Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[Kobi]

A University of North Carolina sexual assault victim has been charged with violating the school's honor code and creating a hostile environment for her attacker by speaking out about her ordeal.

The charge came approximately a month after Landen Gambill, a sophomore at UNC—who last spring reported being raped by a student she says is still on campus—filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. Gambill, as well as others who filed with her—including current and former students, and Melinda Manning, the school's former assistant dean of students—allege that the school had pressured Manning into underreporting sex offense cases.

An email sent to Gambill last week by the school's graduate attorney general—published by Jezebel.com—reads in part:

You are being charged with the following Honor Code violation(s):

I.C.1.c. - Disruptive or intimidating behavior that willfully abuses, disparages, or otherwise interferes with another (other than on the basis of protected classifications identified and addressed in the University's Policy on Prohibited Harassment and Discrimination) so as to adversely affect their academic pursuits, opportunities for University employment, participation in University-sponsored extracurricular activities, or opportunities to benefit from other aspects of University Life.

The matter has been turned over to UNC's Honor Court. If found guilty, Gambill could be subject to a range of sanctions, including probation, suspension or even expulsion.

"This type of gross injustice is unacceptable," Gambill wrote on her Facebook page. "It's important to me that we continue to advocate for the rights of survivors—not just because it affects me personally but because I desperately hope no one has to go [through] anything like this again."

Some of Gambill's supporters have also taken to Facebook and Twitter, changing their avatars to say "I Stand With Landen" and tweeting messages with the hashtag #standwithlanden.

Colby Bruno, managing attorney for the national Victim Rights Law Center, told InsideHigherEd.com the code violation is "outrageous.” For the university "to entertain this as a viable claim is a problem, because it's not,” Bruno said.

The university would not comment on Gambill's case, citing federal privacy laws. But at a board meeting last month, Leslie Strohm, UNC's vice chancellor and general counsel, told trustees "the allegations with respect to the underreporting of sexual assault are false, they are untrue, and they are just plain wrong."

In 2010, the Department of Justice estimated that 25 percent of college women "will be victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate within a four-year college period," and that schools with more than 6,000 students "average one rape per day during the school year.”

According to New York University's "National Statistics about Sexual Violence on College Campuses," fewer than 5 percent of such cases are reported to law enforcement.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/...142933849.html

[femmeInterrupted]

http://www.vulture.com/2013/02/why-s...y-matters.html

[Kobi]

A former employee at a Christian college has enlisted the help of high-profile attorney Gloria Allred to sue a California school that allegedly fired her for engaging in premarital sex, NBC's "Today" reports. In a bizarre twist, the school reportedly went on to offer the pregnant woman's job to her then-fiance.

Teri James, 29, told the news outlet that she did sign a two-page contract with San Diego Christian College that included a provision agreeing not to engage in "sexually immoral behavior including premarital sex."

"I needed a job in this economy and so I never thought that anything would happen," James explained to "Today."

But James said she was humiliated after being pulled into her supervisor's office last fall, where she was asked if she was pregnant and then was let go. After James lost her job, she claims the school offered a position to her now-husband, even though they were aware he'd had sex before getting married, too.

During a news conference featured in a KTLA report, James said she felt she was treated unfairly.

"I was unmarried, pregnant and they took away my livelihood," James said.

Legal clashes involving teachers at religious schools who've been fired for pre-martial sex are not entirely uncommon.

Last year in Florida, an appeals court ruled that a teacher's case would be moving to trial after the judges decided the school might have fired the womannot because she admitted to getting pregnant while unmarried, but because they didn't want to find a replacement for her during while she'd be on maternity leave, according to Reuters.

And as ABC News previously reported, an unmarried teacher in Texas sought legal counsel after she was fired over her pregnancy. The women offered to expedite her wedding in order to keep her job, but school officials still said "no," claiming the pregnancy violated their definition of being a Christian role model.

The legal waters can get murky, though, when contracts between teachers and religious schools are involved.

After a Catholic school in Ohio fired Christa Dias for becoming pregnant through artificial insemination, the school aruged that she had violated Catholic doctrine and failed to fulfill her contract.

“This is not the classic pregnancy discrimination case in which pretexts must be evaluated and discriminatory intent must be divined,” the school’s attorneys wrote, according to Cincinnati.com.

