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Misogyny: A Public Health Crisis

Below the Belt: A Biweekly Column by NOW President Kim Gandy

August 20, 2007

A 20-year-old woman reported being raped by the bouncer outside a bar in Cincinnati. A disabled woman in Everett, Wash., says she was raped in her home by a man she knew, while her young children slept nearby. In Washington, D.C., police say a woman was forced to withdraw money for the assailant after he raped her. A man was arrested in Cheyenne, Wyo., for raping and murdering a woman. Chicago police say a 25-year-old woman was stabbed and strangled in a "domestic dispute."

And that was just yesterday.

Rarely a day goes by without multiple headlines announcing that a woman or young girl is missing, or has been sexually assaulted, raped or murdered, or some combination thereof. It is no secret that violence against women and girls pervades this country and the world, and yet for some reason, neither the statistics nor the headlines shock society into collective, sustained action. The fact that one in six women in the U.S. is the victim of sexual assault raises few eyebrows.

Certain instances of sexual assault, rape and other violent acts against women get a lot of media coverage, but the reports are rarely framed as evidence of a serious public health crisis and a society still struggling with misogyny. More often, incidents make news because of the alleged perpetrator's celebrity status or the salaciousness of the crime, a trend that has fostered a frightening trivialization of violence against women. Rape has become the stuff of gossip — and even humor.

Ask any young woman who has been involved in anti-violence and rape crisis work on a college campus, and you will learn (or perhaps you already know) the undeniable impact of the media's and society's treatment of gender-based violence. At student-organized Take Back the Night marches, when the campus community walks in protest of violence against women, it's expected that the march will be interrupted by streakers. Young feminists at NOW have told stories about male peers who joked about starting "Rape Clubs," and that even wearing a t-shirt saying something like "Rock Against Rape" can prompt snickering from peers.

With attitudes like this so common, I guess it's not surprising to learn that one in five high school girls had been physically or sexually abused by a dating partner, according to a 2001 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The lead author of the study said the findings suggest that many adolescent boys "have adopted attitudes that men are entitled to control their girlfriends through violence." This control can have both immediate and far-reaching effects. For instance, girls who had been victimized were eight to nine times more likely to have attempted suicide in the previous year.

With such sobering findings at hand, you might think we'd hear about large-scale policy or publicly-funded education initiatives to address gender-based violence. You'd think that maybe, six years later, the federal government would have stopped funding abstinence-only programs to the tune of $1.5 billion over the last 10 years — programs that have been widely shown to promote archaic gender stereotypes and hostile gender relations. Take a look at this excerpt from a student workbook used in an abstinence-only curriculum in Ohio, a state which in 2005 ranked fourth in the nation in tax dollars expended for abstinence-only education:

"Deep down, you know that your friend's plunging necklines and short skirts are getting the guys to talk about her. Is that what you want? To see girls drive guys hormones when a guy is trying to see her as a friend. A guy who wants to respect girls is distracted by sexy clothes and remembers her for one thing. Is it fair that guys are turned on by their senses and women by their hearts?"
(The full report on programs in Ohio linked at the SIECUS web site.)

Unbelievable, right? And yet, at the end of June, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to extend the Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage program. On the up side, subcommittees of the Senate Appropriations Committee did approve an additional $39 million in funding for domestic violence-related services, including $2 million in services to address teen dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. But $2 million in services pales in comparison to the $176 million allocated this year for abstinence-only "education" that actively fosters sexist attitudes, which then contribute to violence against women, which then necessitate those responsive services. Where is the sense—or morality—in that? Where is the real "values" discussion?

So while the government is running in circles, wouldn't it be nice if the media were attempting in a serious, credible way to shed a light on violence against women and girls in a way that wasn't obscured by a market-driven and celebrity-obsessed lens?

When CNN feels compelled to run a headline like "Spector rant: 'All women should be shot in the head,'" concerning music producer Phil Spector's alleged murder of actor Lana Clarkson, couldn't the news provider include some information about just how many women are murdered annually by someone they know?

When we hear about violence against women, as in June's stories about the murder of pregnant Jessie Davis by her boyfriend and the murders of Nancy Benoit and her son by professional wrestler Chris Benoit, don't we deserve better than a "she asked for it" response? Said FOX pundit Bill O'Reilly of these murders: "In both of these terrible situations, the men involved were troubled and chaotic. And the women involved had to know that. Now I'm not blaming the victims here, but I am saying that every one of us has to make smart decisions especially when children are involved." Of course, he's not blaming the victims, but he goes on to say, "The women should be alive today, but those ladies made big mistakes."

There's so much more that could be covered in these two cases, and yet the take-away message is that these are isolated, unusual events. That's simply not so. For example, Jessie Davis' boyfriend was a police officer, a fact most media outlets mentioned. But did any news report mention that domestic violence is experienced by at least 40% of police families -- a rate two to four times higher than in the average family?

The same is true in the military, where there is an increased incidence of domestic violence, as well as increased likelihood of sexual assault. A 2003 University of Iowa study found that "79 percent of participants reported experiences of sexual harassment during their military service; 30 percent of the women reported an attempted or completed rape."

Yet, there is no mainstream media coverage of the young enlisted woman who is being court martialed after she reported a gang rape, apparently because she refused to testify against one of the men after being forced to spend two days alone being questioned by the defendant's military lawyer. Why was he allowed to question her alone, much less for two days? Why wasn't her sexual assault advocate allowed to be with her, when she requested it? Why hasn't the media reported on this story?

Finally, would it hurt to have at least one national news outlet cover the story of the three female college soccer players in California who helped a 17-year-old girl to a hospital, saying that they had seen her being gang raped at a party? Two of the young women, April Grolle and Lauren Chief Elk, went public with their experience after the county district attorney decided not to press charges against the accused men, which included members of the De Anza Community College baseball team. The girls lost friends and have been harassed for speaking out, but they told local news media, "We knew what we were doing was right."

No, it wouldn't hurt at all for a few more people to hear that message.

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