Defined+Lines+-+There+should+be+nothing+'blurred'+about+consent

Lauren Mason n6408354 Judith Meiklejohn

Topic From 'condoms on bananas' to negotiating consent: Educating around safety and desire in human sexual relationships

WARNING: Contains explicit material

Defined Lines: There should be nothing 'blurred' about consent

Cultural Artefact media type="custom" key="24258328" align="center"

The cultural artefact is the song and accompanying music video "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharell Williams. There are two different versions of the film clip; the “censored” version shown above and the uncensored version which features the girls completely topless. The song’s lyrics include lines such as “just let me liberate you”, “that’s why I’m gon’ take a good girl”, “I hate these blurred lines”, “you know you want it”, “the way you grab me, must wanna get nasty”, “Swag on, even when you dress casual”, “Do you like it hurt?” and “I’m gonna give you something big enough to tear your ass in two” just to name a few.  http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/09/17/from-the-mouths-of-rapists-the-lyrics-of-robin-thickes-blurred-lines-and-real-life-rape/ Public Health Issue The public health issue correlating with the cultural artefact "Blurred Lines" is that of the implicit nature and the incidence of sexual assault in Australia due to the “rape culture” created by today’s society. Sexual assault continues to be a prominent public health concern with the number of incidences rising. Research shows that reports of sexual assaults are increasing by an average of four per cent each year (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2009).

The perceived insignificance of sexual consent in addition to the dominance and objectification of women as is often portrayed in pop culture outlets such as music and advertising; and this is fuelling our current rape culture causing many girls and women to fear for their safety. Women are encouraged to “try not to get raped” rather than men being taught to not rape.

lifestyle.sulekha.com www.sodahead.com Literature Review Sexual Consent According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2012, the key elements of consent include:
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Understanding what is being proposed without confusion or being tricked or fooled
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Knowing the standard for the behaviour in the family, the peer group and the culture with both parties having similar knowledge
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Having an awareness of possible consequences, such as punishment, pain, pregnancy or disease
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Having respect for agreement or disagreement without repercussion
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Having the competence to consent by being intellectually able and unaffected by intoxication

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Despite the importance of sexual consent to feminist theorists and activists interested in sexual violence, research specifically examining consent it is an understudied and undertheorised concept (Beres, M. A, 2007; Jozkowski & Peterson, 2012). <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Sexual Assault <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"> Sexual assault is defined as a physical assault of a sexual nature to another person against their will, through means of physical force, intimidation, coercion or the attempt to carry out these acts (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2013). It includes all incidents carried out on a person who does not give consent, is unable or is legally deemed incapable of giving consent due to age or disability ( Australian Institute of Criminology, 2009).

Sexual assault encompasses all unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature such as sexual harassment, sexualised bullying, unwanted kissing and sexual touching, sexual pressure and coercion and/or any forced sexual activity such as rape, attempted rape, incest or indecent assault (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2013). <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"> The Recorded Crime – Victims, Australia, 2011 publication demonstrates the vast difference in the gender of sexual assault victims with data showing that 85% of victims who reported incidents of sexual assault to police over a 12 month period were female (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012). Figure 2: Total number of sexual assaults reported to police, and broken down by gender, according to Recorded Crime - Victims data, 2011 <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"> http://www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/pubs/sheets/rs5/figure2.png Notes: WA data cannot be disaggregated by gender due to collection methods. Data for male victims in the NT, Tas. and ACT is 20, 25 and 24 victims respectively. These numbers are so small that they are barely visible on the graph. According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2012, many Australians are survivors of sexual assault with an estimated 1.3 million women and 362,400 men having experienced an incident of sexual assault since the age of 15. This translates to approximately 1 in 6 women and 1 in 20 men.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Table 2A: Men's and women's experiences of sexual abuse and sexual violence, Personal Safety Survey 2005 (and Women's Safety Survey 2006) - since age of 15 <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Personal Safety Survey 2005 || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Total sexual violence, <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Women's Safety Survey 1996 || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Sexual assault || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Sexual threat || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Total sexual violence ||^  || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">1,293,100 (16.8%) || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">353,700 (4.6%) || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">1,469,500 (19.1%) || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">1,228,400 (17.6%) || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">362,400 (4.8%) || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">69,500 (0.9%) || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">408,100 (5.5%) || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">NA ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Women ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Men ||

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Rape Culture <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"> Under Australian common law, rape is defined as a penetrative sexual offence of a person against their will which generally includes penetration of the genitalia by a penis, object, part of a body or mouth (The Australian Law Reform Commission, 2010).

