offender, but not a rapist.  I was taken aback by this.  How could he not be considered a rapist? This brings to question the dichotomy between crime and punishment--does the punishment fit the crime and vice versa.  This would be in consideration of questions, such as: Are there model rape statutes? Are there competing models? How does California's laws stack up to these?  This becomes important questions when reviewing the way in which this case progressed (and the ultimate outcome).  Especially given that CA has amended the way in which they handle rape of an unconscious person (no eligibility of parole, if convicted) after the national and worldwide attention this case had. 

The other aspect of this case that I found interesting was in the target's letter.  That the county probation department recommended a year or less for Brock.  This would mean that Judge Persky was following their recommendation.  But is he not the judge?  Does he not have the ability to change the sentence length?  And, even if he wanted to follow the recommendation, why not do the maximum amount?  What does this say about the probation department?  Honestly, while some aspects of this case have been interesting, I have had more questions and frustrations with the outcome.

When thinking about the direction I want to take with my paper, at this time, I'm leaning towards the rhetoric of how society has reacted to not only the case, but rape/sexual assault as well.  I can see this both as a point of contention and expression.  But I would also like to explore the idea of why this case made national attention and not other cases.  I realize that this may be due to the graphic and disturbing details of the assault, but this case is by no means the only one.  Is there a case that is similar to this one, but does not have an athlete as the perpetrator?  There's also the approach of how men's accounts are preferred over women's.  Brock had one story and then a year later, his story changed.  I can see an evaluation on this aspect.  And like, Jackson said on this subject, women have been viewed as 'crazy' and 'emotional' while men have been viewed as 'logical' and 'controlled'.  An exploration on these differences could prove to be worthwhile as well.

As you can see, I'm not sure which way to go.