Dear Generation,

I was reading my university's weekly magazine Generation yesterday, when a story entitled "Straight A's and G Strings" [11/15] caught my attention.

In a nut shell, it was a piece covering the story of a student (whom apparently achieves high marks) attending Buffalo State University while working as a part time stripper. The author painted an image of glitz and glamour for this 21 year old's way of putting herself through college entirely on the money she takes home from taking her clothes off "only two nights a week.”

The story promoted much more than an “excellent part time job for college student”; it was supporting degradation and disrespect for women. It was giving the OK for the continuation of sexual assaults and rapes on all females. By not including the gruesome facts that tie violence against women in with jobs where women are paid to be a sex symbol—they closed their readers’ eyes to the twisted reality of our society’s normality.

The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIP) outlines the horrific truth that ties rape and sexual assault to a profession where women are paid to provide sex or sex fantasies to an audience. A 1992 study by Thompson and Harred states that 92 percent of the women who enter the sexual entertainment industry are within the poverty limits (including poor college students). “Strip clubs are criticized for being environments where men exercise their social, sexual, and economic authority over women who are dependent on them and as places where women are treated as things to perform sex acts and take commands from men” (Ciriello 1993).

On the NCIP website one is able to come across the statistics that one in every six women are raped within their lives. As for women who attend a university, their odds of being raped or sexually assaulted elevate to one in every four. This means that every Jane Doe at any university across the nation has a 25 percent chance of being a victim of rape (prior to beginning a part-time job as a stripper). “Experiments demonstrating that male psychology students in an aroused state—that is, in a state of higher skin temperature and faster pulse rate—were more likely to respond in a manner defined by researchers as ‘violent.’” (www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/harm.html). One would assume a male is sexually aroused when watching young, poor, nude women dance in front of them.

Generation not only neglected the realism associated within the world of women being seen as a toy for sex (whether physical or through fantasy) but they also fed the minds of all the men who read the article, that it is ok to see a woman as an object. Because of articles such as “Straight A’s and G Strings” singing out songs of praise for establishments that promote sexual violence, are in fact encouraging more sexual assaults and rapes to occur and fewer victims to come forward. The "voice" of my university took a step back on the march to make changes ending sexual violence.

As many of you are college students, I challenge you to stand up for what is right, and not what the social norm happens to be. Violence against women will not stop until we ALL take steps to ensure zero tolerance for such. I don't wish for everyone to march around their cities with signs, but I do challenge you to not laugh at a joke that makes light of sexual violence; to educate yourself on date rape drugs and high risk scenarios, and most importantly to encourage anyone who has been assaulted (sober or drunk) to stand up and report it.

My intent for writing this was not to preach any morality lesson your way, but to simply open the eyes that the article (and our current society) aimed to close.

Best Wishes to All

Jilly Harclerode

P.S. I didn’t even begin to comment on the Pornography piece…wonderful to know that the editor of Generation views a woman getting gang-banged, objectified, and victimized as a “booster to our society”—how’s about using your power of voice for something more than encouraging more sexual violence in our society?

Dear Jilly,

Thanks for the response. You make some very important points in regards to sexual assault, points that should be of special interest and concern to women on college campuses. However, your assertion that our article, our magazine, or even the adult entertainment venue itself actively promote such behavior has a few problems.

First, you state that the author intended to depict stripping in a positive light. The article itself takes no moral stance on the adult entertainment industry. If there are enthusiastic opinions of stripping as a way to make money, they are the opinions of the girl who so graciously agreed to speak with us about her part-time job. She honestly enjoys her work, and her first-hand account of her experience is what made for such a good article.

Which brings me to my second point: the reason Generation ran the article in the first place. Mr. Lillis’ story illustrates a college student whose method of paying the bills deviates from the norm. The story would still be both interesting and publishable if it detailed, say, a student who paid her tuition by trapping fur in the wilds of Canada, embalming dead bodies, or diving for sunken treasure in Lake Erie.

The novelty is the draw, not the nakedness. We were no more trying to promote the adult entertainment industry (to say nothing of sexual abuse) with that article than we were trying to promote naked pictures on the Internet with our story about the Suicide Girls phenomenon [11/1]. We write and publish stories about things that we believe will interest and engage the student body, not because we want to hype the people in them or their businesses.

Finally, you assert that by not criticizing the adult entertainment industry for what is often an admittedly seedy and occasionally abusive work environment Generation (or anyone, by implication) is promoting sexual violence. This idea is dangerously misleading. While the evidence you present is pertinent to a discussion of rape or sexual assault, none of it ties sexual assault to strip clubs or the adult entertainment industry.

