The Blame Game: Views on Sexual Harassment

For this week’s post, I wanted to touch on an article I came across online regarding an email that one college president sent out to all students and faculty to address the issue of sexual assault on campus. The way in which president Donald Eastman of Eckerd College discussed the college’s awareness campaign to minimize sexual assault relates really well to some of the major concepts we have discussed in class.

First of all, this idea of addressing the entire student body about raising awareness surrounding sexual assault and harassment made me think of Hannah’s post about the It’s On Us vs. Carry That Weight campaigns and the differences between the impact that two campaigns had. As Joyce and Harwood found, the people who produce the message really affects the way the audience evaluated the content of the message (2014). I would say that a mass email coming from a college president who has no known history of being affected by sexual harassment probably doesn’t have a very strong message-consistent impact on the student body. When you really analyze the content of the email that President Eastman sent out, it appears that the content was impactful, however, impactful in all the wrong ways.

President Eastman suggests that sexual assault and harassment incidents are, “almost always preceded by consumption, often heavy consumption, of alcohol, often by everyone involved in them.” (Arata, 2014) The relationship between sexual assault and alcohol consumption made me think of the movie we watched in class about drinking culture on college campuses. One of the main points of the film was that drunken sex is glamorized in popular culture, like in alcohol advertisements and teen movies, but the negative consequences of combining alcohol and sex are never really shown. President Eastman suggests that students of Eckerd College can help prevent sexual harassment on their campus by doing two, “relatively simple things” which include: 

          1) Limiting consumption of alcohol and encouraging friends to do the same

          2) Be aware of the “dramatic and often negative psychological effects of sexual activity without commitment" (Arata, 2014). 

Essentially President Eastman is suggesting that students should abstain from drinking and having pre-marital sex in order for sexual assault to vanish from college campuses. This really struck me as problematic because, as we have seen from the documentary we watched, asking college students to abstain completely from drinking and sex is just plain unrealistic. What is interesting to look at is how students responded to President Eastman’s email.

A large community of Eckerd students took to twitter to express their opinions about President Eastman’s suggestions. The majority of the students felt that Eastman’s assumptions that casual sex and alcohol consumption inadvertently leads to rape, was patronizing and victim-blaming (Arata, 2014). What’s interesting is that #victimblaming was a popular hashtag used amongst students in response to the email. One student said, “Let’s see…@eckerdcollege, you blame sexual assault on offenders who use alcohol as their facilitator, not drinking” (Arata, 2014).

Clearly students feel that President Eastman was wrong to attribute sexual assault to alcohol and not the physical human being committing the crime. This idea of placing blame immediately made me think of the Ferguson article we read about promiscuity and responsibility in regards to sexual harassment. Ferguson found that when exposed to portrayals of promiscuous women, viewers thought of sexual assault victims as more responsible and as of having fewer traumas (2005). How do highly sexualized alcohol advertisements fit into this picture? In a large portion of alcohol advertisements women are portrayed as promiscuous and using their sexuality to gain attention all while simultaneously consuming alcohol. Although sexual assault is not referenced in these commercials, the promiscuous way in which they portray women after they consume alcohol is likely to lead viewers to believe that they are more responsible for and sexual harassment they might receive during a night of drinking (Ferguson, 2005). On one end, we have college students constantly being exposed to advertisements that portray women in this promiscuous way, suggesting that they are to blame for any sexual traumas they might encounter. On the other end we have people like President Eastman who are suggesting that alcohol consumption is to blame. While I think President Eastman’s ideas about preventing sexual assault seem extreme, maybe toning down the glamorized relationship between drinking and sex might be a good place to start especially in advertising, movies, and popular television shows. Maybe decreasing the idea that drinking leads to female promiscuity and thus glamorous sex, might change society’s ideas that drinking and sex come hand in hand and thus prevent sexual harassment when one party does not share similar ideas. Or perhaps this happy medium is too utopian of an idea and more conversations on college campuses should be had that point to how advertising associates drinking and sex. What do you guys think?

References 

Arata, E. (2014, November 25). College President Blames Rape On Student Drinking And Casual Sex. Elite Daily. http://elitedaily.com/news/world/president-blames-rape-on-sex-and-booze/863442/

Ferguson, T. Berlin, J., Noles, E., Johnson, J., Reed, W., & Spicer, C. V. (2005). Variation in the application of the ‘promiscuous female’ stereotype and the nature of the application domain: Influences on sexual harassment judgments after exposure to the Jerry Springer Show. Sex Roles, 52(7-8). 477-487.

