Category: Women’s Rights

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Why Women Don’t Report Sexual Assault

Some of the questioning of recent days has focused on why Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, would even consider not testifying on her sexual assault.

In her piece, Jill Richardson explains that there are actually many reasons why women might not want to report sexual assault. Furthermore, quite a few of those reasons involve the unjust ways in which our society treats survivors of sexual assault.

For more details on the reasons why women might not want to report sexual assault, I encourage people to read her original post. As a man, I found it very informative to read why someone like a Dr. Ford may be hesitant to talk about her experiences. Hopefully, others will find Jill Richardson’s post to not only be informative, but also a call to be less judgmental to sexual assault survivors who don’t report their assaults.

Post: “Why Women Don’t Report Sexual Assault”

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Shared Post-Playing Along: How Sexual Harassment Pays My Wages

Yet again, I came across a piece so good that I must share it!

The post I’m sharing this week is a from Sarah, who actually goes to the same college I graduated from! In her post, she discusses how a friendly and flirtatious approach to sexual harassment results in the author (and probably many other waitresses) earning much more money than a stern approach.

The implications of Sarah’s findings (at least from my perspective) are that:

  1. Sexual harassment plays a disturbingly major role in the jobs (and paychecks) of many waitresses.
  2. The way we pay tipped workers in the United States needs to change drastically. I’ve already advocated for this in a post last April on my blog, but I think Sarah’s post only strengthens that argument.
  3. We need to do a whole lot better as a society at treating tipped staff with the respect and dignity they deserve. Too many of us treat our tipped staff like garbage and that needs to stop.

Here’s the link to Sarah’s post.

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The #MeToo Campaign

As readers of mine probably know by now, there has been a #MeToo campaign which has put a spotlight on how big of a problem sexual violence, particularly sexual violence against women, really is.

As such, there are a few things that I feel led to say about the organizers, participants, survivors who decided to not participate, male and nonbinary survivors of sexual violence, and men.

To the organizers of this #MeToo campaign, most especially activist Tarana Burke (who created the original movement) and actor Alyssa Milano (who helped make the hashtag viral)—thank you. Your goal was to make others aware of how much this nation and world has a serious problem with sexual aggression and violence. I think you all succeeded. Hopefully this awareness can turn into ending rape culture. But all of you, as the organizers, took a big step in this much-needed journey. As a result, “thank you” frankly feels like an inadequate thing to say.

To participants in the #MeToo campaign—thank you. Everybody involved in this of was extremely brave and vulnerable. Every one of you made others more aware of how enormous this problem is and all of you did that at the risk of everything from potential backlash to potential flashbacks. Once again, thank you.

To survivors who didn’t participate—your story is no less valid because you didn’t participate. To the contrary, maybe some of you didn’t participate at least in part because your story/stories is/are so fresh and raw. I hope that others who hear your story in the future (if you do ever decide to share your story) will not make your stories any less valid because you emotionally were not able to participate in the “me too” campaign.

To male and nonbinary survivors—your story is no less valid, either. Just because you don’t fit into the most common story of sexual violence (a man committing violence against a woman) doesn’t mean that your story is somehow less true, or that you are any less of a survivor than anyone else.

To fellow men—we need to hold ourselves and each other accountable. We need to realize how our own actions and the actions of those around us contribute to rape culture. Whether it be not always listening to others (an area I realized I was weak at) or making so-called “rape jokes” (not funny, by the way), whether it be the way many of us have been conditioned to be controlling or the way some of us may turn a blind eye to the aforementioned “rape jokes,” we need to improve. So let’s start thinking about how we can get ourselves and others completely away from rape culture and the toxic masculinity which contributes to rape culture.

Finally, to people who got to this point in my post—thank you for at least taking this issue seriously enough to get to this point. I just hope that we can also take this issue seriously enough to start actually addressing it.

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Gender Inequality in Conversations

While I usually avoid American politics in my blog posts, there is simply no way of avoiding politics here because the 2016 presidential election made me aware of the topic I discuss in this post. Namely, after the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, several of my friends saw in Trump the same issue they see with many other males—manterrupting.

For those of us who aren’t familiar with the word I just mentioned, manterruption is a word used to describe how men tend to dominate conversations by frequently interrupting women. Manterruption is one of the many ways that some men have a tendency to dominate conversations and relationships, whether some of us realize that or not. Such domination, in turn, shows a lack of respect for the women who men interact with.

In the short period of time that I have been aware of this issue, I’ve often noticed several types of responses from fellow men who feel like they are being attacked when the topic of manterruption comes up:

  1. Claim that they don’t manterrupt.
  2. Claim that manterruption is a false concept.
  3. Use the whole manterruption topic as an excuse to bash feminism in one form or another.
  4. Use the manterruption topic to claim that people are being soft or “politically correct.”

While there are other types of negative responses to the topic of manterruption, what I mentioned here are just a few of the major types of responses that I usually notice.

If you have a hard time believing what I just said, all you need to do is look at the reviews for the “Woman Interrupted” app on Google Play and you will see all three types of responses to manterruption (few of the reviews address the quality of the app itself). If this blog post were to ever “go viral,” my guess is that readers would see for themselves all three types of negative responses, and few responses which call for self-evaluation to see whether you manterrupt (if you are a man like me, of course).

But for those of us who are tempted to respond to the issue in a negative way, I ask all of you to at least give me room for a response and a plea.

The response is that talk of manterruption is not false or feminism. It is a fact. For decades, scholars have written about how men often interrupt in conversations with women. If you have trouble believing me, you can message my blog’s page on Facebook or e-mail me at blindinjustice2017@gmail.com and I can provide you with some of the widely cited scholarly books and articles that discuss this topic.

The plea is to please at least make the effort to be conscious of your conversations, and spot where you have a tendency to interrupt or be interrupted. I make that plea partially because of my own personal experiences with manterruption—through being conscious of when I interrupt, I made the realization that most of my interruptions occurred when I talked with women. It was an embarrassing realization, but a realization that hopefully enables me to have the egalitarian friendships I so desperately want. I hope that others take me up on this plea.

If our society wants to end the continued lack of egalitarianism in our cross-gender relationships, we need to be aware of the inequalities that do exist (such as in conversation through manterrupting), and then deal with those inequalities. I hope that this post motivates at least a few of you to deal with issues like manterruption, and hopefully get closer to achieving egalitarian relationships with everyone.