This is a special edition of TSSC where we expose the victim blaming idiocy that goes all the way up to the editor-in-chief of The Hatchet. This past Friday Paul and E.V. had the opportunity to speak with Editor-in-chief Lauren French. Each of us has provided our own separate commentary that follows. This post is TSSC’s Valentine to the Hatchet.
Paul’s commentary:
Everything that follows was said by Lauren French. Keep in mind that she has the final say about what gets put into each edition of the Hatchet. My commentary is in italics.
- “I don’t think any of the columns have advocated rape. I don’t think any of the columns have advocated violence.”—Lauren French showing her ignorance of rape culture.
- “Four of those copy-editors are women.”—Lauren French explaining that because the Hatchet employs women, nothing sexist could ever possibly be published in the paper. I’ll bet the Hatchet employs Inuit and Yupik people, so we shouldn’t care about the whole “Eskimo brothers” thing. She later went on to say that 75% of the Hatchet staff is female, so I guess I’ll give up this whole feminism thing.
- “Harrison has a right to his opinion.”—Lauren French saying something that intrigues me.
- “I don’t think that Harrison is contributing to rape culture.”—Lauren French failing to appropriate the phrase rape culture to try to defend misogyny.
- “Just because you guys find these columns misogynistic doesn’t mean all women do.”—Lauren French on why we should just shut up. She also said all the women in college that she knows like to date assholes, and they shouldn’t be surprised when they get abused by their partners. I couldn’t get the exact quote due to writing speed, but the victim blaming happened!
- “In order to know what you guys agree with…we need an example.”—Lauren French complaining that the Hatchet editors haven’t received sex columns without authors that wanted to remain anonymous. Too bad the first three full posts on The Second Sex Column have been by people who submitted to the Hatchet but the editors decided to “go in a different direction.”
- “The Hatchet doesn’t do that.”—Lauren French on whether the Hatchet hates women.
- “The average student doesn’t know the difference between the average opinion piece and an article.”—Lauren French on the intelligence of GW students.
- “I think it’s just a difference of opinion.”—Lauren French on why the Hatchet authorizes misogynistic sex columns.
- “You’re not writing for some Podunk newspaper in Pennsylvania.”—Lauren French on why the Hatchet is better than your shitty hometown newspaper in the rust belt, you journalistic charlatan.
- “We have not had a sex column this year that did not have a letter to the editor.”—Lauren French hitting the nail on the head.
E.V.’s commentary:
This past Friday, Paul and I along with two members of the GWU Graduate Feminists met with Lauren French, the editor-in-chief and Caroline Bowman, the features editor, regarding Harrison Levitan’s racist and misogynistic sex columns.
Alisa, one of the graduate students, pointed out that these articles are highly problematic because they contribute to rape culture. Lauren responded by saying, “I don’t think any of the columns have advocated rape. I don’t think any of the columns have advocated violence.” French then went on to state that she believes most girls in college go for assholes and that is why women get raped, sexually assaulted, or abused (a.k.a. this little thing we like to call victim blaming).
Apparently, the editor-in-chief of the Hatchet has no idea what rape culture means. Since French is not familiar with rape culture, we feel the need to school her. Therefore, class is now in session and it is time for Rape Culture 101; please take out your notebooks and pens now.
Rape culture is the normalization, excusal, and encouragement of sexual violence, most often against women, throughout an entire society.
Rape culture is the assumption that violence against women is a fact of life. Rape culture is using the word rape to describe a negative instance in one’s life or any other action that was not rape. Rape culture is the prevalence of rape jokes in society. Rape culture is the idea that rape is inevitable. Rape culture is the advocacy of sexual aggression by males. Rape culture is the authorization of rape utilized as a tool of war, as a weapon, as a way of domination and power. Rape culture is a culture that adheres to heterosexual terms and assumes heterosexual privilege. Rape culture is contributed to and legitimized by the media. Rape culture is when a person’s claim to rape is doubted and not legitimized regardless of the circumstances involved.
