Their program Odyssey discussed
Rape
What we think of as rape can be determined by court decisions, political legislation and cultural representations. Gretchen Helfrich and guests discuss the social forces that shape our ideas of rape.
Guests:
Jill Hasday — University of Chicago Law School
Michelle Oberman — DePaul University College of Law
Pamela Barnett — University of South Carolina
The second participant, Michelle Oberman, is mentioned in The Resurrection of Statutory Rape Laws:
The reality is that the recent interest in reviving statutory rape prosecutions has been a response to teen pregnancy and more specifically to these girls getting on welfare. This is serious problem and understandably people are grappling for solutions. The catalyst for this renewed concern was as a result of a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute of 10,000 mothers between the ages of 15 and 49. The researchers discovered that 50% of the babies born to 15-17 year old mothers had fathers age 20 or older. Even more unnerving was the finding that generally the younger the mother, the older the father. Other studies confirmed similiar findings such as "Men over 20 years are responsible for five times as many births among junior high girls as are junior high boys." (Quinn 95) These and similar discoveries shattered many of the previous assumptions about teen pregnancy. Almost immediately, politicians started calling for prosecution of the men responsible. California took the lead and states such as Georgia, Delaware, and Florida followed suit.Is the revival of statutory rape enforcement the answer or is this "a new way to sound tough on crime in the guise of social compassion"?(Gleick 96) Perhaps its a little bit of both. We know that 74% of girls who have sex before the age of 14 have experienced coercive sex , as well as 60% of girls who have sex before age 15.(Quinn 95) Its obvious that we are not doing enough to protect young people from sexual abuse and exploitation and maybe statutory rape laws are a step in the right direction. However, its also true that many respected experts in the field are worried about the adverse impact of "discouraging teens from obtaining prenatal or reproduction health care." (Donovan 97) Or as Michelle Oberman pointed out "drawing a connection between enforcing these laws and lowering adolescent pregnancy rates flies in the face of everything we know about why girls get pregnant and why they choose to continue their pregnancies."
Which appears at Age of Consent. The author, Annette Burrhus-Clay, states "My concerns are many and quite honestly I'm not even sure where I stand on this issue." Which is the position I'm going to take as well. Part of the conversation on the show revolved around the California Supreme Court decision described in this article at Contra Costa Times:
A man may be convicted of rape if his sexual partner first consents but later changes her mind and asks him to stop, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.In a 6-1 decision, the justices said a man who continues sexual intercourse with a woman once she has retracted her consent can be charged with rape. The court ruled in a date-rape case involving teenagers at a party in El Dorado County.
"A withdrawal of consent effectively nullifies any earlier consent and subjects the male to forcible rape charges if he persists in what has become nonconsensual intercourse," Justice Ming Chin wrote for the court.
Other topics also came up, including making rape laws gender-neutral and fictional portrayals.
Oh, and race.
You're as shocked at this as I was, no doubt.
Did drive home the difference between Third Wave Feminism and earlier varieties for me, so there's that, at least.
Update: added links to the guests' faculty pages. There doesn't appear to be a copy of Oberman's "Regulating Consensual Sex with Minors: Defining a Role for Statutory Rape online, but truth be told, I'm not looking all that hard. And the audio for the show is available at that first link, if you'd like to give it a listen. Or even if you wouldn't.
You implied this in your post, but it bears repeating, I think.
The article you cite on 3rd Wave feminism does illustrate the performativity of feminitity [which I think they call "lipstick." God save the femmes.] Between performativity & sex-positiveness, however, the author of the article misses the [relative] awareness race and class that 3rd Wave feminism demonstrates that the 2nd Wave emphatically did not.
[Any of you smart people out there care to add/modify this? I'm no women's studies expert.]
Between performativity & sex-positiveness, however, the author of the article misses the [relative] awareness race and class that 3rd Wave feminism demonstrates that the 2nd Wave emphatically did not.
I don't buy this.
Second wave feminism inaugurated the idea of women's attention to their sexual pleasure as a radical act, viz. cunt coloring book, the masturbation seminars, buzz about the clitoral orgasm, the Sexual Revolution etc.
