Students Active For Ending Rape:
An excerpt from Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft:
Changing the Culture
Abuse is the product of a mentality that excuses and condones bullying and exploitation, that promotes superiority and disrespect, and that casts responsibility on the oppressed. All efforts to end the abuse of women ultimately have to return to this question: How do we change societal values so that women's right to live free of insults, invasion, disempowerment, and intimidation is respected?
One way is simply to declare out loud to people in your life that women have these rights unconditionally. Much of modern society remains regrettably unclear on this point. I still hear: "Well, he shouldn't have called her a 'slut,' but she did dance all night with another man." I hear: "He did keep hassling her at her job even when she told him to stay away, but he was heartbroken over their breakup."
I hear: "He did use some force in having sex with her, but she had really let him on to believe that they were going all the way that night." You can influence your friends, your religious group, your bowling club, your relatives by having the courage to stand up and say: "Abuse of a women is wrong - period."
Next, put on pressure against song, videos, "humor," and other media that aid and abet abusers. The flood of complains regarding Eminem's Grammy award succeeded in pressuring CBS to run a public-service announcement about domestic abuse during the broadcast and led the Grammy's president to read an antiviolence statement from the podium. A stream of complains flowed into Simon & Schuster for distributing a video game in which the object was for the male character to successfully rape a female, who was a tied-up Native American women. When the public decries the cultural agents that teach or excuse abuse, the culture receives another strong push in the right direction.
Refuse to go along with jokes that insult or degrade women. If you are a man, your refusal to fall in step with destructive jokes and comments can be especially powerful. When someone tells you, "It's just a joke," answer by asking, "How do you think an abuser reacts when he hears this joke? Do you think it helps him realize the harm is he is doing? Or do you think that his sense of justification gets even more solid than it was?
Encourage the women in your life- your friends, sisters, mothers, daughters- to insist on dignity and respect, to have faith in themselves, to be proud. Expect boys and men to be respectful, kind and responsible, and don't settle for less. Again, men have a particularly important role to play in cultural change. When a father tells his son," I don't want to hear you saying bad things about girls," or "No, I am not going to let you have a 'boys only' party, that's prejudiced," the boy sits up and take notice. Vocal leadership by men makes it much more difficult for abusers to claim that the battle over abuse is one between men and women rather than between abusers and everyone else.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Students Active For Ending Rape is meeting this Tuesday 7pm Williams 219 to discuss recent events and how to respond. Also look up for another general meeting for all student body to discuss this issue. Questions email: SAFERithaca@gmail.com
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20080204005520647