Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote about her experience with sexual assault for the first time on Monday.
In an essay for Jezebel, Weingarten explained that the Rolling Stone article on rape at the University of Virginia — and the potentially negative impact the story’s unraveling could have — prompted her to speak out about her experience.
“When Rolling Stone issued its retraction, my greatest fear was that we would once again have a curtain of silence, where young women feel too afraid to share their truth. And while I have no interest in reliving the experience or pinning culpability on anyone, that curtain of silence is why I am sharing my story today publicly for the first time,” Weingarten wrote.
The summer after her junior year, Weingarten had an internship in Ohio. She met a man at a Shabbat dinner, who invited her to his apartment for dinner later in the week. When she arrived, he tried to rape her, according to Weingarten. She managed to escape, but she explained that the “emotional scarring was deep.”
“I didn’t report it. I thought it was my fault. I thought I should have known better. I should have been smarter,” she wrote.
Weingarten said she was inspired by the many women who have shared their stories and pledged to work with university employees to address sexual assault on college campuses.
“Ending sexual assault on campus is going to take many partners—students, administrators, faculty, staff and their unions,” she wrote.
“But more than policy, we must all help change our culture,” she continued. “If we want to change that culture and combat sexual assault, we must take it on together. We must speak out together.”
Please - how many times does this point have to be made - this is a topic that deserves accuracy!
she did not say “I was nearly raped in college” or “Someone tried to rape me in college”
That makes it sound like it happened on a college campus - and was a part of the college environment.
The point she was making was that she had this horrible experience when she was about 20-21 years old - when she was participating in an summer internship in labor relations at an automobile plant in Warren, Ohio. - during the summer break between her junior and senior year of college - it was a non-college campus environment experience -
Was this during the era of her life when she was a college student- yes … but did it have anything to do with her actually being a college student? no
Her story -
She was participating in an summer internship in labor relations at an automobile plant in Warren, Ohio. She went to shul. One family invited her over for Shabbat dinner. They also invited a young man. He was nice enough. This “nice Jewish guy” then invited her for dinner. A few days later, she went to his apartment. And that’s where it happened. He tried to rape her. She managed to get out after a struggle, but the emotional scarring was deep.
There are genuine problems on college campuses - and there are far far too many stories of college campus sexual assaults that have been ignored - the dialog deserves genuine & accurate discussion - but this is not a “college” story -
So it wasn’t a ‘legitmate rape’ attempt?
"There are genuine problems on college campuses - and there are far far too many stories of college campus sexual assaults that have been ignored - the dialog deserves genuine & accurate discussion - but this is not a ‘college’ story "-
1 in 5? Maybe the true number is 1 in 6, or 1 in 3, or 1 in 10. We just don’t know. Whatever the true number it’s too damned many. Rapists or rapists manque’ need to play a price if their socialization did not include a prohibition against forcing sex on a woman. And it’s not “blaming the victim” to ask women to use a little common sense and at least try to avoid circumstances that make them more vulnerable. Some judicial prosecutions of these rapists might help, too.
Decades ago when I was in college we would hear that rape was epidemic on campus. Yes, sir, why a woman could hardly walk to the student union without being assaulted. Oh yes, and everyone had a friend of a friend on some other campus and yep, they had an epidemic of rape there, too. That’s not to say no women were assaulted. It’s just to point out the part that urban legend plays in making a bad situation worse.
And please don’t tell me I don’t “get it”. I’ve known several women over my life who were raped. That includes a cousin who was raped at age 11 and one who was held prisoner in her own apartment by a serial rapist on parole for other rapes.
And once again a reminder that the RS story wasn’t about the rape, it was about the response of the authorities to it. Whether collage administration, which the RS story focused on, or the replay of many police departments’ response to women reported actual or attempted sexual assault, we have got a long way to go before rape investigation is treated with the due respect and integrity called for.
Please - Randi Weingarten’s story clearly presents an assault and obviously an attempted rape. Have absolutely no issue with that. Have no issue with her lending her personal experience of her youth to the point that she was making .