Our interview in action!
Our first fieldwork consisted of a wonderful interview with a journalist from New York Magazine named Vanessa Grigoriadis. She kindly met us at our school where we led her to a lower school class room which we transformed into a makeshift conference room. We started off with a conversation like interview led by a few questions that we had thought up prior to the interview. We started talking about her experiences with Emma Sulkowits, the woman who she wrote about in her article in New York Magazine. This soon led to a conversation about the saying “no means no” and about her thoughts and feelings while researching and writing her article. We learned so much from her but one if the main things that we learned and hope to pursue, is how important informing our society on the issue about the broad topic of rape culture. We talked about how the topic is so broad that there should be no concurring questions when the target categorizes the sexual assault that she has experienced as rape. We were informed that rape culture is much more prominent in our lives than we would have thought. There are so many girls who feel like they have been sexually assaulted and are afraid to speak up. Vanessa explained to us that this just enhances the importance of informing the society of how broad the topic of rape culture is and this will promote more people to speak up and eventually end this horrible action. We also touched on the importance of informing men and boys about this topic so we can prevent the sexualizing of girls bodies and enforce the term “no means no”. Grigoriadis has some very interesting opinions and points specifically about their problems about rape culture on campus.There was a point in the interview that she asked questions about us and being young girls looking at these hard stories. Although this put our eyes in a different perspective, I think that in the future the interview should be somewhat less conversation based and more of an interview. Vanessa also graciously put us in touch with a wonderful organization called EROC, End Rape On Campus. Overall, the interview was a huge success and we are excited to take the information that was gained further!
