Psychology of Women: Fall 2010

My last visit with the women at the group session was very interesting. For two hours we did nothing but talk about menstruation. The women I spoke to were tired of their significant other always assuming that they are on their period when they speak their mind freely. Many women expressed feeling insulted when their personal concern cannot be voiced without their significant other degrading them as women. Although menstruation should be seen as a positive thing, it is always used in a negative way and usually as an insult. I had mentioned to them about PMDD and how the APA is thinking about adding it into the DSM-IV and their reactions were more than expected. Many expressed that it was degrading and unjust for women to be labeled mentally ill, mainly because they are having severe side effects to their menstruation.  I got the impression that they wanted to talk more about the issue and it seemed as if they were really passionate about what they were saying. Many of the women I talked to that night have felt degraded by their significant other throughout the relationship, but never thought that society would go as far as to hide women behind closed doors when “its that time of the month”. One woman in particular mentioned that her husband was filing for full custody of the kids and if he wins then he is moving them to Colorado. She was very emotional that night, but all of the women at the group warned her not to speak with her heart, but with her mind. Words of advice were: you do not want the judge to mistake you for having her period. It was upsetting to hear that simply because it is true, many women cannot show signs of emotion or be overly emotional without the implication that they are on their period.

The women I met at the shelter and those I didn’t seem to have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders.  The time at the shelter is limited, after the baby is born the women have a year until they must leave the shelter (in certain circumstances some women get an extension).  For the women I met, finding a job or/and going to school can lead to stress.  I am worried because MD has five months until she has to leave the shelter.  I feel like I cannot help and feel bad because she is extremely stressed since she has been unemployed for 3 months. The text states that stress can lead to depression and other mental illnesses. I was not surprised to learn the HD has not been feeling like her usually self.   As well as mental illness, stress has affected HD physical health; she has had incidents of bad headaches the past week and half.  After speaking with HD, I get the impression that she needs help finding a job and child care but at the same time maintains her independence by not asking anyone.  I have tried to help and give suggestions of where to apply but find that she has already applied there.  I feel inadequate as a mentor, one because she is six years older than me and she seems to be very independent.

I was reassigned to be a mentor to another woman at the shelter.  I was actually nervous to meet her because I did not know that much about her and I would not be meeting her with LF (my supervisor).  The first meeting with HD, the woman I was assigned to mentor, went very well and I became more comfortable with her as we talked.  One thing that stood out during this meeting was that she said she was in gifted classes during high school but was in the “dumb dumb” class for math.  This made me think back to the class discussion about the belief in gender appropriate subjects effects how teachers encourage and promote academic success differently for boys and girls. I was wondering if HD lack of confidence in math was an effect of this phenomenon.  In another meeting I asked her if this phenomenon could have influenced her dislike for math.  When I read about this phenomenon in the text, I didn’t realize that it actually happens in real life.  HD stated that she may have liked math and done well if her teachers had helped her more.

The sexual abuse of children is a horrific crime. There are many cases which go unreported for decades, and that is because most of these children know their attackers. Many times it’s even a family member. My first day at RCASA there were two sisters who came in who had been abused by their own father. They had been taken by social services at that point to live with their grandmother, who brought them in that day. Children are apparently viewed as easy victims because the likelihood that they will come forward is slim because they are afraid that they will get in trouble. But as Lips pointed out, the effects of childhood sexual abuse can be more devastating in the long run because these children often end up not only with deep emotional scars but also a higher probability of contracting STDs. When I asked about why they were more likely to contract STDs the people at RCASA told me that it was because the girls were more likely to be victims of repeated abuse by their abuser. These crimes go unnoticed and unpunished for the most part, and it is sickening to see. But until these kids are consciously able to understand that they have done nothing wrong as a victim, there isn’t much that can be done.

Unfortunately I only met with M.A one more time because she decided to go back to New York to live with her (ex) boyfriend’s mother.  I met her at the McDonald’s because she had just come from the DMV. She found out that she was unable to get a driver’s license because she did not have the right documentation.  Since she was hiding from her parents, she had to get her godfather to mail her the documentation.  However, he did not have access to the correct documentation (the birth certificate he sent was actually a birth and baptismal certificate).  Her parents had the correct documentation.  I felt that not having the correct documentation played a small part in her decision to leave. When setting up this meeting she said she would not be available on Friday because she would be out of town.  I was surprised when I found out she wanted to go home and concerned for her safety. The text shows that culture has a big impact on the socialization of gender and gender norms.  Although M.A. was born in the United States, she was also raised and treated according to Nigeria culture.  I was taken aback at MA response when I asked her if her parents would make her go to the clinic.  I realized that in her culture the family would “take care of it themselves.”  I was completely shocked when I heard this but at the same time felt naïve because prior to hearing this I just thought she left because of the verbal abuse she received from her mom. When I dropped MA off at the shelter, I asked her to keep me updated.  I only heard from her a week later but have not heard from her since.  I do not know if I should try to contact her or not.

