Over the last month or so, a group of Purdue graduate and undergraduate students have been collaborating to plan a series of teach-ins addressing sexual assault. The idea for the teach-ins was sparked when students learned of two sexual assaults that occurred on or near the campus at the very beginning of the semester. Many of the students were dismayed that one of the reported assaults took place in a rather public spot on the campus near a residence hall.
Purdue students’ efforts are taking place amidst active protests on many campuses around the nation, and amidst a national discourse about the ways in which many universities have failed to protect their students, particularly young women (though sexual assault and sexual violence can affect a person of any sex or gender).
The teach-ins will address three critical areas of sexual assault that relate to college students and particularly to Purdue’s campus:
Myths about sexual assault and legal definitions and protections, including Title IX.
Rape culture and victim-blaming; and
Resources lacking on Purdue’s campus and the student demand for a rape crisis center and better support for survivors of assault.
The teach-ins are free and open to any member of the Purdue or Greater Lafayette community. The first teach-in will be held tomorrow, March 12th, at 6:00pm, in EE Rm 270.
The teach-ins, held once a week throughout March, will culminate in a Take Back the Night rally at Slayter Hill on Thursday, April 9th around 8:00pm.
Currently, the events are being sponsored and organized by student members of the Purdue Social Justice Coalition, the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Purdue, the Feminist Action Coalition for Today (FACT), and a new student organization to support survivors of sexual assault called Sara(V), or Students Against Rape and Violence. Students have reached out heavily to the Greek community, including both sororities and fraternities, which is a significant community at Purdue.
Please consider sharing this post and the image of the flyer above with any person or organization you think might be interested.
When feminists and scholars use the term “rape culture,” the immediate pushback they receive is generally, “That’s crazy, no one thinks rape is okay!” That seems reasonable, right? It’s unlikely the anyone you stopped while walking down the street – whether a man or woman – would advocate rape. And yet, let’s take a look at some visual texts from recent popular media:
This “Position of the Week” cartoon ran in the Purdue Exponent a few years ago and stirred up controversy on campus. The column was eventually cancelled.
A drink menu from a bar advertises their special “Date Grape” alcoholic beverage.
A recent spread from designers Dolce & Gabbana that ran in major fashion magazines like Vogue.
It’s clear that at the same time we can say outright that rape is bad, we are also inundated with images of rape and assault in nearly all of our media, from jokes to fashion ads to pornography, where 90% of mainstream porn features acts of abuse against women (see Gail Dines’s TED Talk, “Growing Up in a Pornified Culture”).
How in the world do these two things coexist? If, in fact, we believe that rape is wrong, then we clearly don’t recognize it.
IDENTIFYING RAPE CULTURE
In Transforming Rape Culture (1993), author Emilie Buchwald defines rape culture as follows:
…a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm . . . In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable . . . However . . . much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.
This doesn’t mean that we live in a culture that condones rape or believes it’s okay. It does mean that we tend to think of rape as inevitable, something that we can’t help and that is bound to happen. Meaning the idea of rape or sexual assault – especially when we consider the continuum of what counts as sexual assault e.g., any unwanted sexual touching, grabbing, even unwanted voyeurism) – seems normal. Comic Ever Mainard satirizes this attitude in her stand-up at the Chicago Underground club in 2012:
From examining the images above, date rape is often a commonplace and acceptable joke in American popular culture. Consider how casually we use the word as a slang term to mean “dominated,” as in “Man, he really raped you in that last game.”
So what does this normalization of the violation of another human being say about our actual attitudes about sexual assault?
REDEFINING RAPE: WAS IT “LEGITIMATE” RAPE OR “FORCIBLE” RAPE?
In 2012, former senator Todd Aikin (R-MO) made the following comments about “legitimate rape” that outraged women and feminists nationwide. (Not insignificantly, Senator Aikin sat on the Science Committee in the House of Representatives at the time he made these comments…the science committee.)
Shortly following the senator’s debacle, then-Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan insinuated that rape was simply another form of conception in an interview in which he was asked to comment on Aikin’s comments. So here’s the important context to their public comments: both Ryan and Aikin have been proponents of trying to change the language that legally defines rape in an effort to make it illegal for women to have access to abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. Read more about their efforts to narrow the definition of rape to proven ‘forcible rape.’
What’s the current legal definition of rape? As of 2012, according to the Department of Justice, the definition is:
“The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
The definition is used by the FBI.
MOVING BEYOND VICTIM-BLAMING: PREVENTING SEXUAL ASSAULT
These attitude are often so ingrained that even some well-meaning campaigns that attempt to target sexual assault, like the following images from the “Control Tonight” campaign, seem only to reinforce the victim-blaming that many feminists and activists work to disrupt.
