Monday, October 27, 2008

Week 5 Assignment

Personally, I have never heard of the term "sexual terrorism." I have to say though that I don't particularly do any of things she mentioned (unintentionally, like being aware of walking at night by herself, talking on the phone, etc.). This is probably a bad thing, but I usually walk home alone after work or from the library. I don't particularly see this as something all women/girls should hope they could do, I mean it would be nice if a girl could walk alone at night and not be afraid of the two guys walking ahead of her. Something that really stuck out in my mind while reading these articles was the guy who was quoted in the Barometer saying how if he is walking at night he is seen differently. I found myself completely agreeing with this guy, when I do walk at night by myself and I see a guy, my first thought (no matter how fleeting) is 'is this guy going to hurt me?' Which is really unfortunate, because I know that if I were to pass that guy on campus in the daylight or if he were to sit next to me in class I would not think twice about him. I talked to a couple of my friends about this and they completely agree with me. Guys that don't even register to them in the daylight suddenly become something to be wary of at night.
I have to agree with the Jesse Clark article to an extent; calling it "sexual terrorism" could possibly be taking it too far. I can understand where the girl in the "Sexual terrorism, a continuing cycle" article is coming from and the definition could fit, if you stretched it out a bit, but the word "terrorism" implies some pretty bad things, and saying you were sexual terrorized by guys being ridiculous and drunk (and they didn't really do anything to her) seems to be a bit much.

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