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

["Irene Weiser" <>]

Wrong on rape


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-macdonald27feb27,0,6130673.story ;

 

A student activist reacts to an Op-Ed claiming that there is no campus rape
crisis.

 

By Nora Niedzielski-Eichner 



February 27, 2008 

 

I was appalled this Sunday to see the headline "What
<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-mac_donald24feb24,0,4173776.story
>  campus rape crisis?" pop up on my newsfeed, especially when I realized it
came from a major news source. I am grateful to The Times for the
opportunity to respond to Heather MacDonald's rehash of author Katie
Roiphe's discredited <http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1218>  attacks
<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE2D7133EF930A25755C0A965
958260&scp=5&sq=%22date+rape%27s+other+victim%22&st=nyt>  on studies of rape
on college campuses, although I question why such an outdated and
deliberately misleading piece was published in the first place.

To refute MacDonald's claims, I could dwell on her right-wing think tank
credentials <http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mac_donald.htm>  and
the ideological biases that come with such
<http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=198>
funding sources. I could cite peer-reviewed
<http://www.higheredcenter.org/ta/research-summaries/>  academic sources
<http://www.vawnet.org/> , anecdotal student survivor
<http://www.takebackthenight.org/net-read.html>  sources or Department of
Justice statistics <http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/182369.pdf> , [pdf]
all of which demonstrate that sexual assault is a common occurrence on
college campuses. I could link to dozens
<http://media.www.thesantaclara.com/media/storage/paper946/news/2008/02/14/N
ews/Sexual.Assaults.An.Underreported.Reality.In.College-3210304.shtml>  of
articles <http://www.kval.com/news/15613712.html>  from the last month alone
detailing students raped by friends
<http://www.connpost.com/breakingnews/ci_8282928> , Resident
<http://theithacan.org/am/publish/news/200802_More_students_come_forward_wit
h_rape_stories.shtml>  assistants and ex-boyfriends
<http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004177723_uwrapecase12m.ht
ml> . But MacDonald clearly does not care about such evidence, and my real
concern is not with her. Instead, I want to reach out to the survivors,
students, parents, administrators and lawmakers who might have read her
opinion and been misled by her distortions and circular logic, and I want to
discuss what is really happening on college campuses, from the perspective
of those who graduated recently or are there now.

MacDonald gives herself away halfway through the article with her reference
to what "students in the '60s demanded." Apparently she is still fighting
old battles, and her fear of women who drink, have sex and have orgasms is
out of touch with the reality of young men and women today. Certainly there
are problems with sex on college campuses, but I don't think the solution
is, as MacDonald seems to suggest, a return to the days when
"fraternization" was prohibited by college administrations. (Just look at
the recent statistics on rapes in the U.S.
<http://www.va.gov/OCA/testimony/other/040224SM.asp>  military and at
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48335-2005Mar18.html>
military academies, which do have strict rules about fraternization.)

Along with MacDonald's deep distrust of female sexuality, her lack of
respect for <http://www.mencanstoprape.org/usr_doc/Mens_Issue.pdf>  men
[pdf] is evident in her obsession with women's actions, because the only
excuse for focusing on the victim and not the perpetrator would be a belief
that men are unable to control their behavior. But is that really a tenable
position on which to base school policies or our lives? Most men are not
rapists, and I believe that all men are capable of being responsible for
their actions. I also believe fewer men would be rapists with better
guidance on the definition of consensual sex and a decrease in the kind of
victim-blaming in which people like MacDonald engage.

So what are the problems with sex and rape on college campuses? The biggest
is many students' lack of a clear understanding of the difference between
the two. Students today are being inundated by two contradictory cultures,
neither of them healthy. On the one hand, we have the continual
commodification of sex in America. Women's bodies are everywhere, selling
cars, movies and pop stars in increasingly explicit terms, but with little
focus on mutuality, emotions, knowledge, conversation or consent. On the
other hand, we have abstinence-only education and MacDonald-like calls for
chastity, which also focus very little on mutuality, emotions, knowledge,
conversation or consent. So when it comes to an in-person sexual interaction
between two students with these two cultures to draw on, is it any surprise
that some men are picking the elements that justify forcing a woman to have
sex or that some women are confused about what happened to them and whose
fault it is? In all of America's high-volume arguing about sex these days,
why aren't more people simply teaching our students to talk to each other,
honestly and openly, before having sex?

In 2002, fewer <http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/196676.pdf>  than
half of colleges and universities had sexual assault prevention programs,
and the programs that did exist could have been as basic as a skit during
orientation that half the freshmen slept through. This is an unacceptable
failure to put resources into prevention, given the prevalence of sexual
assault on campus. And sexual assault is a problem no matter what numbers
you use - did MacDonald really mean to imply that rape isn't a problem if it
is only impacting one woman or two women or 10 women a month per campus?
Multiply out those numbers, and I'd say that's a pretty big problem.

The services available to survivors are often not much more
<http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/196676.pdf>  extensive. Every
week, the organization I work with, Students Active for Ending Rape, hears
from students who feel re-victimized by the lack of services or by
administrators who did not believe their accounts or blamed them for their
assaults.

I work with SAFER because I feel that the voices that need to be heard are
those of students, not those of writers bankrolled by conservative think
tanks. Students are the ones surviving assault and committing assault, and
colleges and universities need to turn their attention to what students want
and need in terms of prevention programs, survivor services and disciplinary
proceedings. The answers will be different for each campus, as each campus
has a different culture and different students. The solution to the rape
crisis on campus can only come from active responses to what college
students say they need today, not from conservative ideologues 30 years out
of college repeating tired stereotypes from their desks at the Manhattan
Institute.

Nora Niedzielski-Eichner is a board member of Students Active
<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/www.safercampus.org>  for Ending Rape
and a graduate student at Stanford University. 

 

 

Irene Weiser
Stop Family Violence
331 W. 57th St #518
New York, NY 10019

607-539-6856
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