Tag: prevention

Not Quite Enough: White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault

Recently, the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault announced a series of actions to: (1) identify the scope of the problem on college campuses, (2) help prevent campus sexual assault, (3) help schools respond effectively when a student is assaulted, and (4) improve, and make more transparent, the federal government’s enforcement efforts.

These are all fantastic steps, and a huge growth in efforts and attention after several courageous survivors exposed the gross neglect and response to sexual assault on college campuses.

So, what is missing? Women. All of the prevention efforts are focused on bystander education and men’s intervention.

This is great, and all of us in the violence prevention arena agree that it takes men and women working together to end the cycle of violence. The vast majority of men are good. Most people want to help, and just need to learn how. Changing social norms through education about consent and bystander education is something IMPACT does and collaborates with others in the community to do as well.

However, research has shown that traditional gender role norms contribute to a culture that permits sexual violence. And yet, this important effort to end sexual violence is promoting an approach that does just that. Instead of men as perpetrators, it attempts to replace that with men as protectors and interveners. In both scenarios, women are still cast as victims without agency, with men in control.

As our colleague Martha Thompson at Impact Chicago writes, “The message of the White House Task Force that women should focus their attention on awareness of risks and avoiding danger because only men can stop another man from rape and sexual assault is an obsolete message.”

Those of us who work with survivors know of the incredible strength they have. It takes strength to come forward and report. It takes strength to break patterns; to risk losing one’s social status or job; to jeopardize relationships with family and friends; it takes strength to tell complete strangers some of the worst moments of your life.

Women and others targeted for sexual violence have an incredible amount of strength. That strength can be used for preventing violence as well. Women are also able to act as active bystanders. And research repeatedly shows that resistance is effective in reducing the likelihood of an assault being completed, and that resistance does not “make a situation worse.”

We need to examine prevention efforts to be sure they don’t contain echoes of the same gender norms that create gender-based violence in the first place. I greatly appreciate the avoidance of victim-blaming in the White House report, but excluding women entirely is not the answer. Instead, we need to engage women and others targeted for violence in prevention efforts that do not buy into oppression.

It is crucial that we, as a society, develop a comprehensive solution to ending sexual assault – one that includes all genders and one that emphasizes community change as well as individual agency.

I’m Not a Violent Person

Whenever there has been a high profile serial rapist in the news, inevitably someone says, “Don’t you just wish he would pick you, so that you could kick his butt and teach him a lesson?”

I understand the motives behind the sentiment, but my answer is always a resounding “No.”

I don’t ever want to have to hurt another human being in that way. Don’t get me wrong — I will, if necessary. As a student at IMPACT, I worked hard to re-activate my fight-or-flight response after years of being socialized to freeze and do nothing. I realized I can be quite dangerous.

My resistance to violence in real life might seem confusing if you’ve seen me cheering women on when they deliver powerful knees to the groins of their would-be assailants. In truth, delivering a powerful strike feels pretty good once you get past how emotional it can be. Cheering others along can help students get through uncomfortable emotions and socialized responses that may be unproductive. And it feels good to be powerful and to own your own power. That is what I’m cheering for.

However, it would be irresponsible of me to not acknowledge the existence of the cycle of violence. The vast majority of assailants were victims themselves and now hurt others as a way of seeking to feel powerful. We must remember that it was violence that created the assailant’s actions. Beating these men up will not solve the issue of violence in our community.

In every class, even while talking about my work at dinner parties, I bear witness to the suffering that violence inflicts and the ripple effect that the trauma can create. I want no part in doing that to someone else.

Yet, I do believe there is a difference between “ordinary” violence and violence that is committed only as a last resort for self-defense. I believe with every ounce of my being that you and I both have every right to defend ourselves from an attacker just as an animal has every right to defend themselves against a predator. But do I want that to happen? Is that how I want to cast my vote for change in our community?

No.

Not at all. My heart aches at the thought of it. But I do think the world is a better place when people learn they’re worth defending and have skills to prevent violence, both physically and verbally. I am proud that IMPACT deals with different levels of violence prevention; I’m proud that we work with personal safety and community safety and cultural change. Clearly one single route to violence prevention is not enough.

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