Interesting article on the use of words like “bitch” and “slut” in campus debate:

Lewd, Hateful Language Should Have No Place in Campus Debate

By Ravenna Koenig | March 14, 2012

An anticipated commencement address set off a rhetorical firestorm that sickened the author, a Barnard undergrad who calls for action by her campus community.

Tuesday morning last week I phoned my parents—a rare occurrence for a weekday. As a 21-year-old undergrad at Barnard College, I’m usually too busy to call for a chat. But they’re still the people I want to talk to when I’m feeling sick, or hurt, or sad. And I was feeling all three after reading the 864 (and counting) comments that have been posted on Columbia University’s student-run online blog, “Bwog,”  in response to the news that Barack Obama will be speaking at the 2012 Barnard commencement of Barnard College.

Columbia and Barnard students have been using President Obama’s impending visit as an opportunity to launch into a broader conversation about the two institutions’ often confusing relationship. Both colleges maintain an independent admissions process, endowment, and curriculum, but give their students access to the classes and facilities of the other.

The comments on Bwog run the gamut of opinions. Some posts by Columbia students say they’re rankled by the fact that Barnard students get access to Columbia without going through its more competitive admissions process. In others, Barnard students insist that the classes offered at Barnard are just as rigorous as those offered at Columbia, and that the academic superiority they perceive many Columbia students to feel is undeserved. None of this bothered me. What did was the profoundly disturbing number of lewd, misogynistic, and hateful comments that sprouted up among the rest.

Some of these comments were so obscene—”slut” being one of the tamer terms used—that I couldn’t even bring myself to summarize them in later conversations. In a New York Times article, Richard Pérez-Peña likened the Bwog comments to the “hair-pulling,” and “eye-gouging” of a schoolyard brawl. I don’t know if the worst went up after he surveyed them, but the image of school children roughing each other up at recess doesn’t convey the appalling vitriol that some of these comments contain.

What struck many of us at Barnard was the focus of this hostility on Barnard women’s bodies and what they choose to do with them. Written by both men and women, the comments spotlight the purported sexual habits of Barnard students, suggesting, for example, that Barnard women spend more time refining their sexual techniques than studying. What’s worse is that this rhetoric is familiar, echoing that of Rush Limbaugh when he labeled Georgetown student Sarah Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute,” because she advocated for women’s access to contraceptives. And none of the Republican presidential candidates have censured him for them. Santorum made the excuse that Limbaugh is an entertainer and that’s what entertainers do, while Romney just said: “it’s not the language I would have used.”

The ambivalence that’s playing out in the administrations uptown is almost as bad. Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, initially diminished the hate rhetoric on Bwog, saying that the “harsh” comments “reflect the view of hardly more than just few people.” Deborah Spar, Barnard’s president, who is herself such a powerful female role model for students like me, brushed off the comments as “probably…19-year-olds writing at 4:30 in the morning.” Together in a statement they said, “we join in the sentiments expressed by so many of our wise and thoughtful students that disrespectful comments are not representative of our community.”

Such verbal shrugging falls short of what’s needed from Spar and Bollinger, especially in light of the war being waged on women in this country and the commentary of people like Limbaugh. It may be true that only a handful of Columbia students are responsible for the comments, but the fact that such ugly things are being voiced at all needs to be thoroughly, unequivocally condemned. After all, where does misogyny begin?

The comments signal a mentality that corrupts our college communities with very real consequences. A2010 Department of Justice Study found that about 25 percent of college women have been victims of sexual assault. At Barnard, I’ve watched one of my dearest friends endure a physically and verbally abusive relationship in which her partner pressured her to wear revealing clothes while disparaging her physique.

Another of my friends was told by a male Columbia pal that Barnard is an antiquated institution that fabricates gender issues out of thin air and “otherizes” men. He seemed to think Barnard widens inequities between men and women by acknowledging them. And yet, women still account for only 16.8 percent of Congress.  We are responsible for less than 20 percent of op-eds written in the United States—one of the key vehicles for thought leadership.  We make 77 cents to the male dollar. Obama’s choice to speak at Barnard highlights the fact that he thinks women’s issues are still of supreme importance.

If the objectionable posts only reflect the opinions of a handful of students, then the student bodies of both schools need to make that clear—to one another, and to the many watching this embarrassment unfold on our campus forums. According to a Columbia Spectator report, petitions have begun circulating condemning the sexist Bwog comments, and Facebook groups have been set up to “take a stand against the anonymous mud-slinging.” This is a good start, but sexism doesn’t evaporate with a signature or an on-line conversation among like-minded students.

We need to be absolutely vigilant in our efforts to quash misogyny, because it is all around us. I’ve been called a whore by a friend because I beat him at a party game. When I did policy debate in high school it was commonly known that some judges would mark female speakers down for being “bitchy” while marking male speakers up for the same behavior, calling it “assertiveness.” I have friends who complain that their boyfriends and sexual partners think that porn provides a model of healthy sexual relationships. We need to recognize as a community of young men and women that these things are not okay. They amount to a culture of misogyny that perpetuates violence and gross inequity.

