Just this week, Know Your IX, a fantastic new anti-sexual-violence campaign, was launched into the Great Wide World of the Interwebs. Know Your IX seeks to educate college students across the United States about their rights under Title IX, a law that prohibits universities and colleges from gender-based discrimination (it’s more than just sports, y’all). Know Your IX has created a digital repository for related information. In addition to providing plainly worded summaries of federal laws, Know Your IX empowers college students by sharing survivor-activists’ advice, from the best practices for campus change, to weighing the pros and cons of taking legal action, to dealing with the myriad issues that confront survivor-activists.
A Know Your IX contributor myself, I was humbled to click through and read the brilliant pieces written by other Know Your IX-ers. And I have been thrilled to see key constituents of the anti-sexual violence movement greet Know Your IX with open and welcoming arms. However, my excitement for this campaign extends well beyond my own involvement. Know Your IX marks an innovative step in the fight to eradicate rape on America’s college campus, as it features crowd-sourced testimony from the very people who are at the front lines of this movement. The result? A campaign that empowers change-making millennial writers and readers across the country.
Image courtesy Know Your IX.
As Know Your IX frequently reminds its readers, most of the site's contributors are not lawyers or experts. Rather than a liability, I find the student survivor-activists' perspectives to be the campaign’s greatest strength. One of Know Your IX's codirectors, Alexandra Brodsky, told me that, “there are a lot of organizations with far greater legal and political expertise than we have, but what Know Your IX has to offer is that this collective is able to address common issues that are often overlooked by those who aren't on the ground.” This direct perspective results in articles about how to build support networks, deal with school retaliation, and cope with activist burnout and self care, concerns that might not be obvious to someone who lacks first-hand experience. While organizations like the National Women’s Law Center and the ACLU feature Title IX resources, Know Your IX can address questions about the day-to-day experience of survivor-activist life.
In line with its grassroots philosophy, Know Your IX seeks to confront the stereotypes of a, "'default' survivor who is a white, straight, able-bodied, legally documented, wealthy cis woman.” Know Your IX includes articles about how to deal with prejudice as a male survivor, how to handle homophobia, resources that address sexual violence's intersection with immigration status, and advice on contending with administrative and intramovement racism. The site also provides advice on how Title IX can protect trans* students. Know Your IX has successfully provided a resource for all college students. Encouraging widespread, collaborative action by people with diverse gender identities and expressions, sexualities, classes, races, and nationalities is one of the strongest strategies in the campaign to abolish sexual violence. After all, as the Department of Education states “anyone who believes there has been an act of discrimination on the basis of sex against any person or group in a program or activity that receives [Department of Education] financial assistance may file a complaint.”
Image courtesy Know Your IX.
Excitingly, Know Your IX bridges a gap between digital resources and real-world activism. Its web presence acknowledges the importance of online networks in the current movement. According to Brodsky, “We always conceived of the campaign as an online project, in large part because that's where almost all of us connected in the first place. As a social media campaign and website, Know Your IX can reach people beyond our limited set of campuses and quickly respond to visitors' feedback.”
Interested in joining the cause? Sign up here to become a member of the Know Your IX Action Team and help spread the word. In addition to spreading its message via social media, Know Your IX encourages survivor-activists to place ads in their campus papers or to poster their campus with Title IX fact sheets. By providing guides on how to engage with activism beyond sharing or tweeting, Know Your IX encourages visitors to transform their own campuses and communities. Know Your IX’s media awareness also extends to advice on how to harness the media for the movement, and advice on avoiding being misrepresented in the media.
Image courtesy Know Your IX.
Know Your IX is taking a new step toward empowering survivor-activists through educating students on their federal civil right to keep campuses free of sexual violence, and giving students tested strategies with which to implement change. Students are reaching out to other students, and building a resource that is well-researched, decidedly relevant, and in step with current trends in digital activism. But don’t just take my word for it. Learn to know your IX here.
Break Sex Code of Silence to Boost Teens' Self-Esteem
By Jeannie Norris
WeNews guest author
Sunday, August 4, 2013
A sex-saturated culture has made it more confusing than ever for female teens, launching them into sexual orbit before they're ready, says Jeannie Norris in this excerpt from "Parenting Great Girls." She gives remedial tips.
(WOMENSENEWS)--We didn't talk much about sex when I was growing up. At school, we studied the reproductive organs in single-gender health classes. At home, my mother made sure I understood the physical changes that occurred as I made my way through puberty. But detailed discussions about the new "equipment" that my teenage friends and I were developing and how we might use it didn't happen.
