This is what I watched with a friend on New Year’s Eve.  I was surprised to find some feminist undertones.  I wouldn’t call the whole movie feminist, just that it had some undertones running throughout it.

I just finished up Rick Riordan’s (the author of the Percy Jackson series) new book, The Lost Hero.  It was very similar both in the storyline and in the incorporation of the Greek mythology to the Percy Jackson books.  But one main difference I saw was that the Percy Jackson books had a strong female demigod that could hold her own (Annabeth), but the main female character in this book (Piper) was usually described by her relationship to other men.

The treatment of sexual assault by universities makes me sick.  Charges are rarely ever taken seriously and sometimes are even outright dismissed.

On Tuesday, Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello introduced the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act (Campus SAVE Act) to the House of Representatives. The act is a major revamp of the Campus Sexual Assault Victim’s Bill of Rights, which was signed into law in 1992 to build on the Clery Act.

The Campus SAVE Act is a much needed update to current federal policy, and offers far more comprehensive guidelines . In short, it’s incredibly amazing and exciting to see this kind of legislation at play at the federal level. But to get more specific, the bill:

• Expands the list of offenses that must be covered in a campus sexual assault policy to include “sex offenses and other intimate partner violence, including stalking, dating violence, sexual violence, and domestic violence offenses.”
• Mandates primary prevention programming that includes defining consent and bystander intervention training (!!!) and awareness education that includes instructions for how to report offenses that occur on OR off campus
• States that victims will be provided with full explanations of their options for health, mental health, and legal resources both on and off campus, as well as their right to involve local police or campus security AND how they can obtain a restraining order/order of protection/no contact order.
• Requires that all disciplinary proceedings must be “conducted by officials trained to understand the issues of sex offenses and other intimate partner violence.”

And that’s not even all of it. I can’t stress enough what a major accomplishment this would be if passed. What is every college student was given bystander training? What if staff had to receive training in the dynamics of sexual assault and intimate partner violence? What if schools were required to acknowledge that stalking and dating violence are issues on their campuses??? Definitely check out the full text of the bill and contact your representative to encourage them to co-sponsor the Campus SAVE Act.

(Source: fuckyeahfeminists, via rosietint)

Here is a great collection of posts about sexual assault and rape culture that have been published lately.  Trigger warning.

At the volunteer training for the sexual assault organization that I am an intern at earlier this semester, we got this question from a law student/future lawyer: “isn’t rape more of an undergrad problem?”

Here are some of the blog posts that I have found particularly insightful or that I have “enjoyed” reading about the sexual assault charges against Julian Assange in Sweden.