Dear editor,

On behalf of the Women’s Studies Committee, we would like to offer a brief response to Dr. Walter Block’s offensive article entitled “Several Fatal Flaws Mar the Feminist Movement.” We do not wish to further accentuate point by point this article’s outrageous claims. University President the Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., and students, Susan Baughman and Edward Seyler, have done a fine job critiquing its faulty rhetoric in the latest issues of The Maroon. We do, however, want our Loyola students, who have experienced the trauma of sexual assault and rape, to know that we are shocked and angered by the belittlement directed toward them by Dr. Block’s article.

Such rhetoric as “rapists keeling over in laughter” is quite disturbing. Dismissing Take Back the Night as a laughable event is a direct affront that discounts the young women and men in our Loyola family and in all other academic communities, who refuse to silence their pain, and who seek to heal from their traumatic violations by perpetrators.

It bears repeating that statistically one in four college-aged women are victims of sexual assault or rape. Every two minutes, someone in the United States is sexually assaulted, usually by someone he or she knows. At our university where 58 percent of the students are female, a good number of our students (including those sitting in Dr. Block’s classes) unfortunately have endured (or will endure) the experience of rape.

As faculty members, we have a responsibility to model academic discourse and critical thinking. We have a responsibility to uphold our commitment to issues of social justice. We abhor inflammatory rhetoric that threatens the well being, sense of safety and the personal and academic growth of our students.

Sincerely,

The Women’s Studies Committee:

Terri Bednarz, director of the Women’s Studies Program, assistant professor of religious studies

Sara M. Butler, associate professor of history

Barbara C. Ewell, Dorothy H. Brown Distinguished Professor of English

Valerie Goertzen, associate professor of music history

Ginger Hoffman, assistant professor of philosophy

Laura Hope, assistant professor of theater

Marcus Kondkar, associate professor of sociology

Janet R. Matthews, psychology professor

Trish Nugent, associate professor, Special Collections librarian and archivist

Karen Reichard, director of the Women’s Resource Center

Rae Taylor, assistant professor of criminal justice