Rape culture is all of the previously-stated items (and then some more), but in this specific instance it is important to note that victim blaming is part of rape culture. Let me state this again: victim blaming contributes to rape culture. When you publish an opinion piece that basically states that it is the fault of the entire female gender as to why males are assholes, that, my friends, is victim blaming. According to this logic of victim blaming, the Hatchet is telling me that 1 in 6 women, in their lifetimes, asks to be sexually assaulted.
Rape culture places the blame solely on women, but the opposition to rape culture places the blame not on men, but rather on a misogynistic society. A misogynistic society that is influenced by a number of different factors one significantly being the media. Therefore, The GW Hatchet needs to understand that its problematic sex column contributes to rape culture and violence against women.
The bottom line: we would rather that The GW Hatchet not publish a sex column at all if it is going to be misogynistic, racist, homophobic, or transphobic.
-E.V. Ellington and Paul Seltzer
P.S.—Happy Valentine’s Day, Lauren! XOXO, all of us at TSSC.
As a GW alumna, and frequent critic of the GW Sex Column, I am very disappointed to see that you’ve taken the route of selectively quoting the editor in your attempt to criticize the GW “Sex” Column. Yes, the Sex Column has always been offensive. It has almost always been misogynistic (even when written by women), and nearly always advocates irresponsible sexuality. That being said, taking selective quotes out of a conversation you had with the editor, without offering the context in which those statements were made, is also irresponsible. It detracts from your entirely valid point that the GW Sex Column has had problems for years and contributes to a violent culture of victim blaming and irresponsible sexuality. It would be much more effective to put the whole interview on your site rather than putting what is presumably the most damaging quotes you could come up with.
This post is now a personal attack on the GW editors, rather than a productive critique of the rape culture that thrives in Foggy Bottom.
Hey Sophie,
You make a valid point that going after The Hatchet detracts from a productive discussion regarding rape culture. It is important to note that this was an informal meeting not an interview that we requested to try and present the editor with our concerns regarding the sex column. However, after our meeting we were particularly outraged and felt it necessary for us to respond by going the route we did. I do not feel as if this is not productive. Instead, it draws attention to rape culture from people who would not necessarily be familiar with it.
@Sophie
The quotes adequately describe French’s feelings on the matter. She refused to acknowledge any misogyny whatsoever in Levitan’s columns, she clearly had no understanding of the effects of rape culture, and she made it abundantly clear that she personally authorizes such despicable columns. How can we not call her out on it?
I understand your frustration and anger over what she said. But there is a fine line between calling someone out on their comments for the purpose of starting critical conversations and a passive aggressive online tome attacking someone who clearly does not understand the gravity of the implications of her comments.
I just think it damages what you’re actually trying to do. The conversation needs to start, and the GW Hatchet’s columns need to be confronted. They are overwhelmingly disgusting and offensive. But when you involve yourself in personal attacks against one person, rather than against the ideas and long-held notions that perpetuate such offensive views, you’re only distracting from the ultimate purpose–which is to smash that type of thinking in the first place.
Regardless of whether the quotes appropriately represent the Hatchet’s mentality, this article struck me as accusatory and antagonistic in a way that does not appropriately contribute to fostering understanding about rape culture. These issues should be raised, but in the more constructive manner of which I believe contributors are capable.
@Austin
There are multiple ways to form a response, and a polemical one is still valid (mind you, not everything on TSSC will be so antagonistic, but we thought this was extra-special). Keep watching for a different sort of analysis tomorrow.
We also thought people deserved to know how the editor-in-chief of the Hatchet feels about her readers. To talk about “the Hatchet’s mentality” is to talk about the wrong thing–the people who work for the Hatchet authorize the misogyny. We should be exposing the willingness to spread rape culture no matter where it is, especially when the person who runs the most prominent campus media outlet does it to our faces.