Dias sued the archdiocese and according to Courthousenews, the trial is set to begin on March 19.

Some teachers, on the other hand, have decided to leave religiously affiliated schools rather than agree to lifestyle contracts.

As Christianity Today reported in 2012, a third of the faculty at the Southern Baptist-based Shorter University decided to quit rather than sign a "lifestyle statement," which condemned drinking in public, sex before marriage and homosexuality.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_2790085.html

[Soon]

[Kobi]

'Nice legs', 'Hey sexy lady', 'Now I know where you live', 'Get in the trunk, bitch'.

For many women and teenage girls these remarks are not a rare but a daily occurrence.

Coupled with lewd remarks and gropings comes a prevailing attitude that this is simply something women should put up with.

And while many might consider such boorish behaviour verging on the criminal as a relic of yesteryear it is a daily blight on the lives of many in Britain today.Laura Bates, 26, set up the project to document the everyday harassment and sexism women are forced to put up with …

Laura Bates was the target of such behaviour and knew it was wrong but didn't know what to do about it. It was only when she shared her experiences with her friends that she realised she was not alone. And that was when she decided something needed to change.

The 26-year-old freelance writer hit upon using Twitter to collect women's stories and empower them and in April last year launched ‘The Everyday Sexism Project’. She invited Twitter users to share their experiences of harassment through the hashtag Shoutingback thereby giving women a modern tool and a platform with which to fight back.

Within five days it had 3,500 tweets.

Women like Melinda Greenacre, 23, who works in advertising stumbled upon the hashtag and decided to contribute.

She said: “Rarely a day goes by without a man making comments, like ‘hey sexy lady’, or ‘get in my car’. Most of the time I brush it off but when it’s at night – then I get scared and feel uncomfortable.”

She, too, knew such behaviour was wrong but had normalised it. It was by taking part in Shoutingback that she knew she should never have put up with it. And her story is not an isolated case.

For Laura it reinforces the reason why she started the Twitter campaign and its associated 'Everyday Sexism Project’ to encourage women to speak out.

The tweets make for sobering reading. Women have documented how men catcall them while walking down the street, touch them inappropriately, follow them home and even threaten them with rape.

They also described the frequency of these incidents. That they happened everyday, regardless of where they were, regardless of the time of day, regardless how drunk or sober they were, regardless of what they were wearing.

One woman described how she was "chased to my door at 11.30pm by two lads who 'Didn't want to hurt me.' I ran faster".

They also showed how aggressive the harassers become upon rejection – a comment such as “Come here” can switch to “You whore, I’ll beat you so hard” within seconds.

The stark reality of these experiences reverberated around the Twitterverse and caused many to sit up and take note of the true extent of sexual harassment in Britain today.

Laura said: “The profile made women feel more confident to speak up about it. When they had said something before they would get a backlash – responses like ‘you’re frigid’ or ‘you can’t take a joke’. There was this idea that the problem did not exist anymore.”

Sexism at work is one of the most common entries.

Laura said: “We’ve had stories of women in IT who answer the phones and the man on the other end say they want to speak to a man because a women won't understand the problem. Another story was a boss telling a women to sit on his lap to get a Christmas bonus.”

But not all of the stories involve adults.

She continued: “Girls in their school uniform have been sexually harassed or touched in the street.”

Having young girls share such traumatising stories with her shocked and upset Laura, but she added: “It doubles my determination to get the information out there.”

The entries also showed sexual assault in public places was a common theme - with many women simply unaware they had been victim of a crime.

She said: “Women would go to bars and clubs and regularly be touched on their a**e, their breast and so on and they had no idea they were being sexually assaulted.”

The definition of sexual assault is it is when someone is inappropriately touched without giving consent - such as a hand on the bottom or leg. Its most serious form is rape.

Many of the women sharing their experiences were naïve and didn't realise that being groped in a bar constituted sexual assault – and most importantly that it could be reported to the police.

Laura, who since launching the project has received death threats and threats of rape from men, said: “When a women is shouted at on the street the silence of people around her says volumes. There was an instance when a women on a bus was cornered at the back by men saying lewd and threatening things to her - no one stepped up and intervened. People just thought these experiences were just part of being a women.”

