We’ve been at this blogging thing for almost a year now, and it just dawned on me that we’ve been talking a lot about sex and sexual violence. Some might say “what gives?” I thought this was the domestic violence coalition?” (Or that thought might never have occurred to you. If you don’t work in the field, you’d never know that domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy are pretty separate.)
Is it because these issues have recently captured national media attention? Schwarzenegger, Strauss-Kahn, Weiner. Marlo Thomas at Huffington Post wondered recently if Men Behaving Badly is a good thing. She sees a shift in the public response to sexual misbehavior. There’s a lot more outrage and a lot fewer people making excuses for the perpetrators.
Despite her claim that sexual assault is getting more and better coverage, there are a lot of questions—especially among those of us who do this work—about which (domestic violence or sexual assault) gets more attention and accurate representation from the media. Which issue is more main-stream, more understood by the folks who don’t think about it everyday? Are we blogging more about sexual violence instead of domestic violence because we think it is less understood, or more? I don’t know.
What I do know is this: It should not be an either/or discussion. Sexual and domestic violence are inextricably linked. After all, rape happens in domestic violence relationships too, and I’m not sure the separation of these into different specialties has served us well. Maybe our blog’s tag line (“talking about violence and relationships”) has freed us to see past our titles and re-focus on the bigger goal—let’s get all kinds of violence out of our lives.
Can You Relate? 