The predominance of rape is said to emerge from a culture within our society where sexual violence against women is normalised, excused and even glamourised by the media and within pop culture (Marshall University, n.d.). Rape culture is often perpetrated by the domination and objectification of women through the use of misogynistic language, degradation of women and their bodies in addition to promoting the perceived “masculine” act of sexual violence (Marshall University, n.d.; Vogelman, 1990). <span style="color: #d6d6d6; display: block; display: inline !important; text-align: left;">__[|psych-your-mind.blogspot.com]__<span style="color: #2518b5; display: inline !important; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">[|www.ekimeeza.com] <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"> Marshall University (n.d., para. 3), provide some examples of rape culture which include:
 * Blaming the victim (“She asked for it!”)
 * Trivialising sexual assault (“Boys will be boys!”)
 * Sexually explicit jokes
 * Tolerance of sexual harassment
 * Inflating false rape report statistics
 * Publicly scrutinising a victim’s dress, mental state, motives, and history
 * Gratuitous gendered violence in movies and television
 * Defining “manhood” as dominant and sexually aggressive and “womanhood” as submissive and sexually passive
 * Assuming only promiscuous women get raped
 * Assuming that men don’t get raped or that only “weak” men get raped
 * Refusing to take rape accusations seriously

A rape culture’s acceptance of sexual violence by certain types of men and the perception of women as true sexual assault victims are heavily influenced by social categories including race, class, sexuality and age. Many victims are not only doubted, but are also blamed for encouraging the violence against them through actions such as wearing certain types of clothing, consuming drugs and/or alcohol and being in certain locations or out at night. (Guckenheimer, 2008).

Pop culture such as “Blurred Lines” demonstrates a lack of understanding and ignorance to the importance of sexual consent therefore aiding in creating an environment that portrays violence as being sexy and disregards women, their rights and safety (Guckenheimer, 2008). Victims of rape and sexual assault are frequently blamed and made to feel responsible for being violated with the act of rape often not being acknowledged as a crime (Vogelman, 1990). This along with the ambiguity surrounding the criminal justice response results in most rape cases not being reported (Russo, 200).

Sexual assault is an important public health issue that needs to be addressed in order to prevent the number of incidences in Australia from rising even further. Due to sexual assault often being defined with regards to consent; prevention efforts are centered on the clarification and promotion of the importance of the definition and obtainment of consent as a mechanism to reduce sexual assaults (Jozkowski & Peterson, 2012). <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Cultural and Social Analysis __ [|www.sparksummit.com] __ [|youdontneedfeminism.tumblr.com] In contrast to criminological theories that view rapists as social deviants and the rape culture theorist notion that sexual violence is a learned behaviour; sociobiological theories become part of the rape culture with their argument that male sexual aggression is only natural (Hockett et al, 2009).

Seeking justice for women and aiming to end sexism in society; feminism is both an intellectual commitment and political movement providing mainstream philosophical views with a constructive and critical exchange of ideas in addition to introducing new topics of inquisition. A relationship between dominance and sexual aggression provides the basis for feminist theories on rape motivation (Hockett et al, 2009).

Scientific literature written about the reasoning behind rape motivation often focuses on one of two prominent driving forces; the motivation of sexual gratification or the motivation of an exertion of power through dominance. In addition to this, there are hypothesis’s suggesting that males can be motivated to rape as a result of a social learning theory where rape-supporting attitudes and behaviours are seen as acceptable (Hockett et al, 2009).

According to MacKinnon, a feminist scholar, lawyer, teacher and activist, (1982, p515-516), “Sexuality is to feminism what work is to marxism: that which is most one’s own, yet most taken away.” Sexuality is socially constructed by moulding the expression of sexuality into two separate sexes, male and female; this is the division that underlies the entirety of social relations. Feminism is a theory of power and its inequality, often involving the deprivation of a woman’s sexuality, which defines the conception of a lack of power (MacKinnon, 1982).

Research findings have reinforced the theory that men are perceived as sexual initiators and women as sexual gatekeepers, and that men's sexual pleasure is primary whereas women's experience of pleasure is secondary (Jozkowski & Peterson, 2012). These ideas and conceptions are likely to be a result of society’s rape culture and are heavily influenced by pop culture and the entertainment industry in particular.

Feminist theorists from the 1970’s drastically challenged the idea that men are rendered by biology as being superior over women both culturally and sexually (Basiliere, 2009). According to Basiliere (2009, para 1), there were conflicting beliefs between feminists that as a result of this challenge to male authority, women would either “claim sexual pleasure and agency within a patriarchal society” or the belief that “embracing radical sexualities constituted violence against women and submission to patriarchal ideals”.

Three female law students from the University of Auckland in New Zealand have created a feminist parody film clip called “Defined Lines” in response to Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”. Defined Lines was actually removed from YouTube due to it’s “inappropriate” nature whilst the Robin Thicke’s “censored” version remained available to watch; it has since been reinstated with YouTube claiming it was taken down “by accident”.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"> media type="custom" key="24258342" align="center"

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Analysis of artefact and learning reflection: In an interview with GQ about “Blurred Lines”, Robin Thicke stated, "We tried to do everything that was taboo. Bestiality, drug injections, and everything that is completely derogatory towards women. Because all three of us are happily married with children, we were like, 'We're the perfect guys to make fun of this." "People say, 'Hey, do you think this is degrading to women?' I'm like, “Of course it is. What a pleasure it is to degrade a woman. I've never gotten to do that before. I've always respected women.”

