An Open Letter to the NPR Weekend Edition Staff and the Parents of College Students You Misled
Dear NPR Weekend Edition Staff and the Parents of College Students You Misled:
The August 24 program “Weekend Edition” produced a story on how some universities are “tackling sexual assault before parties start”, which underscores how important it is for parents, as well as colleges and universities, to prepare students in advance, and to remind them of the risk while offering them strategies to reduce it. This broadcast featured a clip of a conversation between a father of an incoming University of New Hampshire student, who is a doctor, and his daughter, “Kelly”. When Kelly asks her father specifically for advice (“What should I know about consent and assault and rape?”), Dad offers Kelly the following advice:
- Anticipate a situation before you get into it
- Always travel with friends
- Have a planned list of activities, night and day
- Avoid isolation
- Avoid substances
Kelly feels better, and Kelly’s Dad, who is clearly educated, informed, and appropriately concerned about his daughter’s safety and well-being, has done his job. And yet, what has she been told, really? Don’t ever be alone, don’t ever drink or use drugs, and keep yourself on a preset busy schedule. In other (vague) words, avoid, curtail, limit, distract, and then hope for the best. She might as well live at home and take all her courses online.
The take-home message of that list of rape avoidance strategies — inadvertently offered, perhaps, but communicated nonetheless — is that once danger is imminent, the outcome is a given. If one’s avoidance measures fail, there is no advice provided, implying that women do not have the option of fighting back.
And yet research has shown that girls and women are capable of safely and effectively resisting rape and sexual assault. Self-defense training is one critical way to teach, and allow for the practice of, active and clear strategies for things you can say and do in a potentially dangerous situation, where someone is trying to rape or assault you. And the research tells us that these strategies make women feel safer, make them more empowered to set and assert their boundaries in a range of situations – including social and dating situations – and can effectively prevent an assault or a rape from occurring.
So NPR and parents, please have these conversations, and please include not only a guy’s legal obligation not to attack but a gal’s legal right to defend herself. Here’s our script for daughters:
If someone tries to rape or assault you, one thing you need to know is that you have the right to protect yourself – verbally or physically. You have the right to tell someone that what they are saying to you, how they are touching you, is not what you want, is not okay, is a crime; you have the right to yell and scream and call for help and make a scene to attract the attention of someone who might be able to help you. And you also have the right to physically resist – by pushing, shoving, hitting, kicking, with any part of your body that you can use – hands, elbows, hips, knees, feet – and against any part of their body – testicles, face, abdomen, arms, legs. And, you need to know these are all things you can do, and have the right to do, but that if you are in danger, we trust you to make the best decision for yourself that is going to keep you feeling as safe in the moment as possible. And that means that while we want you to know that it is okay for you to do these things, it doesn’t mean you have to or you should. You do what’s best for you, and we will love and trust and support you, no matter what.
Not that anyone asked, but here’s our script for sons:
If you want to do something physically intimate with someone, tell them and ask them. If the person you’re with has been drinking or using drugs, consider them incapable of offering meaningful consent and move on. If the person is reasonably sober and makes it explicitly clear that the desires are mutual, great. Do not assume you can pick up signals or hints. Do not ever attempt to impose yourself or your will onto another person. It’s neither sexy nor legal. Don’t treat anyone as an “easy lay.” If you don’t understand these principles, you just might get your ass kicked.
That’s the way to tackle sexual assault before the party starts.
Sincerely,
Jill Cermele and Martha McCaughey
WAY TO GO, MISS USA. WAY TO GO.
June 9, 2014
An Open Letter to Miss USA, Nia Sanchez
WAY TO GO, MISS USA. WAY TO GO.
On June 8, 2014, Nia Sanchez, (“Miss Nevada”), was crowned Miss USA. And, in the question-and-answer portion of the finals, she said something totally radical about sexual assault against women:
“More awareness is very important so women can learn to protect themselves….[Y]ou need to be confident and be able to defend yourself…That’s something we need to implement for a lot of women.”
We completely agree, Nia Sanchez. And given the influence you have as the newly crowned Miss USA, we are delighted that you shared this perspective on national television, so that the millions who may have been watching got to hear you say it. It’s a message that young men and women need to hear.
