Throughout sexual assault awareness month in April, groups like Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment and Men Opposing Sexual Assault will be concentrating their efforts in promoting public discourse and education on the issue of sexual assault. As a very important issue in a woman's life the prospect of sexual assault does not only dwell in the front of the female consciousness, but the statistical probability of it terrorizes women on a daily basis.
Everyone agrees that sexual assault is wrong, but society as a whole cannot agree on what it actually is, when it occurs, why it occurs and how to stop it. Not all rapes occur in a dark alley late at night. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, in 1999, 71 percent of rape victims nationwide knew their offenders.
Since college campuses are oases for sexually active young adults, women are at a much higher risk of being sexually assaulted on campus than they are anywhere else. According to a 1999 study done by the U.S. Department of Education one of six college women had been raped and one out of fifteen college men raped or attempted to rape a woman in the previous year. Despite these extreme statistics, they do not represent reality, as it is speculated that only five percent of undergraduate victims actually reported their assaults.
It is clearly necessary that we continue to push this issue because the message is not getting across to the perpetrator. If you go out to a bar with the intention of finding a girl there to nail so you can reassure yourself of your worth you are already partaking in the assault process by dehumanizing women.
If you have the attitude that the more drunk she is the better, because the more likely you are to get laid, you are not looking for a sexual partner; you are looking for an object with which to promote your ego. Sex as sport is part of the social structure that breeds rape. If you were interested in a healthy sexual experience you would want a coherent partner, not only so you could be sure of her consent but also because a healthy sexual experience is about sharing pleasure with another person.
Rape, however, is about power, not about pleasure. Some rapists are aware that they are forcing sex but many men rape because they have not been properly taught how not to rape. A rapist is not just a serial criminal. Even the most familiar faces can become attackers when they take what they want when they can get it without any concern for the victim.
So many men focus on getting laid with little concern for how they get there. They take advantage of a social scene, which promotes female insecurity mixed with alcohol and peer pressure and which often ends with women feeling that they have been forced into a sexual act to which they did not consent.
The line blurs when a woman feels she has been raped but the man thought it was consensual. Both were drunk and neither remembers much but if she did not want to have sex, then she was raped, and if he was so drunk he couldn't be sure what happened, he easily could have ignored her signals.
Women have to take responsibility for how they dress, how much they drink and where they end up at the end of the night; we all must face reality. But a woman is not responsible for how men interpret her clothes, how much men drink and how that effects their ability to distinguish between 'yes' and 'no.'
Every woman has been lectured on how to be safe and how to avoid dangerous situations, but there is only so much that women can do to protect themselves from someone else's actions. Rape is a man's issue and it is time that men took responsibility for it. The men in power clearly do not take rape seriously because there are so few policy initiatives to educate boys on how not to rape.
Nearly every man cares about a woman who has been raped, even though most do not know about the mother, grandmother, sister or friend who has been assaulted. Until men take on the task of changing the institution that objectifies women rape will continue to be an epidemic and women will continue to live a life that is terrorized on a daily basis by the fear of violence. The attitude needs to shift in this country. It is not the responsibility of women to avoid rape, it is the responsibility of men to stop rape.
For more information on sexual assault awareness month events go to the PAVE web site at www.pavingtheway.net
Alexandra is a senior majoing in English literature.
