Jul
16
Title IX & a Silsbee Cheerleader
Tags: Constituional Law, Title IX
Filed Under Uncategorized | By | 3 Comments
There’s been plenty of noise about last month’s decision by the Supreme Court not to hear the appeal of a Silsbee, Texas high school cheerleader who was kicked off her squad for refusing to cheer for her rapist. Probably because it was a First Amendment case, almost none of the noise has been about the important federal laws that can protect student survivors. Sexual violence in schools and on campus is usually strange and mysterious territory for survivors, advocates, and lawyers alike. That’s why it’s so important to take this opportunity to talk about Title IX.
For most people, Title IX calls to mind gender equality in sports, like a school having an equal number of sports teams for boys and girls. But Title IX can mean much more than that, especially when it comes to sexual violence. I want to offer some thoughts on what Title IX—and other civil legal remedies—can and should mean for those of us serving crime victims in Texas. First, though, here is a brief explanation of what Title IX is.
Title IX Explained
Similar to other civil rights laws that prohibit sex discrimination in the workplace and in housing, Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in the educational setting. Among other things, that means a school can be held legally responsible when it knows about and ignores sexual harassment or sexual assault in programs that it has control over.
According to the Supreme Court in the 1999 landmark case Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, the bottom line with Title IX is that any form of sexual harassment or violence can constitute sex discrimination if it is “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim’s access to an educational opportunity or benefit.” Thus, if a school is “deliberately indifferent” to known sexual harassment, the school can be considered to have discriminated against the victim on the basis of sex.
Such a broad definition means that schools can even be liable if an assault was student-on-student, not just when school employees perpetrate the violence. For example, some colleges have paid damages for failing to prevent athletic recruits from sexually assaulting other students, where the schools were aware of prior complaints about the recruits’ sexually harassing behavior. Moreover, according to a letter issued in April 2011 by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (available at http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201104.pdf), even a “single or isolated incident” can constitute unlawful discrimination under Title IX.
What does this mean for us?
Setting aside the legal nuances, what does all this mean for those of us who aren’t litigating Title IX cases—the advocates, educators, and law enforcement personnel among us? I think it means a couple things. First, we need to make sure we’re well-informed about the legal remedies available to the people we serve, beyond the standard criminal justice responses. And second, we must put that information to use both when we consult with survivors and in our relationships with community partners, like schools.
If we, as victim service providers, are not familiar with the civil laws that can benefit our clients, then how will our clients find out about them? Certainly, most of us can’t advise survivors on the legal merits of a Title IX lawsuit. But many of us are uniquely positioned to learn the details of a survivor’s situation and assess whether talking to a lawyer might be worthwhile.
And that means equipping ourselves with knowledge ahead of time. That applies to Title IX, but also to the many laws protecting survivors’ rights in employment, housing, immigration proceedings, and more.
Many of us work hard to build partnerships with agencies and institutions in our communities. Education about laws like Title IX is a crucial part of that: according to law professor Wendy Murphy, in the early stages of a Title IX suit against Harvard University, even Harvard’s legal team advised the university president that Title IX has nothing whatsoever to do with sexual assault.
Partnering with local sexual violence programs and rape crisis centers to develop response policies and prevention curricula is a good way for schools to comply with federal law. Unfortunately, many schools shy away from robust sexual violence policies, failing to appreciate their potential liability under Title IX.
A Teachable Moment in Silsbee
It’s very possible that Title IX could provide a remedy for the student from Silsbee. Others, including Professor Murphy, have offered analysis elsewhere, and I won’t rehash the subject here. However, I do want to this blog post to emphasize the significance of the Title IX remedy in the context of our work as advocates.
To be sure, the school’s response to the sexual assault and to the perpetrator’s conviction was unacceptable. But perhaps just as disturbing has been the school’s course of action following the lawsuit: eliminating its sexual assault education program and silencing conversations about sexual violence in school. Beyond the insensitivity to the survivor, the school seems ambivalent—if not indifferent—to the fact that such a permissive attitude toward sexual violence will do nothing to protect its students from more assaults in the future. That sort of patterned decisionmaking—especially if maintained—seems to teeter dangerously close to exactly what federal law prohibits.
The Silsbee case, tragic as it is, presents an opportunity for the victim services field to reach out to our partners in education and advocate for tough and appropriate policies to respond to sexual assault. Indeed, that’s not just the right thing to do. It’s what federal civil rights law requires.
