WISE WISE Words Blog

Tell us what you want!

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:15:21 GMT

We're almost a year into our brand new WISE website and in our efforts to always serve the needs of the community - we're asking you what you want!

What do you want on the site? What documents, resources, links, information?

What do you want on the blog? What should WISE be seeking out to comment on through our blog? Anyone want to guest post? Who do you want to hear from?

What's working? Are there things that you LOVE and want to make sure stay?

Tell us what you want!

WISE Standard

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:22:45 GMT

Laura Powers wrote a beautiful article which ran recently in the Vermont Standard on the Woodstock Healthy Teens project currently running in Woodstock, VT. Our favorite line: "And Rohdenburg is talking, a lot." :)

WISE presenting in the First International Online Conference on Child Sexual Abuse Prevention!

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:13:38 GMT

Kate Rohdenburg (current WISE Education and Outreach Coordinator) and Christina Stoltz (formor WISE Program Advocate, current Crisis Intervention Advocate at Sezim Crisis Center in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan) were accepted to present their paper "Worlds Apart: How Social Networking Technologies Blur the Boundaries Between Sexual Assault Prevention and Perpetration" at the First International Online Conference on Child Sexual Abuse Prevention. The conference happens virtually in March. Social networking is a new horizon for WISE and as we start to really imagine our organization's participation online, this experience presenting to international colleagues will certainly guide our work. Wish them luck!

The paper summary:

This paper globally contextualizes contemporary trends in discourse, teaching, and activism by highlighting the ways in which First and Third World communities outreach programs utilize virtual social networks and by examining the benefits and challenges these organizations face. From the perspectives of two gender-based violence intervention organizations, WISE victim advocacy and support center in New Hampshire, USA and the Sezim Crisis Center in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, this paper addresses the following trends in crisis intervention, education coordination, and social networking:...

Find out more about the conference sponsored by Deakin University.

Sexting

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:00:35 GMT

Last year I was stumped when a high school teacher asked if I had heard about the new thing kids were doing call "sexting". I never had heard of sexting - but I could imagine what it entailed, sending sexually explicit pictures via phones. My immediate reaction was to chuckle at the cleverly apt name, and to muse that Cosmopolitan magazine had been instructing women to send suggestive texts to boyfriends since the capability had been invented. Why wouldn't middle and high school youth be catching on, that's how you're supposed to be attractive, right?

Unfortunately, as information and research have emerged, it has become clear that teens aren't just mimicking adults and experimenting with their sexual presence.

While numerous studies are confirming that the majority of girls who are sending explicit texts are doing so because of pressure from a boyfriend or interest, Rihanna is confirming how widespread and acceptable sexting has become. ("if you don’t send your boyfriend naked pictures, then I feel bad for him") At the same time, we're realizing how damaging the aftermath can be if photos or messages which were meant to be private are then shared with the world.

And this is what I think deserves some more thought. While the high school teacher's immediate thought was "don't these girls know better?!" I don't see "these girls" as the problem. They're doing what the culture is expecting of them.

Rather, the youth who are circulating private exchanges without consent, the youth who take it upon themselves to slut-shame, humiliate and bully the victim. The schools and parents who punish victims for "bad choices" rather than the bullies and abusers for taking advantage of a vulnerable girl. This is problematic, and as we've learned recently, tragic.

Sexual violence doesn't follow the script that we've written for it. Sexual violence in the form of forwarding pictures and harassing the victim can be as invasive and tormenting as any other. We need to shift our focus from what "choices" the victim made, to what violence others have perpetrated.

On Predators and Bystanders

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:08:06 GMT

Thomas has a really interesting post on the Yes Means Yes blog analyzing research (including by Dr. Lisak) on repeat perpetrators of Rape, and using that to propose some prevention strategies - mostly in terms of what bystanders can do.