Joyce, N.,  & Harwood, J. (2014). Context and identification in persuasive mass communication. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications,
26(1), 50-57. doi: 10.1027/1864-1105/a000110

Masculine Drinking Habits

Something I wanted to talk about in this week’s blog post was the drinking culture, especially in college and how it relates to masculinity. The video we watched in class was a real eye opener when discussing the dangers of the excessive drinking culture in college. I think especially for men binge drinking is dangerous on college campuses. There is competition between males to out-drink one another and prove their manly-hood by drinking until the point where they black-out and put their life in danger. I know a lot of people throw out the word, “black-out” like it’s funny when it happens and you don’t remember your night. But in reality, blacking-out is caused by oxygen not being able to be transported to all parts of the brain so one’s brain shuts down the memory producing part of your brain to keep you alive. So really it’s not a funny manner and is more serious than just forgetting your night. 

Something in the news that relates to this topic is the recent suspension of Greek Life at West Virginia University. At a frat party, a male student was found unconscious and later died from alcohol consumption. This relates to the video we watched in class discussing how males are pressured to drink large amounts of alcohol to prove themselves as male. Not only does the video we watched in class mirror this event but also most of the readings discussing male sexuality relate to this. Males need to be strong and the aggressors according the male scripts of Kim et al., and if they want to be desirable by females they need to exemplify Cad characteristics that may take on the “bad-boy” images displayed by binge drinking according to Taylor’s article. Since when has putting your life in danger become a way men feel they need to take part in to fit in with society?

In regards to the incident, the Dean of Students has shut down greek life for the rest of the semester. But in reality, what is this going to do? It’s not just greek life that drinks excessively and certainly wont change the way males drink in the future by shutting it down for the last two months of the semester. People will find other ways to consume alcohol whether it’s in a greek life setting or not. Something else needs to be done to the drinking culture at colleges.

I mentioned in class about a guy I went to high school with you recently passed away from excessive drinking mixed with stimulant drugs such as Adderall. His mother is working to stop this kind of behaviors at Universities. She talked about how when she went to the University of Michigan the drinking culture wasn’t nearly as excessive as it is now. Also, she mentions that the combo her son passed away from wasn’t out of the norm, this is something a lot of male students partake in to drink heavy amount of alcohol and she explains how it has to stop. Below is an article about her son and her hopes of starting a new campaign to combat these kinds of behaviors on campuses across the country. 

http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/09/report_former_u-m_football_man.html

This whole epidemic of binge drinking on college campuses and students putting their lives at risk it disheartening. There needs to be changes done, but I don’t know how it is possible to change something so prominent in society. 

Kim, J. L., et al. (2007). From sex to sexuality: Exposing the heterosexual script on primetime network television. Journal of Sex Research.

Taylor, L. D. (2008). "Cads, dads, and magazines: Women’s sexual preferences and articles."

What ever happened to J-14?

During last week's class conversation we talked a lot about sex (obviously). More specifically BDSM in media and Sam brought up the ways magazines have covered sex and that particular subject which got me thinking a lot about magazines in general. I'm not sure how many of you all grew up reading teen magazines. Maybe it was just a thing at my middle school but they were kind of a huge deal. Not even in a fad type of way, they were just genuinely a part of our (girls) everyday lives--so prevalent that we kind of just took them for granted. Point is, as we have talked more about sex and magazines in this class, I remember that these magazines, especially J-14, served as a kind of handbook for learning about romantic relationships and the beginning stages of a sexual relationship (kissing, making out, etc.). 

Hot topics or favorite magazine sections back in my days usually had to do with either quizzes, embarrassing moments, and advice columns. Above is a throwback cover of J-14 that was not uncommon to look like for my middle school years (2004-ish). A lot of the type of  "sizzling secrets" that were included advice on how to initiate or respond to boys advances to kiss you and that kind of stuff. However, based off from what I can tell about most recent J-14 articles, the conversation might not be as sex-centric as they used to. Disclaimer: I can really only go off of their online portal for J-14 which still has a lot of content that they feature in their monthly magazine. However, a lot of what can be seen on www.j-14.com pertains mainly to celebrity gossip and less to teens in the context of sexual relationships. Before, there were all types of articles that described embarrassing moments while hooking up with your man and the best way to get your crush to kiss you. I wonder if there is actually a change in this content. If so, could it be that "teens" are considered teens at a younger age now? In another class, we addressed that tweens or pre-teens now adopt tendencies and interests that the traditional "teen" is usually seen to take on. I wonder if this absence of sex-related (even if they were only ever mild) topics stems from an increase in younger readership. Below is an example of a 2014 issue of the same magazine which does feature some segments of body image but other than that does not really have any references to something that could be potentially about sex.