Of course, adults also weren't talking openly about sex. Love and marriage, yes. But not sex. Remember "I Love Lucy?" Bedroom scenes in the show featured twin beds, and the stars were required to have at least one foot on the floor at all times.
Times have changed. Our culture is saturated with sex. Recently, I stood in front of a display of teen magazines and noted how often the word sex appeared. Sizzling headlines on glossy covers asked "Are You Sexy?" or proclaimed "Sexy Minis," "Sexy Scene Stealers" and "Sexy Hair." More headlines focused girls on everything but their brains: "Jeans That Give the Best Butt," "Be a Great Kisser," "365 Ways to Look Hot" and "Get Flatter Abs in Two Weeks."
Television also leaves little to the imagination. According to industry statistics, the number of sexual scenes on television, across all genres, "has nearly doubled since 1998," and a staggering "70 percent of all shows include some sexual content, and . . . these shows average 5.0 sexual scenes per hour." Moving to the Internet creates a more disturbing picture. Analysis of entertainment found online, for example in video games, makes it clear that females are frequently portrayed as sex objects or as the targets of sexual violence.
Earlier Exposure
To add to the problem, we're exposing children to provocative images at increasingly younger ages. Amidst controversy, Mattel discontinued Lingerie Barbie and her "heavenly bustier ensemble," but the popular Bratz dolls with their flirty, seductive looks and sexy clothing (miniskirts and fishnet stockings) keep sexualized images in front of girls as young as 4. The report of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls specifically noted, regarding Bratz dolls, that it is "worrisome when dolls designed specifically for 4- to 8-year-olds are associated with an objectified adult sexuality."
What is particularly alarming about our culture's sexualization of children is its occurrence at a time when we are seeing the onset of puberty at younger ages than ever before. One-in-six 8-year-old girls is entering puberty, compared with 1-in-100 a century ago. Researchers seeking causes are looking at possible connections to, among others, the increase of obesity in children, hormones in food and phthalates, "a ubiquitous chemical plasticiser" found in products as diverse as building materials, food packaging, garden hoses and shoe soles.
The problem, says Lynn Ponton in "The Romance of Risk: Why Teenagers Do the Things They Do," is that girls can have "fully developed women's bodies with all the associated social commentary before they even enter adolescence." In other words, girls' physical development launches them into sexual orbit long before they're emotionally mature enough to manage the social pressures that result.
As if this were not troublesome enough, society compounds the situation by sending girls distorted messages about how their emerging sexuality is related to their self-worth and personal power. According to the report of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, "Research suggests that viewing material that is sexually objectifying can contribute to body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, low self-esteem, depressive affect and even physical health problems in high-school-aged girls and in young women."
Open Dialogue
Of course, the source of a young woman's healthy sense of self is not a low-cut blouse or a short skirt. Girls will benefit when adults can take steps to slow down the pace at which adolescents are being hurled into provocative adult behaviors. Furthermore, our daughters' genuine confidence and self-esteem will develop as a result of our spending time to help them make sense of a culture that pushes every sexual boundary and depicts sex "as recreation, sex as commerce and exploitation, sex as sport, status and even violence," according to a Washington Post article.
The code of silence in effect when I was a teen won't work today. We must talk to girls early and often about what they are experiencing as they develop. If we can't find the words, there are resources to help us. Author and human sexuality educator Deborah Roffman reminds us what research in sex education consistently confirms: "Children who grow up in families where sexuality is openly discussed grow up healthier."
It has always been a parent's responsibility to help a teen understand the fallacies in the messages communicated through popular culture. Ask your daughter to make a list of her personal qualities and of the evidence that she does indeed possess them. By redirecting her to reflect upon the inner strengths and talents that will shape the course of her life, you dilute the impact of the diminishing messages that surround her.
Excerpt from "Parenting Great Girls: Giving Our Daughters the Courage to Lead Authentic and Confident Lives."
Jeannie Norris is a respected leader and advocate in the area of all-girls education. She speaks and writes extensively about the education and parenting of girls and the role of women in philanthropy.
(from UK, Wales, Scotland, London etc—SHARES the Pushback that American students and the rest of us do! We cry out for Feminist Solidarity. Email me / us at [email protected] now for gender-equal treatment in USA.) PLEASE!?
What happened when I started a feminist society at school
We wanted to challenge sexist behaviour – but we unleashed a flood of abuse from our male peers
Altrincham feminists state their case. Photograph: Jinan Younis for the Guardian
I am 17 years old and I am a feminist. I believe in genderequality, and am under no illusion about how far we are from achieving it. Identifying as a feminist has become particularly important to me since a school trip I took to Cambridge last year.
