On Tuesday, November 26, my group went to visit the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault. The goal of the fieldwork visit was to gain more knowledge of our topic and make connections with the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault. This visit greatly impacted me and my group. We gained a lot of knowledge from our interviewee (Kira Laffe). Kira and May (their intern) gave us great advice and excellent resources including a study NYCAASA did on teen dating violence, a movie disc of Searching for Angela Shelton and great referrals for other movies, organizations and contacts. What we managed from to learn greatly helped our understanding of our topic.

I learned that rape isn’t necessarily about “bad sex”, it’s about the rapist feeling powerful because they have taken their victim’s rights and their power. I also learned about the root causes of sexual assault. I learned that we are taught to think that rape is caused by drugs, alcohol or sexy clothes, when in reality it’s about power, taking power, and power equity. I also learned that social justice issues are interconnected, and it’s very difficult to focus on one issues without taking some other issues into account. Something interesting I learned about was an event that happened in Steubenville, Ohio. A young woman, about 15 years old, was at a party with her peers and she got very drunk. A group of her male classmates stripped her naked and carried her around their town and repeatedly raped her while videotaping the whole thing. They took this video and posted it on the Internet. They boys then went back to the party and went to their basement and talked about it to the camera and posted that on the Internet as well. There was lots of outrage, which was not only targeted towards the boys, the outrage was also targeted at the girl and her family. People were wondering why she was at the party, why her parents would let her go, why she got so drunk, why her parents let her hang out with those boys and why she hanging out with them. This is an example of Slut Shaming. Slut shaming is when people blame the victim instead of the rapist or calling someone a slut based on their clothing, actions or habits. An example of this is when people say,, “She was asking for it.” In reality no one “asks” to get raped — even if the victim was flirting with the perpetrator, even if she was drinking, even if she was doing drugs, even if her skirt was short or her dress was tight, even if she didn’t exactly say no it doesn’t mean she said yes and defiantly doesn’t mean she is asking to be raped. I would like to send a special thank to May the intern, Min Um-Mindhyan, Kira Laffe and everyone else we met at the NYCAASA.