I wrote another blog today (for RCASA’s blog) about spousal rape. It should be up on Sunday if you are interested in reading the same thing twice. As Lips pointed out in the portion of our book covering sexual violence, spousal rape is one of the most overlooked types of rape there are. Until 1993 there were states in the U.S., like North Carolina, which blatantly stated that forcible sex was rape unless it was with your spouse. The laws until the end of the 20th century stated that you couldn’t rape your wife. That is something that I still can’t fully wrap my head around. This all goes toward the idea of there being different definitions of “rape” as Lips had pointed out. The rules are also different for women who wish to report a rape by their spouse. In most states you only have a 30 day time period in which you can report your rape, and there usually needs to be physical violence associated with it before it will be able to be a case that could convict the spouse. The fact that to prove her husband rapes her, a woman would have to be beaten up by him too is sickening. And the thing that is the hardest for the women at RCASA to say is “the next time he does it…” as though they should expect that there will be a next time. The truth is, though, that there will be a next time unless she leaves him or he beats her up badly enough that she can prove the rape was non-consensual. And as Lips pointed out, women generally have a hard time leaving a man because there aren’t a whole lot of places which she can go. It’s really a lose/lose situation for them and it is very disheartening.

Sexual assault is a terrifying experience for anyone, but unfortunately, it is only the beginning for many women who bravely choose to report their rape. There are certain guidelines that I never knew about when it comes to being able to successfully prosecute your attacker. The biggest rule is that you have to get to a hospital within 72 hours or they can not do a rape examination to try and find DNA. The earlier you go, the more DNA they will find, the better your results. The one that many people know, relating to DNA, is that you shouldn’t shower until you have gotten that examination. DNA is a woman’s best bet in court when proving rape, because otherwise it is a lot of he-said/she-said, and your case is a lot harder to win. The other rule, that most people don’t know, is that you have months before you can no longer report the rape. The longer you wait, the worse your case. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth fighting the good fight. The thing that the women at RCASA have stressed to me most, is that every time a woman doesn’t report their case, their attacker feels that he got away with it, and will probably do it again, if not to you, than to someone else. But the odds are good that this wasn’t just a one time thing for him. The good news in all of this, is that if a woman follows those rules, she has a very good chance of winning her case. Of rape cases brought to court, meeting all the criteria of what should be done when building a case, approximately 88% of the time the perpetrator of the rape is convicted. Despite the emotionally trying nature of these types of cases, they are seen as worth while after the conviction by most women.

Another area I felt Lips didn’t spend enough time touching on was the abuse of women who are mentally ill. These women have no capacity for consent as the American Justice system defines it, yet they are abused more often than we would like to think about. The problem that most people find in trying to attain justice for those who are severely mentally ill, such as schizophrenic women, is that their memory recall is not all that great. They usually don’t have a full enough memory of what happened to file a claim which can be properly used in court, and what they remember can be unreliable. Unfortunately, this makes some men feel as though they have a free pass to do as they please with these women, because the odds are in their favor that nothing will be done about it. There are very strict rules about how long it is before you can no longer get a rape examination at a hospital, and how long it is before you can no longer report a rape. It is a long and emotionally trying process for those who are not severely mentally ill. For those who are it is a nightmare. One that, in all likelihood, won’t have a positive outcome.

One of the things that I keep hearing at RCASA, from those who work there, is how little the police do for women who are sexually assaulted. They are especially hard on the Mary Washington Campus Police, stating that they have had cases where they have convinced girls that they were not really raped because it was by their boyfriend, or because they were drunk and, by all accounts, “leading the guy on.” This not only hurts me as a Mary Washington student, but as a woman and a human being. As Lips discussed, “normative rape” such as spousal rape are not considered to be rape by some people. The fact that those who are to protect and serve us as students would believe that forced sex under any circumstances should not be considered rape is terrifying to me. We spoke in class about “rape light” and I think that these police officers should look more seriously into what kind of message they are sending to the local men when they take on an attitude like that.

One of the cases that I was there to hear, was a homeless woman who was raped in a shelter, and when she tried to report it the police blew her off, knowing that the odds of their finding the perpetrator in such a transient area like Fredericksburg were slim. That, to me, seems like the equivalent of saying “you don’t matter, and therefore your safety doesn’t matter.”

As the women at RCASA pointed out, there are some police officers who are very nice and very helpful, and actually try to make sure the victims of sexual abuse and assault are taken care of. These men are to be commended. I’m just disheartened by the fact that they are not all like that.

At RCASA I was asked to do research on the incidence of sexual violence in Native American and Alaskan Native Populations. What I ended up finding astonished and horrified me. As we discussed from the Lips chapter on sexual violence, studies show that of women age 12 and older about 64.8% had reported being forcibly raped. The numbers in the communities which were surveyed in the research I did were dramatically higher, reaching about 85% of the women interviewed. Many of the women had stated in the interviews that it was to be expected that they would be sexually assaulted at some point or another. What was even more horrifying was that most of these crimes go unreported because there isn’t a whole lot that is done for these women. There have, in the past been laws on the books that have stated that if a Native American woman is raped by a white man, the punishment would be less than if that man had raped a white woman. Approximately 12% of the women interviewed reported that their rape was done by a white man, though. Lips says that one of the problems in dealing with rape research is that it is hard to define rape, and things like “normative rape” still exist. The fact that these women believed that they should expect that they would be raped is almost unimaginable. If these crimes are going under-reported at a shocking 85%, what would the real statistics look like?