Laura has since launched another hashtag called ‘followed’ which encourages women to tweet occurrences when she feels she is being pursued. Like Shoutingback, the experiences are common and heartbreaking to read.

So far 20,000 experiences have been shared and the project has had the backing from MP Stella Creasy and ‘Double Jeopardy’ actress Ashley Judd. Recently the project encouraged Twitter users to tweet a supermarket chain to change the display of its magazines after spotting the supermarket stocked science and politics magazines only in the men’s lifestyle section.

The project has seen men also give their support to women and vow to intervene if they witness street harassment or sexual assault.

As International Woman’s Day celebrates its 102nd year Laura is adamant that there is still a need for feminism and projects like ‘Everyday Sexism’.

She adds that what may seem like a harmless catcall on the street can quickly escalate to sexual assault and rape. One in five women over 16 in England Wales have been the victim of a sexual offence.

Laura said: All of these issues are connected and everyday sexism is an underlying factor.”

She added: “The laws that are there to promote equality are not matching up to the reality. It suggests that we have not come as far as we think we have. If we look back to the Jimmy Savile scandal, when the allegations came out a lot of people said ‘thank goodness it’s not like that anymore’ - but we see the same complaints on the projects.”

Laura’s message is clear – as long as these experiences persist, women will keep shouting back.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/internation...171432386.html

[Kobi]

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood warns that a U.N. declaration on women's rights could destroy society by allowing a woman to travel, work and use contraception without her husband's approval and letting her control family spending.

The Islamist movement that backs President Mohamed Mursi gave 10 reasons why Muslim countries should "reject and condemn" the declaration, which the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women is racing to negotiate a consensus deal on by Friday.

The Brotherhood, whose Freedom and Justice Party propelled Mursi to power in June, posted the statement on its website, www.ikhwanweb.com, and the website of the party on Thursday.

Egypt has joined Iran, Russia and the Vatican - dubbed an "unholy alliance" by some diplomats - in threatening to derail the women's rights declaration by objecting to language on sexual, reproductive and gay rights.

The Muslim Brotherhood said the declaration would give "wives full rights to file legal complaints against husbands accusing them of rape or sexual harassment, obliging competent authorities to deal husbands punishments similar to those prescribed for raping or sexually harassing a stranger."

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice last week touted at the commission - a global policy-making body created in 1946 for the advancement of women - progress made by the United States in reducing the rate of violence against women by their partners.

"All 50 states in our union now have laws that treat date rape or spousal rape as just as much of a crime as rape by a stranger," Rice said. "We cannot live in truly free societies, if women and girls are not free to reach their full potential."

The contrasting views show the gap that needs to be breached in negotiations on the declaration, which this year is focused on urging an end to violence against women and girls. The commission failed to agree a declaration last year on a theme of empowering rural women due to similar disagreements.

WORLD IS WATCHING

Egypt has proposed an amendment, diplomats say, that would allow countries to avoid implementing the declaration if it clashed with national laws, religious or cultural values. But some diplomats say this would undermine the entire declaration.

The Muslim Brotherhood warned the declaration would give girls sexual freedom, legalize abortion, provide teenagers with contraceptives, give equality to women in marriage and require men and women to share duties such as child care and chores.

It said the declaration would allow "equal rights to homosexuals, and provide protection and respect for prostitutes" and "equal rights to adulterous wives and illegitimate sons resulting from adulterous relationships."

A coalition of Arab human rights groups - from Egypt, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan and Tunisia - called on countries at the Commission on the Status of Women on Thursday to stop using religion, culture, and tradition to justify abuse of women.

"The current positions taken by some Arab governments at this meeting is clearly not representative of civil society views, aspirations or best practices regarding the elimination and prevention of violence against women and girls within our countries," said the statement issued by the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies.

Michelle Bachelet, a former president of Chile and head of U.N. Women, which supports the commission, said the commission was unable to reach a deal a decade ago when it last focused on the theme of women's rights and ending violence against women.

"Ten years later, we simply cannot allow disagreement or indecision to block progress for the world's women," Bachelet told the opening session of the commission last week. "The world is watching ... the violence needs to stop."

http://news.yahoo.com/egypts-islamis...020322994.html

[Soon]

CNN's Steubenville Coverage Focuses On Effect Rape Trial Will Have On Rapists, Not Victim