SCHOOLS frequently dismiss sexual assault between students as part of the “rough and tumble” of high school life, a report by the Australian Institute of Family Studies shows.
And while one in seven teenage girls has been the victim of a sexual offence, most are reluctant to report them because they know the perpetrator or they fear they will not be believed.
The SMH article is based on this AIFS press release. The AIFS Resource Review for schools goes into more detail.
Categories: gender & feminism, law & order, media, violence
Friday Hoyden: Gillian Triggs 
DUFC #69 
Advising women to prevent their own rapes is not brave or edgy or helpful 
An article about domestic violence in the Guardian in which it’s OK to read the comments 
Hoyden About Town 
Incredibly, I heard the researcher (?) interviewed on NewsRadio (? again! sorry, I don’t pay much attention to such details it would seem) this morning, and he was asked why boys were sexually assaulted so much less than girls (it was 3% of boys, I think). His answer was almost entirely about the difficulties boys have in identifying and reporting sexual abuse because they feel it undermines their masculinity etc. I can’t remember the exact phrase he used but to my ears he managed to simultaneously imply that the ‘victim’ role just came naturally to girls while the boys struggled with that concept because boys are tuff stuff. At the very end of his answer he made a comment about how this difference between males and females was the same in other studies (e.g. of grownups).
Basically what I’m saying is he managed to COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY ignore and downplay the obvious fact that women are particularly and for powerful gendered reasons the targets of sexual abuse.
I don’t think I’m expressing myself well. Anyway. It made me angry.
-Bron from the election-day-drinks 🙂
I certainly know no force on this earth would have gotten me to charge my now-ex with attempted rape back in the day. It’s hard to articulate why that is. It’s not just the self-blame and the like, but the questioning “Was this wrong?” is a factor to.
Anna’s last blog post..Brain Break!
Not surprising. There was a couple of hours with two awesome teachers in a special year eleven course in which we learnt that you must have consent to have sex. The dudes acted like they were the victims. I can’t remember anything accurate* about rape being taught after taking four years of mandatory PE.
Rape is often seen as a joke or used as a metaphor. Women who have sex are labelled as sluts. PE teachers often contribute to the anti-woman culture. These results fit the context.
*The innacurate thing taught was a victim-blaming definition of sexual assault.
Considering when I’ve brought up the ‘rape joke’ culture at my school with students – and even teachers – and just gotten the ‘can’t you take a joke?’/’But, but, but they’re my friend, we’re just mucking around’/ ‘But they’re just kids, they don’t know what they’re saying’ crap, this kind of report does not surprise me.