Jennifer Baumgardner's "Rape" T-Shirt

Does it Help or Harm Women?

During my college teaching days, I did have a couple of occasions during which I talked with young women who had experienced date rape. I am not a counseling professional, and I knew at that time I wasn't. I simply tried to be an "ear."

Jennifer Baumgardner, she of the "I Had an Abortion" T-Shirt of 2004, has decided to expand her expertise to include "I Was Raped" as a current T-Shirt. She eschewed a couple of ideas including one that was in her words "Too Shocking" wanting one that helped women "own the experience. Her ultimate collaborator was Vinnie Angel, who had created his own iconic piece of work "Vinnie's Tampon Case."

That is pretty much the story other than to say that there are a number of people who think that this latest effort by Ms. Baumgardner will hurt rape victims; really?

The situation here is pretty easy to dissect. Jennifer Baumgardner is one heck of a business woman. What she is doing is taking advantage of the bad luck of other people, but she really isn't doing anything that Jerry Springer or Maury Povich doesn't do.

The women that I talked with were not interested in making their rape experience some situation where they could psychologically "take ownership" of it. The problem was they already had ownership of the rape, what they wanted was ownership of answers; what they wanted was ownership of justice; what they wanted was ownership of change.

Today in high schools I see that when it comes to sexual rights, there is still a double standard; a male who is sexually active is a stud; a female who has the same lifestyle is a slut.

If it weren't so sad, one might be inclined to laugh about this situation; rather than being up in arms over the fact that the issue of rape is still amazingly prevalent; we would rather debate whether or not a "T-Shirt Maker" is impacting rape in any way by some slogan she thinks "gives women ownership" of rape.