You present a quote which contends that strip clubs are where men assert their social domination over women, but you completely ignore the fact that every female stripper is a competent adult with the free will to choose her occupation.

You note that 92 percent of women in the adult entertainment industry—which includes more than just strippers—are below the poverty line, but have you looked at similar statistics for women who work as waitresses or Wal-Mart greeters or just female college students in general? And what does that have to do with sexual assault?

I think your heart was in the right place, but you have to remember that nothing is as cut-and-dry as your initial impressions. Take a trip to a strip club. Look at the guy with the flannel jacket and trucker hat while sipping a $7 glass of water in the corner, furtively glancing at the strippers he must pay but is not allowed to touch to assuage his own inability to socially connect with the cute woman at his laundromat. Tell me who’s “dominant” in that relationship.

Undoubtedly, there are horror stories connected with this industry, but I would suggest that these instances are symptoms of a larger social disease, not the end result of a causal relationship between sexual entertainment and rape.

Cheers,

Jacob Drum

Associate Editor

Personals Response:

Dear 143 (what a lovely name!):

I was pleased to see your personal ad (it was sitting on my desk when I walked into class yesterday). Your suggestion, if you are a femme fatale, sou nds intriguing. I wish you had used the word “heavier” instead of “fatter,” but no matter. I’ll slim down, if necessary, though I work out 5-6 days a week as it is. And I think I weigh less than Hem did from his middle life on.

I assume you’re in my 384 class because we discussed “charm” one day, and, of course, we read Hem; but this may not be the case. I have tried to imagine who you might be, and I have an idea or two, but I won’t speculate. I can say only this—if you wish to make yourself known to me, I shall protect your privacy; and you need not worry about embarrassing yourself in any way. I have lived a good deal, and I have done and seen many things. Embarrassment is a word that I apply only to situations where one spills a glass of beer on a department chairperson’s head at a party (not easy to do unless s/he is very short!).

In truth: I am a lover of youth; and there are many places still for me to run away (with or without retirement). I am a lover of the “good destruction” as well, to say nothing of belles lettres, bougainvillea, and Vivaldi (hey, this sounds like a personal in The New York Review of Books).

Why not email me at:

hwolf@acsu.buffalo.edu

We could start with a trip to Toronto, say, or something like that. Even my beloved NYC.

Of course, this all may be a joke, tease, and jest on your part. If so, I’ll take the compliment, “charming,” and run.

I could say much more, but modesty forbids, even as many emotions course through my body.

-H.

Intelligent Design is Based on Science

George W. Bush has come out as an advocate for creationism or intelligent design as a counter theory to evolution but most scientists are saying that this is not a scientific theory.

However, the Cambrian period casts scientific doubt on evolution. As Steven Jay Gould in his article “An Asteroid to Die for” explained, “Within just a few million years, nearly every major kind of animal anatomy appears in the fossil record for the first time ... The Precambrian record is now sufficiently good that the old rationale about undiscovered sequences of smoothly transitional forms will no longer wash.” George W. Bush is not only advocating for a counter theory to evolution but also a scientific theory.

Many proponents of evolution object to creationism because they say it is not a scientific theory because some creationists use biblical references to support their theory. Yet, there is also a vast amount of scientific evidence that also supports creationism. As F. Heylighen in his article “Punctuated Equilibrium” explains, “However, if you study the fossils of organisms found in subsequent geological layers, you will see long intervals in which nothing changed (“equilibrium”), “punctuated” by short, revolutionary transitions, in which species became extinct and replaced by wholly new forms. This evidence shows that creationism is not simply based on a few biblical passages but scientific evidence.

Intelligent Design is also a scientific theory that equally has its place in our education system and should be thoroughly examined by everyone. The greatest evolutionist Charles Darwin was also aware of this problem as he wrote in Origin of Species, “There is another allied difficulty, which is much more serious. I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks.” George W. Bush’s promotion of intellegent design or creationism is road out of the wilderness of deception and a light amongst the deceivers that prefer to leave us in darkness.

by Rick Johnson

Dear Rick,

Thank you for your article which proves that there are, indeed, two sides to every theory backed by “scientific evidence.” My only request: Don’t stop with evolution. Give me zoological studies of Leviathan mating habits. Genealogical diagrams charting the seed of Man from Adam to Julio Iglesias. Legal analysis of the Ten Commandments (“That depends on what your definition of the word ‘ass’ is.”) Let’s give every opinion a fair shake, no matter how weak its factual basis.

We Are All Scientists in God’s Eyes,

Jacob Drum, Associate Editor