I specifically want to point out this excerpt:

I saw economist James Galbraith not long ago — an economist beloved of progressives everywhere. Galbraith said, among other things, “First rule of economics: incentives work.” He was speaking in another context, but this applies to rape. The overwhelming prevalence of acquaintance over stranger rapes and of intoxication over overt force, and the relative rarity of weapon use and physical injuries, is easily explained. Rapists know what works. They like to rape, they want to keep doing it, they want not to be caught. It is in their interest to be very sensitive to which accounts of rape are believed and which are attacked and to know which targets and methods are lowest-risk for them.
What they do is what works. They rape their drunk acquaintances because it works. They rape their drunk acquaintances because we let them.

This is important to be because it means that EVERY TIME we victim blame, or make assumptions about "real" rape (or as Whoopi puts it, "rape rape" we are allowing predators to perpetrate. We are accomplices. But we can make the choice not to be.

Perpetrators may not change their minds to decide that rape is bad, but we can make the risk far too high for the majority to accept. If we as the culture take away the incentive. If we take away the camouflage. If we take away the excuses. We can end rape.

The Trial of Mr Smith and "real" men

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:16:13 GMT

I like this video and LOVE The Trial of Mr Smith on which it was based, I like the blunt articulation. I'm not sure about framing these things as what a "real man" would do. Some say that re-framing "real man" to be positive, respectful and non-violent is helpful, others would say that it maintains a false gender dichotomy - that the idea of "real man" and "real woman" is false, limiting and exclusionary. What do you think?

Teaching Primary Prevention

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:09:17 GMT

Primary prevention comes from a public health model of preventing disease, and has more recently become a catch phrase in the anti- domestic and sexual violence movement. (For more information on what primary prevention means check out this memo by WISE fellow Amanda George!)

The shift for many crisis centered organizations has really caused us to think about our mission and purpose, however many (including myself) have come to the theory that prevention is crucial to ENDING gender-based violence.

So when we decide to embrace prevention education, what does this mean and how can we best teach it? There are many theories, postulations, and little research. And this spans across all manner of learning, violence, and prevention topics.

One little minute detail - the teaching of Myth v. Fact - has been one that's caught my attention and the divide is great. Is it a useful tool to show common myths in order to dispel them, or are we doing more harm than good by giving the myth air time in lessons? While I have firm personal beliefs, others have as well which are directly opposite, and the research we each can turn to is loose and not violence-based.

The CALCASA (the parent organization of PreventConnect) blog looks at the examples of other social messaging campaigns and asks how we can connect these lessons to our work in anti-violence.

What do you think? Is prevention the next step for our movement? Can we use other social messaging to inform our methods? Are myths useful or hurtful?

"Accidental Rape"

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:41:59 GMT

I do this activity in schools where a couple goes to a party, both of them drink, but the female becomes so drunk as to be incapacitated. Her boyfriend takes her upstairs (she wants to lay down to feel better) and has sex with her (while she's unable to protest). Most commonly the response to "what happened??" is "There was a miscommunication." I think Amanda's response to this over at The Sexist is SPOT on (read the whole article for much more debunking fun!) ***

Excerpt from Legal Consent, Morning After Regret, and "Accidental" Rape Orignally posted Nov. 9, 2009

Some rapes happen on accident [Source].

As Thomas notes on the Yes Means Yes! blog, the dominant analogy used to address rape likens it to a terrible and unpreventable disaster. Under this model, rape is like a hurricane. Everyone agrees that hurricanes are devastating. Hurricanes cannot be prevented—they can only be predicted, planned for, and vigilantly avoided. Because no one can be blamed for causing a hurricane, the onus is on the victims to make sure they stay out of the disaster’s path.

Similarly, because many people are convinced that nothing can stop a rapist from raping, women are encouraged to conform to a series of disaster-avoidance behaviors: stay indoors, wear longer skirts, quit drinking, travel in packs, and avoid trusting men.

Of course, rapes have a pretty obvious culprit: rapists. Still, some people continue to cast date rape scenarios in particular as unavoidable accidents. Since acquaintance rapes are absent of any obvious malicious intent, they are considered a product of an unfortunate miscommunication. These rapists did not intend to rape anyone. In a way, they too are victims—victims of the problematic gray area of sexual consent.