You may or may not have thought about what kind of a reaction you would get for that statement, and you may or may not have cared one way or the other. We, as academic feminists and self-defense advocates, applaud you. And we are disheartened, but not surprised, that this is not the response that you will get from all women who identify as feminists, and that in 2014, after decades of work by feminist scholars and activists advocating for women’s empowerment, broadly defined, that such a statement is still criticized. Consider the piece in Jezebel today, where Rebecca Rose takes exception to your comment, writing:
“While I certainly admire how hard she’s worked to obtain her status as a black belt, college women shouldn’t have to “learn to protect themselves.” College men should “learn not to rape.” But somehow I doubt we’re going to hear those words come out of the mouth of a national beauty pageant contestant anytime in the near future” (http://jezebel.com/new-miss-usa-says-women-need-to-learn-to-protect-themse-1587972074)
Rebecca Rose positions women learning self-defense against men learning not to rape—as if these are mutually exclusive choices, where one is clearly better/more radical/more feminist. Rebecca Rose also questions why women should “have to” learn self-defense. Well, why should we get mammograms, learn to change our tires, use birth control, get cervical screenings, or learn how to swim? For that matter, why should we learn to drive?
Here’s the answer: Because the best way to protect ourselves from risk, human or environmental, is to have any and all options at our disposal, any and all kits in our tool bag. Preventing sexual assault includes awareness and prevention work of all kinds, including working to teach men not to rape. But none of that precludes teaching women that resistance is an option—and a really, really good option in most cases.
Amanda Marcotte criticizes you in Slate, saying that self-defense probably won’t work, and that talking about self-defense is victim-blaming and disempowering to women, and even that self-defense will make claims of rape in court impossible. “Most disturbingly,” Marcotte writes, “the focus on self-defense allows some to argue that a rape doesn’t count as a rape unless the woman attempted to use violence in self-defense.” Marcotte goes on to suggest that “in a society where women are urged to take on the responsibility for stopping rape through self-defense, it becomes incredibly easy to start to see rape not as a matter of the rapist’s choices, but of the victim’s. Which, in turn, becomes an excuse to let rapists off the hook….” (http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/06/09/miss_usa_on_campus_sexual_assault_nia_sanchez_a_black_belt_in_tae_kwon_do.html)
Don’t worry, Miss USA, we—like you—know that we do not live in a society urging women to stop rape through self-defense. Indeed, you’d be hard pressed to find any information about women’s legal right to defend themselves or where to get that training in any given campus’s rape prevention materials. It is not taught in public high schools along with CPR; it is not taught by the American Red Cross; and it is not recommended by the Center for Disease Control, despite their focus on sexual assault. Nor is it listed anywhere in the recent recommendations of the White House Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault. Overall, our culture still prizes docility and vulnerability in women and values strength and assertiveness in men. And in fact, in a culture that steadfastly refuses to acknowledge women’s rights to defend themselves against sexual violence, the question of “Did she fight back?” has been, and continues to be, trotted out in the legal arena as “evidence” as to whether a rape occurred. We have nothing to lose by letting women know this is a viable option. We cannot conceive of a reality where anyone would prefer to be the victim of a completed attack just to be able to successfully prosecute the attacker later (as if most college rape victims ever go to court anyway).
We also know that self-defense is not victim-blaming, and that self-defense is an option, not a responsibility. And we know that it does work in the vast majority of cases—according to LOTS of data, including that published in our own March 2014 special issue of the academic journal Violence Against Women.
While we support any legal response that women and girls have in the face of assault, we think it’s really important for them to know that self-defense is an option. And knowing that it’s an option is a whole lot better than sitting demurely by, crossing our ankles, whether in our Christian Louboutins, our Birkenstocks, or our Uggs, and waiting for someone to teach men to stop raping.
People like Rebecca Rose and Amanda Marcotte are going to assume that you don’t believe that we should teach men not to rape, that you have somehow naively accepted sexual assault as the natural course of things. We, however, are happy to see a lovely young woman advocate self-defense training—and we apologize for our fellow feminists who are using your beauty against you to indicate that you must not be progressive enough. They’re the ones who aren’t progressive enough. Keep up the fight.
Jill Cermele and Martha McCaughey
See Jane Fight Back 
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