Cheated

We respond to a lot of young teen victims. I actually feel a particular affinity for these clients. Perhaps because I remember pretty well the frustration of wanting to be grown up and at the same time having rules I didn't understand holding me back, as well as a healthy dose of being totally clueless.

With so many of these, mostly girls, I see kids who may or may not have adequate supervision from their parents . . . or I see that they have, already at such young ages, been asked to absorb so many problems well beyond their own levels of maturity. And, I see girls who want to be grown up and men who will tell them whatever they want to hear for a bit of action.

When I talk to girls, I try to convey . . . and as I get older, I suspect I'm less convincing . . . that jumping straight from meeting a guy, flirting a bit, to having sex is skipping over a lot of fun stuff. It's fun to have a crush . . . to wait for the phone call . . . to walk on cloud 9 because he did call . . . to have him hold your hand . . . that first nervous kiss. Being a teen is hard enough without cheating yourself out of the stuff that makes being a teen fun.

I also try to address my idea that decent guys wouldn't ask you to break rules, get in trouble with parents (or police/DSS), ask you to risk getting pregnant or an STD. I try to convince girls that one of the reasons 22 year old guys are interested in 13 year old girls is because girls their own age expect them to be adults and 13 year olds don't expect much. I point out that if I'm a 20 year old girl dating a 20 year old boy, I expect him to have a job, to be in school, to call when he says he is . . . to show up on time . . . and to be honest, reliable, etc. Whereas, if I'm a 13 year old girl dating a 20 year old guy . . . any attention he pays is enough . . . even if he's selling drugs or not working or disrespectful of me, my family, and friends.

I'm not really advocating a return to "past values." I'm really not. There are all kinds of problems with the power dynamic created by the "traditional" dating. But, I'm thinking some mutual respect and shared power in a relationship has to be better than 13 year olds being labeled "problem" children and arrested for "running away" when they were lured by men who should know better. I'm also frustrated by the trend I see in these cases, where we assign more responsibility and blame to the kid who got caught up in feeling grown up than the adult who manipulated and acted criminally.

"Cherry Picking"

Yeah, I like crime TV. Although, my husband refuses to watch any fictional work that includes a sexual assault because I always end up pointing out the errors or inconsistencies. I find it a bit maddening that rarely are Rape Victim Advocates included in story lines . . . and when they are, it is always as an obstruction or potential victim.

Tonight, The Closer fell back on a favorite story line for rape cases. The group of white, upper-middle class boys who rape girls as part of a bet or competition. Most crime shows eventually use this story line. Generally, this story line can make the boys out to be unsympathetic creatures while appealing to adults who see victims as either wholly innocent or "asking for it." And, there is usually some power dynamic involved, some extra layer of entitlement to really add to the story line.

The Closer got a few details right . . . in the real world, there is a small subset of men who rape . . . but they have multiple victims. Also, in the real world, surrounding the group of rapists are "facilitators" who assist the perps in gaining access to victims and/or help them get away with it. Surrounding the facilitators are bystanders . . . they may be vaguely aware of what is going on . . . or not . . . and they have power to reinforce a group norm or not.

The fact of the matter is, rarely are perpetrators wholly evil and rarely are victims wholly innocent or "asking for it." When we as a society can have a more realistic grasp on what the real issues around rape are . . . perhaps we can create real responses and preventions.

For more information about the realities about young, middle class folks involved in rape culture, check out this video/research.

Woman Centered

I'm kinda an "old school" feminist. I had early childhood experiences in the San Francisco Bay area in the early 1970s. I told my father he was a male chauvinist pig for the first time when I was 8 years old (because he wanted me to dry dishes while he and my brothers watched tv). I remember seeing my mom's belly dancing group perform in parks on Saturdays.

I appreciate the woman centered experience.

Today I read a blog entry from a crew member of the Anthony Bourdain show No Reservations. The producer is a woman, her chief assistant is a woman, and their recent televised show was filmed in Saudia Arabia . . . and was largely led by a couple of Saudi women. You can read the entry here.

This is what I appreciate about the blog entry . . . and the fact of the conditions described. Here is a society that is uber male oriented/dominated. And, yet, the women have found a way to create woman centered times/intimacy in the midst of it. I have to appreciate that.

Irony

Being in a small, southern town, I sometimes am a bit behind when it comes to learning of the scandalous news stories. I read the NY Times when I can, I read several blogs . . . some feminist, others for pure fun. I've seen the site Jezebel . . . but was off put by the sordid sex details.

So, today, I see in a blog I read that there has been quite the uproar over two of the Jezebel writers who made a drunken appearance on Lizz Winstead's show "Thinking and Drinking."

I've always liked Lizz Winstead . . . she is smart and funny and I'm willing to believe her version of the events. You can see her reaction to the show and clips from the show here.

The women ramble on about the issue of rape. I think they went off the rails by over personalizing rather than speaking about the issue. One woman, who is a self proclaimed "slut" says that she has never been raped. But, I suspect that she is really declaring that she has never had an experience that she felt terrified her sufficiently to define it as rape. I found her statement that she may have never been raped because she's "smart" particularly offensive. The other woman talks of her own rape experiences . . . she is obviously saddened by the stories, but then trivializes them by saying that she didn't want the hassle of reporting the rapist and she had important things like drinking to do.

This became the topic of conversation in our office. I believe the consensus was that as women who make their livelihood from writing about feminist issues, they do, indeed, have a responsibility to choose their words more carefully. The two dangers I see in their attitudes are a) that a victim viewing this will feel even more shamed by their cavalier attitudes and be even less inclined to seek comfort and support and b) they give fuel to the people who think that rape is exaggerated and that women are just whining when it's really not so bad.

We also came to the conclusion that we don't embrace the brand of feminism that seems to say "if you can't fix it, join it." I have seen young women behave in ways that can only be described as mimicking what they imagine to be men's behavior. They shut down their own sense of boundaries, and seem to believe that being a "slut" is an expression of their feminism. I'm all for people choosing the lifestyle they believe fulfills them as people . . . but too often I see the young women continue to be unhappy with their relationships and themselves. Living a sexually "open" lifestyle takes work and a very highly developed sense of boundaries. Acting as if you should be sexually available to anyone without regard for your own wants, needs, and feelings isn't choosing a lifestyle . . . it's giving up.

But, back to the Jezebel women . . . one of the young women who was in the audience wrote about the performance and her disappointment in her "feminist heroes" in her personal blog. One of the Jezebel women left a comment on her blog, and the young woman backed down in her criticism. Their excuse for their socially irresponsible behavior? They were drunk.