Friday Roundup: April Was Sexual Abuse Awareness Month but May Brings It Front and Center
I’ll get to Arnold Schwarzenegger later. For now it’s enough simply to observe that over the past few weeks, the world has been cracked open to reveal–and we hope come to revile–the sexual hubris that has enabled so many men to feel entitled to power over women’s bodies. I’ve made the “power over” versus “power to” distinction in No Excuses. What more direct way to rob women of their power to?
There are many kinds and facets of sexual abuse and assault. This week’s roundup is a sampling of recent news about some of those facets. Why do I feel hopeful? Because now there are names for this abuse of power. Because when you name it you can fight it. Because young women know it’s wrong and they aren’t going to take it any more. That’s what’s cracking the world open. It’s not just the way things are any more.
IMF Head Arrested for Sexual Assault: What Happened, What it Means.
Military Veteran Opens Up About 1970s Sexual Assault.
INTENTIONING
Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women
Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good
The new book from Gloria Feldt about the future, taking the leadership lessons learned from this disruption and creating a better world for all through the power of intention.
Wear jeans for more than comfort.
Peace Corps-50 years, more than 1,000 rapes?
And let me end with a particularly heartwarming success story from Hollaback, an organization that fights street harassment around the world:
Back to Arnold…Nah, I’d really rather think about Maria Shriver, his wife.
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.
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Gloria, your first two links are the same.
One might expect serving in the Peace Corps to be less dangerous for women than the military, but it appears this is not the case, and raped women seem to have precious little recourse in either service. Over 1000 rapes reported in the last ten years in the Peace Corps, and what is being done about it? About as little as the over 1000 rapes per day in the Congo, as Eve Ensler reported for the Ms. Blog. 1,100 Congolese Women Raped Each Day: I Am Over It
Aletha, thanks for sharing that link from Eve’s blog post. I had already planned to do my roundup on this topic before the news broke about DSK and Schwarzenegger. Clearly it’s a bigger story, and getting bigger by the moment, so I wrote the one I posted on Heartfeldt Friday. Here’s that link if you haven’t seen it: https://gloriafeldt.com2011/05/20/sex-power-irony-and-why-maria-shriver-will-be-back/
And I’ll check the duplicates you noted.
Not newsworthy? I think that says it all about our mainstream media. Even after that huge scandal about Jamie Leigh Jones, gang raped by Halliburton employees in Iraq, the mainstream press would prefer to sweep anything that stains the shining reputation of the military under the carpet.
I might have something to say about the Governator later. The only thing I find surprising about that scandal is that he managed to finish his time in office before something about his sexual indiscretions came out that he could not deny. I do not think I should take the bait of someone raving about what a fantastic team the Clintons make.