By SOLIEL PAZ
Staff Writer
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I’ll say it right now: this probably isn’t the kind of article you were hoping for. Sorry to get your hopes up, but it caught your attention, didn’t it? Congratulations on reading the first paragraph, though.
Anyway, over the course of the past three years, I have been a more dedicated advocate than many when it comes to sexual violence and rape culture awareness.
When I was a senior in high school, I managed to launch a brief (and to be honest, very rudimentary) awareness campaign that ran under the slogan “Consent is Mandatory,” as my own sort of spin on the widely-circulated “Consent is Sexy” campaign. Though I wish I could have continued it, many things were wrong with the operation that drove me to abandon it after those first few fliers went up.
First of all, the campaign was a class project created for a grade, and thus it lacked an official component to really take off. Second, let’s face it, it was the last month of my senior year and I was ready to be done.
And third, as my audience was a small public high school (population 500), talking about sex and consent was something understood by only a fraction of the student body.
So, dear readers of the college newspaper, let’s talk about sex.
More specifically, sex without consent—that’s the official, accepted definition of rape. And contrary to popular belief, consent has many facets to it. It is an ongoing, voluntary, informed, and sober “yes.”
In my experience, people don’t seem to understand how all-encompassing that definition is. It’s not sex if they change their mind, it’s not sex if they are passed out, and so on. Though it is not commonly perceived to be so, rape is very black and white. Consent is black and white.
As a bit of a reality check, I found that in a survey conducted of over 6,000 male college students throughout 32 different campuses, one in twelve anonymously admitted to committing acts that fit the definition of rape. So in six thousand, one in twelve is about five hundred of them. Of those five hundred, 84 percent did not believe that their acts were counted as rape—that’s about 420 of them. And if that wasn’t bad enough, that means about 80 people flat-out admitted that they raped someone. And I don’t know which is scarier.
When I created my little campaign (for which I still have stacks of unused fliers), I chose to use the “consent is mandatory” slogan because that was the clearest way to deliver my message. I realize the “Consent is Sexy” promotion can be misinterpreted: there is the side that says getting consent should be encouraged as sexy, versus the side that says in order to be sexy, you must consent. I remember getting a brochure for “Consent is Sexy” during my freshman orientation and thinking that, had I the resources to continue, I could have made something out of that advocacy project.
As another personal note: the terms “sexual harassment,” “sexual assault,” or anything to that effect really bother me. I see those words as euphemisms that people only use to lessen the power of those ideas, whether that’s intended or not. We use the words simply because they’re nicer to say. But this topic isn’t nice. I try to avoid using those phrases as much as I possibly can.
The thing is, the word “rape” in itself has a sting to it; it sounds harsher, sharper, more acute. If this article sounds like I’m constantly throwing the word in your faces, then hey, I must be doing something right. We as a society are reluctant to acknowledge rape unless it’s in a very roundabout way, so taking the bull by the horns is probably the only thing that will get the message across.
We live in a rape culture. If you’ve never heard that term before, it’s not your fault. “Rape culture” refers to a society that devalues the experiences of rape victims and supports the actions of their perpetrators. Again, many people refuse to believe it exists, but it’s very real.
One recent story that really stuck out to me, and one that I should have written about long ago, was the Carry That Weight demonstration by Columbia University student Emma Sulkowicz. Since then, the movement has spread to countless colleges and universities across the country. (Has Saint Rose done that yet?)
Her statement started as her senior thesis project, in which she struggled to carry a mattress around campus until the student who raped her on that mattress is expelled or leaves. Until she is no longer made to go to school with her offender every day, she will continue to carry a burden that is both physical and emotional.
Let’s think about this for a second. To this day, no one has been expelled or even remotely punished for that particular rape case. Comparatively, as students, the consequences of plagiarism have been drilled into our heads time and time again. Through the threat of failure and expulsion and a system in which you are punished for one but not the other, we have been actively taught that plagiarism is a more severe crime than rape.
This is rape culture. It teaches women that it is their responsibility to avoid rape, that wearing certain clothes is considered “asking for it.” It teaches men that “boys will be boys,” and that all degrees of sexual urges are normal. And it teaches us that we will have to save ourselves unless someone notices that we need saving.
I know for a fact that there are a number of students at Saint Rose who are rape victims, and sadly that number is larger than I wan to accept. If, by some miracle, one of you is reading this article, please know that it is not your fault. It is not your fault. And I hope this article has done you even a fraction of justice.
