As part of my Intro to Gender Studies class, we have to come up with a topic we've always been interested in and research it. Part of the project requirements include sharing information and teaching others as well as learning about the topic yourself. So I wanted to share some information here, hoping that it'll help someone somewhere.
Here is a link that lists hotlines and organizations that can help a huge range of people. There are LGBTQ resources, teen resources, and adult resources. Domestic violence (or dating violence, in the teen years) doesn't discriminate. It effects us all.
“About 72% of 8th and 9th graders report dating;... and 1 in 10 adolescents reports being a victim of physical dating violence. Over 40% of young people who report they are victims of dating violence say that the incidents occurred in a school building or on school grounds.” (here)
“Nearly one in six (7th grade) students surveyed reported being a victim of physical dating violence in the last six months.” (here)
“Teens' caution in talking to adults might be warranted. Our surveys of a sample of adults in Michigan found that over 53% of mothers and 62% of fathers stated that they would urge their child to talk to their dating partner about dating abuse if he or she came to them about the issue.... Over 29% of mothers and 32% of fathers stated they would point out the good things in their child's relationship with the partner.”
“...[O]nly 8% of high school students used formal sources of help, such as teachers, counselors, medical personnel, or police, when confronted with dating aggression.”
(both from here)
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Writing and Learning
One thing I love about life is that there is always more to learn. Textbooks, history books, even fiction novels have something to teach us. Possibly the most important lesson I've learned so far is that, despite efforts to help, there will never be enough support for those in need. Homeless shelters will never be empty.There will always be a large number of unwanted children in the foster system or orphanages. And domestic violence shelters will always have a waiting list.
A few weeks ago, I interviewed a woman who manages a domestic violence shelter. She told me that even with federal money and private donations, the shelter is always in need. That the women and children living there, and on the waiting list, will always have to go without something or other because sometimes just feeding them is tough. So I took a list from her, a list of things they're always in need of. Besides the obvious things like business clothes, casual clothes, toiletries, and feminine products, they're looking for childhood items. As an example we laughed over, what kid wants to eat Cheerios instead of sugary Frosted Flakes? Drink water over apple juice?
The items many people fail to consider are the items shelters are in most need of. The food that has a short shelf life. Milk, bread, juice, fruit. So many people donate canned goods and pasta that they have overloads of those items and not simple things to mix the routine up a bit, like taco seasoning or boxed cake mixes and frosting.
So if you're thinking about donating clothes or anything you don't need anymore, skip Goodwill. There are always plenty of donations for Goodwill. Instead, Google a domestic violence shelter in your area and send your donations to them. Even if it's only a bag with a few shirts and some child toys, they'll appreciate it more than a corporation will.
A few weeks ago, I interviewed a woman who manages a domestic violence shelter. She told me that even with federal money and private donations, the shelter is always in need. That the women and children living there, and on the waiting list, will always have to go without something or other because sometimes just feeding them is tough. So I took a list from her, a list of things they're always in need of. Besides the obvious things like business clothes, casual clothes, toiletries, and feminine products, they're looking for childhood items. As an example we laughed over, what kid wants to eat Cheerios instead of sugary Frosted Flakes? Drink water over apple juice?
The items many people fail to consider are the items shelters are in most need of. The food that has a short shelf life. Milk, bread, juice, fruit. So many people donate canned goods and pasta that they have overloads of those items and not simple things to mix the routine up a bit, like taco seasoning or boxed cake mixes and frosting.
So if you're thinking about donating clothes or anything you don't need anymore, skip Goodwill. There are always plenty of donations for Goodwill. Instead, Google a domestic violence shelter in your area and send your donations to them. Even if it's only a bag with a few shirts and some child toys, they'll appreciate it more than a corporation will.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Thoughts from my Crimes Against Women Class
As a quick summary of the first week of classes, I’ve found myself looking forward to waking up at 7:30am MWF and getting to my classes. I’ve never felt this strong drive to learn and fill myself with knowledge before. It’s both exciting and frightening. I have this feeling that I could happily add more classes to my college career, dragging it out indefinitely while taking different classes pertaining to social work, sociology, and women and gender studies. The thought is scary, since they cost lots of money at my school, but also exciting when I think of all the knowledge I would have and be able to use to help people.
All of my quotes are taken from a book required for my Crimes Against Women course at Grand Valley State University. The Invisible Woman: Gender, Crime, and Justice, third edition published in 2007, written by Joanne Belknap. It is a very well researched and documented book, so the quotes I use and information I present in my blog post are going to be treated as near fact (or, if not fact, then strongly supported statements.) Anything that is in parentheses inside a quote “(example)for you” is a part of the quote. Anything in brackets [example] is something I added to help the context of the quote. I’m also going to use the same headings that Belknap uses in her book, merely because they are spot on.
