Our good readers!  I hope you had spectacular weekends, all!  I, for one, most certainly did!  As a result of the goodness of my weekend, I am a bit tired, but in a good way!  I do not have particularly deep thoughts on the nature of rape culture this morning, but do not fret, for I have other exciting things to send your direction, courtesy of the magic of the intertubes. 

One of the regular themes we’ve explored on this blog so far is the importance of a concerted push against rape culture, and the systems in society that support it.  The hardest part of that work is trying to do it alone without getting burnt out, crushed, or miserable.  It’s pretty hard for me to overstate the value of community in doing both sexual violence prevention, and good progressive work in general.  I’m incredibly lucky that I have the friends and support network I do, but I’m also really lucky that I’ve found a place for myself in a couple of great groups of like-minded folks who want to make the world better.  And since Summer is a good time to explore new things and meet new people, and Bostonians tend to be in better-than-average moods because it isn’t winder anymore, I thought I’d throw out some cool events coming up from a bunch of different awesome organizations working on sexual violence prevention, gender issues, progressive issues, and rocking the house issues.

Regularly occurring things that you might want to check out:

Feminism and Dessert, run by BostonNOW and the Cambridge Commission on the Status of Women, is hosted the first Thursday of each month at the Cambridge City Hall Annex.  Come for great discussions and free donuts!

Perestroika, at Jacques Cabaret, the first Monday of every month.  There is no reason you shouldn’t be there right now, except that it isn’t the first Monday.

While it is about to close out its Spring season, the Ford Hall Forum does have a couple more public discussions coming your way, Thursday nights at the McLaughlin Moot Court Room in the Suffolk University Law School.  If you like smart people talking about issues of public importance, check it out!

Also check out the awesome community calendars at both SoJust and QWOC (Queer Women of Color) to find some cool, grassroots stuff going on this summer!

Stuff coming up sooner rather than later:

The Close to Home Network is presenting its first Monologue Project tomorrow, Tuesday 5/18, in the Vietnamese Community Center at Fields Corner.  Inspired by the Vagina Monologues, the project is designed to showcase the power of community to end sexual violence.

Socializing for Justice is running one of its largest events of the year, Connecting for Justice, this Thursday at Lir Pub downtown on Boylston Street.  Connecting for Justice is a great opportunity to network with other progressive professionals, and now there’s a dance party, too! 

May 21st is the second US Social Forum happy hour, dedicated to raising money to send a delegation from Boston to the US Social Forum in Detroit in June.  The fundraiser is a big party shindig at Encuentro 5 on Harrison Avenue at 6:30 pm.  Only $5 to get in!

Stuff Coming up a little later, but not that far in the future:

June 5th is the annual NOMAS-Boston supply drive to support local domestic violence shelters.  NOMAS is always looking for more volunteers to help out; if you want to help shelters and meet cool people, contact planning@nomasboston.org.

June 5th is also Recess for Justice, hosted by SoJust, in the Southwest Corridor Park at 1pm.

June 11th is Dyke March!  Held annually the Friday night before Pride, Dyke March is a non-commercial grassroots alternative to Pride.  Also, it is awesome.

June 12th is the Pride Parade!  The entire week is Pride, really, but the parade is a spectacle of a special sort.  Check it out!

June 12 is also perhaps the single most important rematch in the history of soccer: US vs England in the group stages of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.  Not really related to social justice per se; but it is going to be the greatest thing that ever happens on this Earth.

June 16 is the Boston Center for Community and Justice’s Opening Boston Awards, and graduation for the LeadBoston class of 2010.  Support a great organization, and get to know the socially-conscious business and non-profit leaders of the city!

Stuff Coming up in a while:

NOMAS-Boston’s Dating While Feminist (date TBA, but sometime in July).  We’re all about positive sexuality!  Come hang out and talk (and maybe flirt a little) with folks who want to connect their social lives and their justice work.

July 28th kicks off the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s Othello on the Common.  It runs until August 15th.  Free, public art: what could be more refreshing or necessary for the soul?

July 31st is GLAD’s Summer Party in P-Town.  This should be enough to make you want to go.

Doing sexual violence prevention work is tough, but our dance parties are pretty hot.  Enjoy the summer!

We held the first of two information and interview sessions for prospective volunteers Wednesday. Part of the session is an icebreaker activity, where you answer a question about yourself (questions helpfully provided on little slips of paper by yours truly). I went first; mine was “tell us something about you that we could not tell just by looking at you”. I confessed to being a huge comic book geek and, frankly, practically a comic historian. But it occurs to me that something else I could’ve revealed is that I’m a pro wrestling fan.

