is this the only power that you ever really had?
this was from a bulletin on myspace, and is about a bar near ohio state's campus, but it deserves to be posted in other forums and considered, since crimes like this should not go unpunished or unnoticed by people all over.
Hey Everybody,
I am writing this letter to all of my friends, because it is a community issue that affects us all, but the message is most urgent for women. This note is about sexual assault and a violent sexual culture at many bars and clubs around campus that we should all be challenging.
Approximately three weeks ago a woman was raped and locked in a storage closet at 4-Kegs. Police had to use the GPS function on her cell phone to find her and she was not set free until several hours after the bar had closed.
As disturbing as the incident itself is, how the media and the bar have responded adds insult to injury. Campus and Columbus news never reported the crime, nor did they run stories on bar safety for students. 4-Kegs changed their age policy to 21 and up, (which is no real protection against sexual assault), but have otherwise responded abhorrently.
I went to 4-Kegs myself this Thursday with a group of women to raise awareness about rape and question why no one has been told about the incident and why bars aren’t doing more to protect their customers. We held signs, chanted, and passed out flyers. In response, 4-Kegs patrons and employees called us “a bunch of dykes.” A media van came to film, and after they left, 4-Kegs played “Rape Me” by Nirvana over the loudspeaker as several patrons on the patio cheered. This is NOT the kind of establishment that takes women’s safety seriously, and it’s probably not the only one.
Of course, the perpetrator is primarily responsible and should be brought to justice. But rape is not an isolated event- it is a campus community issue. It strikes in environments that permit it to happen, and springs from a culture that encourages aggressive male behavior and a view of women as sexual objects.
Bars should be safe for women. Period. This means that individual men shouldn’t take advantage of women, that bar owners and employees should maintain environments that do not encourage violent male aggression, and that bars should furthermore have much better security policies to protect their customers. It is unacceptable that a man was able to gain access to a storage closet to commit the crime. It is unacceptable that bar employees were not watching to see that all patrons were safe. It is unacceptable that the bar did not check the premises before locking the woman in, and that it maintained an atmosphere conducive to such behavior.
Stopping this kind of thing from happening requires action from all fronts- challenging bars like 4-Kegs, media that ignore issues of sexual assault and bar safety, violent cultural norms around sex and gender, and of course, changing individuals through education and outreach. This note is not to blame any one specific actor, but to show that there are many beyond the perpetrator that we should not ignore! I want all of my female friends to be safe, and for the campus area to be safe for them. Awareness is the first step.
Thanks for reading to the end. If you find these events as upsetting as I do and want to see change, please pass the information along!
Wishing everyone happiness and health,
Laura Tompkins
Hey Everybody,
I am writing this letter to all of my friends, because it is a community issue that affects us all, but the message is most urgent for women. This note is about sexual assault and a violent sexual culture at many bars and clubs around campus that we should all be challenging.
Approximately three weeks ago a woman was raped and locked in a storage closet at 4-Kegs. Police had to use the GPS function on her cell phone to find her and she was not set free until several hours after the bar had closed.
As disturbing as the incident itself is, how the media and the bar have responded adds insult to injury. Campus and Columbus news never reported the crime, nor did they run stories on bar safety for students. 4-Kegs changed their age policy to 21 and up, (which is no real protection against sexual assault), but have otherwise responded abhorrently.
I went to 4-Kegs myself this Thursday with a group of women to raise awareness about rape and question why no one has been told about the incident and why bars aren’t doing more to protect their customers. We held signs, chanted, and passed out flyers. In response, 4-Kegs patrons and employees called us “a bunch of dykes.” A media van came to film, and after they left, 4-Kegs played “Rape Me” by Nirvana over the loudspeaker as several patrons on the patio cheered. This is NOT the kind of establishment that takes women’s safety seriously, and it’s probably not the only one.
Of course, the perpetrator is primarily responsible and should be brought to justice. But rape is not an isolated event- it is a campus community issue. It strikes in environments that permit it to happen, and springs from a culture that encourages aggressive male behavior and a view of women as sexual objects.
Bars should be safe for women. Period. This means that individual men shouldn’t take advantage of women, that bar owners and employees should maintain environments that do not encourage violent male aggression, and that bars should furthermore have much better security policies to protect their customers. It is unacceptable that a man was able to gain access to a storage closet to commit the crime. It is unacceptable that bar employees were not watching to see that all patrons were safe. It is unacceptable that the bar did not check the premises before locking the woman in, and that it maintained an atmosphere conducive to such behavior.
Stopping this kind of thing from happening requires action from all fronts- challenging bars like 4-Kegs, media that ignore issues of sexual assault and bar safety, violent cultural norms around sex and gender, and of course, changing individuals through education and outreach. This note is not to blame any one specific actor, but to show that there are many beyond the perpetrator that we should not ignore! I want all of my female friends to be safe, and for the campus area to be safe for them. Awareness is the first step.
Thanks for reading to the end. If you find these events as upsetting as I do and want to see change, please pass the information along!
Wishing everyone happiness and health,
Laura Tompkins