- Good evening, Mrs. Janet Sanders, assistant Dean of Women at Kansas University. Welcome to a feminist perspective. This weekly radio broadcast is sponsored by the Women's Resource and career Planning Center, a program and information service of the Dean of Women's Office, 220 Strong Hall. A feminist perspective provides a forum for women themselves to speak publicly on issues of concern to them and helps inform other women and men of the movement, which is remaking the shape and substance of women's and men's lives. The women's resource and career planning center contains large amounts of information, news clippings, government documents, magazine articles, research studies, and books pertaining to the many aspects of the women's movement. We would like to invite you to come in and browse or take advantage of the materials which can be borrowed, that's in 220 Strong Hall at the University of Kansas. Tonight's program is part of a continuing series on choice and sexuality. Our specific topic tonight is infringement on choice. We have two guests, Miss Jill Whitley who is a senior in the Kansas university School of social welfare and Casey Eike, who is assistant to the Dean of Women at Kansas University. I think that the general orientation I had in mind for infringement on choice would be the kinds of things that operate in the world today that prevent women especially from exercising and expressing their sexuality as they might choose to. The things that keep women from being aware of the possible alternatives that frown on some of the alternatives or make it impossible for them to utilize some of the alternatives to expressing their sexuality. And I guess the thing that comes to mind, first of all, as a clear infringement on choice is rape. Rape is legally defined as carnal knowledge of a person usually a woman against her will. Casey, I think you've been doing some work on rape statistics around the country. - I think it's interesting to note that in 1970 there were 37,270 reported rapes. In 1972 there were 41,890 reported rapes . And most criminologists that I have read estimate that between four and 10 times as many rapes that occur are reported. The FBI has indicated that rape is the least reported crime of all. - Any hypotheses about why that might be? - Well, I think we can all come up with our own hypotheses but the one thing that comes to my mind first is it's such a hard thing for the woman to go to the actual reporting procedure and having to remove the situation. We have so many different times for different questionings and the idea that it's kind of inherent in our culture that it's kind of the woman's fault that she was raped. I think that a lot of women that grow up with this attitude and still even though they intellectually may know that that's not her fault and that this is something done to her, a crime committed against her person, I think she still has to deal with some inner guilt feelings. And many times in subtle ways she has to deal with it in herself. But I think lots of times in more overt ways during questioning say, the kinds of questions that you're asking. Why were you on the street at that time? Why were you in this bar getting a beer, things like that. And she really has to delve into herself and dig out those fields. - What about this community itself, is a rate much of a problem in Lawrence? - Well, it's a problem everywhere. And Lawrence is no different really. It's a smaller town of course, there's not as many, but last year... In 1972, there were 26 reported rapes in the city of Lawrence and over 200 assaults of all types. Again, there is no way of really knowing how many rapes actually occurred during that time period. And it also depends on how you define rape. I think, we can all think of very obvious examples. If a woman is a costed and forced into an ally, things like that, we would all agree is rape. But I think that we might talk about the topic on infringement and talk about some more subtle kinds of rape or I don't know, if there's a different way to term it but it could be termed rape also. - I'm thinking right now about the more violent and obvious kind of thing, and thinking of that as an infringement of another kind of choice. I'm remembering some women saying that they feel that their territory is very limited. For example, some of the streets around campus they feel are not safe for a woman after dark and that is infringing their choice just as when do they go to library. Jill, I see you nodding. Do you share this feeling? - Yeah, I share the feeling as a woman student and sometimes at the street at night there comes that feeling and a little bit of that fear. And I really resent that. The fact that I am not free to walk around safely and comfortably, I still do it. But definitely is that fear. - I think we all are raised with that fear and for good reason because the problem exists and it's something that we should be aware of. But I experienced the same kinds of frustration and kind of anger at why do I have to be afraid to walk down the street by myself? - I'm wondering something about this fear of rape because thinking back through my own upbringing that seemed to be something that was really very very much to be feared. It keeps me and kept me from going out at night by myself and doing things that I really wanted to do. And yet when I sit down and think about it objectively then I can think, well, so long it doesn't kill you or maim you, there seems to be a lot worse things in the world than being raped. And yet that really for women seems to be a great bugaboo, a great thing to be terribly afraid of. - I think ,Ive read something a woman wrote about that particular topic that she said that in many cases it's better to be raped than to be mauled or I mean to be maimed for life or killed or whatever. I wish I could remember her exact words 'cause they really impressed me but she said that it's the idea of... And I wish I could think of the right words, but the infringement on her person intimate and the highest form of insult, I think is is what she meant by her