Now, onto the real topic of the blog post. As Crimes Against Women comes close to starting it’s second week, I have to read the first chapter of Belknap’s book. In the beginning I was very excited. I want to know everything I can possibly learn about gender studies and why things happen, as well as what I can do to help prevent and fix the problems in society. Upon reading to about the halfway mark of the first chapter, my stomach starts to fill with dread. I now know that my feelings toward this class are going to be love/HATE. I’m going to love the knowledge and what it’s going to help me accomplish, but I’m also going to despise the knowledge it gives me because it’s so terrible and nauseating.
Getting past the introduction to the chapter, I started taking notes and paying close attention to the research Belknap has done. All of her information is very well supported, and completely changes my view of society. “The title of this book was chosen to reflect the strong theme of invisibility in the three major areas covered in the book: (1) women and girls as offenders, (2) women and girls as victims, and (3) women professionals working in the crime-processing system” [pg2].
Introduction to Chapter 1
When you think about statistics, do you doubt them or doubt the people who conducted the research? If the stats are quoted in a valid, reliable source [say a scientific journal or a well-known and well-respected news channel], you probably believe they are at least mostly correct and unbiased. See, in the twenty-first century, people like to delude themselves into believing that this world [not including the third world countries] has progressed significantly. And it has, but not as much as you may like to believe. If you pay attention to headlines on news websites, you’ll see the constant complaints and battles over unequal pay between genders and the shunning of anyone who doesn’t fit into one neat little category. While we’ve made progress past women being kept in the home as pets or homemakers, we haven’t made this world a place that values perfect equality.
While reading the first few pages of this book [not even the complete first chapter], my viewpoint has changed drastically. I’ve now decided I’m going to doubt every statistic I read until I do my own research and find that many scientific sources agree with the numbers. Unless I find that multiple scientific sources believe approximately the same thing, I’ll be ignoring the panic-inducing headlines while those around me fall into the trap of the media. My reasoning? Belknap states “Until the late 1970s, it was highly unusual for these studies [studies about what causes crime, primarily in juvenile males] to include girls (or women) in their samples. Although gender is the strongest factor for indicating a person’s likelihood to break the law, these (almost exclusively male) researchers rarely thought it necessary to include women or girls in their samples” [pg 3]. Time seemed to slow when I read this and it took me a handful of minutes to actually process what she had written. People in this world trust researchers and scientists to be unbiased and all-encompassing in their research, yet they knowingly [purposely!] leave out a whole gender from their studies? While a part of me rebels at the idea, the realistic side of my mind agrees. In our idealistic world, everyone in a position of power is honest, hard working, and wants to make this world the best place it can be, especially for the coming generations. But if you pay attention to politics, even just enough to roll your eyes at the commercials, you’ll see that the system we rely on is corrupted and subjective.
“Women and Girls as Offenders”
Belknap quotes another researcher when she says “Criminology theories were constructed ‘by men, about men’ and explain male behavior rather than human behavior” [pg 3]. Being raised to believe everyone is equal, it took me a few minutes to believe the truth in this statement. But she’s right. If so little research or inclusion in research has been done on the female side of criminology [the study of crime], how can female behavior be included in theories that have been made? They can’t! Let’s face reality: the female incarceration rate will soon rival the male incarceration rate because it is growing so much faster than men’s, but we don’t know why because so few people are studying the trends [pg 5]. Belknap believes studying why females offend less frequently than males could provide valuable clues for explaining and dealing with men’s criminal activity [pg 3].
“Whereas social class, access to opportunities to learn crime, and area of residence in a city have been used to explain boys’ likelihood of turning to crime, the causes of girls’ criminality were rarely examined until more recent years” and even then “when researchers did include girls in their samples it was typically to see how girls fit into the boys’ equations [theories of why they turn to crime]” [pg 4, 3]. The main focus is still on males, even though we claim to be a world of much more equal standing.
A large area of inequality in female offenders is the correctional facilities they are provided. “The prisons and delinquent institutions for women and girls, both historically and presently, vary drastically from those for boys and men, mostly to the disadvantage of girls. Moreover, historically, treatment and punishment issues/opportunities differed vastly for women based on race” [pg 4]. I wish I could understand why, if females are such delicate creatures who aren’t capable of the same treatment and work as men, are females given less advanced facilities and programs to help them? Belknap blames the difference on lack of interest [pg 5].