One of the ads from Control Tonight. From a feminist perspective, what’s problematic about the message this ad sends?
Remember the definition of “radical”? To go to the root. What’s at the root of our sexual assault problem? Well, rapists for starters. But more insidiously, the attitudes that connect masculinity with sexual aggression. This attitude is something that we need to correct much earlier than the “don’t rape” lecture at college orientations.
So let’s take a look at this campaign to stop sexual assault on campuses: “Men Can Stop Rape” gives men a primary role in combating rape culture. These posters appeared at Purdue’s Student Health Center.
Here’s another in the series:
Such messages are a far cry from the usual method of teaching young women to avoid being raped, a rhetoric that magically makes the perpetrator of such crimes – that is, the rapist – invisible. This campaign actively recruits men as important allies on the frontlines of changing other men’s mistreatment of women.
In March of 2013, two young men from the small town of Steubenville, OH were officially convicted of raping a 16-year-old classmate and were sentenced to one year in a juvenile detention center. An article from Yahoo news featured a photograph of one of the players hugging his mother after the verdict (cue the pathos, but not for the victim):
“The judge sentenced them both to at least one year in juvenile jail and said both can be held until they’re 21. Mays, who’s 17, was sentenced to an additional year in jail on a charge of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material, to be served after his rape sentence is completed.”
According to a post on the Feminist Majority Foundation website, the presiding Judge Lipps described the evidence as “profane and ugly” and a cautionary tale of teenagers with alcohol and “how you record things on social media that are so prevalent today,” effectively reducing the violation and dehumanization of a young woman’s body (the video shows the young men urinating on her as well as dragging her around and penetrating her unconscious body) becomes little more than a cautionary tale for teens not to drink while underage and be smarter about how they use social media.
This is similar to the message FOX & Friends news commentators gave when responding to the video of football player Ray Rice punching his wife unconscious in an elevator. The lesson they took from this incident? “Take the stairs next time” – meaning, make sure it isn’t caught on camera.
What sort of message does this send to young men about violence? What does it say to them about athletes?
In the meantime, the young woman from Steubenville who charged her two attackers has received enough anonymous death threats to warrant posting two police officers at her house for her protection. Both the incident and the verdict resulted in nationwide activism on behalf of the victim, though the media tended to side with the rapists in the case. Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry was a prominent exception in her television address to the young woman from Steubenville, “Dear Steubenville Survivor, I Believe You” (the survivor’s name has been kept private).
What’s notable about this case is that Steubenville is a town that prides itself on its high school football team, and both of the men convicted in this case were “star” football players on the team. Perhaps the most damaging message we get from this is that sports and male bonding among athletes are more important than the bodily integrity of a young woman, their peer.
This is mostly about privilege: such comments are a way to continually place at the center of the dialogue the men and their feelings and reputations, while silencing the voice of the victim.
The victim was publicly accused of trying to ruin the reputation of the team and thereby destroy the morale of the town – out of jealousy, perhaps? It’s not made clear what her motivations might be for doing so. But the implication is – and this is another “rape myth” that supports victim-blaming – that this was revenge for a “regretted sexual experience.”
Rape myths like these are deeply influenced by the idea that “good girls” are not sexually active and would never find themselves in such situations to begin with, whereas “bad girls” are sexually irresponsible and deserve what they get. Notice that there is never any discussion about young men’s sexual repsonsibility.
Salon.com just published this article, “Why Naked Pictures Aren’t Harmless,” that discusses not only the growing comfort with which young men on college campuses, particularly members of fraternity culture, openly express their misogyny as a means of male bonding and as a joke. As we’ve discussed in class, these behaviors that fuel a wider rape culture hurt not only young women, in very obvious ways, but they harm, young men and destroy relationships between men and women before they’ve even got started.
But here’s the GOOD NEWS: the article also addresses the ways that students on these campuses have been fighting back – and successfully too. Click the link above to read more about how students taking action to protect their rights has made strides in educating others and sending a loud, clear message that campus rape culture will not be tolerated.
An image from the “Pink Loves Consent” campaign by FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, which spoofed (and challenged) Victoria’s Secret Pink ads (the real VS campaign featured panties with messages like “Unwrap Me”), in 2012. For more on the movement, visit PinkLovesConsent.com.
Back in March, two young men from the small town of Steubenville, OH were officially convicted of raping a 16-year-old classmate and were sentenced to one year in a juvenile detention center. An article from Yahoo news featured a photograph of one of the players hugging his mother after the verdict (cue the pathos, but not for the victim):
“The judge sentenced them both to at least one year in juvenile jail and said both can be held until they’re 21. Mays, who’s 17, was sentenced to an additional year in jail on a charge of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material, to be served after his rape sentence is completed.”