phrasing. And she said that was the same feeling when she thought about rape as she had when she read about the British woman who was tarred and feathered-- - For getting in Northern Ireland. - Right. Right. - For assault. - And again in British soldiers some of it Irish and Sargent's, cut her hair at times. - And even though the tar would come off of wash off and her hair would probably grow back, there was no way to replace that. The loss of respect for herself or the kind of harm that was done to her person. - What about to her reputation? Do you think that, okay, in 1973, people would look at a woman who had been raped, she loses her reputation if she has been raped? - I remember seeing some movies from the forties that she couldn't hold her head up in the community again, that kind of thing. - Well, I think that that might be part of it. I mean, there has to be some reason why women keep this to themselves. I think part of it is some kind of a feeling of guilt and at least a feeling on there part no matter how justified it is today that other people will look at her somehow as being to blame or somehow is being different even. Maybe not even to blame, maybe they see her as... Just it's too bad it happened since it has, well, it's just somehow that she's different. My intellectual reaction would be, I don't think that's too common anymore, but I'm sort of struggling to find out why exactly it is that women are so reluctant not only to inform the police but just to go to the hospital or to tell tell parents about it. - Or to tell anyone. And there have been lots of cases where the woman doesn't tell anyone until several years or 10 years later. Say in the CR group, I know this one example. - Consciousness Raising. - Consciousness raising groups, sorry. She finally admitted in her group once they started talking and she felt comfortable, she could finally admit that yes, this had happened to her 10 years ago, but she had never told anyone about it. I think that's a good example of that kind of thing too. I also think that that's changing the more that women talk about rape and it's more out in the open and the more that women learn about the injustice, say inherent in our legal system about rape. And if we can develop a healthy anger about the whole situation, I think that more and more women will report and talk about rape and go to counselors if they've been raped and talk about it and get those feelings out. - I think support from other other women is growing and just locally entailed with the rape victim counselors being set up and being able to call up a woman who was sympathetic to what the rape victim must be feeling and who maybe has had contact with being assaulted herself even or dealing with other women who have been assaulted. And just being able to talk about it openly. - I'm thinking that that might be one of the ways that women, in some ways box themselves in to losing their freedom of choice. The idea that you don't talk to other people about sexual matters. And I think that, okay, I'm 27 and I remembering being a teenager, in my very early twenties, lots and lots of questions about my sexuality about wanting to compare my experiences with other people but you just don't talk about that kind of thing. At least we didn't then or in the groups of friends that I was in. And so it must be very difficult when you can't even talk about the usual things that happen to bring up something like this. And I think some of this closeness can account for losing choices if you don't choose to be open about it. What you were saying earlier, Casey, about the the more covert types of rape, not the kind where a man drags the woman into the ally and tears her clothes off and rapes her but... - Well, I'm thinking of situations that I, as though it never happened to me that I can remember right now anyway. But the kinds of situations where say a freshmen girl is going out with neat guy or something and maybe he expects her to put out for him and she kind of expects that he expects that. And although she hasn't really thought about it and made a conscious decision, she's kind of led into that because she feels that it's expected that he may feel that she expects it and all these expectations and that kind of thing where there isn't a conscious choice. I mean, you don't consciously decide what you wanna do. I think that's an infringement on people choosing. I would define it that way. Part of my responsibilities as human sexuality advisor to the commission on the status of women includes problem pregnancy counseling. And so often the women that I talk with who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy say it's something that just happened. I really hadn't been expecting it, I hadn't been thinking about it, it just happened. And they don't appear particularly happy about that. They hadn't given it any thought and afterwards they're just worried a lot and it did have bad results for them. - I think there are a couple of things that lead to that. And I think one of them is that, that inability to talk about sex openly. I mean, even when that when that freshmen girl is dating her boyfriend it's very hard to even bring up the possibility of whether they will have sex or not. So that even when it appears that they will be imminently or whatever it's still very hard to say, wait. I mean, it's so hard to verbalize around the whole sexual sphere. And when you can't verbalize you can't even express, that you're not ready, you're not protected, you're not anything. I mean, so there's still a lot of lack of talking about it. - Which makes for a lack of choice. Do you think that there's anything still going on like we used to see in cartoons, the fellow who drives the woman out to the country after a date and says, neither get your roller skates on and skate home or put out now? For example, here at the University of Kansas do you think that there's that kind of mentality going on? - I'd hate to answer that, but I don't have any way of knowing. But I wouldn't be that surprised just given the way that we were all raised and the kinds of