Sofie Karasek

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Sofie Karasek (born June 25, 1993) is an American advocate for women's rights and the fight against sexual assault. In 2013, she helped launch a national movement to hold universities accountable for sweeping sexual harm under the rug under Title IX, and was a key driver behind California's "Yes Means Yes" law. [1] [2] She co-founded the advocacy organization called End Rape on Campus (EROC) in 2013.

Contents

Early life

Karasek grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts and attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School. [3] She also lived in Copenhagen, Denmark for several years during her childhood.

University of California, Berkeley

Karasek became a prominent advocate against campus sexual assault while she was a student at UC Berkeley. [4] [5] After she was sexually assaulted in 2012 and her case was mishandled by the university, she connected with Annie Clark and Andrea Pino who were speaking out against similar cover-ups at UNC Chapel Hill. [6] [7] She went on to file federal complaints against Berkeley under Title IX and the Clery Act and was instrumental in creating the 2013-2016 wave of the movement against campus rape. [1] She also organized others to file cases. [8]

In 2015, Karasek was featured in the documentary, The Hunting Ground . [9] She was on stage with Lady Gaga at the 2016 Academy Awards "Till It Happens To You" performance. [10]

End Rape on Campus

Karasek co-founded End Rape on Campus (EROC) in 2013. [11] [12] During her time there, she was a key force in passing laws for survivors' rights across the country, including "Yes Means Yes" in California. [2] She served as the education director of EROC and she left the organization in 2017. [10] [13] She also started the #DearBetsy campaign in January 2017. [14]

Additional advocacy

In February 2018, Karasek argued in the New York Times that America needs institutional responses to sexual harm that prioritize both justice and healing. [15] She's also written for The Guardian and Teen Vogue . [16] [17]

Related Research Articles

Sexual assault is an act in which one intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will. It is a form of sexual violence that includes child sexual abuse, groping, rape, drug facilitated sexual assault, and the torture of the person in a sexual manner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sexual harassment</span> Unwanted sexual attention or advances

Sexual harassment is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome and inappropriate promises of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. Sexual harassment can be physical and/or a demand or request for sexual favors, making sexually coloured remarks, showing pornography, and any other unwelcome physical, verbal, or non-verbal conduct of a sexual nature, verbal. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions from verbal transgressions to sexual abuse or assault. Harassment can occur in many different social settings such as the workplace, the home, school, or religious institutions. Harassers or victims can be of any gender.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clery Act</span> 1990 US federal law

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act or Clery Act, signed in 1990, is a federal statute codified at 20 U.S.C. § 1092(f), with implementing regulations in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations at 34 CFR 668.46.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Dirks</span> American indologist, historian and former university administrator

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Equal Rights Advocates (ERA) is an American non-profit gender justice/women's rights organization that was founded in 1974. ERA is a legal and advocacy organization for advancing rights and opportunities for women, girls, and people of gender identities through legal cases and policy advocacy.

The anti-rape movement is a sociopolitical movement which is part of the movement seeking to combat violence against and the abuse of women.

Sexual consent is consent to engage in sexual activity. In many jurisdictions, sexual activity without consent is considered rape or other sexual assault.

<i>Yes Means Yes</i> 2008 book by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti

Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape is a feminist non-fiction book edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti, published in 2008. The book was one of Publishers Weekly's 99 Best Books of 2009 and inspired a sexual education non-credit course at Colgate University. The title refers to the popular, "Yes Means Yes" affirmative consent campaign against date rape, which calls for sexual participants to obtain a declaration of consent, "yes", to each sexual act or escalation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victim Rights Law Center</span> American non-profit organization

The Victim Rights Law Center (VRLC) is a non-profit organization that provides free legal services to victims of rape and sexual assault in Massachusetts and Oregon. Established in 2003, it became the first nonprofit law center in the United States solely dedicated to serving the legal needs of sexual assault victims. The VRLC mission is to "provide legal representation to victims of rape and sexual assault to help rebuild their lives and to promote a national movement committed to seeking justice for every rape and sexual assault victim." VRLC also seeks to transform the legal response to sexual assault in the United States.

Campus sexual assault is the sexual assault, including rape, of a student while attending an institution of higher learning, such as a college or university. The victims of such assaults are more likely to be female, but any gender can be victimized. Estimates of sexual assault, which vary based on definitions and methodology, generally find that somewhere between 19 and 27% of college women and 6–8% of college men are sexually assaulted during their time in college.

Annie Elizabeth Clark is a women's rights and civil rights activist in the United States. She was one of the lead complainants of the 2013 Title IX and Clery Act charges lodged against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, claiming that the institution violated the law by the way they handled sexual assault complaints. Clark and Andrea Pino, then a fellow UNC student and also a victim of sexual assault, launched a nationwide campaign to use Title IX complaints to force U.S. universities to address sexual assault and related problems more aggressively. Clark is co-founder with Pino of End Rape on Campus, an advocacy group for victims of campus sexual assault.