This focus on some rapes as “accidents” suffers from a misapplication of the term “accident.” I often find analogies misleading in discussion of sexual assault (see: that hurricane bullshit), but I’m going to use an analogy in this instance because I think it may be helpful. What if we thought about rape in terms of another type of accident—a car accident?

In the United States, driving a car is a privilege. In order to be cleared to drive, you must pass tests, register your information with the government, have enough money to buy a vehicle, and secure insurance in case you get into a wreck. For some people, the privilege of stepping behind the wheel inspires a certain amount of hubris. These people believe that because they are driving a car, they can take certain liberties on the road—including cutting others off in order to save time, running red lights, shirking stop signs, and generally being a gigantic asshole. Their concern lies only in getting where they want to go as fast as they can, and not at all with all the other humans on the road they have an obligation to protect.

A few weeks ago, my boyfriend was hit by a car when he was in a crosswalk (he’s fine, thanks for asking). In D.C., of course, pedestrians legally hold the right of way in a crosswalk. But my boyfriend did not share the privilege of the driver—he was a pedestrian, and so he was forced to wait patiently at the very wide, very well-marked, very busy crosswalk until one of the big privileged cars deigned to stop for him. If a pedestrian decides to step out into the street as oncoming traffic approaches, he has to hope that his legal right to cross—not to mention his human life—outweighs the driver’s sense of privilege to keep on trucking. Asserting your rights, of course, comes with a certain amount of danger. But pedestrians have no choice but to cross busy streets. And sometimes, they get hit.

Now, the driver who hit him did not set out with the intention of running into a human with her car. She didn’t mean to hurt anybody. But she also knew full well that cars are required to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. She was simply so accustomed to her driving privilege that she never dreamed that this could actually happen—and that she would ever be held responsible for her habitual disregard for the law. After all, a lot of motorists act this way, and most pedestrians just stay out of their way. When a pedestrian is hit in a crosswalk, it’s not an accident. It’s the result of the motorist who has normalized her dangerous actions.

When rapists engage in sex acts without bothering to gain their sex partner’s consent, they are not “accidentally” raping someone. Rapes don’t come from miscommunication. They are not isolated, unpreventable incidents. They are a product of institutionalized, reinforced, life-long privilege. They are the symptoms of a flaw in the rapist’s entire worldview. They are the product of the way the rapist has habitually devalued women, laid claim to the bodies of others, pursued what he wants no matter what—and never thought anything of it because he has never been called on it. That’s not an accident. That’s a system.

Violence Against Women Entertains

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:19:46 GMT

Gender violence has cultural roots - we learn what we see. Unfortunately, according to a new study, what we're seeing is a lot of violence against women and girls.

From Sociological Images

Parent's Television Council has put out a report titled "Women in Peril: A look at TV's disturbing new storyline trend" which found that depictions of violence against women has increased by 120% on mainstream television. Specifically:

"Cumulatively, across all study periods and all networks, the most frequent type of violence was beating (29%), followed by credible threats of violence (18%), shooting (11%), rape (8%), stabbing (6%), and torture (2%). Violence against women resulted in death 19% of the time.

Violence towards women or the graphic consequences of violence tends overwhelmingly to be depicted (92%) rather than implied (5%) or described (3%)."

And if you're skeptical, check out some of the images collected at Sociological Images.

Dr. David Lisak on non-stranger sexual assault

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:14:26 GMT

Dr. Lisak is a leader in research on sexual assault, specializing over the past 20 years on perpetrator psychology. WISE recognizes him as one of the primer experts in the field of sexual assault. Dr. Lisak was one of the first presenters for the WISE Law Enforcement Annual Trainings.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

From the UMass Boston website: Dr. Lisak is a clinical psychologist who specializes in the study of the causes and consequences of interpersonal violence. His research focuses on the motives and behaviors of rapists and murderers, the impact of childhood abuse on adult men, and relationship between child abuse and later violence. He consults nationally with law enforcement, prosecutors, judges and the U.S. military, and he was the founding editor of the journal, Psychology of Men and Masculinity.