In any case, I think that in the context of sexuality and media, it is probably important to think about magazines like J-14 as some of the beginning media types that young teens engage with. Are they even a thing anymore? We have read in literature that media can serve as a super peer for teens in the context of sexual education. As we read in Brown et al's work (2005), earlier maturing girls are more likely to take interest in media with sexual content rather than girls who bloom later. However, if media such as J-14 is, in a way, kind of designed to be a super peer for girls and does not do a wholesome job of presenting facts and testimonials for safe sex, could it be the case that girls will seek it elsewhere? Maybe this print media type is outdated but I'm guessing this would also mean that young girls would seek sexual guidance from other, more mature sources which could have different implications altogether.

Works Cited

Brown, J. D., Halpern, C. T., & L'Engle, K. L. (2005). Mass media as a sexual super peer for early maturing girls. Journal of Adolescent Health, 36(5), 420-427.

50 Shades of Heterosexual Scripts?

After reading the Weiss article, I could not help but immediately think of the Fifty Shades of Grey series. What started as a single novel soon developed into a trilogy. The books have since spiraled into a full blown franchise with a film rendition set to come out this Valentine’s day. It seems as though this series has gotten constant media attention across varying outlets. What strikes me most about this franchise, however, is the polarizing response it has gotten. On one side, the books have topped best-seller lists around the world and major companies, such as OPI, have tied their brand to the films and everything the stand for by creating things like Fifty Shades of Grey nail polish collections (yes, that's a thing). On the other side, there is shock and awe over the content these books have placed in the mainstream media. The film faced major production set backs as it was near impossible to find actors and actresses who would sign on to play these roles. And, perhaps more relevant to this class, the content and themes presented in the books have struck a nerve with many women who consider themselves “feminists."

I came across a very interesting opinion piece in The Guardian written by a woman named Sophie Morgan who proudly claims to simultaneously be a feminist and a sexual submissive. The points she makes in her article greatly relate to the concepts Weiss discusses about SM becoming problematically mainstream as opposed to politically progressive (2006). Her article counters many points that Weiss makes which suggest that often times BDSM is only understood in terms of pathologizing or understanding S&M behaviors as a kind of sickness (2006).  Sophie writes, “The first thing to say is that I’m not broken. I grew up in a nice middle-class home…there is no deep-seated trauma in my past that has exacerbated my love of being degraded” (Morgan, 2012). She counters Weiss's argument which states that being submissive denotes a type of person and not a practice when she says, “But being submissive is only one facet of the person I am” (Morgan, 2012).

In discussing being submissive as only part of the person that she is, Sophie also divulges into a discussion surrounding the problematic gender scripts that BDSM representations are enforcing as they become more prevalent in mainstream media. She notes that one of her biggest frustrations with the success of Fifty Shades of Grey is, “that there is so much of the main relationship that plays into the misconception that a sexual relationship based around BDSM is, at its core, an abusive one” (Morgan, 2012). Her argument is in line with Weiss’s ideas is that Fifty Shades of Grey is accepted across the majority of audiences because it presents these kinky concepts inline with the heterosexual scripts that are so dominant in our media. Kim et al. discuss these scripts that portray women as submissive, passive partners, and men as aggressively pursuing sex (2007). In the book, main character Ana is passive, sexually innocent, and looks to Christian Grey as this all powerful sexual god to teach her everything and anything there is to know about sex all the while waiting for him to make every first move. What Sophie interestingly points out is that the SM is framed in a way that forgets to consider that women are “enjoying rather than enduring” these sexually submissive acts. I think we need to cut the ties between depictions of BDSM in the media and the heterosexual scripts that seemingly always accompany them and thus, normalize them. Perhaps if depictions of BDSM in the media were framed in a way that showed women in power and as deciding who to submit to and enjoying rather than enduring, we could reach the sexual freedom stage that Weiss discusses on her timeline and avoid pathologizing submissives as “sick.”  

References

Kim, J. L., et al. (2007). From sex to sexuality: Exposing the heterosexual script on primetime network television. Journal of Sex Research.

Morgan, S. (2012, August 25). I like submissive sex but Fifty Shades is not about fun: it’s abuse. The Guardian,            http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/aug/25/fifty-shades-submissive-sophie-morgan

Weiss, M. (2006). Mainstreaming kink: The politics of BDSM representation in U.S. popular media. Journal of Homosexuality, 50(2/3), 103-132. 

Cosmo: BDSM vs. Rough Sex ... Normalized?

Reading the new issue of Cosmo this month I came across an article called “Some like it Rough” which ties in perfectly (pun intended) to our discussion of Weiss’s article “Mainstreaming Kink: The Politics of BDSM Representation in U.S. Popular Media.”

