After our conversations about Steubenville, Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, and rape culture in America (see this LINK), it is important to find materials to help us learn more and continue our conversations.
As we heard in class, the issue of sexual violence towards women unfortunately remains a significant issue in our society. In a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease control of 5,000 college students at over 100 colleges, 20% of women answered "yes" to the question "In your lifetime have you been forced to submit to sexual intercourse against your will?" Thus, one in five college women has been raped at some point in her lifetime. Clearly, this is an issue that requires further study and thought. Take some time today to continue to gather information about its prevalence (in both high school and college), the issues surrounding it, its causes, effects, and solutions. To do so, please follow these instructions:
- Use the links below to browse and gather information. For each, make sure that you don't just read the main article but also explore where some of the hyperlinks take you.
- For every story that you read that's interesting, please copy and paste the link in a comment to this post along with a sentence or two describing the article and what's interesting about it.
- Once you've read a few articles, do a blog post on the issues raised by our class discussion and in the articles that you read. There should be specific references to at least two articles in your post. This may count as your weekly blog post (provided that you also follow the instructions in # 4 below).
- After writing your post, return to the comment section for this one and scroll through the list of articles to see what people are thinking and writing about. For one that sounds interesting, go to that student's blog, read their post and write a comment back to them.
- Select one article that you'd like to discuss further. Print it out, develop some discussion questions, and be prepared to summarize and lead a discussion about it in class tomorrow.
LINKS
- Unfortunately, what happened in Steubenville is not an isolated incident. After the Steubenville case, information came to light about a similar incident that happened to two young women in Maryville, Mo. Here is the original article that details the situation although a lot has happened since. If you're interested, read the article and then go here to see additional updates.
- In class we discussed a few examples where "rape culture" might be present in our society. See this list of 25 Everyday Examples of Rape Culture and see what you think. What kind of impact on our society do you see these having? (Make sure you click the hyperlinks)
- The Huffington Post has an entire section devoted to "Breaking the Silence: Addressing Sexual Assault on Campus". Scroll through and browse the latest stories and columns about this issue.
- Annie Clark, Andrea Pino, and Sofie Karasek are young women who founded an organization called End Rape on Campus. There are a number of interesting resources on the site.
- Often an afterthought in discussions on this issue is sexual assault against men. Consider this OP-ED piece by a Stanford University student
- Soraya Chemaly is a self described "Writer, Feminist, Satirist...not necessarily in that order" who writes and blogs extensively on sexual assault and violence towards women. Here are a few of her articles(make sure you explore the hyperlinks she posts as well).
5 Ways Sexual Assault is Really About Entitlement
Why Naked Pictures Aren't Harmless
