More Native American Women Experience “non-consenting” Sex
Read Time:2 Minute, 41 Second
Native and American Indian women living in the nation’s urban centers are more than twice as likely to experience non-consenting sexual intercourse in their first encounter, a new study shows.
The report released Wednesday also shows that a third of urban indigenous women surveyed chose sterilization as a form of birth control.
The study was conducted by the Urban Indian Health Institute in Seattle on data collected in the 2002 edition of the National Survey of Family Growth, which looks at U.S. populations between the reproductive ages of 15 and 44.
Of the 7,643 women surveyed in the 2002 study, health institute researchers focused comparisons between 299 urban indigenous women and 3,173 non-Hispanic whites.
Maile Taualii, a science consultant for the institute, said many parts of the study aren’t as conclusive as researchers would like. But it shines a light on urban indigenous women a population generally overlooked in research.
“It’s a group that has fallen through the cracks,” Taualii said.
Researchers said their study is the first to examine the data for this subject because of the limited number of women studied. They hope it leads to more comprehensive research.
“It’s a small sample, but the striking findings still come through,” said lead researcher Shira Rutman.
Among Alaska Native and American Indian women, 17% had experienced non-voluntary sex their first time, compared with 8% white women, according to the 63-page report. Almost 14% of indigenous women said their first sex partner was seven or more years older, while 9% of white women reported sex partners who were much older.
The 2002 survey didn’t ask women outright if they had been sexually assaulted in their first encounter or any other time, and researchers say it’s another area that should be examined more closely.
Instead women noted how their encounters were non-consenting, such as being pressured with words or actions, given alcohol or drugs, told the relationship would end if they didn’t have sex, threatened with harm, actually injured and physically held down. Women could choose as many categories as applied.
Women who had ever been forced to have intercourse at any age were more likely to have initiated sex before the age of 15, a sign of early risky behavior, Rutman said.
Another finding that stunned researchers was the rate at which women chose sterilization 34% compared with whites at 20%. Also prevalent among young Native women between the ages of 15 and 24 was the use of the injectable, long-lasting hormonal contraceptive Depo-Provera, which researchers say can cause weight gain. That’s a possible health risk for American Indians and Alaska Natives, who are three times more likely to die from diabetes.
Depo-Provera was used by 23% young indigenous women, while only 7% white woman in the same age group used it.
“Why are the rates so different?” Taualii said. “This is something that should raise some alarm. That’s the question that we should be asking these women. Are these forms of contraception all they’re being advised on, all that’s being offered to them?”
Story contributions by Associated Press
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I can’t help but think of George Carlin’s bit about euphemisms, going from shellshock to PTSD.
No amount of equivocating will ‘wash out’ the wrongness in approach and catalog of this ‘information’ depicted as a ‘study’. (FIRST SEXUAL INTERCOURSE NON-VOLUNTARY) I’d like to see that read out loud by the author/s at the four corners gas station – grocery store in Hotevilla in the heart of the Lakota-Hopi res in Chʼínílį́. To my observation, the questions are being posing under peerage and seem ‘expected’ to comply with an agenda.
The fact remains: there is no such thing as non-voluntary nor non- consentual …..
It is a violation.
I understand your equivocation here Oso… I simply don’t accept it. A frgging study? Archaic and insensitive. No matter how you defend it’s procedure, it diminishes women.
Whether a woman or man … it is called RAPE. And it happens to men, boys for the most part, how many times a minute ???
And I am still insulted and angered at the choice of demographic. Size and isolation go a ways in determining the grant $ for this kind of mind messing data collection. That’s just academic usury.
Sis,
you’re completely right here, as I go back and scan the PDF. I hadn’t considered grant $ and stuff like that. Or their being academics. So I withdraw my defense of their method.
*****Oso******
always the hero! I get cha… I’ve had to pound myself to read all of everything…
Vig has caught me three times! LOL Everyone have a great weekend~!
I miss Vigil. He lost a couple of comments and just stopped commenting even though I figured out what was happening. After much experimentation trying to replicate the issue I discovered that if you click submit comment and then click out of the page before the comment appears the comment disappears. I can see that happening if one is in a big hurry. It is either that or our content is beneath Vigil 🙂 🙂 Regardless I miss him wandering about our pages.
