Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

[Wendy <>]

You should treat offensive speech and stalking against women that hasn't reached actionable levels under the law in EXACTLY the same way you would treat such behavior against black  students that doesn't rise to the level of actionable.

What steps do you take when a student uses the N-word offensively - once - against a black student?

A single use of the N-word is not enough to prove stalking or harassment but it's something you will want to address quickly to prevent escalation and to send a firm message of intolerance.

Moreover, you should state openly when communicating with students about your response that the harm to women is the SAME TYPE of harm as happens when racist words and conduct occur.

This is bit to say that slavery and women's subjugation caused the same harm. The point of making them the same is to engage students as a community to feel invested in the solution. 

I, as a white person, feel invested in racism prevention because I understand it as a civil rights harm that injures me because it injures my community. The nature of civil rights harms is inherently everyone's injury but students don't perceive harm to women in this way because campus officials FRAME women's suffering differently.  Indeed, that propagandized Differentness is why people wrongly thought Title IX was a sports equity rule  for decades.

Every substantive and procedural rule and policy related to the redress of racist harm should apply with equal force to the redress of sexist harm - whether or not the harm fits a technical definition of actionable conduct.

Wendy Murphy