In "Letter To My Students," ten steps are laid out to students to help prevent sexual assault and rape on campus without administration intervention:
1. the person who has been raped should immediately go to the hospital to collect all necessary evidence against the perpetrator. Additionally, any injuries or potentially transmitted diseases need to be addressed as soon as possible.
2. Always give the potential victim the benefit of the doubt and never ask a victim if they are sure the rape occured. This is not a positive, supportive statement to make; one does not have to believe the perpetrator is capable of such things to help the victim
3. Do not let shame get in the way of going to the police or the hospital. Any feelings of guilt or shame about the victim might have are irrelevant and the focus should instead be on helping oneself, persecuting someone who has committed a crime, and protecting others from this rights violation. A victim will not be help accountable for the details of their actions surrounding the incident. Rape and/or sexual assault is a violation regardless of the victims behavior.
4. Do not joke about rape. This must work in conjunction with encouraging positive sexuality and awareness. This will include acceptance of all sexual lifestyles and preferences as well as stressing the importance of respect. People need to be encouraged to share their experiences and report sexual assault, and feel that they will be supported.
5. Encourage victims to report rapes and sexual assault and encourage others to report rapes that are heard about. It is the moral obligation of bystanders or friends to protect the community from additional harm and help a victim regain get the help necessary.
6. Do not encourage our culture of complacency about responding to disrespect and sexual violence. Actively discourage bullying, nonacceptance, and making light of serious issues. Intimacy gained from inflicting pain on others is immoral, wrong, and sometimes criminal. This should not be accepted in or society, as it inhibits true intimacy and respect.
7. There needs to be more intra and inter gender conversations about rape, and the societal pressures that encourage wrong behavior, steps that can be taken to prevent this rampant societal norm, and the structures that inhibit proactive responses.
8. Stop the social situations that encourage or facilitate rape and sexual assault. If this is to extreme, take measures to monitor party-goers and actively prevent certain people from entering based on their inebriation or past behavior.
9. Spread these rules all over campus and discuss them frequently; this type of discourse and bonding will facilitate the most memorable and effective type of information-sharing
10. Report rape that has not yet been reported, no matter when it happened. It is never too late to report this type of crime and the information can help the university analyze the extent of the issue on campus.
Steinem's Supremacy Crimes discusses the issue of white, male, middle class, heterosexuals who are the overwhelming commiters of hate crimes, impersonal, superiority-driven mass killings, and serial, sexually motivated sadistic killings. The pattern of perpetrators in these types of cases demonstrates that it's not the life experiences that are the cause, but the expectation of dominance their socio-economic status, age, and ethnicity facilitates. This connection is largely unexplored, as other causes are more popularly examined. The reasons behind these typed of offenses are often nonsensical, resulting the perpetrator's decrease in happiness or suicide. Other cases revolving around drugs, self-defense, etc. seem more reasonable and understandable. Society and the media seem generally uninterested in this pattern, whereas if women, homosexuals, or people of color engaged in these sorts of killings, analysis and awareness would be widespread. The violence amongst Americans seeking power rests on the patriarchal notion that masculinity means physical and emotion strength and domination over the weaker, more feminine individuals; this masculinity and power must be protected at all costs. By incorporating understanding, nurture, empathy, and collective bonding and decision-making, these symptoms can hopefully be reversed.
Enloe's chapter discusses whose voices are heard most often and taken seriously, a concept she relates to getting students to participate in class. She brings up Hannah Ardent, who believed that it is only through active discourse to fellow citizens and intensive listening that we can sustain a healthy political and communal system. Teachers, while aiming to encourage public participation may inadvertently silence some voices; this is a similar patter to that which takes place in political movements. Ardent believes that discussions of women's domestic and sexual rights should be silenced in public political discussions and saved only for the private realm, whereas some of her feminist counterparts believe public discourse is the only way to undermine patriarchy. This public-private dichotomy, as Enloe calls it, is a pervasive and preferred school of thought, with most women's issues being kept out of the public sphere; this limits victims of sexual violence from exposing perpetrators and societal patterns of abuse. The mechanisms keeping women from expressing themselves involved the issue of respectability. In the past, it was improper for a woman to "speak out." This respectability had to be risked by the workers who protested sexual harassment, particularly from their employers, in the public sphere.
The utilization of girls as cheap laborers has "feminized certain industrial assembly processes" while assuring the maintenance of workers' respectability and marriageability, one of the most important characteristics a woman should maintain. Just as Val discussed in class yesterday, some women are reluctant to speak publicly about their unwanted sexual encounters because of the effects this will have on her "purity." In democratization movements, sexual harassment is not used as a way of exposing male dominance concerns but as a way of humiliating a nation. If, then, a woman has any sense of national pride she will not expose her secrets. For democratization movements to be truly authentic, women need to be able to expose their rights violations and have them be considered at the same level of importance as other sovereignty, economic, and political concerns.
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