Before I begin my topic for this week, I must make a correction to my last column about the "Tell Someone" campaign. The line that said, "A person who receives Gardasil cannot be infected by HPV," was incorrect. Gardasil prevents only four types of HPV infection: 6, 11, 16 and 18. It has also not yet been proven how long the standard three vaccinations are effective. Therefore, all women should still be regularly screened for cervical cancer regardless of whether or not they have been vaccinated.

Now, on to our regularly scheduled programming....

Hate crimes: a crime motivated by prejudice against a social group. This definition includes gender, in fact that's actually the example accompanying the definition on Dictionary.com.

Everyone knows what sexism is: the angry and radical cries of a bunch of bra-hating feminists. No? Then explain to me why the media rarely classifies crimes against women as hate crimes. This is the point made by Bob Herbert in his Oct. 16 New York Times column entitled "Why Aren't We Shocked?" Herbert claws his way under the text and headlines of the recent school shootings in Pennsylvania and Colorado to point out a major flaw in the American culture; the extremely prevalent and often subconscious subjugation of women.

In Paradise, Pa., 32-year old Charles Carl Roberts IV held 10 girls (ages 6 to 13) hostage inside a small Amish schoolhouse. He shot 10 of them, killing five, before committing suicide. The original focus is on the location of the killings, an Amish community. Later, CNN mentions the discovery of a 2x4 with 10 large eyehooks in the wood, a bag of nails, chains, small clamps, flex cuffs and two tubes of KY jelly in one of Roberts' boxes. However, the focus is immediately drawn to Roberts' past and his possible childhood related motives.

In Bailey, Colo., 53-year old Duane Morrison held six girls hostage at Platte Canyon High School. He molested all six girls and killed one, 16-year old Emily Keyes.

I first read Herbert's column and then searched for all articles directly related to these two incidents on CNN.com. He was right - on the basis that the politically correct liberals weren't shouting their outrage but more so on the basis that I wasn't. It is too common, too normal and too expected that men will violently target women for us as a society to be surprised by it. Had either Roberts or Morrison targeted their victims based on race or religion the entire country would have stopped dead in its tracks. People nationwide would cry out in intense moral outrage. The event and its issue would be known, noticed and addressed.

Every few minutes a woman in the United States of America, the nation of equality and freedom, is being sexually assaulted. Do you see the uproar?

The video game series "Grand Theft Auto" lets players virtually rape, beat and molest women.

Ads for American Apparel frequently use images of scantily clad female body parts (crotch, butt, breasts) that promote the dehumanizing and objectification of women.

A Trident White gum advertisement depicts a cartoon image of a woman taking off her bra. In the window is a dark outline of a male peeping tom with a pure white smile.

In a two-image Cesare Paciotti ad, a sexy woman is sitting on a well-dressed man's knee in the first panel. In the second, the woman is naked, covering herself with her previously worn clothing, and the man is a little ruffled but still fully clothed.

A Calvin Klein advertisement for underwear has a woman in underwear and a small shirt pushed up to below her breasts in an altered fetal position with her rear end sticking straight up in the air.

Women shouldn't be confined to long skirts and modest attitudes - I favor the idea of a strong and sexy woman just as much as anyone else, but there is a difference between sexy and exploited. As long as these subservient images are perpetuated throughout society, girls will continue to internalize this repulsive "societal ideal."

This country needs to wake up and realize that this bigotry is every bit as heinous as racism or any other form prejudice imaginable. In no way is this just harmless fun.

Kyra-lin Hom can be reached at kl_hom@yahoo.com