How to tackle rape on campuses – without the lectures

July 26, 2012 | 65 notes

As back-to-school season approaches, here’s some real assault-prevention advice for schools and students - by Jill Filipovic:

• Instead of fear-based sex education, emphasise healthy sexuality

A culture where sex is understood as enthusiastically consensual and pleasurable for all people involved is a culture in which the “misunderstanding” narrative of date rape will be killed dead. Instead of requiring don’t-get-raped lectures, colleges should emphasise healthy and safe sexual behaviour, and challenge stereotypes about what “real” rape looks like. Scholars such as Jaclyn Friedman offer exactly these kinds of workshops – more campuses should be calling her.

• Colleges should treat sexual assault like a crime

This sounds like a no-brainer, but a disturbing number of campuses have policies that require student-on-student sexual assault to be mediated through the school, as if assault were a personal dispute instead of a crime. Of course colleges shouldn’t force students to report their assaults to the police, but they should give students the option – and provide counselling and social support for students who choose to report the crime. Too often, colleges are concerned about their own reputations at the expense of justice and student safety. Realistically, though, it’s in the colleges’ interest to remove predators from campus.

• Focus on men

Rape prevention advice largely focuses on women, who are disproportionately sexually victimised (although it’s important to know that men on campus are also often victims of sexual assault, and experience similar shame and stigma). Working with men to break down stereotypes about rape victims – that women regularly lie about being raped, that acquaintance rape is simply a “she didn’t say no and he misunderstood” situation, that a woman’s behaviour is partially to blame – is a good first step.

More important, though, is giving men the tools to intervene when they see other men exhibiting predatory behaviour. We know that men who rape on campus are often serial rapists, and intentionally target women who either seem vulnerable or can be easily incapacitated through alcohol, force or some combination of the two. The best way to stop a potential rapist? Intercept him. And men can do just that if they see a friend or acquaintance pushing women’s boundaries or clearly seeking out women who seem vulnerable.

• Stigmatise men who assault

Again, it seems like a no-brainer – who likes rapists? – but men who commit assaults on college campuses are often protected by their friends, teammates, fraternity brothers and their school, who write off the assaults as misunderstandings or drunken bad behaviour. Simple advice: stop doing that. If you know a guy has been behaving badly, it’s time for a good old-fashioned shunning. Jessica Valenti has other pieces of advice for outing rapists, and emphasises that speaking out about rape and information-sharing about rapists is nothing short of heroic. So if a number of women at your school are all saying that one particular guy assaulted them, or if you witness a man disrespecting women on campus, perhaps it’s time to cut him out of the friend circle.

College should be a time for intellectual, personal and, yes, sexual exploration. And all students deserve a safe campus. The way to truly deliver on that ideal is to address sexual assault holistically and purge rapists from schools – not to again lecture young women on what not to do.