Content Warning: Sexual Assault
As I watched people “lube thumb wrestle” on stage, I was expecting a fun, somewhat lighthearted event about sex education. Instead, Laci Green used an incredibly organized and approachable manner to explain rape culture. She spoke about all of the excuses I hear so often on this campus. Excuses which are harmful and honestly dangerous, but without these conversations can also be confusing and hard to dismantle. As I looked into the audience, I saw a sea of familiar faces and I became increasingly frustrated. We need more of the campus to be involved in these conversations, not as a hobby or an interest, but literally for the safety of our best friends, hall mates and fellow human beings who deserve to feel safe in their place of education.
Before I understood the topic of rape culture, I was often confused by these seemingly paradoxical situations as well. Why wouldn’t the survivor always report the sexual assault? She knew him and had slept with him before, how is it a crime this time? It was a party and no one really remembers what happened, how do we know who to believe?
Before approaching these questions, it’s important to understand the statistics and lay a foundation. Sexual assault disproportionately targets women and rape is overwhelmingly committed by men. This doesn’t mean that an overwhelming number of men are rapists, but that those who rape are overwhelmingly men. We also know that most rapists on college campuses are serial rapists and commit an average of 5.8 rapes. It’s easy to distance ourselves from these statistics, because as long as we would never commit rape, we aren’t part of the problem, right?
This is why education is key. If we remain uninformed, rape will still be seen as inevitable, victims will continue to blamed, and rapists will continue to walk away without any consequences. Why would anyone report an assault when the process has been described as “being raped all over again,” when more than 100 colleges and universities are currently being investigated for inappropriately handling sexual assault cases?
Survivors who do choose to report not only have to re-live a traumatizing event over and over again, but also have to defend an experience where they were absolutely powerless in front of a room full of people questioning every single detail. Were you drinking? Wearing a short skirt? Did you have any previous relationship with the perpetrator? You repeatedly have to prove you aren’t lying, and your story will be broken down and broken apart every step of the way.
But who says we generally assume the victim is lying? Actually, college students believe 50 percent of rapes are false claims, and in reality that number sits between 2 and 8 percent. When our culture ignores reality and tends to believe women lie about rape half the time, how can we even begin to solve this problem?
Even now, it can be easy to distance yourself from the problem. “I would never react that way!” “I don’t need to hear this sermon.” How many times have we doubted our friends’ stories? How many times have continued acting as if nothing had ever happened because it was easier than engaging in a topic so personal? Most rapes on college campuses are committed by someone the victim knows. Sometimes, someone the survivor is romantically involved with is the perpetrator. Just because you engaged in sexual activity with a person once doesn’t mean you’ve given them consent forever. Regardless of past interactions, it is entitled and dangerous for one to assume they have a right over someone else’s body, at any point, without explicit permission. Marital rape is rape; date rape is rape. If you are in the middle of sexual activity and one person wants to stop, yet you force them to continue, it’s rape. I understand that scenarios can be context dependent and everything isn’t always black and white, but it is imperative for us as a college campus to understand one simple fact: when both parties do not want to engage in the activity or continue with it, it is sexual assault.
Many times the situation becomes muddled with alcohol, but alcohol isn’t an excuse. Regardless of how drunk the perpetrator may have been, they had enough cognitive ability to actually commit the act of rape. How is it possible that perpetrators are aware enough to either force themselves on to another person or have sex with someone who is unconscious but they aren’t aware enough to ask for consent? If you are too drunk to understand whether the other person wants to have sex with you, don’t have sex. Again, that does not mean that if any alcohol at all has entered either party’s system, it’s rape. It means if you aren’t coherent enough to make sure the other person wants to engage in activity, then don’t do it.
I haven’t always held these views; we are socialized from a young age to blame victims of rape and suspect them. That doesn’t make me a bad person, it just means I hadn’t had this specific education. It’s important to unlearn certain things as we get older, and if we are going to start to combat this problem, we can’t have our lawmakers and politicians making statements that are harmful to survivors and perpetuate rape culture. We can’t go on trivializing rape. We can’t go on prioritizing rapists’ futures over survivors’ lives. Rapists aren’t the only ones who maintain rape culture, it’s also each of us who not only chooses to blame the victims for being raped, but also suspects the victims’ reports and attacks their character by default. Rape is a crime, so let’s start holding rapists accountable and changing the culture at Duke. We all seem to agree that violent rape in a dark alley by a stranger is horrible, but let’s be courageous enough to move beyond that and confront what is happening in front of us everyday.
This is the fourth column in a semester-long series written by the Women’s Center interns. Their column explores gender issues and usually runs on alternate Fridays. Bhavya Varma, a Trinity senior, wrote this week’s column.
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