Apply to be a peer educator!

The Peer Education Group is an amazing opportunity to be part of an organization dedicated to education, awareness and making a real difference in the community. You will meet tons of new people, have lots of fun, and get an intense training that will impact all aspects of your life. The time commitment is small, but the rewards are infinite.

Below, we have posted a letter written by Jennifer Kronk on April 18, 2007. Jennifer serves as the Volunteer Recruiter for the Chicago Rape Crisis Hotline, a program of the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago. This letter does a beautiful job of expressing many of the feelings we have heard many women express regarding the succession of events over the past couple of weeks.

On Friday, April 13th I saw that the name and face of the victim in the Duke rape case was now national news. Her face was plastered everywhere, often with the word "liar" right next to it. The charges in her attack had been dropped therefore she must be lying, was the general attitude. The story was everywhere.

What I never heard was any defense from the feminist movement. This woman, whom I refuse to name here, has been viciously attacked by voices all over the country, if not the world and no one has stood up to defend her. She is an easy target and everyone is aiming. Nowhere have I seen the numbers showing how often rape cases are dropped due to supposed lack of evidence. And rape is not the only crime where chargers are dropped. Although I heard that the woman says she is no longer sure that she was penetrated, she has never said that nothing happened. Three men, one woman, a small space and short time period tells me that whatever happened was quick and chaotic thus leading to a difficult experience to tell and understand.

No one is discussing how damaging it is for other rape survivors to realize that there are no anonymity promises any more. After all, even in active cases rape shield laws vary from state to state. We all learned that from the catastrophic handling of the Kobe Bryant case. The victim's name became public knowledge; she had to move four times for her safely. A man served time for stalking her.

The fact that there was not a prosecution does not mean that there was no victim. And the vitriol that is being directed at this woman is unprecedented and very telling when we look closer. Neither the Duke case nor the Bryant case resulted in convictions. Both victims have Wikipedia entries identifying them (the fact that both of these women have Wikipedia entries is a whole other topic.) However, only the victim in the Duke case has a picture. It is a standard face-shot, with a strong resemblance to a mug shot. There, in that small, unsmiling picture is an African-American face to bear the weight of a lot of white male rage. The entry on the victim in the Bryant case, who was White, is much more sympathetic. It makes it clear that Bryant admitted to the rape. Nowhere does it discuss past mental health issues. It does not even mention her career, which we all know was a big issue for the victim in the Duke case.

So, how does this all fit in to the other recent events? The naming/shaming of the victim was overshadowed by the firing of Don Imus after he slandered the women of the Rutger's basketball team. Looking at the picture of the team, it is not hard to notice that the majority of the players are African-American women. Don Imus attacked them as "nappy-headed ho's," which dismisses them as both ugly (a huge sin for a woman, apparently), as sluts, and creates the very sterotypical image of the "untamed black savage," one who chooses to let her hair be matted, uncombed and "black" rather than smooth, straight and "white." Again, we have an easy target for an angry white man's impotent rage. He says he thought he was being funny. While I was researching the Duke victim, it took me less than a minute to find a blog entry linking the Duke victim to the Rutger's team. The entry was illustrated with a white teddy bear bearing a tee shirt that read, "Nappy-headed ho." Funny.

Two days ago, America witnessed a tragedy unfold at Virginia Tech University. 32 people were shot, 30 of whom were shot after an initial incident was dismissed as "an isolated domestic incident." The killer had found his first victim, someone the authorities believe that he had an acquaintance with, easily enough. A second person was killed at that time as well. Another easy target? After the police responded to the first two killings, they knew that the gunman was still loose. Was the assumption that someone who would kill an acquaintance was not a danger to everyone around him?

Once again, we are seeing proof that violence against women is only a problem for the woman being hurt. No one wants to delve further into the ugly truth and see that when a woman is not safe because of a man, we as a whole are not safe because of that man.

There are easy targets everywhere we look this week. Whether it is a victim who has been denied her voice because she is not who society wants to believe, a player of a game in a male dominated field or one of the many people who tried to warn authorities about the dangers of a young man at Virginia Tech they were all made targets because society feels that violence against women is someone else's problem.

A few months ago, Kenneth Cole ran an AIDS awareness campaign that spread the belief that when one person has AIDS, we all have AIDS. Well, when one woman is in danger, we are all in danger. When one victim can be slandered and smeared into a national joke, we all face that risk. When one woman can be called an ugly slut, we are all diminished by those words. When one woman is lost to violence and hatred, we all lose.