The Columbia and Barnard administrations need to up the ante as well. Spar and Bollinger must make it clear that this hateful rhetoric is not to be tolerated. There are no two sides of the aisle to misogyny. The institutions are preparing 8,090 young individuals to assume roles of influence in the world. That training needs to include lessons in respect.

Viewpoint: Men seek to stop domestic violence

By ROB OKUN | Editor, Voice Male Magazine

Published: Sunday, March 04, 2012, 1:08 AM

It’s happened again. Another domestic violence death has rocked the Valley. We weep for Jessica Ann Pripstein, found slain in her apartment Feb. 20; her boyfriend charged with killing her. 

How can we comfort her family and friends? For all the vitally important work that’s been done to prevent violence in our community for decades – first by women, later joined by men – we know we can’t stop every abusive act of malice. 

The work Safe Passage, the YWCA, NELCWIT, Womanshelter/Companeras, and the Everywoman’s Center do to support survivors of violence; the efforts Moving Forward makes with perpetrators in its batterers’ intervention program; the broad reach of the domestic violence task forces of the region’s District Attorney’s offices, all have greatly improved the lives of women and have helped men and boys live lives based on a culture of peace. And yet, it’s happened again. 

In these raw early days of grieving for Jessica Pripstein, it may be small comfort to know there is an international movement of men and young men saying no to all acts of abuse against women, including murder, the act Ryan D. Welch is accused of committing. 

But the story of the White Ribbon Campaign, founded more than two decades ago in Canada, is exactly the kind we need to hear at a moment like this– when our hearts are heavy, when hope for harmony in the home may seem a distant dream. 

Across Massachusetts this week, including at a gathering at the State House on Thursday, hundreds of men and young men will don white ribbons and sign pledges stating, “From this day forward, I promise to be part of the solution in ending violence against women.” 

It was Dec. 6, 1989. Angry that he’d failed to get into engineering school, a lone gunman strode into a lecture hall at the University of Montréal and murdered 14 women whom he blamed for his academic failure. A shock wave pulsed through every segment of Canadian society – from the classroom to the barroom. 

Two years later, challenged by the women in their lives to respond to all forms of men’s violence against women, three men—the late Jack Layton, Michael Kaufman, and Ron Sluser (with others)—launched the White Ribbon Campaign (WRC) as a way for men to begin to take a stand against men’s violence against women. That first year, 1991, 100,000 wore ribbons across Canada. Today, the campaign has spread to at least 70 countries and several million men have signed pledges not to commit, condone, or remain silent in the face of domestic or sexual violence. 

At its heart an educational campaign, WRC is politically nonpartisan, seeking to reach a wide swath of men and young men. Some serve as informal ambassadors spreading the word. In the U.S., the campaign has been growing in recent years in, particularly here in Massachusetts. It is spearheaded by the Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe Inc., the Boston-based statewide coalition against sexual assault and domestic violence. It coordinates 60 local member programs around Massachusetts working with allies on, what Jane Doe organizers say, are “lasting solutions that promote safety, liberty, and dignity for victims and survivors of sexual and domestic violence.” The 2012 Massachusetts White Ribbon Day, the fifth such commemoration, will be marked by a gathering on Thursday at the State House, as well as a separate first-ever White Ribbon Campaign incorporating members of the military. 

The 2012 campaign has added a new component, a tool kit to help male high school athletic teams across the Commonwealth. “Young Men 4 Change” encourages male youth to demonstrate leadership in addressing violence against females in the school community. 

“Since many coaches and student athletes are leaders in their wider communities,” Norberg-Bohm said, “emphasizing working with male athletic teams is a powerful way to both invite and inspire other men and boys to make a public and private commitment to promote respectful, safe, and healthy relationships.” Coaches can be instrumental in helping athletes they are training to become involved in White Ribbon Day and to assist them to be responsible people on the field and off. What could the impact be of hundreds of male coaches and student athletes across the state declaring their commitment to this principle of non-violence? 

We’ll never know if Ryan Welch, charged with Jessica Pripstein’s murder, would have turned out to be a different kind of man if he had gone to a high school “promoting values of safety and respect in all relationships and situations.” What we can know is some young men will listen, are listening. 

To honor Jessica Pripstein’s memory – along with all the women who have been killed in domestic violence murders in Western Massachusetts, the Commonwealth, across the country and around the world – let’s dedicate this year’s White Ribbon Campaign to each of them. Let’s take the pledge to remember that harmony in our world begins with peace in our homes.

(Source: masslive.com)

Fact: in America, women are twice as likely to be murdered by their ex husbands or boyfriends than by strangers.

(Source: thedarkestofevils)