On average one in five women will be a victim of some kind of sexual assault sometime in their lives, which is an astronomical number of women. Rape culture goes hand in hand with party culture. Colleges are the breeding grounds of party culture, we’ve all heard of the crazy parties that happen at colleges, and as of late the world has seen an influx of rapes on college campuses. What is Rape Culture? Rape Culture is the normalization of sexual assault and the culture surrounding it.
We can fix rape culture on college campuses by teaching young teenage boys about the importance of consent and that a girl under the influence of alcohol isn’t a free pass for an uninvited sexual encounter; we can also help by teaching boys from a young age that women are their equals not just objects used to for sex and should be treated as such. Colleges are currently having an epidemic with the amount of rape cases they are seeing. One of the main ways men are assaulting women is through sexual coercion.
Emory University describes sexual coercion as using tactics intended to reach a “sexual end” with an “unwilling partner” (Emory University). Up until recently we thought of sexual coercion as only a physical action used by men to lead to sex with women, but now we know it’s used by both men and women and is not just physical. Studies say that men are twice as likely to be coercive than women. Women are still coercive, just not on the level that men are. Both men and women believe that continued coercion after refusal is “mutually beneficial” to them and the other person (Emory University).
It is also important to note that “heavy alcohol and pornography consummation” are “common risk factors” for people who sexually coerce (Emory University). It could be that some of these men are just trying to live a fantasy from a pornographic movie they saw, one without the consent. Consent is the most crucial part of avoiding sexual assault and while engaging in sexual natured activities, consent must always be present. Consent is a conscious lucid verbal decision to engage in sexual behavior. Some states such as California are putting forth legislation to make more known the rape culture seen on college campus recently.
Kristen N. Jozkowski states in that students heavily rely on consent cues which in turn breaks the affirmation consent policies which are in place on most college campuses (Jozkowski). The climate around campuses must change; not just with the student, but the students are a great starting point. Consent classes should be given to all students and student should know exactly what consent is, respecting others consent and NO MEANS NO. Consent is the most important part of being sexually active, therefore campus administrators should be doing more to make sure those boundaries stay unbroken.
In a sexual assault case from 2013. where the assaulter was given minimum punishment at The University Of Kansas, a spokesperson for the university refused to call the incident sexual assault or a rape, prompting to call it non-consentual sex (Jozkowski). The definition of rape according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is ” sexual intercourse with a woman by a man without her consent and chiefly by force and deception. ” All that the spokesperson was saying by not calling an assault an assault was that consent is useless which lies at the heart of the college rape culture and the college rape crisis.
To combat sexual assaults schools should teach more about the feminist movement and the struggles women went through when they were considered nothing more than property. The schools should try to improve gender relations instead of ruining them even further. In March 2012, College professor Andrew Bretz saw a poem on a Facebook page for overheard things said at his school and the page is full of his former students. The poem is a chant about how a man wishes women were like statues of the Roman goddess Venus without arms so that he could rape them and them not really be ble to fight back (Bretz).
Bretz touches on that not all rapist are monsters. Not all rapists are monsters, some are jut misguided in to thinking that males can assert their dominance whenever they please; this is where the world should teach boys and men from a very young age that women and men are very equal and should be treated as such. What ever teachers teach kids and young adults about rape or the culture surrounding rape is either going to sink in and affect them or its going to go right over their heads (Bretz).
The article poses the question that if some men are going to rape no matter what they’re taught, why teach them? The research clearly indicates that there is a responsibility to teach them because its the right thing to do– teach them because maybe it will go through their head and they won’t sexually assault an unconscious girl behind a dumpster. What Brock Turner did was extremely wrong. So was the judge who sentenced him to only six months in jail. Brock Turner was a star collegiate swimmer who only served three of those six months, a minimum sentence, for raping a girl behind a dumpster at a party.
Now Activists, colleges and legislators are working together to help fix this crisis. A survey on MIT of eleven thousand students recently showed that twenty-four percent of females and seven percent of male students have experienced unwanted sexual behavior directed towards them (Cooper). However, under five percent had actually reported anything. MIT took up their own initiative and held meetings, hired more staff for the sexual assault prevention programs and advanced their reporting process.
In 2015 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a billed aimed at requiring an affirmative consent standard, a student bill of rights and immunity from getting in trouble for minor offenses if they report a sexual assault; this bill went in to full effect at all the states colleges and universities in July 2016 (Cooper). It’s still not enough, but it is definitely a start to help fix this problem. Some other schools have taken different approaches to combating sexual assault on campuses.
A fraternity in Pennsylvania recently went co-ed ecause it lost its charter, everything after was different. Parties were no longer about sexual encounters, and the members didn’t treat it as such; they appointed designated watchers to make sure nothing happened because of a little too much alcohol (King). Could this be the answer to solve the crisis? Integrating fraternities would definitely change the culture around the campus and the parties that the fraternities throw. Think of it like this: the boys would think of the girls as sisters, where they might have thought only of them previously as a conquest.
That would change the whole dynamic of the culture and it would show the men who might not have had a sister that girls are just like them. Human. Not a sex toy. Human. Andrew Brown was raped on his sixth night of college, by another boy in the bathroom of his dorms. Like most people he blocked it out afterwards, but would have panic attacks whenever he saw the other boy. He waited to report it, but finally did at the beginning of May the following year (Clark and Pino). The other boy was eventually expelled for what he did. Andrews story isn’t unique. A lot of LGBT people are raped and a lot of them happen on college campuses.
LGBT people are more likely to not report an assault because they feel because of their sexual orientation people will victim blame them worse or because their assaulter was the same gender the sexual acts forced upon them won’t fall under the College’s definition of a sexual assault (Perez). The LGBT community is often left out of statistics, but they have the most rapes. So why leave them out? Thordis Elva thinks that its time we stop acting like sexual assault is only a women’s issue when it’s not (Elva and Stranger). Thordis was also sexually assaulted but she was sexually assaulted by her boyfriend, Tom Stranger.
The two did not speak to each other for years afterwards, mostly because he was a foreign exchange student. Thordis has since found forgiveness for Tom and the two have written a book together. They have also told their stories to crowds such as TED. Thordis has said that attackers and victims must face this issue together if this crisis ever going to get anywhere near fixed (Elva and Stranger). People has described this epidemic as shady journalism, a power grab over our youth by the democrats and a fake crisis. That it’s just a lie made up by the left leaning politics and the “fake news” (French).
It is no myth that there are a lot of rapes and a rape culture around college campuses. Look no further than the Miami University Of Ohio’s “Ten Ways To Get Away With Rape,” a flier put in the men’s bathroom at a co-ed dorm that suggested that the males rape unconscious women because they won’t remember you (Jozkowski). College rape isn’t a lie. All it takes is a trip to a college to ask around and find out. Republicans and Democrats need to work together to get this issue figured out so that colleges and people in general are more safe tomorrow than they are today.
The United States must face the college rape crisis together as a whole unit. Some may deny that it exists. However when the news is reporting on another story of a college rape every other night; it’s time to take action. To fight rape and rape culture on college campuses we must teach our male students as kids to respect women and about the past struggles of women, and also about the importance of consent and why its so important. The only way to fight this epidemic is to change the deeply rooted sexism that some boys have in their head because that is what they were taught.