Women are not the only ones at risk of sexual assault and harassment and the perpetrators are not always men. However, the most common cases of assaults are of women by men. Society’s awareness and understanding of the sexual assault and harassment of women has improved over the past few years but women are still at risk, especially on college campuses. So there is clearly still room for improvement.
One improvement that could be made is our approach to preventing sexual assault and harassment because it is flawed and seems to suggest the opposite of one fundamental truth about sexual assault – that the survivor is not at fault. More often than not our solutions put more responsibility on the women who could be in danger than on men who could put them in danger. Let me explain what I mean by this: women are repeatedly told not to wear revealing clothing, or drink too much, or leave their drink unattended, or walk alone late at night. These are probably things your friends or your family have said to you or that you have said to your nearest and dearest. I understand that particularly for parents it is important to give their daughters these safety tips because they can determine how their own child behaves more than they can determine how the rest of the world does. Despite that, these words of advice send a different message even though they come from a place of love. When someone says something like “oh you shouldn’t wear that, it gives off the wrong vibe”, they are essentially saying that the woman is responsible for preventing assault which is so misleading because it implies that sexual assault has more to do with her actions than the perpetrator’s attitude towards women and that is false. No one who is sexually assaulted is ever at fault – they are not the reason that they assault took place.
That said, what we need to do instead of giving women tips on how to stay safe is to teach men how to respect women because when we put the onus on women to prevent sexual assault we are also saying that their right to feel safe is revoked if they have had one too many drinks or find themselves alone in a dark alley. I understand that it is important to teach women to protect themselves because it empowers them and so educating girls on how to identify dangerous situations and defend themselves is valuable. However, that’s only a temporary solution and it shouldn’t be the only one because it doesn’t get to the root of the problem. If we only continue to teach girls how to avoid harmful people and situations but we don’t teach boys how to treat girls, then we’ll never eradicate rape culture. And perhaps it’s idealistic to strive for a world where rape culture is a non-issue but that’s not a reason not to try because ultimately people’s lives and well-being are at stake. So how exactly can we shift and share the responsibility of preventing sexual assault? What can we all do to ensure that our brothers, our cousins, our friends know what it means to respect a woman?
Firstly, as a society we need to change the way we discuss sexual assault. As helpful as statistics are, they have a tendency to make people feel disconnected from reality – it’s common to think “that won’t happen to me or anyone I know”. But that’s dangerous thinking. It’s not that we need to have survivors recount their stories because that can be traumatizing for them, it’s that we need to get men to see that what’s happening could happen to their sister, or their mom, or their niece. This way every time they find themselves in a situation where assault or harassment might occur – either as the perpetrator or the bystander – they can empathize and act positively to change the situation. From a young age, children should be taught to see things from each other’s perspective so they have the capacity to understand each other’s experiences.
Secondly, we need to hold men accountable for the things they say about women and how they discuss their own sexual experiences. It’s not enough for a man to choose his words wisely when he’s around women, a true judge of his character is what he says about women when none are present. That’s what really matters because the last thing we want is for all this to be a façade – men need to believe in the necessity and value of respecting women. Correcting a little boy when he says something mean about a little girl, or calling out a teenager who refers to a woman in a derogatory way are just some of the ways we can change how men think of women. And this isn’t just something only women or only authoritative figures can do – everyone can do this. We all have the right to point out what is offensive and preach what is positive. The way boys are taught about sex and intimacy is also something that is important here because it influences how they perceive the act and how they discuss it with their peers. It must be emphasized that sex is an act of affection and love, not of power and control. Boys need to be taught that sex attributes nothing to their masculinity if it as the expense of someone’s health, safety, choices and desires.
Lastly, we need to teach men how to be mindful of a woman’s personal space and of what she says. This may seem obvious but some men simply don’t understand when a woman is trying to communicate that she’s uncomfortable with his advances no matter how direct she is. There are men who interpret this as coyness – perhaps because of how society is conditioned to think that women should and tend to suppress their sexuality, but that’s an entirely different topic. And then there are men who simply don’t care – those men obviously have much deeper rooted issues that need more time and professional help to solve. Men need to know that the only time it is okay to be physical with a woman is if she has explicitly expressed that. This means we need to teach little boys that it’s not okay for example, to pull a girl’s ponytail if she’s yelling at him to stop. It might seem excessive to do so when the stakes are so low but brushing off something like this just signifies to boys that just because bodily contact is unwanted, it doesn’t mean they don’t have to stop what they’re doing. It basically teaches them that consent is unnecessary, and that too is dangerous thinking.
I must say that the one problem with this approach is that it works best the younger the boy is. Changing someone’s attitude is easiest when they are still young and impressionable. It’s very difficult to alter the beliefs of an adult but it’s not impossible, right? So I suppose one thing I want to leave you thinking about is how we can change the way grown men think of and behave towards women. What are some effective ways to talk to a group of college guys, for example, about sexual assault and harassment? How could UCLA better address this issue so that we have fewer incidents on our campus? That’s a story for another day.