expectations you were all subject to. - That seems to me somewhere in the middle ground between the very overt dragging someone in the alley and the just happening kind of thing. But where a man has a specific intent in mind and gives a woman really not too much choice if she wants to walk seven miles back to Lawrence at three o'clock in the morning in the dark and the cold, that isn't too much of a viable choice. - I had a roommate actually couple of years ago who had that kind of experience. It was not at on campus, it was when she went home. And so I think it still is happening definitely. - Well, my thoughts are moving into yet another more subtle kind of denial of choice. And that's just kind of a societal denial. In some of the readings that I've been doing on sexuality, people are becoming very conscious that both women and men have had their choices limited by society's expectations. That there is only one proper, healthy normal way of expressing your sexuality. And so of course that is the only one that you will consider. And that is the only one that you will practice. I like to call that the heterosexual American dream ideal, which Dr. Lonnie Myers of the Institute for the Study of Sexuality in Chicago talked about and described as adult, male and female, preferably married, preferably white, preferably in their own double bed after 10 o'clock with the lights out and quietly, so the children don't hear and the man on top, that is being the heterosexual American dream ideal, and anything else, any other expression of sexuality is not good for your body, it's not good for your mind and it definitely isn't good for your soul. And so that to me seems clearly to be cutting out a lot of possible alternatives for sexual expression. - Did she go on to talk about the reasons what keeps this ideal going? - Well, she laid quite a bit of the blame on the medical profession, the medical profession, who it itself is ill informed about sexuality who finds difficulty, a physician who finds difficulty as Jill pointed out in communicating about sex to a patient. And just some of the popular press also that keeps that kind of ideal going. What are your thoughts on that? - Well, there seems to be a tradition, keeping sex really under the covers in more ways than one. And the idea that you described, I think you could probably add, not very often, maybe once a week. And, you know sex seem to be a topic that there's no freedom around it to be expressive. It's something sort of like for the woman. I mean, it's traditionally been even talked about in terms of an obligation or a duty. - And for the man it has been the right of the husband - Right. So I think it comes about because of our feelings about sex in general, that we restrict it to certain kinds of situations just because we want to restrict it anyway. And then in my own personal case, I can recognize a very strong religious influence on some of those values. I really distinctly recall in grade school, I went to a parochial grade school. And as early as like the second or third grade when a nun would lead us through an examination of our consciousness. One of the things she would ask us is ask yourself, have I had any impure thoughts and have I allowed these impure thoughts to remain in my mind and to enjoy them? Well, first of all second graders related the most, don't have any idea really what an impure thought is. And what immediately develops from that is that any thought about sex is impure. - And if you even enjoy the thought, you're bad leave alone action. - That's right. - Unless it is in this ideal situation. And so the outlet can be in that ideal situation and whether there's a choice. - And there's even sometimes a failure to make the connection if... It was never explained to us how to have pure thoughts about sex I guess. Never had that option that at least hang on to also sometimes it's okay. So that whole thing. And I don't think that just has to be any kind of a certain religion. I think that general attitude is very pervasive in the society and definitely restricts choice because from the inside as far as we internalize these values and there's an internal resistance to doing anything in this area. - I think that there... I was just thinking there's a definite age limit on this that fits into the ideal that I hadn't thought about before. I think people definitely think that a free sexual expression is not for teenagers, of course. Probably if you are married, from the time that you were 21 until what would you say the upper limit would be, 35? - I have some empirical evidence about this when I present programs on sexuality. One of the things that I like to do is display about 30 photographs and then I have people rate the photographs. Are these photographs very sexual in nature, moderately sexual or have no sexuality component whatsoever. And I have, for example, a set of photographs that are very similar, just the heads of a man and a woman and the heads are very close and the people are smiling. And the only difference is one set, the man and woman appear to be about 25, 26, the other set, the people are clearly in their 60s. And people rate those photographs and they always rate the younger couple as being at least moderately sexy. And the older couple is zero, no sexuality in this at all. In the loving, in the caring, even in the close physical contact there is no sexual component whatsoever. And I think that this leads to expectations and to norms, to limitation of choice. So that if there is an older couple older, they're 65 the man might feel a little bit like a dirty old man if-- - Unless he finds a younger woman. - Yes, that's another norm that is accepted. And the woman definitely, I would think, would not fit into the norm, into the ideal expectations for a woman of 65 to have an active and enjoyable sex life. - How about... Let's put it down to the campus community right now. Do you feel that in a campus situation this ideal is less active? That people are allowed more choice? - I think there may be a new thing entering in now for women, at least in