It’s Her Fault? Really? Ashley Bradley University Blogger

If you’re from the Chicagoland area, you’ve probably heard about the high school counselor and girls’ basketball coach from the southern suburbs who wrote a racy, “self-help” relationship book geared towards women entitled It’s Her Fault and was recently fired as a result. Now, he has the right to exercise freedom of speech, his first amendment right, by writing a book. The issue is that it is a highly offensive and degrading work.

Now, I haven’t read the book myself, but I’ve been hearing a lot about it since returning to school. The media continually quotes the same sentence from the book: "The ultimate point here is to utilize your worth, brains, experience or even sex appeal to potentially dominate one of the least intelligent creatures on the planet when it comes to the opposite sex," Craig writes. So women are one of the least intelligent creatures? The same “creatures” who bring males into this very world? If we are so lacking in intelligence, then what is our purpose on this planet? Is our purpose only to appeal to and please men? If that is our sole purpose, then I would agree that we are not too intelligent, but the majority of women are not on this planet to simply please men.

I spoke with a friend about it, and she mentioned the possibility of Bryan Craig (the author) writing the book as a joke just to see if he can get away with it. Maybe he did it as a publicity stunt of sorts. The thing is I don’t think Craig wrote it as a joke at all. I believe this is what he truly believes and how he feels about the female population. It makes me wonder if this is how he feels about his own wife (since it turns out that he’s actually married). Does he expect her to behave certain ways and hold her to a certain standard? I don’t think this is fair to his wife or women in general.

Blaming women for most issues in a relationship is not fair at all since relationships are a two-way street. I think another issue with this book is that it is truly reinforcing patriarchal society concepts in some areas. Because Craig is a man, he is superior and therefore knows exactly how a woman should act and what would make her a better wife and such. It’s one thing to give good advice on how to make relationships better in little ways, but it’s another thing to basically criticize and blame half of the human race for relational problems.

Women are living in fear and discomfort and it’s not fair- by Blogger Juan

Walking down the street, in a dark, cold night of September, on my way back from school, I noticed how women along the way would cross the street in order to avoid getting into close contact with me. This got me thinking. I started to put myself in the position of a woman and realized how easy we have it as men and yet we do not realize it until something like this occurrence happens. Women are living in fear and it just isn’t fair.

The same happens with wearing certain types of “provocative” clothes. I was speaking with one of my close friends a while back and he mentioned that he doesn’t like it when women wear tight clothes because it seems as if women are asking men to look at their body. Had to stop him there. I thoroughly explained to him what I felt about this comment. Honestly, if men feel like wearing whatever men will wear whatever, but when it comes to women this isn’t the same apparently. I told him that if a woman feels comfortable in the clothes she chooses to wear, she should have the right to wear whatever piece of clothing she pleases without having to be afraid or take in consideration so many expectations this society has implemented. It is saddening to know that we live in a society were gender binary has been normalized and until great minds start putting some ideas together, this will continue.

The Circle of 6 - Lily Blogger

As a former college student, it was always a bit nerve wracking to walk across campus late at night from the library. I always held my keys between my fingers and looked behind my shoulder every couple of blocks. But now a new app for your phone can provide an extra measure of safety on those dark nights or even in uncomfortable situations.

This new iPhone app called Circle of 6 is an innovative way to reach out to your friends if you ever feel like you're on a bad date or need help. There are 3 icons. The first icon, the car icon sends out a text message to your Circle of 6 that reads "Come and get me. I need help getting home safely. My GPS coordinates are..." The second icon, the phone icon sends out a text message that reads "Call and pretend you need me. I need an interruption." which would be handy for uncomfortable dates. The last icon, the chat icon sends out a text that reads "I'm looking for information, just letting you know." and will direct the user to national hotlines and other helpful resources.

The design is simple and meant to protect privacy so that no one would be able to see what is happening on your phone. For more information, please refer to these links.

http://appsagainstabuse.challenge.gov/submissions/4900-circle-of-6