Chris Kaiser is TAASA’s staff attorney. He provides training for advocates and assistance to survivors on a range of civil legal remedies. Check TAASA’s event calendar at taasa.org to find upcoming free online trainings, or contact Chris at ckaiser@taasa.org.
Jul
15
Let’s Talk About It Man
Filed Under Guest Post | By | Leave a Comment
TAASA Guest Blogger Kelsey Downey is a program assistant for the Sexual Assault and Family Investigators Course a project of the Texas Municipal Police Association.
I first heard University of Texas Professor Robert Jensen speak years ago as a guest presenter in my Gender Communication class at St. Edward’s University. Jensen’s book Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity had just been published and – known for speaking candidly about topics typically avoided in polite conversation – Jensen challenged our class to think critically about the portrayal of hyper masculinity and sexual violence in commonly depicted scenes of pornography. Thus began our class discussion on the social implications of viewing masculinity and femininity through a pornographic lens.
Recently, I got the opportunity to hear Robert Jensen speak again at a GAFDI (Greater Austin Forum on Diversity and Inclusion) meeting, where he briefly touched on the nature of patriarchal masculinity as a social system. Some people may hear the word “patriarchy” and feel it is a non-issue and others may dismiss the conversation as extreme leftist rhetoric, but from the moment we are born we are socialized according to our sex. From the color of clothes our parents dress us in, to what kind of toys we are supposed to play with – regardless of political stance, religious affiliation, race, or class – at some point during growth we are exposed to certain gender expectations. These expectations in turn have an effect on the adult person we become. As a woman who has studied issues relating to domestic violence, sexual assault, and topics of this nature – I have heard a lot about how patriarchy has negatively affected the lives of women – but I rarely hear about how patriarchy has negatively impacted the lives of men, something that was mentioned during the recent GAFDI meeting. This got me thinking about an old reading assignment written by bell hooks[1].
Contrary to sexist mythology, in the real world of male and female babies, male babies express themselves more. They cry longer and louder. They come into the world wanting to be seen and heard…In recent years it has become clear to researchers working on promoting the emotional lives of boys that patriarchal culture influences parents to devalue the emotional development of boys. Naturally this disregard affects boys’ capacity to love and be loving…We can not teach boys that “real men” either do not feel or do not express feelings, then expect boys to feel comfortable getting in touch with their feelings. – The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, by bell hooks.
I think hooks and Jensen started an important conversation. Do social gender expectations influence male children to develop an emotional disconnect?
I know in my home town (small town, Texas), little boys were taught to stifle any emotions deemed “girly” – i.e. compassion, sensitivity – any warm, fuzzy feeling. If you were a boy and something upset you or hurt your feelings, crying about it was essentially committing social suicide; apathy, aggression, and anger were the only acceptable emotional responses. These gender constructs also influenced my perceptions of what it means to be a man and woman. I am the second of five children – four girls, one boy. Our father worked a lot growing up and wasn’t always around, so my brother was constantly surrounded by women. When I was 9, I remember trying to teach my 4-year-old little brother how to fight, so he could be “tough” and, well, “manly.” Even though I was just a little girl, I thought physical aggression was an act of masculinity and that men who displayed acts of femininity were somehow less than. Being someone who now works in the DV and SA field, I look back and cringe at my younger self. Obviously everybody has a different point of view regarding the events of one’s life and everyone takes away different lessons. My brother did not grow up to be an abusive man, but I often wonder if this event in our life negatively influenced him in some way. What did he think I was saying to him, and more importantly what did he hear? Did he hear me say he wasn’t good enough the way he was…did he hear me say he was weak…did he hear me say women are weak? I often wonder how many other people have similar stories, and I’m reaching out for your opinion. What are children hearing when we talk about masculinity? And, are we essentially stripping boys of their right to feel?
[1]bell hooks bucks convention and does not capitalize her name.
Jul
14
It seems that with every new twist in technology we lose another assume facet of our privacy. The latest comes from Facebook’s facial recognition software, and Google’s image recognition function as part of their search engine. For the survivor of sexual assault, for the parent trying to protect her- or himself and their children, these new tools may provide offenders and others with a way of locating or identifying people that would prefer that their whereabouts or that of their families remain obscured. There are tactical things a person can do to reduce their profile, but, as with most anything in the Internet Age, it’s best utility is going forward, not what’s already out there.