E.V. & Paul,
Thanks for taking the initiative to meet with The Hatchet. Every time a new sex column is printed, I brace myself to be insulted and threatened. I probably would’ve ripped out my own hair at that meeting, and I’m really impressed that you turned it into an informative post instead. You’re both an inspiration!
Laura
I agree with Austin’s comments. I think this is an extremely important topic, and I commend you both for making such an effort to bring attention to it. However, I believe that rather than ridiculing an institution or a social phenomenon, you have effectively marginalized a single individual. Not that I wish to disregard her faults, yet I believe this could have been conducted in a much more constructive manner. Many who are apprehensive or unfamiliar with the subjects you tackle will view this as a personal attack, and will be turned off and unwilling to listen to the many more valuable things you have to say and offer to the community.
I find it interesting that the critiques of this blog all seem to be “well you had a good point, but you said it so meanly! Be less angry and maybe we’ll listen!” The thing is, that doesn’t work. Being less angry has gotten us nowhere. Being less angry got these progressive sex columns turned away from the hatchet. They got the authors of this column shot down and their concerns made light of in a meeting with Lauren French, and they got silence. Being less angry was for months ago when people read the Shark Week column and were shocked and appalled and talked about it and tried to talk to the hatchet and got shut down.
And the only people who making the BE LESS ANGRY arguments are the people with privilege, here. They don’t see any reason to be angry because they haven’t been wronged by this article or the Hatchet column.
Be less angry is a classic tone argument and it saddens me to see it here. The people affected by this stuff, by rape culture, by these offensive articles, by the people who believe them and perpetuate their behavior, they have every right to be angry. Being angry doesn’t make them any less right. Instead of critiquing them for being angry (which they have every right to be), why not start addressing the content here and ways to change it? Maybe once the hatchet no longer publishes articles that glorify rape culture and victim blaming and misogynistic attitudes towards women (that somehow by being nice to a woman, you deserve to have sex with her, and why won’t she have sex with you, you were nice! she must be a bitch) then people will be less angry.
Anger can be an excellent motivator and it is legitimate in this context. I do think, however, it should be directed at the sources of the issue (patriarchy, sexism, etc) and not at those who likely do not understand how they are perpetuating it. I truly want TSSC to succeed and therefore believe that anger should be more focused for greater impact.
This post and this blog are terrific. Keep it up, Paul and EV. We have such great women’s studies undergrads and such a shitty, shitty paper.
P.S. The Hatchet seems very “Podunk” to me.
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First of all, the fact that this response to an article has generated so much response speaks to the fact that rape, rape culture, misogyny, feminism, patriarchy, journalism, anger and other themes mentioned are contentious issues. They’re personal, they’re political, and they’re controversial.
My critique of the article is founded in the blatant sexism:
“When it comes to pursuing a woman in a sundown situation, there are no greater faults I’ve found than respect, kindness and compassion. Women value all of these characteristics, but predominantly in friends and serious boyfriends. And though they seem to appreciate them in most day-to-day interactions with men, some of them forsake this whenever the aim is to find a man to crawl into bed with. In fact, women seem to go for the guys who act: impolite, dick-ish, coy, uninterested, uninteresting, narcissistic, or like the TA in my econ class.”
Lets think about this paragraph critically. Levitan argues that women sleep with assholes so in order to get laid men should disrespect the woman. This assumes a few things:
1. Women like to sleep with jerks. Maybe this is true for some women, or maybe it isn’t. Have the neg pickup lines ever worked? Has being an asshole and insulting women ever led to a one night stand? In my experience, being as asshole leads to a drink in the face and a cold bed.
2. Men need to act like jerks to get laid. This, in effect, is espousing the belief that men should in fact act like jerks. So the next time you’re at a party and you see a hot girl you totally wanna bang, don’t ask whats up, tell her shes fat and ugly! She’ll jump right in bed with you after that, guaranteed. More problematic than the on the surface rudeness to women, is the propagation of disrespecting women. Nobody wants to be disrespected, much less a woman you want to sleep with.