“Women and Girls as Victims”
It’s no secret that girls are taught to fear walking home alone in the dark. In fact the lesson is reinforced everywhere, especially with “gentlemen” who offer to see their dates home safely. I’m not saying I would turn down an offer to be escorted home, because I am quite the sucker for the strong male who wants to protect and care for his woman. What I am saying is that young girls shouldn’t be taught this lesson to begin with. Belknap calls it a “‘gendered’ form of victimization” [pg 5].
Other examples of gendered victimizations include birth control methods, breast implants, and egg harvesting for infertile couples, all of which at one time had not been studied thoroughly enough to be proven safe or unsafe [pgs 5-6]. She quotes two other scholars when she says they “identify Dow Corning (the largest supplier of silicone breast implants), plastic surgeons, and ‘an apparently indifferent government’ as they key players in allowing this dangerous procedure [breast implants]… These scholars document that the FDA approved these implants despite inadequate research assessing their safety. In 1991, rather than recalling the procedure until adequate safety testing could be conducted, they simply called for more testing” [pg 5]. Medical professionals, government professionals, and government agencies are all being trusted with the safety of civilians and the safety of the coming generations, yet they approved products that hadn’t been thoroughly tested. She quotes from another source that “The committee argued that they chose not to end or restrict silicone implants- despite the suspected risks- because they were a public health necessity both after cancer surgery and simply to enlarge breasts” [pg 5-6]. I don’t know about any one else, but the idea that having plastic surgery is a “necessity” in this materialistic society infuriates me, especially since there are other options for breast cancer survivors.
As for the practice of paying women to go through intense drug therapy to produce eggs for infertile couples? This just has me shaking my head. Aren’t there enough unwanted, starving, homeless, family-less children in this world without putting a young woman’s life in possible danger? “To date, little is known about the long-term effects of this intrusive medical procedure of “harvesting” eggs. Indeed, it may be that the heavy drug treatment used to produce numerous eggs, temporarily “throwing” these women into hyper ovulation, may increase these “donors’” chance not only of ovarian cancer but also of infertility problems themselves later on” [pg 6]. This statement blows my mind. Even with the lack of evidence pointing towards safe or unsafe, throwing off your body’s natural rhythm by pumping it full of unneeded medication is not healthy. Belknap states that this practice “may well end up being classified as a form of organizational crime” [pg 6].
“Women as Professionals in the Crime-Processing System”
I’m actually going to skip this section, since I’ve already mentioned inequalities in professions. You can find all sorts of information in the news about professional inequality problems.
“Blurring of Boundaries of Women’s Experiences in Crime”
During the interviewing Belknap did of women prisoners and policewomen, she noticed that the categories of victims, offenders, and professionals usually overlapped. The interviews “included numerous disclosures by these workers of having survived incest, extrafamilial child sexual abuse, stranger rape, and woman battering in intimate relationships. (A number of the women police officers discussed battering perpetrated by their police officer husbands.)” [pg 7]. Many of Belknap’s interviews showed her that there may be a parallel between prior victimization and the following offending and incarceration. Professional women in the crime-processing system were also [usually] survivors of some kind of abuse, which could be their reasoning for joining law enforcement like they did, though the relationship between victimization and choice of professional career hasn’t been studied or researched [pg 7].
“Historically, the crime-processing system that chronically failed to respond to battered women as victims responded harshly to them as ‘offenders’” [pg 7]. Many times, the battered women who end up killing their abusers in self-defense also typically end up with harsher and longer sentences than their male counterparts who killed their wives [pg 7-8]. “A more recent study documents how girls tried and convicted at the deepest end of the system, those tried and convicted as adults… often experience extreme victimizations ignored by the same systems that treat their offending at the most serious levels” [pg 8]. The system who should have protected them and taken care of them after their victimization failed them, and failed them twice over when they took extreme measures to punish those who acted out for the attention they deserved. I’m not saying that breaking laws is the way to go to get attention if you’ve been victimized, but that is what happens.
I’ve run out of steam to keep writing. These are the only sections I felt driven to write about so far, but the writing has exhausted me for now. I had to share the information I’ve been given, and express my outrage at all of the stupid inequalities that can be prevented with very simple procedures. Equal studying of male and female behavior would be the very beginning of the solution.
So much can change with the effort! Please join me in being part of the solution and not increasing the problem!