Yes, pro wrestling is grade-A cheese, but it knows it’s cheese. No, it’s not a Real Sport; yes, it’s rigged. But it’s fun. And something in my ballet background really appreciates the choreography, especially in matches where the wrestlers are really, really good. There’s a thrill in watching Jeff Hardy backflip off a ladder. Whee! He’s flying! And the mom in me wants to take half of these big, burly guys home and bake them cookies.

Pro wrestling has its flaws, sure. Drug use is unfortunately epidemic, and the way the female wrestlers are handled is not what you could call feminist.

But some wrestlers? Are just awesome.

I’ve been a fan of Mick Foley and his alter egos Mankind, Cactus Jack, and Dude Love from the very beginning. Foley is one of those wrestlers who is so clearly just having a blast out there, whether he’s playing it straight or whipping out a sock puppet. He’s silly, he’s goofy, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make the audience laugh or give a great match. Literally. Barbed wire has been involved. The man has ripped his ear off. Foley is committed.

And one of the things he’s committed to these days is the fight to end sexual violence.

It’s rare enough to see a celebrity taking a stand on this. Rarer still to see an athlete. And a wrestler? When I first saw that Foley was getting involved, I was bouncing around my apartment for hours. Talk about reaching a community no one’s been reaching. Wrestling is male-dominated, very macho, and rape is not a thing I’ve ever seen discussed there. Just by giving half the advance of his next book to RAINN, Foley is making a statement that will make a lot of people think about sexual violence. He presents it as an issue that men, that wrestlers and wrestling fans, should care about.

But Foley’s going farther: he’s become an online hotline volunteer.

Foley says, “When I went to Sierra Leone in November 2008 to visit the little boy I sponsor and to visit some schools I’d funded, I met some women who had been victims of rape during their civil war. I don’t know if I would have appreciated what they went through without what I knew about RAINN. It was a powerful day, to meet the woman and see the children of rape. I asked Child Fund International to come up with a program that provides loans and scholarships for the victims. I decided to donate half the money from my book advance to this program and the other half to RAINN. I have a legendary reputation for thriftiness in pro wrestling. So any decision I make about money is a well thought out, belabored one.

“It was after that I had started thinking about volunteering. Before that, my [volunteer work] was mostly showing up at different places and shaking hands. Volunteering for RAINN seemed to be a little more hands-on and challenging. It feels as important as anything I’ve ever done, including writing and wrestling. It’s a 40-hour online training program, which includes 15 hours of in-person training. When I had my first practice session with another volunteer, I just fell apart. I couldn’t bring up some of the resources on the computer. It was among the worst experiences of my life. My kids heard things they’d never heard from me. They didn’t know I knew how to curse.

“By the next week when I did my real session, partially supervised, I was much more comfortable. Last week I did my first unsupervised shift. I had a session with a young lady who had been raped by someone she knew at school. It was a difficult session, but at the end I really felt like I’d helped her. I think there’s a role for someone like me who has not been a victim. You have to learn to communicate in all different types of situations, whether they were confronted by date rape, incest, physical abuse, or it’s a woman trying to escape an abusive relationship.”

And not only that. Not only that! But he’s encouraging other men to get involved.

“Crimes of sexual violence profoundly affect men. Every two minutes in this country, someone is sexually assaulted, and the victims have husbands, fathers, brothers, friends, and colleagues ... Moreover, men are victims of sexual assault, too.  For us men to ignore this problem is to lay down our arms in the fight against sexual violence. It means giving up on a battle that can be won with weapons as simple as education, understanding, and a little old-fashioned anger. We should no longer stand idly by, allowing only women and survivors to engage in this most winnable form of combat.

“Furthermore, victims of sexual assault—male and female—need to hear from male voices. They need men as well as women to take them seriously, to tell them that it isn’t their fault and that they are not alone. That’s why I am an Online Hotline volunteer, and it is why I hope to persuade more men to become aware and involved.

“There are simple things that any man can do to prevent sexual violence as well as help victims of this serious crime: if you see someone who might need help, don’t simply walk away and assume everything will be okay. Intervene! Speak up. Help the potential victim get to a safer place.  If you see a buddy or a guy doing something that he shouldn’t—stand up for what you know is right. Tell him that you don’t agree with what he’s doing and ask him to leave the potential victim alone. I know it can be uncomfortable, even painful to do. Many men (including me) may have found themselves witnesses to situations that seemed wrong—situations that had the potential to escalate into something truly bad or criminal—and simply lacked the courage to speak up or step forward.

