As graduation approaches, I like to think that many of my peers have spent the last four years seeking to understand the often fragmented calculus of their personal activism.
For me, this process meant unearthing a deep conviction toward addressing issues of domestic and sexual violence. As I prepare to graduate, I can say unequivocally that I am proud to be a member of a campus community that centralizes the importance of events like Take Back the Night, which creates a space free of gender-based violence in order to shatter the silence that oppresses and suffocates survivors.
This pride expands when I see that dialogue continues in columns like College senior Zach Bell’s and my university’s own perspectives on these issues grow to more fully ensure the rights of all persons.
Unfortunately, this pride is all too often tempered. I could not help but be appalled by the numerous comments on Zach’s column, many of which accused women of being responsible for inciting men to rape by dressing “immodestly” or simply by being alone with a man.zx
I could not help but be deeply disturbed that so many of my peers and colleagues believe that by matching our student conduct charter to federal guidelines — as reported in the article regarding changes in the Office of Student Conduct’s policy (“Penn lowers sexual violence proof standard,” 04/10/20120) — we will effectively encourage women to lie about rape. Commenters expressed this concern despite the overwhelming data demonstrating that firstly, false reporting is extremely rare and secondly, that survivors face nearly insurmountable obstacles in sharing their stories and finding spaces where they will be believed. I also could not help but be disappointed — once again — at the absence of queer perspectives in this discussion. Rape is not only a heterosexual problem, and women are not the only victims.
As we continue to address these issues, we must be willing to be critical of what has informed our understanding of gender and sexuality. We must question why we eroticize blurring the lines of consent and autonomy. We must think about sexual violence in terms of how it manifests — power and privilege. We must acknowledge how trust is manipulated and violated when people are assaulted, not least because most assaults are perpetrated by someone the victim knew in an environment they believed was safe.
We must not curtail the autonomy of women as a means of prevention and we must not paint men as insatiable sexual beasts. We must acknowledge the reality of sexual and relationship violence in queer spaces and not displace that narrative as unimportant.
We must stop blaming victims, through our language and actions, for the assaults and rapes for which they did not and will not ever ask. We need to keep discussing consent and what that actually means in the reality of sexual experience in its nearly infinite manifestations. We must ask ourselves whether we do in fact actively live and participate in a rape culture, where sexual intimacy is transactional, unilateral, and has the potential to be violent and exclusionary.
I urge you to begin a conversation about these issues and be open to new perspectives. Be open to hearing and affirming the experiences of your peers. While marching during Take Back the Night, a chant we often hear is “Penn, unite! Take back the night!” Begin these conversations, in earnest, and I promise you that we will eventually be able to take back more than the night — we will take it all back.
