Abstinence-Only Sex Ed Sez, “You can’t rape a slut!”

We all know that abstinence-only ed teaches kids some pretty horrific stuff (you can get AIDS from tears, sexually active women are like chewed-up peppermint patties, etc etc), but this just might take it to a new level.

The Ohio program is Abstinence ‘Till Marriage, which started receiving annual CBAE grants of $600,000 in 2006 (set to run until 2011). On their “Miss the Mess” website, you can enter the “Party Room”, where you learn the story of Rochelle, Jason, Monica and Tanner. Each person tells their perspective about what happens during and after a party one night.

Rochelle tells how she drove her drunken friend Jason home after the party, and then is raped by him. Jason denies that the rape happened, saying their sex was consensual. Monica and Tanner observe that Jason was being a drunken idiot the entire night, with Monica (Jason’s ex) adding her opinion that Rochelle has a reputation for “putting out” and being a “slut”.

The site then asks the question: “Based on all accounts, whose story sounds the least credible?”

Guess who is the “correct” answer? Rochelle.

It gets worse. The website continues, “Do you think a rape occurred?” The answer:

We don’t really know if Rochelle consented to having sex with Jason. She did make several bad choices and had a motive to lie when her dad went “ballistic.” Unfortunately, we are left to judge Ro’s honesty by her character and her actions … Monica implied Rochelle had a promiscuous reputation and the whole school seemed to know it.

The website then goes on to point out how how alcohol and drugs played a role in this situation. How?

Also, alcohol makes people less inhibitive. Jason was extremely vulnerable to his circumstances (like his recent breakup, crying, and being with a “hot” girl who comforted him).

So Jason was vulnerable, poor thing, and Rochelle is a lying slut. And at the end, they all get STDs.

If you’re American, your tax dollars are funding this, and effectively subsidizing rape culture. As Joe points out, abstinence-only ed has received $1.8 million in federal funding so far, and they’re slotted to receive another $1.8M in the next three years. We’ve spent $1.5 billion dollars on these programs in the last decade.

Tell Obama to stop funding medically inaccurate, rape-apologist abstinence-only education. Young people deserve facts and information that will keep them safe, not dangerous misinformation and shame.

Cross-posted at Feministe.

Shorter NYTimes: Girl-parts are weird, girl-brains are weirder

“What Do Women Want?: A new generation of postfeminist sexologists is trying to discover what ignites female desire.”

In the writer’s defense, you usually don’t write your own headers or sub-heads, so I can’t really blame him for the “postfeminist” thing. I also can’t blame him for the unfortunate graphic, which seems to suggest that when women really want it, they breathe smoke from their severed heads.

I can, however, blame him for portraying the female sexologists as overly sexual, and for mentioning the fact that socialization influences biology without really seeming to understand or explore it. For example:

Thinking not of the search for chemical aphrodisiacs but of her own quest for comprehension, Chivers said that she hopes her research and thinking will eventually have some benefit for women’s sexuality. “I wanted everybody to have great sex,” she told me, recalling one of her reasons for choosing her career, and laughing as she did when she recounted the lessons she once gave on the position of the clitoris. But mostly it’s the aim of understanding in itself that compels her. For the discord, in women, between the body and the mind, she has deliberated over all sorts of explanations, the simplest being anatomy. The penis is external, its reactions more readily perceived and pressing upon consciousness. Women might more likely have grown up, for reasons of both bodily architecture and culture — and here was culture again, undercutting clarity — with a dimmer awareness of the erotic messages of their genitals. Chivers said she has considered, too, research suggesting that men are better able than women to perceive increases in heart rate at moments of heightened stress and that men may rely more on such physiological signals to define their emotional states, while women depend more on situational cues. So there are hints, she told me, that the disparity between the objective and the subjective might exist, for women, in areas other than sex. And this disconnection, according to yet another study she mentioned, is accentuated in women with acutely negative feelings about their own bodies.

How about the fact that women grow up in a society that is centered on men’s experiences and lives? That the female body is used as a representation of sex itself, whereas (hetero) men’s experiences and understandings of sex dominate our cultural narrative? To go back to an old feminist gem, men watch; women watch themselves being watched.

And women’s bodies are positioned as public property. Whether it’s ongoing political battles about what we can and can’t do with our reproductive systems or a cultural religious/virginity narrative that places female sexuality as a bartering chip between male “protectors” or not being able to walk down the damn street without a reminder that we don’t have the same right to public space as men do, to be female is to be told, “Your body is not yours.”

Plus there’s the fact that female bodies are marked as decorative, whereas male bodies are active. Men’s bodies do things — they represent strength, ability, power. Women’s bodies look like things — they represent sex, beauty, fertility.

Of course we feel disconnected from our bodies. Of course that impacts our sex lives.

Michigan 2L Speaks Out

The Michigan 2L who reported her assault to police only to be arrested has spoken out in a letter to her law school. I’ve re-posted the letter here. Anyone interested in leaving supportive comments can leave them over at Feministe.

Latoya Peterson on ColorsNW

Latoya Peterson, one of my favorite bloggers, is profiled in ColorsNW. Check it out — it’s a great overview of the work Latoya has done at Racialicious and elsewhere, and she gives a shout-out to Feministe, where she was a super-star guest-blogger this past summer.

Latoya is also a contributor to Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, the inspiration and namesake for this blog. Her essay is incredible, and I’d encourage you all to check it out.

Congrats, Latoya, on the profile. But more importantly, thank you for all the work that you do.

Dear Ann Arbor Police, Sgt. Richard Kinsey, University of Michigan and Yaron Eliav:

Are you kidding me?

The story goes like this: A University of Michigan Law School student went to police after being assaulted by Michigan Near Eastern Studies associate professor Yaron Eliav. The student had been advertising sexual services on Craig’s List in order to pay her tuition (which at Michigan is more than $40,000 a year). According to the article, she “reluctantly” consented to allowing him to spank her with a belt, but then he decided to slap her across the face twice, causing her temporary vision problems. So she went to the police to report the assault. You can guess how sympathetic they were:

The rarity of how the case began – with a law student showing up at the police department’s front desk to report she was assaulted while committing a crime herself – was not lost on investigators.

“Perhaps she should have cracked a legal textbook before coming in to the police station to talk about this,” Ann Arbor Detective Sgt. Richard Kinsey said.

The police charged both the student and Eliav with the misdemeanor charge of using a computer to commit a crime. Both have pled no contest. Eliav was not charged with assault, and retains his position at the university.

 

Cross-posted at Feministe.