A group of men in a car started wolf-whistling and shouting sexual remarks at my friends and me. I asked the men if they thought it was appropriate for them to be abusing a group of 17-year-old girls. The response was furious. The men started swearing at me, called me a bitch and threw a cup coffee over me.
For those men we were just legs, breasts and pretty faces. Speaking up shattered their fantasy, and they responded violently to my voice.
Shockingly, the boys in my peer group have responded in exactly the same way to my feminism.
After returning from this school trip I started to notice how much the girls at my school suffer because of the pressures associated with our gender. Many of the girls have eating disorders, some have had peers heavily pressure them into sexual acts, others suffer in emotionally abusive relationships where they are constantly told they are worthless.
I decided to set up a feminist society at my school, which has previously been named one of "the best schools in the country", to try to tackle these issues. However, this was more difficult than I imagined as my all-girls school was hesitant to allow the society. After a year-long struggle, the feminist society was finally ratified.
What I hadn't anticipated on setting up the feminist society was a massive backlash from the boys in my wider peer circle. They took to Twitter and started a campaign of abuse against me. I was called a "feminist bitch", accused of "feeding [girls] bullshit", and in a particularly racist comment was told "all this feminism bull won't stop uncle Sanjit from marrying you when you leave school".
Our feminist society was derided with retorts such as, "FemSoc, is that for real? #DPMO" [don't piss me off] and every attempt we made to start a serious debate was met with responses such as "feminism and rape are both ridiculously tiring".
The more girls started to voice their opinions about gender issues, the more vitriolic the boys' abuse became. One boy declared that "bitches should keep their bitchiness to their bitch-selves #BITCH" and another smugly quipped, "feminism doesn't mean they don't like the D, they just haven't found one to satisfy them yet." Any attempt we made to stick up for each other was aggressively shot down with "get in your lane before I par [ridicule] you too", or belittled with remarks like "cute, they got offended".
I fear that many boys of my age fundamentally don't respect women. They want us around for parties, banter and most of all sex. But they don't think of us as intellectual equals, highlighted by accusations of being hysterical and over sensitive when we attempted to discuss serious issues facing women.
The situation recently reached a crescendo when our feminist society decided to take part in a national project called Who Needs Feminism. We took photos of girls standing with a whiteboard on which they completed the sentence "I need feminism because...", often delving into painful personal experiences to articulate why feminism was important to them.
When we posted these pictures online we were subject to a torrent of degrading and explicitly sexual comments.
We were told that our "militant vaginas" were "as dry as the Sahara desert", girls who complained of sexual objectification in their photos were given ratings out of 10, details of the sex lives of some of the girls were posted beside their photos, and others were sent threatening messages warning them that things would soon "get personal".
We, a group of 16-, 17- and 18-year-old girls, have made ourselves vulnerable by talking about our experiences of sexual and gender oppression only to elicit the wrath of our male peer group. Instead of our school taking action against such intimidating behaviour, it insisted that we remove the pictures. Without the support from our school, girls who had participated in the campaign were isolated, facing a great deal of verbal abuse with the full knowledge that there would be no repercussions for the perpetrators.
It's been over a century since the birth of the suffragette movement and boys are still not being brought up to believe that women are their equals. Instead we have a whole new battleground opening up online where boys can attack, humiliate, belittle us and do everything in their power to destroy our confidence before we even leave high school.
It is appalling that an institution responsible for preparing young women for adult life has actively opposed our feminist work. I feel like the school is not supporting its girls in a crucial part of their evolution into being strong, assertive, confident women. If that's the case for a well-established girls' school, what hope does this generation of women have in challenging the misogyny that still pervades our society?
If you thought the fight for female equality was over, I'm sorry to tell you that a whole new round is only just beginning.
• Altrincham Grammar made the following comment about the feminist society:
"Altrincham Grammar School for Girls has supported Jinan in setting up the society, providing administrative assistance, guidance and proactively suggesting opportunities to help members to explore this issue which they feel passionately about.
"We are committed to protecting the safety and welfare of our students, which extends to their safety online. We consider very carefully any societies that the school gives its name and support to.
"As such, we will take steps to recommend students remove words or images that they place online that could compromise their safety or that of other students at the school."
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Equal Rights Alliance, P.O. Box 59023, N. Redington Beach, Florida 33708 - [email protected]
