American Prospect online [1] has published a piece that has created a good deal of discussion, yet again, around the subject of rape. This time the author, Courtney Martin, makes the connection in American Prospect Online - Willful Ignorance [2] between abstinence-only sex education programs and the high rates of rape and sexual assault in the United States.

Every two and half minutes someone is sexually assaulted in America. Many of these assaults take place on college campuses; 80 percent of rape victims are under age 30. Two-thirds of all rapes are committed by someone who is known to the victim, not a stranger in a dark alley. (Though rape statistics are notoriously inaccurate, we can assume that these, from the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) are at least close to the truth, as they are derived from a survey of multiple studies, including the National Crime Victimization Survey from 2005.)

The lack of public, comprehensive, and complex sex education in this country contributes to this toxic sexual culture on most college campuses. The abstinence-only sex education that most young men and women receive does not teach them how to articulate their own sexual needs and respect those articulated by their partners. Teens who are merely told "Just don’t do it" are lacking more than an anatomy lesson or information on contraceptive choices. They are also missing out on essential communication skills and life-saving knowledge about sex and power. Which is bad news for teenagers in our paradoxically hyper-sexual and hyper-conservative contemporary America who are in desperate need of wise mentorship.

This article has inspired me and irritated me in equal parts. So much so that I believe that in order to break down the barriers around the discussion of sexual education, feminists need to take action now: It's time we build an open-source feminist enclyclopedia.

Even as I applaud how Martin makes the connection between the lack of education and the high incidences of rape in this country, this is yet another article about rape that gets me irritated. What I don't particularly like about this article is how I am expected to take at face value as rape what is described in a few sentences and only from the point of view of the alleged victim.

Color me a bad feminist, but as the mother of two boys, I am not comfortable with these discussions of rape. This is only because the perpetrator is usually depicted as some kind of universal "Rapist Guy". The Martin article is good example in which the U.R.G. has little voice in the narrative, yet is powerful for his violence, alleged or otherwwise.

As I have said before in Rape, tourture, sex and social justice [3], I believe the lynch-mob mentality created around tales (true or fictionalized) of rape and sexual assault trivialize their seriousness and horror when conflated with scenes of dates gone sour, rejected lovers and tales of bad sex.

Not only that. There are some of us who remember the consequences of lynching.

As the mother of two boys I freak at the mob mentality behind these discussions. It's the reason why I had a hard time covering the now infamous judicial, legal and political mess that is the Duke University Rape Accusation Fiasco [4]. This case is so bad that people from both sides of the racial spectrum are calling for an investigation. A day ago New York Congressman Peter King [5] asked the U.S. Attorney General's office to investigate potential prosecutorial violations and now the NAACP [6] has echoed the request.

We all should be ashamed of how we handled this case and contributed to the lynch-mob mentality. We should also be alarmed at how dumb and uneducated our actions were.

After the Prospect article appeared, the links have been pouring in, but let me start with Ann Bartow's Feminist Law Professors » Blog Archive » Why Is It So Difficult To Talk About The Nexus Between Alcohol Consumption, and Sex That Is Uncomfortable, Unwanted, or Worse? [7]

Ann raises a great point : how can we talk about the social setups that lead to rape in a way that is not accusative :

If advertising free or discounted admission or drinks for women only is a mechanism by which both women and men are lured into an establishment, something “gendered” is happening. Moreover, none of my students recalled seeing a bar or club advertise free admission or drink specials pitched exclusively at men. How can we talk about this imbalance productively? Is there a way, without blaming or shaming any victims of sexual assault, to prevent future victims, and to call out the victimizers?

And then I read Echidne's Sex Education Revisited [8].

If Ann Bartow was the trigger for the idea of creating a common ground where feminists will be obligated to exercise their collective intellectual muscle and negotiate a more objective language and protocol around discussions of rape, then Echidne proves the point of my initial reaction with this:

This whole topic just screams with feminist implications, but I'm going to be ornery, and address something not especially linked to feminism: the need for generally agreed on language and terms about sexual activities.

The growing list of excellent posts on the subject has :

Mamacita: Can Sex Ed Prevent Rape? [9]

Feministe » Because bitches is crazy [10]

Pinko Feminist Hellcat: Saying yes, accepting the no, and growing up [11]

CampusProgress.com : Toxic Sex Culture on Campus? [12]

Violating the conservative mythos on rape at PunkAssBlog.com [13]

Reclusive Leftist » Blog Archive » Abstinence-Only Sex Education, otherwise known as Godbag Bullshit [14]

TikvahGirl : Willful Ignorance [15]

One more reason to drop abstinence-only: rape prevention at Pandagon [16]

Each post has it's point of focus about the Martin article but all have a common thread : they all agree that sex education in this country sucks and something has to be done about it.

Here's were I am the voice in the wilderness : I believe we have the power to use the technologies and practices of the internet in order to create tools for self-learning and independently educating our kids and ourselves on sex and reproductive health from a feminist perspective.

Yes, I am advocating for the creation of not just a wiki [17]-based feminist encyclopedia. I am advocating for a complete deschooling [18] of feminism, especially sexual educational materials and information.

There is no better time in history than now for feminist to use the tools of the fast evolving web 2.0 [19] and free sex education from the shackles of institutional prejudice and censorship.

With an open source [20], Creative Commons [21] licensed Feminist Encyclopedia, we will move the discussion from the loop of unproductive echo chambering and into rigorous infrastructural building.

Do you need more proof as to why this is needed?

I was able to buy the following domains with no problem whatsoever while I was pondering this article :

feministcommons.com
feministencyclopedia.com
feministpedia.com
feministguidetosex.com
opensourcefeminism.com
opensourcesexeducation.com
sexeducationenclyclopedia.com
sexeducationwiki.com

It is telling that NARAL, Planned Parenthood, NOW, Feminist Majority nor any other major feminist organizations in this country invested the $6 per domain that I just did.

Unfortunately for us, their models of advocacy and education are outdated and out of touch with the networking platforms we have available at our disposal right now. Change within these organizations will not happen fast; yet we could use a project like the Feminist Encyclopedia to accelerate their entry into the 21st century and hopefully bring within them much needed structural change.

So it is up to us, the feminist of the web 2.0 era to raise the money, call on the people and get the resources we need in order to get this project off the ground.

No, it's not going to come cheap given that just for security reasons we would have to invest on some seriously robus server power and systems administration. Yet, when compared to the millions of of lives we would be effecting, a Feministpedia would be priceless.