According to a post on the Feminist Majority Foundation website, the presiding Judge Lipps described the evidence as “profane and ugly” and a cautionary tale of teenagers with alcohol and “how you record things on social media that are so prevalent today,” effectively reducing the violation and dehumanization of a young woman’s body (the video shows the young men urinating on her as well as dragging her around and penetrating her unconscious body) becomes little more than a cautionary tale for teens not to drink while underage and be smarter about how they use social media.
In the meantime, the young woman who charged her two attackers has received enough anonymous death threats to warrant posting two police officers at her house for her protection. Both the incident and the verdict resulted in nationwide activism on behalf of the victim, though the media tended to side with the rapists in the case. Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry was a prominent exceptionin her television address to the young woman from Steubenville, “Dear Steubenville Survivor, I Believe You” (the survivor’s name has been kept private).
RAPE AND SPORTS CULTURE
What’s notable about this case is that Steubenville is a town that prides itself on its high school football team, and both of the men convicted in this case were “star” football players on the team. Perhaps the most damaging message we get from this is that sports and male bonding among athletes are more important than the bodily integrity of a young woman, their peer. The victim was publicly accused of trying to ruin the reputation of the team and thereby destroy the morale of the town – out of jealousy, perhaps? It’s not made clear what her motivations might be for doing so. But the implication is – and this is another “rape myth” that supports victim-blaming – that this was revenge for a “regretted sexual experience.”
Last year, former senator Todd Aikin (R-MO) made the following comments about “legitimate rape” that outraged women and feminists nationwide. (Not insignificantly, Senator Aikin sat on the Science Committee in the House of Representatives at the time he made these comments…the science committee.)
Shortly following the senator’s debacle, then-Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan insinuated that rape was simply another form of conception in an interview in which he was asked to comment on Aikin’s comments. So here’s the important context to their public comments: both Ryan and Aikin have been proponents of trying to change the language that legally defines rape in an effort to make it illegal for women to have access to abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. Read more about their efforts to narrow the definition of rape to proven ‘forcible rape.’
What’s the current legal definition of rape? As of 2012, according to the Department of Justice, the definition is: “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” The definition is used by the FBI.
This coming week, several student organizations have come together to offer a campus teach-in on the recent “war on women” in America. Teach-ins are an effective activist educational tool, designed to educate the public about an important issue or group of issues and get them involved in further actions.
Because this event combines both important content as well as activism/activist tools – something you can learn from in addition to your service learning – I’ll offer 10 points of extra credit for those who attend one of the teach-ins and turn in a write-up in response to the experience, including what you learned. Try to tie in what you’ve learned from class, as well as the reading from Grassroots, in your writing about this event.
Today, all of you filled out postcards to send to the young woman from Steubenville, OH whose case has reignited a nationwide conversation about rape culture in the United States. Know others who might want to send support?
Let’s see if we can send her 1,000 messages of love, hope, and support for her bravery.
Send a postcard or letter to the following address. Though the name of the young woman has not been released, the attorney general who prosecuted her case will receive your much-needed messages and make sure that they reach her at this hour.
General Mike DeWine 30 E. Broad St., 14th Floor Columbus, OH 43215
Back in December, a horrific gang rape in India brought the issue of violence against women to the forefront. A 23-year-old woman, accompanied by a male friend, was brutally raped, disemboweled, and then thrown from a bus in Dehli. She was a physiotherapy student, the daughter of laborers and the first in her family to work toward a college degree – and in a country where many skimp on their daughters’ education, saving their money to educate their sons (this is also a class-based issue).
The protest movements that have risen in response have not only been outspoken but have also included a large number of men, something that doesn’t necessarily occur (at least not yet) in the western world.
For Wednesday, you’ll read Boswell and Spade’s article “Fraternities and Collegiate Rape Culture.” Read their argument carefully: they’re not blaming fraternities for rape on college campuses, but this pair of researchers is interested in which environments were safer for women and which environments made it easier for men to prey on women at parties. Take note.
HOMEWORK
In addition, listen to an episode of The Diane Rehm Show (see below for link) that recently aired this piece on the Violence Against Women Act: the last congress was the only congress not to renew VAWA since its introduction in 1994 (Bill Clinton signed it into law). It’s time once again for our new congress to decide whether or not to reauthorize the bill.
“The law provides police and other groups with money to help fight domestic violence and sexual assault. It’s been reauthorized every five years since it was first passed in 1994, but not last year. House Republicans objected to modifications which allowed for protections for gays and lesbians, Native Americans and immigrants.”
This radio show discusses VAWA and hosts callers who challenge the act, and Rehm’s guest, in rather stereotypical ways. (The show also features Phyllis Schlafly, the woman responsible in large part for recruiting other politicians to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment back in the 70s.)
The Gender Press 