By Annie Garvin, Staci Dubow & Stephanie Purnell
A drunk make-out against a wall at a party, a 2AM booty text, waking up next to someone you don’t know, quietly sneaking out of someone’s room, avoiding eye-contact with someone you’ve hooked up with: these are all too frequent scenes for so many students in Bucknell’s hook-up culture. However, underlying these interactions is a patriarchal relationship between men and women that is crucial to understand. A power dynamic exists in which men are dominant to women, rendering women silent to their struggles and frustrations as a part of the hook-up culture. Eliminating this non-communicative structure benefits both men and women by loosening gender expectations and establishing respect among both parties in a sexual interaction. The power dynamic does not always follow cys-gender or heteronormative lines. Therefore, the following references to men and women are used to represent the male privilege of assuming the dominant role and the female subjugation of assuming the subservient role.
A Fall 2014 Campus Sexual Assault survey conducted by Bill Flack, Associate Professor of Psychology, found that 24 percent of female students experience sexual assault while attending the University. While this statistic is both upsetting and eye-opening, it is also important to acknowledge that whether a hook-up at Bucknell is consensual or nonconsensual, it largely occurs for the benefit of men. Hook-ups predominantly occur in male dominated spaces, such as fraternity houses and male dorm rooms. When a man and woman go home together, it is expected that they will have sex. Moreover, sex is not viewed as an act of mutual enjoyment, but rather as a process of women “giving it up” to men. Once a man orgasms, the hook-up is typically over, regardless of whether the woman also achieved orgasm. Furthermore, men receive praise for their sexual “conquests.” In comparison, women are slut-shamed if they participate as actively in the hook-up culture as men. There is a pressure placed on both men and women to hook-up because it validates one’s worth through society’s gender norms. Under heteronormative gender roles, the more women a man has sex with, the more masculine he appears and the more attention women receive from men, the more feminine she is as a sexually appealing object. These gendered expectations make men the primary benefactors of the hook-up culture because women participate as means to men’s pleasure.
The power dynamic between men and women plays a large role in perpetuating rape-culture on campus. The Oxford Dictionary defines rape-culture as, “a society or environment whose prevailing social attitudes have the effect of normalizing or trivializing sexual assault or abuse.” As subservient, women feel unable to voice their expectations, boundaries and preferences in sexual interactions. Moreover topics such as consent, sex, oral sex, orgasms, masturbation, porn, sexual dysfunction and sexual assault are considered taboo in society. The lack of communication before, during and after sexual interactions is dangerous and undesirable- lines are crossed without consent and sexual fulfillment for women becomes difficult, if not impossible. Silence fosters rape-culture by eliminating the communication that is necessary to create safe hook-up environments. Moreover, silence about sexual assault and all taboo sex topics normalizes both sexual assault itself and the power dynamic between men and women by eliminating the means to equal sexual liberation.
In order to overcome rape-culture, women need to be respected as more than just sexual objects for men’s pleasure and achieve the same sexual liberation as men. Feminist scholar Gloria Steinem reflects, “the first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.” Students at Bucknell need to unlearn the obstacles on campus to meaningful communication about the hook-up culture and gendered power dynamics that entrench an overarching rape-culture. Communication about sex topics, before, during and after sexual interactions, is the key component to reaching a culture of consent. Once men and women feel comfortable talking to one another about both of their expectations, boundaries and preferences, a sense of male entitlement to sex can be eliminated and females can be considered as equal sexual beings with equally important sexual needs.
Break the silence and join us at the Civil War Cider Bar on December 1st at 8:00PM where we will be discussing the complex, gendered power dynamics that fuel Bucknell’s rape-culture.