3. Women are to blame for men acting like assholes. Because men think women like to sleep with assholes, men act like assholes to women. Whos at fault here…the asshole or the woman being disrespected?
Rape culture has real, physical, lived, experienced consequences. In other words, rape culture leads to rape. And not just the rape of women but also the rape of men. It leads to injustices in the justice system, harassment on the streets and in the workforce, psychological trauma, sexual objectification, victim blaming and an unsafe and unfair world. Violence against women will continue as long as rape culture continues and is allowed to continue.
The response from the Hatchet representatives was totally inadequate. They used circular logic and didn’t address the problems at hand. How can you deny that an article does or does not propagate rape culture if you don’t even know what rape culture is? How can you say that we should have done something about it when you rejected Cameron’s submissions? How can you take responsibility for only the “good” parts of your newspaper but claim no responsibility for the “bad” parts? This, I believe, is the source of the anger.
Thanks to the awesome students who created this blog. Its about time we had a real conversation about sex and rape culture.
Here is the actual number of forcible rapes taken from the “UCR Crime Statistics” which stands for United State Crime Rate. 2009 is the year, 28.7 is the number of forcible rapes per 100,000 people.
So if 1/2 are women 50,000 and we divide that by 28.7, 50,000/28.7= 1,742. That means the true number is 1 in 1,742 which in no way can translate into 1 in 6. Can someone please tell me how 1 in 1,742 translates into rape culture?
The fact is I don’t know or have ever met 1,742 women, which is probably why I’ve never met anyone who was forcibly raped. In fact, around 3,000 people a year trip and die on flat level ground in this country, which mean’s your chances of tripping and dying on flat level ground is far greater then being forcibly raped.
Now can we please stop with this bogus “we live in a rape culture” schtick. Because if that’s a culture, death by flat level ground is a pandemic.
Most cases of rape are not reported (anywhere between 75% and 95%, RAINN states that 60% of sexual assaults are never reported to police http://www.rainn.org/statistics). Of those rapes that are reported, very few perpetrators are convicted (maybe 5-10%, according to RAINN 15 out of 16 rapists will never spend a day in jail). There are a few reasons for this: women are often blamed by others and blame themselves for rape. Taking a rapist to court involves police cooperation and rape kits (which are not available at all hospitals including GW). Prosecuting a rapist means meeting your rapist in court in front of others and then describing in detail what happened – an unsettling experience to even imagine. The process is lengthly, time consuming, and expensive.
Maybe you haven’t met someone who has been raped or maybe you have but they haven’t told you. You don’t have to meet 1,742 women to meet someone who has been raped. 1 in 3 women will be SEXUALLY ASSAULTED in their lifetime.
And please explain forcible rape to me, I don’t quite understand how rape – nonconsensual, unwanted sex – can be non-forcible.
I’ll stop protesting rape culture when we stop living in one.
You guys make great points about victim blaming and how it is so ingrained in our culture that many of us can’t even tell when we’re contributing to it. I work for the RAINN crisis hotline, so I truly appreciate and respect the work you guys are doing. However, I have to say that the personal attacks on Lauren are a little too much for me. While French’s comments may be uninformed, she is a product of the culture in which she lives, and I highly doubt that she is purposefully trying to contribute to rape culture. She’s a college student, just like yourselves, who has worked hard to get where she is. She’s just trying to run the paper, and is entitled to her own opinion, however ignorant it may sound to the enlightened few. (After all, she’s not the writer and hasn’t put those opinions explicitly into the paper as of yet.) I believe in your cause, but I don’t believe in bullying. Love you guys, but this is too mean for my taste. I read this aloud with three other students, all of whom were too distracted by its cutting remarks to pay attention to its message. So, I worry that your meaning is lost behind the anger and the insults. Keep up the other wonderful work you’re doing– It’s an important topic, and I’m glad you guys have facilitated a discussion about this.