“Let’s get the courage. It’s a courage that might stop a friend from committing a crime, and stop someone—a sister, a mother, a wife, a friend, a human being—from being a victim. “

“Together, this is a fight we can win,” Foley says, and I agree.

Mick Foley, I salute you. Cookies are on me.

Hat-tip to Snoopy for alerting me to this story this morning.

The more I learn about abuse and abusers, the more I see similarities across a broad spectrum of stories.  This is valuable to me because, as someone who cares about ending sexual violence and abuse, the more I’m able to recognize the signs of abusive relationships, the more I’ll be able to push back against them.

In the annals of stories that definitely have not made me feel positive about the world is this report from Dateline about a young man named Jaime Ramos.  The story is really long, but the basic scenario is Mr. Ramos, an abused, neglected 21-year old, was left with no parents and an uncle who sexually tormented him for 10 years.  Ramos was involved in a sexual relationship with one of his teachers as a young man, got obsessed, and when she broke it off, he exhibited some stalking behavior and got arrested.  After getting into a work-release program, Ramos was seduced and manipulated by his program counselor Patty Presba.  Patty was 47 and a mother of four.  Their relationship had every component of abuse that violence prevention experts know to look for.  Eventually, Patty convinced Jaime to kill her husband.  If you have the time, the dateline report is thorough, if depressing.

Ramos was an incest survivor and the victim of ridiculous levels of trauma.  He was needy and vulnerable, and now it seems likely that he is a murderer as well.  His story is not particularly different than the vast majority of victims of domestic violence except for his gender.  We as a culture don’t expect women to ever be perpetrators of abuse, and when it happens, we sort of don’t know what to do with it, even when it looks pretty much the same as male abuse.  Dr. Evan Stark, author of Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life wrote at length about all of the strategies abusers use to manipulate and control their victims, and violence is only one of those aspects.  Isolation, emotional control, and taking over aspects of the victim’s day-to-day reality are tactics used for power and dominance.  While Dr. Stark’s book primarily looks at male abusers and the strategies they use to gain power over their mostly female victims, what struck me about the Ramos case was how similar it felt and sounded to many of the male-perpetrated situations I’ve studied (with violence being the one stark difference).

One of the major personal reasons I got involved with BARCC was to prove to myself and to others that not all men are rapists.  Not all of us are abusers; power and domination and pain and hurt are not endemic to being a man.  While I still mostly believe that (I have some more longer, less well-articulated thoughts about the way men are socialized and how that socialization fosters violence), one of the huge eye-opening aspects of working at BARCC is learning that dominance, manipulation, and control are not a male-only realm, even if the majority of perpetrators are male.  The cultural narrative about who could be a victim and who couldn’t had seeped into my brain.  Myriam Denov, a researcher at the University of Ottawa, wrote a journal article in 2003 titled “The myth of innocence: Sexual scripts and the recognition of child sexual abuse by female perpetrators” (the link is unfortunately only to an abstract).  In the abstract, Denov wrote:

Moreover, it highlights the role of traditional sexual scripts in impeding the official recognition of the problem. Traditional sexual scripts, particularly the perception of females as sexually passive, harmless, and innocent, appear not only to have influenced broader societal views concerning sexuality and sexual abuse but also to have permeated the criminal law, victim reporting practices, and professional responses to female sex offending. The implicit denial of women’s potential for sexual aggression within these three domains may ultimately contribute to the underrecognition of the problem in official sources.

We have discussed before the hurdles that survivors of rape and sexual assault have to jump over if they want to report their assaults, and that’s if they already conform to the social standards of who can be a survivor in the first place.  One of my goals for myself is to start trying to see, and prevent (in whatever way I can, anyway), abusive behavior, and not just abusers.  When I look for the latter, what I will see is men, and only men.  I will see them because men do make up the majority of perpetrators of sexual and partner violence, but I will also see men because I’ve been trained to understand that abuse is something that men do.  That training leaves me poorly placed to support men who are survivors of abuse, or genderqueer folks, or women who are abused by other women.

I’ll need help, though.  I’ll need a media that treats abuse as abuse, no matter who perpetrates it or survives it.  I’ll need other bystanders, especially other male-identified ones, to help me remember that abuse can come from anyone regardless of gender presentation.

And I’ll need hot music videos to help me keep my sanity when I read about sexually abused and neglected 21 year old kids getting manipulated into killing people.  Here’s a start for that: Mint Royale’s remix of Singing in the Rain, because breakdancing piles of trash in a subway can make a lot of things better.