I think they addressed rape at a different part of the study.This part seems to have dealt with the type of pressures young women are put into to have sex:
FIRST SEXUAL INTERCOURSE NON-VOLUNTARY
There are two questions about the voluntariness or wantedness of first sexual intercourse. The first one
asked how much the first intercourse was wanted with responses as:
• I really didn’t want it to happen at the time,
• I had mixed feelings-part of me wanted it to happen at the time and part of me didn’t,
• I really wanted it to happen at the time.
The second question asked was: “Would you say then that this first vaginal intercourse was voluntary or not
voluntary, that is, did you choose to have sex of your own free will or not?”
‘non-voluntary sex’
Whoever invented that term needs their bollocks chopping off – unless it was a woman in which case they need their heads chopping off.
Sex is A) consensual or B) rape. It ain’t rocket science.
‘Non-voluntary sex’????? Somebody shoot somebody pleeeease.
This is a group I have been donating to ever since their first house was burned down, in 2007 I do believe. They help Native American women. Sorry I forgot to add it to my rant earlier today. At any rate, here their blog and if you scroll down to almost the middle, it tells you why this group was founded. Here is just a taste of it. Right now they are looking for funding so if any of you are so inclined, the donate button is there for you.
From Pretty Bird Woman House
According to a recent Amnesty International report, more than one in three American Indian and Alaskan Native women will be raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Far too often, perpetrators of these crimes go unpunished. Domestic violence is also a serious problem, inflicting physical and emotional damage on both women and children. Often victims have nowhere to turn due to poverty, remote geography and tangled legal jurisdictions. In these dire situations, local domestic violence advocates and women’s shelters can make dramatic differences in helping women cope with the after-effects of violence, and helping them escape from situations where further violence is likely. However, these shelters are chronically under-funded. One such shelter, Zintkala Waste Win Oti (“Pretty Bird Woman House”), has run out of funding and will be forced to close in May if new resources can’t be found to sustain it.
The shelter was founded by Jackie Brown Otter after the kidnapping, rape and murder of her sister (whose Lakota name means Pretty Bird Woman). It serves the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, which is on the border of North and South Dakota. The reservation covers over 2.3 million acres, and with a per capita income of only $8,615, it’s one of the most destitute regions in the United States.
http://prettybirdwomanhouse.blogspot.com/
Oops, this is from the original burning down of the house up there. Never the less, they still need fudning for what they continue to do for our sisters in trouble there. Below, you will find the recent postings. The music is cool too for what its worth.
http://prettybirdwomanhouse.blogspot.com/
Exactly Gwen, we used to call it RAPE back before the PC crowd felt the need to pretty up and repackage words and word meanings to make them sound “less hurtfull”. I’m betting that those girls saw it as rape too and not just “non-consentual”.
This represents an isolated kind of “academic” POV / research. And it reads with an excusory euphemism: “non-consulting / non-voluntary first time sex” … kind of like reporting a RAPE and having a male police officer question your authenticity. Its how I read this piece.
In my clan, non consulting or non voluntary sex is RAPE. It diminishes any women represented as anything else.
That I am a clan sister to women among the Nations, who are so want for understanding and help on the reservations… I am insulted by the way in which this information is presented and the lack of respect in it.
No, really.
Yeah, Gwendolyn, you know, I’m reading this and saying “Ok, are you eggheads talking RAPE here??? How about calling it what it is, rather than this “non consensual” shit.”
What is with all the women hating these days? Not you Mike, just all these different things I am seeing all over the place regarding us wimmin. Where is NOW and any other women’s group standing up for these women? This is why we need sex education in schools, so that ALL options are available to make good choices from. No, gotta have that abstinence in there because as we all know, that really totally works does it not?
I have just been going through the American Academy of Pediatricians new policy paper, that they are considering female genital mutilation, Kansas just struck down a proposed tax on abortions. WTF is going on here? Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick, women are so much more than their sexual organs and it is about damn time some people learned that.
Here is the link to AAP and its vile, let’s just nick it because that is better than cutting the whole thing crap. Warning it is a PDF and on page 6 you will find the language I am talking about.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/peds.2010-0187v1