The lyrics and film clip of the popular song “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke, T.I. and Pharrell Williams essentially represents a rape anthem by the objectification and degradation of the women in the film clip, in addition to the violent lyrics and promotion of non-consensual sex and trivialisation of consent. The women being shown almost completely naked whilst the men are all fully dressed in suits further accentuates the inequality of the women and men within the film clip. The video and lyrics also promote a male dominance over a woman’s personal sexual agency and creates confusion to the viewers about what a women’s body language is saying as opposed to what she is actually saying, for example, her body language says “yes” but she actually says “no”. This stems back into the misogynistic notion that rape is the victim’s fault and the excuse being that the rape victim was “asking for it”.

Personally, I find the lyrics of the song and the film clip to be extremely derogatory towards women and a major step backward towards the oppression of women. It is my belief that glamourisation and promotion of sexual violence towards women shown in “Blurred Lines” and Robin Thicke’s opinion about it being a pleasure to degrade a woman will only increase the prevalence of sexual assault and rape stemming from our current rape culture.

My research into this topic has shown me that sexual assault caused by a rape culture is a serious public health issue that needs to be addressed and rectified by our society rather than to continue to be encouraged by media and pop culture.

Women should be considered equal to men in every way including their sexuality and this can only be made possible educating people about the importance of treating women with integrity and respect, obtaining proper consent, what constitutes as being sexually violent and what is and is not socially or criminally acceptable.

I will apply what I have learnt from this research in the future by helping to create awareness about the implications of rape culture try to challenge the normalisation of inappropriate and violent behaviour towards women.

As Koehler (2013) says, “There are no blurred lines, there is only one line: consent. And the absence of consent is a crime.”

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 * Learning Engagement and Reflection Task **

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 * Reference List **

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2013). Sexual Assault. Retrieved October 11, 2013, from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4530.0Chapter2062011-12

Australian Institute of Criminology, Australian Government. (2009). Selected crime profiles. Retrieved 11 October, 2013, from http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/facts/1-20/2008/2%20selected%20crime%20profiles.html

Australian Institute of Family Studies, Australian Government. (2012). Age of consent laws. Retrieved October 11, 2013, from http://www.aifs.gov.au/cfca/pubs/factsheets/a142090/

Australian Law Reform Commission. (2010). Sexual Offences ‘Rape’: The penetrative sexual offence. Retrieved November 4, 2013, from http://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/25.%20Sexual%20Offences/‘rape’-penetrative-sexual-offence

Basiliere, J. (2009). Political is Personal: Scholarly Manifestations of the Feminist Sex Wars. //Politics and Performativity, 22//(1). Retrieved 4 November, 2013, from[|__http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mfsfront;c=mfs;c=mfsfront;idno=ark5583.0022.101;rgn=main;view=text;xc=1;g=mfsg__]

Beres, M. A. (2007). ‘Spontaneous’ Sexual Consent: An Analysis of Sexual Consent Literature. //Feminism & Psychology, 17//(1)//,// 93-108, doi: 10.1177/0959353507072914

Haslanger., Sally., Tuana., Nancy., O'Connor., &Peg. (2003). Topics in Feminism.//The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved November 4, 2013, from// http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/feminism-topics/

Hockett, J. M., Saucier, D. A., Hoffman, B. H., Smith, S.J., & Craig, A. W. (2009). Oppression through acceptance?: Predicting rape myth acceptance and myth acceptance toward rape victims. //Violence against women 15//(8),877-897, doi ** : 10.1177/1077801209335489 **

Guckenheimer, D. (2008). Rape Culture. // Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Violence, // 581-583. doi: 10.4135/9781412963923.n387

Jozkowski, K. N., & Peterson, Z. D. (2012). College Students and Sexual Consent: Unique Insights. //Journal of Sex Research, 50//(6), 517-523, doi**:**10.1080/00224499.2012.700739

Koehler, S. (2013). From the mouths of rapists: The Lyrics of Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines. Retreived Nov 3, 2013, from http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/09/17/from-the-mouths-of-rapists-the-lyrics-of-robin-thickes-blurred-lines-and-real-life-rape/

MacKinnon, C. A. (1982). Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An agenda for Theory. //Signs, 7//(3), 515-544, Retrieved from [|__http://www2.law.columbia.edu/faculty_franke/Certification%20Readings/catherine-mackinnon-feminism-marxism-method-and-the-state-an-agenda-for-theory1.pdf__]

Marshall University. (n.d.). Rape Culture. Retrieved November 2, 2013, from http://www.marshall.edu/wcenter/sexual-assault/rape-culture/

Plank, E. (2013). A feminist takedown of Robin Thicke, and anyone who thinks there’s something “blurry” about sexism. Retrieved November 4, 2013, from http://www.policymic.com/articles/56069/a-feminist-takedown-of-robin-thicke-and-anyone-who-thinks-there-s-something-blurry-about-sexism

Russo, L. (2000). Date rape: A hidden crime. Retrieved 4 November, 2013, from http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/0/2/A/%7B02A6DF4D-A33D-4BE1-8AD2-0767A30264E0%7Dti157.pdf

Vogelman, L. (1990). //Sexual Face of Violence: Rapists on Rape.// Retrieved November 2, 2013, from https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/abstract.aspx?ID=127046