Nor do I believe that Second Wave feminism "emphatically" did not attend to race and class. I have blogged about this.
I was reading Alice Walker's stories about poor, black women when I was a pre-teen because Second Wave feminism created a cultural space for the work and a market for its dissemination. I'm one young colored girl who is extremely and emphatically grateful for Second Wave Feminism's attention to race, class and sexuality.
"a common woman is as common as a loaf of bread"
Hey now! I don't mean to be dismissive of the 2nd wave. We could not be living as we do now w/o it. Nevertheless, try talking to a room full of 2nd wavers about strap-ons, or flogging, or butch-femme, and see how far you get before tempers flare. &, while race and class certainly figured into the 2nd wave, examples don't often enough filter into WS 101 textbooks, & the average 200-level syllabus is also white-washed & bougie. We should all feel connected to our 2nd wave roots, but not be dismissive of some of its basic inequities so that we can more adequately address these in our own generation.
i've been coming here from Heather's site for a week or so now, and i just have one comment here:
DISCLAIMER! all the below is just my opinion, formed from my personal study of 2nd and 3rd wave feminism!
i see the "sexual revolution" as being expressly for men's benefit -- the Pill was so that the responsibility for birth control was put on the shoulders of women, women were still seen as "sluts"; "good girls" still didn't put out. it wasn't really part of 2nd wave at all until they co-opted it. 3rd wave embraced female sexuality from the very beginning.
2nd wave did a lot (a LOT!) for all women professionally, societal-ly (is that a word?), and racially. but, in my opinion, women weren't really allowed to find true power in their sexuality -- power apart from men -- until the mid-'70s at earliest.
Nevertheless, try talking to a room full of 2nd wavers about strap-ons, or flogging, or butch-femme, and see how far you get before tempers flare.
the last line of my previous post was a quotation from judy grahn, who wrote quite a bit about butch femme. and i think that you are missing the context of the times: talking about the clitoral orgasm in the Sixties was much more of a radical act than any amount of discussing flogging now.
if the second wavers tempers flare, perhaps it's that they don't take to the airs of condescending youth. on a personal/anecdotal level, i do not at all find that Third Wave feminists are any more conscious of sex, race or class. if anything, Second Wave feminism came out of the Civil Rights and New Left movements, and had a much more organic relationship to these things.
&, while race and class certainly figured into the 2nd wave, examples don't often enough filter into WS 101 textbooks, & the average 200-level syllabus is also white-washed & bougie.
Afaisee Alice Walker, Zami, Mab Segrest, Bridge called my back, etc are staples of syllabi, but I haven't done a rigorous survey.
I'd also point out that there is a tremendous difference btw saying Second Wave feminism was and saying that it is represented as such in WS courses.
I can't speak for anybody else's experiences in women's studies courses, but as an older Gen-Xer, I can say I got exposure to some race and class issues in college (e.g., Black Women in White America was one of the texts in a women's history course I took) and I took a whole course on Feminism and Sexuality, at a university without a women's studies department.
I'm also not that clear on the dividing line between second-wave and third-wave per se, but as I've gotten older, I find the whole "second wave issues are done, get out of the way while we address important stuff" schtick I occasionally hear a little annoying sometimes. I'm glad to see young women who aren't reluctant to call themselves feminists, but sometimes I think even younger women who call themselves feminists got their definition of feminism from Quiche Lorraine: "fat, hairy-legged, and manless".
But that's my experience as a white middle-class feminist among white middle-class women; don't mistake it for a general statement.
prominent accomplishments of the so-called "third wave":
the use of email nicks/band names with either:
chick or grrrrrl
the wearing of crop top/baby t's with either:
"daddy's little girl" or "porn star" written in glitter
the lamentable extinction of visible feminine hirsutitude...
(in response to which i wonder "what would frida shave?")
the "second wave" may need some tinkering, but the third wave ain't even got the goods to be tinkered with...
as a famous first waver (with a hirsute girlfriend, no doubt) said.... "there's no there there"
I braided a woman's arm pit hair once.