The Facebook feature is intended to help recognize members from their pictures and suggest to other people that they might know them. The effect of this technology is that a survivor’s face might be presented for ‘friending’ to the very person from whom they are trying to keep away, because many couples share friends on Facebook. Simply blocking the person won’t help, as a perpetrator could use more than one Facebook account and ‘friend’ people friendly with the survivor. Here are a few ways to limit this type of exposure:
- Facebook users should go through their privacy settings and reduce, to the smallest number, the circle of friends that may see anything about the survivor. Any information that’s visible to ‘the Entire network’ is visible to all users. ‘Friends of friends’ is not as snug a circle as one might think; I recommend a ‘Friends only’ approach to sharing any pictures or personal information, including profile information.
- See the table below for detailed privacy settings (as of late June 2011).
- There are mobile applications encouraging users to state where they are, and many of these post, outside of Facebook’s check-in feature. Since phone users must actively download and register these applications, this is not as much a stealthy issue; but sometimes people don’t realize the implications of their actions.
Here are my personal Facebook settings:
| Information | Setting |
| Posts by me | Friends Only |
| Family | Friends Only |
| Relationships | Friends Only |
| Interested in | Friends Only |
| Bio and favorite quotations | Friends Only |
| Website | Friends Only |
| Religious and political views | Friends Only |
| Birthday | Friends Only |
| Places you check in to | Only Me |
| Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in | Unchecked |
| Edit privacy settings for existing photo albums and videos | User should manage this the first time privacy settings are tightened up to ensure that photo albums are only visible to desired individuals or groups. |
| Photos and videos you’re tagged in | Friends Only |
| Permission to comment on your posts | Friends of Friends |
| Suggest photos of me to friends | Disabled |
| Friends can post on my Wall | Enable |
| Can see Wall posts by friends | Friends Only |
| Friends can check me in to Places | Disabled. This setting is important as some friends might not know a survivor is trying to contain their whereabouts or activities. |
| Contact information | |
| Address | Friends Only (I suggest keeping this field blank entirely) |
| IM screen name | Friends Only. (Also suggested blank; if a person wants contact outside Facebook, they should actively provide that information.) |
| <email addresses> | Friends Only. (Again, consider leaving this blank) |
The Google image and sound search feature attacks privacy from the other end. Although it does not use facial recognition (at least, not at this time), it’s an amazing tool for, for example, presenting Google with an image and getting back images from nearby places, or other connections. This means that a family photo taken at a birthday and available on a website can now be ‘mined’ for the location. The audio feature could say, for example, that the sound sample provided is from a certain city, or train station. Again, there are forward-looking things a survivor can do to limit the information available to undesirable persons:
- See the Facebook issue above. Anything publicly available may be mined by Google for image location recognition.
- Flickr, Tumblr and other photo storage and blog sites may contain images or audio a survivor might not want to have available. All three of these have differing capabilities of limiting user access but blogs in particular are intended for public display. For most survivors this might not be an issue, but it’s something worth looking into for survivors who are writing about their recovery.
Controlling one’s privacy on the Internet is an extension of how we teach children to practice safe Internet access: be a little paranoid, a little less trusting. And assume that anything your commit online may appear in the New York Times’ front page.
The above warnings should be taken in context: with the proper level of vigilance Facebook and other social networking tools are important and increasingly integral to our lives. They are worth the effort to secure, and, for survivors, give them a venue to reach out to others, and reclaim their lives.
In late-breaking news, with Google+’s official launch, there’s a whole other set of privacy issues that bear understanding. In a followup piece I’ll compare Google+ and Facebook’s privacy features and issues.
Jul
8
Dynamic Duo: Cultural Awareness & Volunteer Training
Filed Under Diversity, Motivating Moments, Powerful Women, Prevention, Resource | By Rose Luna | Leave a Comment
Featuring a blog post by Corey Seldon – Structured Education Coordinator with Hope Alliance, in Round Rock,TX.
Volunteers play a vital role in the survival and function of any non- profit agency. Training volunteers is always a challenge. The amount of information to cover, how much is too much or too little, will the information prepare for the volunteer for the challenges ahead? The list of potential content is exhausting and the decision on what to include is never easy. The issue of cultural awareness, although recognized by agencies as very important, very seldom makes the cut. Hope Alliance in Round Rock, Texas incorporated a diversity portion to their volunteer training and has experienced great feedback from the volunteer to be.
Check out Blogging for Hope featuring “Cultural Competency? Really?”