sigelphoenix

From the front-page article of today's campus newspaper, "UWPD to train students in rape defense":

"One in six women is a victim of rape or attempted rape during her lifetime in Washington state. In order to combat these statistics, the University of Washington Police Department is holding a women’s self-defense class."

Uh, no. In order to combat rape, you teach people not to rape. Within the sexism-fueled rape culture that we live in, that means, first and foremost, teaching men to respect women's sexual and bodily autonomy. Providing women self-defense education so that they can keep themselves from being victimized is a stopgap solution. It can be useful, yes, but is not to be mistaken for the primary method of sexual violence prevention.

Ironic that this article comes along just as I'm reading The Macho Paradox, which describes how we mistakenly place our attention and scrutiny upon (female) victims of sexual violence, rather than looking at men, who commit the overwhelming majority of sexual violence and actually have it in their power to prevent it. Notice how the article is comfortable naming women as the primary/only targets of sexual violence - which is true - but fails to note that men are the primary perpetrators of it. Notice how it makes men, and men's responsibility to prevent themselves and their peers from committing sexual violence, disappear.

To get a sense of how ridiculous this one-sided attention is, check out misia's Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project (a satirical response to the Open Source Boob Project). Does it seem absurd that the proposed project puts the onus on men to prevent unwanted/violent attention perpetrated upon their own bodies? How absurd is it that we do expect women to do this for themselves, every damn day?