Andrea Lynn Pino (born February 15, 1992) is an American women's rights and civil rights activist, author, and a public scholar on issues of global gender based violence, media framing of violence, gender and sexuality, and narratives of survivorhood. She is the queer daughter of Cuban refugees and has stated that she is a survivor of sexual assault.

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<i>The Hunting Ground</i> 2015 American film

The Hunting Ground is a 2015 American documentary film about the incidence of sexual assault on college campuses in the United States and the reported failure of college administrations to deal with it adequately. Written and directed by Kirby Dick and produced by Amy Ziering, it premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The film was released on February 27, 2015, an edited version aired on CNN on November 22, 2015, and was released on DVD the week of December 1, 2015. It was released on Netflix in March 2016. Lady Gaga recorded an original song, "Til It Happens to You," for the film, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

In April 2013, Emma Sulkowicz, an American fourth-year visual arts major at Columbia University in New York City, filed a complaint with Columbia University requesting expulsion of fellow fourth-year student and German national, Paul Nungesser, alleging he had raped Sulkowicz in her dorm room on August 27, 2012. Nungesser was found not responsible by a university inquiry.

Gray rape, also spelled as grey rape, is a colloquial description of sexual intercourse for which consent is dubious, ambiguous or inadequately established and does not meet the legal definition of rape. The term was popularized by Laura Sessions Stepp in her viral 2007 Cosmopolitan article "A New Kind of Date Rape", which says gray rape is "somewhere between consent and denial and is even more confusing than date rape because often both parties are unsure of who wanted what". The term "gray rape" has been criticized. Lisa Jervis, founder of Bitch magazine, argued that gray rape and date rape "are the same thing" and that the popularization of the gray rape concept constituted a backlash against women's sexual empowerment and risked rolling back the gains women had made in having rape taken seriously.

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Stop Sexual Assault in Schools is a United States non-profit organization that advocates for K–12 students’ right to an education free from sexual harassment and sexual assault. Sexual assault and severe or pervasive sexual harassment are types of sex discrimination prohibited under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in any education program that receives federal funding. SSAIS accomplishes its mission by creating and distributing free education programs, filing pro bono civil rights complaints with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), collaborating with national gender equity organizations, supporting legislative and legal initiatives, working with communities and families to bring schools into Title IX compliance, and educating the media about how sexual harassment and sexual violence in K–12 schools can violate students’ rights.

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References

  1. 1 2 Grinberg, Emanuella (12 February 2014). "Ending rape on campus: Activism takes several forms". CNN. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  2. 1 2 Adler, Kayla Webley (2014-12-22). "Fighting Words: Meet the College Senior Behind California's Radical New Sexual-Assault Law". Marie Claire. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  3. ↑ "Student Alumni". MIT AgeLab. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  4. ↑ "Students Stand Against Sexual Assault - The Hunting Ground". thehuntinggroundfilm.com. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  5. ↑ Fuller, Thomas (24 March 2016). "Sexual Harassment Cases Tarnish Berkeley's Image as a Center of Social Activism". The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  6. ↑ Suddath, Clair (4 April 2014). "Changing How Colleges Deal With Rape" . Bloomberg. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  7. ↑ Felch, Jason (26 February 2014). "31 women accuse UC Berkeley of botching sexual assault investigations". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2018-08-29.
  8. ↑ Asimov, Nanette (2018-03-01). "Feds say UC Berkeley mishandled complaints in sexual harassment cases". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2018-08-28.
  9. ↑ "PA Commission for Women Added to PCAR, State System of Higher Education for Campus Sexual Assault Film Screening". Manufacturing Close-Up. 15 November 2015. Archived from the original on 18 November 2018. Retrieved 28 August 2018– via HighBeam Research.
  10. 1 2 Itkowitz, Colby (2016-03-07). "There's a moving story behind this powerful photo of Biden and a sexual assault survivor at the Oscars". Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  11. ↑ "Mission & Vision". END RAPE ON CAMPUS. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  12. ↑ Miller, G. Wayne (25 May 2018). "Inside Story: A sexual assault survivor sees a better way for justice and healing". Providence Journal. Retrieved 2018-08-28.
  13. ↑ "Sofie's passing the torch and is ready for the next fight". END RAPE ON CAMPUS. Retrieved 2018-08-28.
  14. ↑ Miller, Hayley (2017-01-09). "#DearBetsy Campaign Implores Donald Trump's Education Pick To Protect Campus Rape Rules". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  15. ↑ Karasek, Sofie (22 February 2018). "I'm a Campus Sexual Assault Activist. It's Time to Reimagine How We Punish Sex Crimes". The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  16. ↑ Karasek, Sofie (2014-03-04). "America's universities: where you're all too likely to be sexually assaulted | Sofie Karasek". the Guardian. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  17. ↑ Karasek, Sofie (31 January 2017). "What a Sexual Assault Survivor Wants Trump's Pick for Education Secretary to Know". Teen Vogue. Retrieved 2018-08-28.
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