Today we have a special guest post from one of our fabulous medical advocates, Kelly!

Lately, it seems my world as a rape crisis counselor and my boyfriend’s world as an avid sports fan have collided.  I have been known to suffer through a Bruins game or Sportscenter episode in the spirit of compromise, but lately my other half has not had to bug me to listen to 98.5 The Sports Hub or watch ESPN. The recent high profile cases involving athletes “allegedly” raping young women has had me interested in hearing how sports reporters and commentators would report these stories and what kind of biases or rape myths may be included in their coverage.

I am happy to say that I have been surprised and humbled to see that many reporters have handled these stories in a way that I find commendable, while others, well…let’s just say some journalists could use a BARCC workshop or two.

However, I’d like to focus on the positive. Recently on a drive into school, I felt compelled to call into the Felger & Massarotti show on 98.5 after listening to a discussion of the most recent Ben Roethlisberger sexual assault case. These guys were blunt. They were not making any excuses for “Big Ben.” Just because he is a talented quarterback does not give him a free pass to rape women. Just because he has money does not mean women would falsely accuse him of rape for publicity (who would want that kind of publicity?) or financial gain (as a medical advocate I can assure you that the lengthy and invasive sexual assault evidence collection kit is not something you submit to without good reason). I called in and told them I am happy for once not to hear victim-blaming or unnecessary references to the survivor’s level of intoxication.

One word that makes me cringe when hearing about cases of rape in the media is the word “accuser.” I think this word unnecessarily shifts the focus from the actions of the perpetrator to the survivor. As an “accuser,” the survivor is now the one who is doing something to the perpetrator, not the one who has had something done to them. While for legal purposes journalists may have to stay more neutral than using the word survivor, why not try “alleged victim.” It is a subtle thing that can make a really big difference.

Tonight my boyfriend mentioned to me that a discussion about the word “accuser” occurred on Sportscenter. I haven’t been able to see it yet, but from what he told me it was really promising, and I hope that more stations will think twice before using that language. The fact it is even being discussed at all says something.

Over the past couple of days I have also heard conversations on various sports media about Lawrence Taylor’s (former NFL star) charges of raping a 16 year-old-girl. One commentator suggested we not refer to his victim as a prostitute, as she is 16 and that is actually considered sex trafficking, not prostitution. Another mentioned that regardless of whether or not he paid for sex, she is underage and that is rape. Kind of seems like common sense, but you’d be surprised.

I hope that these conversations in the media will continue to address the fact that a rapist can be anybody, even a seemingly nice guy who happens to be able to throw a football like Roethlisberger or a hall of famer/Dancing with the Stars alum like Taylor. I hope that more and more people realize talent, no matter how great, does not mean rape is excusable (cough cough Kobe Bryant). I hope that the focus is steered away from survivors and their clothing, behavior, and alcohol-intake. I hope that more and more people continue to get educated about rape myths and their huge and devastating effects on survivors of sexual assault. I hope that there is no more rape.

But we can at least start with not using the word accuser anymore (are you listening, Larry King?).

Related: Tommy’s post on sportswriters and the Roethlisberger case.

I really need to stop watching the Today show while I get ready for work in the mornings. Occasionally, I’ll pick up some good tips, like the one about almond milk as a delicious lactose substitute (thanks, Al Roker!), but more often than not, particularly with stories related to sexual and domestic violence, I end up seething with rage and shouting at the TV while I iron my pants.

And so it was on Thursday morning, when I saw in the teasers that Meredith would be interviewing Criminal Profiler Pat Brown on the tragic murder of UVA senior Yeardley Love. To lose a loved one to violence is always a tragedy for the families and friends and communities of victims, but this case is particularly difficult because Yeardley (as with many other victims of domestic violence homicides) was about to make the jump into the next phase of her life. She would have graduated with her classmates on May 23rd. 

As the video package continued, we learned more about the relationship that Ms. Love had recently ended with George Huguely, a fellow lacrosse player and senior at UVA, who is now charged with first degree murder in her death. The facts surrounding this case paint a frightening picture.

It would seem that Huguely, who lived next door to Love, was prone to aggressive behavior, particularly when he had been drinking.  In the incident that led to his 2008 arrest for public drunkenness and resisting arrest, Huguely stated to the female arresting officer, ” ‘I’ll kill all you b*tches’” and “shouted other threatening, profane language.”

Notably, Huguely’s friends and teammates knew him to be violent when drunk: “A friend of Huguely’s who played lacrosse with him in summer leagues told the Daily News that Huguely ‘partied really hard and when he was drunk or f——- up, he could be violent. He would get out of control.’”

