Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

["Angela Seguin" <>]

While I agree with what you are saying, Abby, and I share your discomfort 
with the term, if our use of the term helps some subset of our victim 
population to begin on a path to calling what happened to them "rape" (who 
otherwise would take much longer to get there) then I think the term has a 
place in our work.  In my experience, MANY victims are unable to call it 
sexual assault or rape at first but can clearly identify it as an unwanted 
experience.  Consider where most college students are in their human 
development.  Many are still struggling just to verbally communicate about 
sex and make sense of even consentual sex.  So why do we expect them to be 
so much farther along in their understanding when the sexual experience is 
rape?  Then there is shock, disbelief, and trauma working against their 
ability to clearly make sense of what happened.  I would rather have any and 
all tools available to me in helping them get onto a healing path.

I didn't see use of the term "regretted" in the discussion prior to your 
message.  I think there is a clear distinction between regretted sex and an 
unwanted sexual experience.  unwanted = assault.  saying yes but later 
wishing you hadn't = regretted and is still consentual.  Coersion, of 
course, makes the lines more fuzzy & gray and this is a constant struggle in 
educating students.  Our campus' sexual assault policy includes the word 
"coersion" on the list of actions that are a violation.

I think its important for us to challenge it when we hear professionals and 
students alike buying into the rape myths that you have mentioned.  Our 
public message needs to be clear that unwanted sex is rape/assault and is 
unacceptable & illegal.  But in terms of reaching victims, I think we 
shouldn't rule out this term.

Angela

Angela DiNunzio Seguin
Coordinator, Sexual Offense Support (S.O.S.)
Wellspring: Student Wellness Program
University of Delaware
(302) 831-3457
http://www.udel.edu/wellspring/SOS