This article asserts that “liking it rough” is currently pervasive and normalized in mainstream culture and focuses on countering the common view that wanting to be dominated in the bedroom makes one “anti-feminist.” The article begins with a personal narrative where the author discusses her experiences with discussions and portrayals of “rough sex” in the real world and the media. She notes that she first ran in to the discussion of “rough sex” at a party, “I was making small talk with some girls I didn’t even know too well…One of the girls mentioned wishing her boyfriend were rougher in bed … Even wise-decorous party guest seemed to have something to say about say, slapping, and spanking during sex ” (Atik, 2014).  The author notes that “rough sex” is now cocktail conversation providing evidence that BDSM practices have worked their way into the mainstream (Atik, p. 169, 2014). She then goes on to state that many women are interested in forceful sex siting a recent study at North Texas University that found that found, “as many as 57% of women are turned on by the idea of forceful sex” (Atik, 2014). Next the author turns to discussions of the way “forceful sex” has claims that when the book first became popular it was primarily consumed via e-book, being the first book to sell one million copies for the Kindle thus “suggesting that many fans weren’t cool with friends coming over and seeing a fetish-themed book jacket on their coffee table” (Atik, p. 169, 2014). The author then follows up with a discussion of how, three-years later, the racy trailer for the film premiered on morning time Today,“making it official: Kinky rough sex has gone mainstream” (Atik, p. 169, 2014).

The next portion of the article discusses why being dominated is physically and psychologically arousing and it argues that if you, “like it rough you can still be a feminist” (Atik, 2014). The author sites a sex and relationship therapist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to strengthen her argument that wanting to being dominated in the bedroom stems from a biological sexual desire stating, “Physical size and strength and masculinity are essential differences between men and women…and those kinds of differences are going to be erotic,” and “When you’re scared or on edge, blood circulation increases, your pupils dilate, your whole body is in a heightened state of arousal...when you ad a sexual component this can be very pleasurable”(Atik, 2014).

 Next she reaffirms her argument that being dominated in bed does not mean you want to be dominated in any other facet of your life by siting studies about how many women who play dominant roles in the work world or in their relationships enjoy being dominated in bed (Atik, 2014). She ends with the statement, “isn’t being empowered to do what you want—even when it isn’t what you feel is expected of you as a strong, self-possessed woman- what good sex is all about (Atik, 2014)?" 

I find the frame of this article to be beneficial to the mainstreaming of BDSM practices because it asserts that BDSM practices are normal, just that women being dominated in them aren’t and should be. In Weiss’s article about normalizing BDSM in the media she states, “The time line for normalizing minority sexualities is as follows: “first representation and visibility, next acceptance or tolerance of the minority, then an empathetic form of understanding, and finally sexual freedom” (Weiss, 2006).  The discussion of BDSM like action as already being a part of mainstream culture (at parties, on Kindle, on the Today Show, in films) plants the seed that it is indeed normal to participate in BDSM practices, even it isn’t actually one hundred percent accepted yet. This article first and foremost gives BDSM practices representation and visibility because it is in Cosmo is a widely consumed popular media source for men and women who are primarily sexually active, and because it discusses other media forms where BDSM practices are visible. It also presents BDSM practices as being a normal thing to explore, and as being something that many people are actually interested in and willing to discuss in everyday settings. By siting researched data, personal experience, and media portrayals and consumption that advocate for the practices of BDSM, particularly for being dominated as a women (if that’s what your into) the author gives the audience concrete information to help them be see, accept, tolerate, empathize, and create the sexual freedom that Weiss discusses in her article.

My one critique of this article is that it does not explicitly mention BDSM or the BDSM community even though addresses different practices which go under the umbrella of BDSM such as spanking, degrading sex talk, role play, bondage, and choking. There is small section at the very end of the article that is a kind of guide book of "How to play rough” (Atik, 2014). This section takes a page right out of the BDSM community offering guidance such as  establishing what is ok, and having a safe word, and safe methods for beginners interesting in choking and bondage without siting the community at all. It seems that using the term BDSM is almost too abrasive, and its possible that it was not included because it might may scare off readers and deter them from engaging in these kinds of acts. While I believe that this article is a good starting point, one that may be appealing to a wide audience, the fact that BDSM or references to the BDSM community are not explicitly stated shows that while some BDSM practices are gaining mainstream normalization BDSM in total is still a minority sextuality and something that people are afraid of being explicit about (pun intetned, yet again;).

Link to the article online

References

Atik, C. (2014, November). Some like it rough. Cosmopolitan. pp. 169-171.

Weiss, M. (2006). Mainstreaming kink: The politics of BDSM representation in U.S. popular media. Journal of Homosexuality, 50(2/3), 103-132.