And indeed, others had noticed Huguely’s behavior towards Love escalating in aggression: “Huguely was described by the summer league teammate as ‘obsessive,’ constantly texting and calling Love, to the point that people close to her worried about the relationship.”

In another report, “the two had been in physical altercations before, including at a party near campus this spring, according to two students who were there. Those students, both athletes at Virginia, said they did not want their names to be published for fear of retribution from their teammates, who have chosen not to speak to reporters.”

Finally: “A former Virginia student who was friends with both Love and Huguely described a disturbing incident in which Huguely recently reportedly attacked Love, then had no recollection of it the next day, which precipitated their final breakup. ‘He was really messed up and punched a window of a car on the way over to her apartment that night,’ the friend said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of consideration for Love’s family. The friend said Huguely had been seen breaking bottles at another party before Love’s death and had told people he was going to her apartment to get Love back.”

Media reports have detailed Huguely’s statements to police that he had sent Love threatening emails, which was why he had removed her laptop from her room. He directed police to where they could find it, and police and prosecutors are in the process of trying to recover the messages.

Given those circumstances, I was prepared for an incisive, illuminating commentary from Ms. Brown. With her background as a criminal profiler, I expected her to…I don’t know…profile the suspect in this case? How does his behavior match up with the profile of other young men who have killed their current or former partners? What were the factors in this case that created barriers to Love and Huguely’s friends, family, teammates, and fellow students intervening in his violent and obsessive behavior in the past, before it got to this point?

I stopped ironing, filled with gleeful anticipation. Oh, Today show and Criminal Profiler Pat Brown, how you crushed my optimism beneath the heel of your victim blaming and superficial, irrelevant analysis. Rather than focusing on the murder, the events leading up to the crime, or the violence and stalking behavior that had apparently been going on in full view of their friends, Ms. Brown zeroed in instead on the problem of “young ladies” who “get into these relationships” without really knowing the person. (Note: I am paraphrasing here because I can’t find the video clip online, but if someone links it in the comments, I can embed it .) Her solution, “regardless if anything happens in this case” (I presume she means a conviction on the first-degree murder charge), is for “the young ladies” to slow their roll, particularly with regard to “sexual relationships.”

Here is the only point of agreement between Criminal Profiler Pat Brown and myself, though I have taken the liberty of restating her view so that it is in some way relevant or useful: young people should be given concrete skills to recognize and seek out honest, equitable, responsible, and respectful relationships. Certainly, they should have practice and examples for recognizing those characteristics in their own relationships (and this includes friend, peer, and other relationships, not just dating and sexual relationships). But, and perhaps more importantly, they should be given skills for how to talk to their friends and peers (or seek out others who can talk to them) when those individuals are behaving in ways that are disrespectful, aggressive, or violent.

Yeardley Love was not a victim of her own poor judgment, or lack of judgment. She was a victim of a violent crime, perpetrated (by his own admission to police), by George Huguely. I don’t believe that George Huguely emerged from the womb a violent, entitled, monstrous human being, destined to kill. I believe that he grew into an attractive, young man who was a very skilled senior lacrosse player on the top-ranked team in the NCAA. I don’t believe that his relationship with Yeardley Love started with smashed glass, blows, and threats. They were from similar backgrounds, shared similar interests, and had many friends in common. I believe that he also grew into a young man whose problematic use of alcohol was used to camouflage and excuse his aggressive behavior, and that he moved in a social circle where those around him were impressed by and afraid of him.

I also believe that by the time George Huguely kicked in the locked door of Yeardley Love’s room that night, it was too late for either of them to singlehandedly have prevented that murder from occurring. Ms. Love had already been attacked, in public, on more than one occasion, and no one had intervened to help her, so what expectation did she have that anyone would stop him when they were alone? He had never borne any consequences or received any negative feedback (that we know of) for his previous aggressive behavior, so it’s easy to imagine that he believed himself entitled to punish Ms. Love for ending the relationship.

What is most illuminating here is the number of Love and Huguely’s friends and family who have refused to speak on the record about these incidents, citing in various cases respect for Love’s family and fear of retaliation from other friends and teammates who see speaking out about the violence as a betrayal of the bonds between teammates and friends.

In my mind, that is the attitude that needs adjusting here. Love and friendship mean checking someone’s behavior well before it escalates to the level that George Huguely’s had. Being a good and loyal teammate does not mean ignoring or minimizing violence because you wear the same uniform, it means holding a fellow player to the same standard of excellence off the field as on, and showing them how to be better when they perhaps lack the skills.