Students of Professor Clayton Michaels’ class about a feminist approach to comic books got a rare treat on Monday March 1: a professor from St. Mary’s College as a guest lecturer.
Professor Terri Russ of St. Mary’s communication studies department gave a lecture titled “The Bitch Deserved It: Deconstructing Gendered Violence.”
Identifying herself as a feminist since early childhood, Russ studies gendered violence due to her experience of using “urban self-defense,” a series of behaviors that women use to keep themselves safe when in the city at night.
“As a city woman, you know all these techniques,” said Russ. “For example, always parking under a streetlight, even if you have to walk farther, first checking under your car, then in the backseat to make sure no one is hiding there waiting for you. And it’s really problematic that women feel like we have to do these things.”
Russ became interested in the issue of gendered violence due to an incident that happened when she was in law school.
“A friend showed up in tears, her boyfriend of three months had date raped her,” said Russ. “They had been out for their three month anniversary and he said that three months equaled a blow job and she said no. Instead, he took more.”
After tipping off the emergency room staff to the fact that the man who had raped her friend was the same man that was in the waiting room, Russ began to study how the media insinuates the thought that violence against women is okay in society.
In her presentation, Russ highlighted how the concentric circles of violence feed each other, moving from the personal violence in the home to the overall societal problem of accepted violence through a pervasive fear that permeates male/female interactions and leads not only to violence, but to a disinclination to report acts of violence.
A further problem is a lack of sympathetic ears. When Russ worked at a university in Virginia, she became part of a committee that made recommendations about sexual harassment policy and handled complaints. In the first two months of the committee’s existence, it handled 11 cases, but took no action, which angered Russ.
Her presentation included lists of rape facts and myths, such as the myth that rape is motivated by sexual urges, and the fact that most rapes are committed by people whom the victim knows. Also, only 2% of reported rapes are false reports.
Russ also touched on the fact that victims of violence often question themselves asking if the violence directed against them was their fault, and how families become stuck in a cycle of violence.
“Stage one is tension, where some incident no matter how small sets the abuser off,” said Russ. “Stage two is explosion, where the violence occurs, and in each cycle the type of violence escalates. Stage three is remorse, where the abuser protests that it will never happen again. Stage four is the honeymoon period where everything goes well, but tension builds, leading back to stage one.”
Connected to all this is how the media participates in “normalization” of violence. Russ included information from the 2000 census that shows 98% of homes have one television set, and over 70% have two or more.
Using magazine advertisements, Russ’ students divided the images into two categories, women with the look of death, and women as the victim of attack. With these images saturating our consciousness, the audience becomes programmed to accept these as a standard of feminine beauty.
“Media images are fragments of a cultural Zeitgeist—we’re fascinated with them and we identify with them,” said Russ.
Russ is in the process of organizing a conference on beauty called the Bold Beauty Conference, to be held at St. Mary’s on April 26. Interested students should send an e-mail to truss@saintmarys.edu.
Gendered Violence and the Media
Published: Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Updated: Tuesday, March 9, 2010
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False Rape Society