All of my quotes are taken from a book required for my Crimes Against Women course at Grand Valley State University. The Invisible Woman: Gender, Crime, and Justice, third edition published in 2007, written by Joanne Belknap. It is a very well researched and documented book, so the quotes I use and information I present in my blog post are going to be treated as near fact (or, if not fact, then strongly supported statements.) Anything that is in parentheses inside a quote “(example)for you” is a part of the quote. Anything in brackets [example] is something I added to help the context of the quote. I’m also going to use the same headings that Belknap uses in her book, merely because they are spot on.
Now, onto the real topic of the blog post. As Crimes Against Women comes close to starting it’s second week, I have to read the first chapter of Belknap’s book. In the beginning I was very excited. I want to know everything I can possibly learn about gender studies and why things happen, as well as what I can do to help prevent and fix the problems in society. Upon reading to about the halfway mark of the first chapter, my stomach starts to fill with dread. I now know that my feelings toward this class are going to be love/HATE. I’m going to love the knowledge and what it’s going to help me accomplish, but I’m also going to despise the knowledge it gives me because it’s so terrible and nauseating.
Getting past the introduction to the chapter, I started taking notes and paying close attention to the research Belknap has done. All of her information is very well supported, and completely changes my view of society. “The title of this book was chosen to reflect the strong theme of invisibility in the three major areas covered in the book: (1) women and girls as offenders, (2) women and girls as victims, and (3) women professionals working in the crime-processing system” [pg2].
Introduction to Chapter 1
When you think about statistics, do you doubt them or doubt the people who conducted the research? If the stats are quoted in a valid, reliable source [say a scientific journal or a well-known and well-respected news channel], you probably believe they are at least mostly correct and unbiased. See, in the twenty-first century, people like to delude themselves into believing that this world [not including the third world countries] has progressed significantly. And it has, but not as much as you may like to believe. If you pay attention to headlines on news websites, you’ll see the constant complaints and battles over unequal pay between genders and the shunning of anyone who doesn’t fit into one neat little category. While we’ve made progress past women being kept in the home as pets or homemakers, we haven’t made this world a place that values perfect equality.
While reading the first few pages of this book [not even the complete first chapter], my viewpoint has changed drastically. I’ve now decided I’m going to doubt every statistic I read until I do my own research and find that many scientific sources agree with the numbers. Unless I find that multiple scientific sources believe approximately the same thing, I’ll be ignoring the panic-inducing headlines while those around me fall into the trap of the media. My reasoning? Belknap states “Until the late 1970s, it was highly unusual for these studies [studies about what causes crime, primarily in juvenile males] to include girls (or women) in their samples. Although gender is the strongest factor for indicating a person’s likelihood to break the law, these (almost exclusively male) researchers rarely thought it necessary to include women or girls in their samples” [pg 3]. Time seemed to slow when I read this and it took me a handful of minutes to actually process what she had written. People in this world trust researchers and scientists to be unbiased and all-encompassing in their research, yet they knowingly [purposely!] leave out a whole gender from their studies? While a part of me rebels at the idea, the realistic side of my mind agrees. In our idealistic world, everyone in a position of power is honest, hard working, and wants to make this world the best place it can be, especially for the coming generations. But if you pay attention to politics, even just enough to roll your eyes at the commercials, you’ll see that the system we rely on is corrupted and subjective.
“Women and Girls as Offenders”
Belknap quotes another researcher when she says “Criminology theories were constructed ‘by men, about men’ and explain male behavior rather than human behavior” [pg 3]. Being raised to believe everyone is equal, it took me a few minutes to believe the truth in this statement. But she’s right. If so little research or inclusion in research has been done on the female side of criminology [the study of crime], how can female behavior be included in theories that have been made? They can’t! Let’s face reality: the female incarceration rate will soon rival the male incarceration rate because it is growing so much faster than men’s, but we don’t know why because so few people are studying the trends [pg 5]. Belknap believes studying why females offend less frequently than males could provide valuable clues for explaining and dealing with men’s criminal activity [pg 3].
“Whereas social class, access to opportunities to learn crime, and area of residence in a city have been used to explain boys’ likelihood of turning to crime, the causes of girls’ criminality were rarely examined until more recent years” and even then “when researchers did include girls in their samples it was typically to see how girls fit into the boys’ equations [theories of why they turn to crime]” [pg 4, 3]. The main focus is still on males, even though we claim to be a world of much more equal standing.
A large area of inequality in female offenders is the correctional facilities they are provided. “The prisons and delinquent institutions for women and girls, both historically and presently, vary drastically from those for boys and men, mostly to the disadvantage of girls. Moreover, historically, treatment and punishment issues/opportunities differed vastly for women based on race” [pg 4]. I wish I could understand why, if females are such delicate creatures who aren’t capable of the same treatment and work as men, are females given less advanced facilities and programs to help them? Belknap blames the difference on lack of interest [pg 5].
