From Lynn Beisner (pseudonym)

"Contrary to Will’s assertions, I have never encountered a trigger warning in a college classroom, but I’m sure they must be present in some. I’m sure it must be a horrible inconvenience for a professor who has to insert a boilerplate line into a syllabus, and it must be annoying to read such a warning if you, as a student, have no such triggers. Surely that pain and annoyance outweighs the risk of a PTSD relapse for students who have been assaulted."


 http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/06/10/privileges-ive-experienced-survivor-sexual-assault/


*****

"For more than a decade, I have been working or studying on college campuses. And I can say that, as George Will asserts, sexual assault victims who report being victimized get all sorts of privileges. They get special tutors who sit with them during tests. Their papers are practically written for them, and they barely have to show up to class.

Wait, sorry, those are athletes I’m thinking of.

I remember one class where we were discussing an issue related to sexual assault, and a woman was so rattled by the discussion that she confessed to having been the victim of a recent sexual assault. Let me tell you how many people lined up to escort her to a counselor, to make sure the assault was reported to campus police.

Nobody. That’s how many people did that.

But there must have been a huge payoff in the status she was afforded. Who doesn’t want to be known as a 'crazy bomb' that could go off at any second?"

 http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/06/10/privileges-ive-experienced-survivor-sexual-assault/


*****


"A few years ago, I received a rape and death threat against my daughter so gruesome and personal that I have felt obligated to write under a pseudonym since.

The truth is that George Will is lying. There is no privilege or status granted to those who have been sexually assaulted. We are counted as liars or trouble-makers. We become the objects of gossip, attacks, and other people’s projected shame."


 http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/06/10/privileges-ive-experienced-survivor-sexual-assault/