that, existing within a university community which is maybe far more permissive than their home environment or their hometown. And with women, the great emphasis is put on being popular and being liked and the great security that comes from having a steady boyfriend and all that. And having a steady boyfriend more and more meaning a sexual relationship with him is becoming a more and more accepted thing by the male and the female but I can see that in some cases leading to a denial of choice in that women could enter into sexual relationships with some kind of an infringement of choice in that they have to accept the male on his terms almost without really questioning the terms themselves. - So they still more or less have their status defined by an association with a male. - Yeah. And it's changed a little. The nature of relationship-- - They don't have to necessarily be married and they don't have to have a double bed or a King size water bed, can't be all right. And maybe even a Saturday afternoon instead of astronaut o'clock, but nevertheless it is-- - Yeah, I think you you still find those same kinds of limitations going on in the woman and I'm sure in the men too in so far as they cannot express openly to themselves or to each their real feelings about having sex period or about the kind of sex they're having. I think it's probably even today, very difficult say for a woman to express to her lover that what he's doing is not really leaving her that satisfied or that he could improve his technique in this way. I still think those kinds of conversations, I have a feeling are still pretty rare. So I view that as an infringement on choice in that a choice not to have sex but to have the best kind of sex or enjoyable sex or to think that that's something that is a really within grasp within reason. - Well, I wanted to explore some of the alternatives for women to increase their choice. And it sounds to me like we were dealing with two different kinds of choices. One of them is the kind that you were talking about Jill just now, that if a woman somehow found the courage to take the risk she could choose to communicate in deeper ways in different ways, in more ways with someone else that is important to her. What kind of things would lead up to that? Okay, what can people do to increase their own choices? Any suggestions to meet this particular heterosexual ideal problem that we've talked about? - Well, I would say just to sit down and really try and deeply think about yourself and what you enjoy and what you really want, what you are comfortable with, not what other people around you may want you to be comfortable with and really what you want. And it's got to come from yourself first, I think and that can be done by talking to other people. There are lots of people-- - I think specifically to other women. And if you can find a friend that you trust and share your experiences and share your thoughts and feelings about that. I think that's one way to test out some of the things you want to say and how, what words to use, how to say them. - But again, what you talked about in the beginning of the program that that can be very difficult thing to do too unless it's a very close friend and you've had somewhat similar conversations before. But there are certainly people in the, well in the Dean of Women's office and the counseling centers that you could talk to also. Another idea is just to be informed. Just to read books and articles and just be informed about the facts. Physiological facts, facts about birth control. There's no reason not to be informed about sending-- - Yes, you can't possibly make a choice if you don't know that it's there to be made. - Another possibility might be just gaining an understanding of the limitations that you are. At present working under, I've had conversations with close women, friends of mine which we've talked about what our mothers told us about sex. And after seeing a little that was, it sort of know dawns on us a little more, well, no wonder these things are hard. And just understanding where it's coming from and then that it has some background-- - And that you are not a dumb person or a bad person or born with some parts missing or something like that. It's simply the way you were educated about this important subject. - That can be a really good way to initiate a conversation like that, is to just start out by telling funny stories about what you feared. I mean, maybe they're not so funny deep inside but they are funny. - They weren't funny at the time, but now we can live there. - But now you can kind of look back and laugh and that's probably a good way to start off the conversation of that sort. - What about the the more obvious problem that we started to program with, the very violent infringement on choice, specifically through rape? How can a woman increase the choices she has available to her either to prevent a situation like that or to deal with it when it occurs? - Well, there's always learning self-defense techniques. There are very simple kinds of techniques and things that any woman can do and learn that are just really common sense but we need to have it called to our attention that we can do that. We're working in the Dean of Women's office with traffic and security on a slideshow, on self-defense for women which we hope to have done by January so we can take that around, which will give those kinds of examples of things that you can do. We also have a rape counseling group of women who would be glad to talk to anyone who has been recently like like right now and wanting someone to go with and help her through some of the situations, reporting it to the police and going to the hospital. And she would just need to call the information center which 864-3506 and get help in that way. - Okay. I think that this evening we've covered some of the problems facing women in the infringement on their choice for expressing their sexuality. I'll like to thank our guests, Jill Whitley, and Casey Eike and invite you to tune in next week, same time, same station for a feminist perspective.