“Women and Girls as Victims”
It’s no secret that girls are taught to fear walking home alone in the dark. In fact the lesson is reinforced everywhere, especially with “gentlemen” who offer to see their dates home safely. I’m not saying I would turn down an offer to be escorted home, because I am quite the sucker for the strong male who wants to protect and care for his woman. What I am saying is that young girls shouldn’t be taught this lesson to begin with. Belknap calls it a “‘gendered’ form of victimization” [pg 5].
Other examples of gendered victimizations include birth control methods, breast implants, and egg harvesting for infertile couples, all of which at one time had not been studied thoroughly enough to be proven safe or unsafe [pgs 5-6]. She quotes two other scholars when she says they “identify Dow Corning (the largest supplier of silicone breast implants), plastic surgeons, and ‘an apparently indifferent government’ as they key players in allowing this dangerous procedure [breast implants]… These scholars document that the FDA approved these implants despite inadequate research assessing their safety. In 1991, rather than recalling the procedure until adequate safety testing could be conducted, they simply called for more testing” [pg 5]. Medical professionals, government professionals, and government agencies are all being trusted with the safety of civilians and the safety of the coming generations, yet they approved products that hadn’t been thoroughly tested. She quotes from another source that “The committee argued that they chose not to end or restrict silicone implants- despite the suspected risks- because they were a public health necessity both after cancer surgery and simply to enlarge breasts” [pg 5-6]. I don’t know about any one else, but the idea that having plastic surgery is a “necessity” in this materialistic society infuriates me, especially since there are other options for breast cancer survivors.
As for the practice of paying women to go through intense drug therapy to produce eggs for infertile couples? This just has me shaking my head. Aren’t there enough unwanted, starving, homeless, family-less children in this world without putting a young woman’s life in possible danger? “To date, little is known about the long-term effects of this intrusive medical procedure of “harvesting” eggs. Indeed, it may be that the heavy drug treatment used to produce numerous eggs, temporarily “throwing” these women into hyper ovulation, may increase these “donors’” chance not only of ovarian cancer but also of infertility problems themselves later on” [pg 6]. This statement blows my mind. Even with the lack of evidence pointing towards safe or unsafe, throwing off your body’s natural rhythm by pumping it full of unneeded medication is not healthy. Belknap states that this practice “may well end up being classified as a form of organizational crime” [pg 6].
“Women as Professionals in the Crime-Processing System”
I’m actually going to skip this section, since I’ve already mentioned inequalities in professions. You can find all sorts of information in the news about professional inequality problems.
“Blurring of Boundaries of Women’s Experiences in Crime”
During the interviewing Belknap did of women prisoners and policewomen, she noticed that the categories of victims, offenders, and professionals usually overlapped. The interviews “included numerous disclosures by these workers of having survived incest, extrafamilial child sexual abuse, stranger rape, and woman battering in intimate relationships. (A number of the women police officers discussed battering perpetrated by their police officer husbands.)” [pg 7]. Many of Belknap’s interviews showed her that there may be a parallel between prior victimization and the following offending and incarceration. Professional women in the crime-processing system were also [usually] survivors of some kind of abuse, which could be their reasoning for joining law enforcement like they did, though the relationship between victimization and choice of professional career hasn’t been studied or researched [pg 7].
“Historically, the crime-processing system that chronically failed to respond to battered women as victims responded harshly to them as ‘offenders’” [pg 7]. Many times, the battered women who end up killing their abusers in self-defense also typically end up with harsher and longer sentences than their male counterparts who killed their wives [pg 7-8]. “A more recent study documents how girls tried and convicted at the deepest end of the system, those tried and convicted as adults… often experience extreme victimizations ignored by the same systems that treat their offending at the most serious levels” [pg 8]. The system who should have protected them and taken care of them after their victimization failed them, and failed them twice over when they took extreme measures to punish those who acted out for the attention they deserved. I’m not saying that breaking laws is the way to go to get attention if you’ve been victimized, but that is what happens.
I’ve run out of steam to keep writing. These are the only sections I felt driven to write about so far, but the writing has exhausted me for now. I had to share the information I’ve been given, and express my outrage at all of the stupid inequalities that can be prevented with very simple procedures. Equal studying of male and female behavior would be the very beginning of the solution.
So much can change with the effort! Please join me in being part of the solution and not increasing the problem!
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