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Who should be talking about sex to whom?

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Crossed this article:

Sexual coercion and “reproductive control,” including contraceptive sabotage, are a common, and devastating, facet of dating and domestic abuse.

The article basically links pregnancy among teens to partner abuse. So what is the prevailing belief over at RH Reality Check? “We need to get even more dating-violence education into the schools.” They acknowledge:

Researchers, including Teitelman, are also studying exactly how parents can best educate their kids, not just about the birds and the bees, but also about standing up to sexual coercion. (In one study, Teitelman found teen girls whose mothers had talked to them about resisting sexual pressure were twice as likely to delay sex, or use condoms during sex; when fathers did the same, they were five times more likely to have safe sex.)

I suppose if RH Reality Check is going to allude to the idea that parents should encourage abstinence, it is only fitting that the info be shrouded in brackets toward the end of the article. And yet they insist the focus should be on getting more sex ed “in the schools.”

In this same article, a nurse practitioner points out, “We’re giving teens all this information about prevention in the clinic, and yet I see them back all the time for STI testing.”

So in this article we’ve outlined that the parent thing works well, and that learning about condoms from a stranger (even if they’re a medical professional) doesn’t work well. So we need to elaborate sex ed in schools. Something about not being able to see the forest for the trees…

(Though I’m being a bit critical here, the article is worth a read. It sheds light on a topic we don’t hear enough about.)

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Rebecca adds: “Contraception sabotage” – this is an area ripe for study. I’ve never had a male friend own up to deliberately sabotaging his partner’s birth control, although I don’t suppose many men ‘fess up to it, especially to female friends. I do, on the other hand, know women who’ve quite consciously lied about birth control (explicitly, as in claiming to be on the pill when they’re not; or implicitly, when they stop taking it or “accidentally” miss a week; or say “it’s a safe time” when it’s not, or might not be) and think it was a perfectly fine thing to do, because the guys wanted to marry them, just needed a nudge, ya know? And there are many other situations where I suspect something similar might have happened.

A lot of these relationships ended badly. Not a surprise, given how little trust must exist for those shenanigans to take place. A couple of them are still married a decade later. Still doesn’t justify that kind of lying, in my opinion. At any rate, tricking a guy into fathering a child is as despicable as coercing or intimidating your girlfriend into having a child. And it’s something a lot of people condone, or turn a blind eye to, in my experience.

Rape in Iraq

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Why do an estimated 80% of these rapes go unreported?

They didn’t report because they didn’t think they’d be believed…  They didn’t report because they were ashamed and humiliated and they didn’t want anyone to know what happened to them.

Oh, I should probably clarify that we’re not talking Iraqis raping Iraqis.  These are Americans raping Americans.

[In 2006] there were 2,974 cases of rape and sexual assault across the services. And of those, only 292 cases resulted in a military trial.

And in 2007 there were even fewer prosecutions.   Of more than 2,200 servicemen investigated for sexual assault, only 181 were prosecuted…

And in a majority of cases, the punishment doesn’t seem to match the crime. Often most offenders only get a reduction in rank or reduced pay.

And the Western world is supposedly so much more civilized.

Is that what 6 months buys you these days?

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Wife abuser sentenced to six months. Woman’s subjugation ‘appalling’ judge says.

6 months for an ‘appalling’ crime, I thought? Can’t be that appalling. But read on and if you have a stomach for abuse and cruelty, you will have to agree that the abuse the woman suffered was truly appalling. Am I the only one to think that six months imprisonment is a joke in light of the circumstances?

I was wondering… What if the same man had inflicted the same violence to a by-stander — man or woman — on the street, in a club, or on a bike path? Regardless of the fact that such violence all in one dose would likely have killed the recipient; do you think the man would have gotten away with 6 months imprisonment had the victim not been his wife? So what are the attenuating circumstances? He knew the woman? She thought it was okay? She tolerated it? He managed not to kill her?

And then what? Will 6 months in jail turn him into a respectful man or a loving husband? Will the woman be better off once her husband returns after 6 months in jail?

So many questions. So little time.

Thoughts on jogging alone

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A woman is sexually assaulted on the NCC bike paths and people discuss why women can’t choose where they go and when. In fact, women are free to wander at dusk on secluded pathways. Only, they might be violently attacked and raped as a consequence for that choice. Some choice. Now I feel liberated.

In August 2003, Ardeth Wood disappeared while biking on the National Capital Commission (NCC) bike path where I did my daily jogging. When she was found forcibly drowned in a creek off the pathway, I stopped jogging on NCC paths. Aside from being devastated by her death, I was also annoyed to be confined to residential streets for my exercise. The NCC’s stretch of land bordering the Ottawa River in Ottawa/Orleans is a gorgeous and inspiring place to run. As a taxpayer, shouldn’t I be entitled to the same enjoyment of crown land as my male counterparts? Maybe, but as long as some freak will think himself entitled to the use of my body for sexual gratification, my entitlement to run alone on a secluded pathway is tainted by some serious “what if’s?”

Earlier this summer, I went jogging along the river with my son in the jogging stroller. The path ran behind a row of houses and I felt relatively safe until the path veered away from the residential area and into the deeper wooded area where Ardeth Wood met her killer. I tried to reassure myself that this was the afternoon, that the paths were well-traveled, that I was aware of my surroundings and able to defend myself but I couldn’t shake a deep feeling of fear for my safety and that of my son. I returned to the inhabited area and later learned of Pamela Kosmack’s murder on a west-Ottawa bike path. I have now reluctantly accepted that in this crazy world, single women should always be within line-of-sight and earshot of someone else. Violence against women makes us all victims.

Interesting how we don’t hear cries to protect sexual assaulters’ reproductive freedoms, or their ability to do what pleases them with their reproductive organs. No calls for women’s groups and crime-fighting organizations to get their noses out of assaulters’ crotches (you think I’m vulgar? I’m just quoting pro-choice writers who link to our website). Quite obviously I might add, since it’s been long accepted that freedoms cannot be exercised violently over other people’s bodies. Or your reproductive freedom stops where my body begins. But this short foray into the nature and limits of freedom illustrates once again to what extent the acceptability of abortion hinges on dehumanizing the fetus. Because if the fetus is even remotely human abortion becomes the violent exercise of one’s freedom over the body of another. At this point, we can clearly see why abortion advocates must oppose any effort to assign any value to any fetus – as in bill C-484 – lest it opens people’s eyes to what abortion really is. As for me, it is obvious that if the fetus wasn’t human, women wouldn’t need to abort it. Really. The reason why women feel the need to dispatch their unborn babies and the reason why others oppose abortion are one and the same: because it is a baby. And I have yet to understand why women’s reproductive freedom extends over the bodies of their infants.

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Andrea hesitates to add this: but men are also attacked–so the question is not of “a woman’s right to use the NCC paths” but one of understanding that this is indeed a dangerous world we live in… She trails off and vows not to run with headphones on again. Sad.

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Véronique begs to differ: Men are also attacked, granted. And I think that if we look at crime stats, we would quickly find out that it is generally riskier to be a guy than a girl. But I don’t think that we can simply compare statistics on violent attacks and say “there, it is more dangerous to be a guy” — we also need to look at the reasons underlying violent attacks. I am no criminologist but I would venture that women are violently attacked because they are women. Ardeth Wood would not have died had she been a guy. The latest victim of sexual assault on NCC property would not have been assaulted had she been a guy. In fact, how many guys probably passed by unfeathered on both occasions before these women were assaulted? The criminals who thought themselves entitled to the use of both women were specifically and anonymously looking for women. Any woman. And that what makes a woman’s right to use public spaces more qualified than a guy’s.

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