Please join us at the Booksmith as we welcome Vanessa Grigoriadis for her latest work, Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus.
Today’s female students use fresh, smart methods to fight entrenched discrimination and sexual assault even as they celebrate their own sexuality as never before. “Woke” college men are more sensitive to women’s concerns than previous generations ever were, while other men perpetuate the most cruel misogyny. Social media has created an “acquaintance culture” that makes “friends” of strangers, and has major implications for sexual assault. Grigoriadis sorts through the apparent contradictions, and finds the new truths about what’s really happening behind closed doors on America’ s college campuses.
She:
- reveals how millennial women are making their own way — on their own terms — through a highly sexualized environment in which they are more comfortable than previous generations have been.
- argues convincingly that America needs a common definition of “sexual assault,” because today’s radical feminists are talking about something different than their dads. She also demystifies the conflicting statistics about the prevalence of campus rape.
- delves into Rolling Stone’s UVA story, Baylor’s Bears, Columbia’s Mattress Girl, the Vanderbilt football players’ criminal trial, and highlights Syracuse and Wesleyan University.
- calls attention to the “red zone,” the start of freshman year, which is the riskiest period of a college woman’s life. Grigoriadis explains why, and offers advice on how schools can reduce the risks.
- maps a clear, if controversial, path to reducing assault: shut down or co-educate fraternities, as Harvard has done. Only this drastic action will transform the social scene on campus, making it safer for everyone.
Grigoriadis spent three years interviewing one hundred and twenty students from twenty universities – from Yale to Michigan State to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She spoke with nearly eighty administrators and experts, and combed through dozens of case reports. The sum of her fascinating, fly-on-the-wall reportage is a revelatory account of how longstanding rules of sex and power are being rewritten from scratch.
“The definitive book on contemporary campus sexual culture. With daring and elegance, Grigoriadis explores the myriad factors—alcohol, gender, privilege, hormones, and politics, to name a few—that converge in the sex lives of teenagers who are set free for the first time, Blurred Lines is a fascinating and nuanced account of what constitutes "ethical sex" for students, and the implications for the rest of us.” —Ariel Levy, author of The Rules Do Not Apply
Vanessa Grigoriadis is a contributing editor at the New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair, specializing in pop culture, youth movements, and crime reporting. She is a National Magazine Award winner and has been featured on MSNBC, CNN, Dateline, and Investigation Discovery shows.
RSVP appreciated, but not required. If you cannot attend the event, but would like a signed copy of Blurred Lines, place your order below and fill out the special requests field.
