A friend of mine recently posted a video on Facebook with disgust. This video was of the University of Lincoln President talking to women on campus about how men treat women and why. He informs us that, “Men treat women the way women allow us to treat them.” He continues with, “we had on this campus, three cases of young women, who after having done whatever they did with the young men, and then it didn’t turn out the way they wanted it to turn out…went to Public Safety and said, ‘He raped me.’” He then states that alleged rape allegations can ruin someone’s life because they will go to jail. His final remarks are, “Don’t put yourself [referring to women] in a situation, that would cause you to be trying to explain something that really needs no explanation had you not put yourself in that situation.” If you haven’t seen the video please watch it HERE.
There are many, many things wrong with this talk given by the president of the college and I am going to outline them here for you. First, this is the president of the university, which is incredibly concerning. Second, the problem is that we are clearly seeing a notion that women need to act a certain way. He does not seem to believe we should expect more out of men or that we should teach men that they should not take advantage of women. No, his message is instead that if women let men take advantage then men will. This is in a similar vein that men cannot control themselves so women have to help them do it. This is an incredibly outdated and problematic ideology.
The next problem is that he is reinforcing the concept that women are vindictive and manipulative and will use the rape argument if they are unhappy. He seems to believe that when women are not happy with how a “situation turned out” they report it as a rape. It is also interesting that he believes that three women reporting rape is noteworthy. There are many more rapes and sexual assaults that happen that are not reported and if three is a lot, then he clearly has no idea of the real statistic, which is: 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted or raped in their lifetime. And it is wrong to think that most women are lying about being raped. This is one big problem with rape culture.
Another problem is how he talks about real life consequences. That if you report a rape then there has to be an investigation and this can lead to someone going to jail. Well, sorry to break it to you, but people who commit rape should go to jail! The end! This again leads to the concept that women who report rape are vindictive. They clearly are not considering the real life consequences when they decide to make a rape claim. The problem is that this is not the average. It is wrong to believe that most women who report rape are lying and thus the alleged perpetrator shouldn’t have real consequences. This is a big conflict! Rape is a real crime and should be treated as such and not ignored because it is one person’s word against another’s.
Finally, he says that women are putting themselves at risk, which is blaming the victim. This goes on all the time. People say that women should start protecting themselves, but why don’t we ever tell men to not rape? We need to stop blaming the victim and start teaching our young boys and men that sexual assault and rape are not acceptable and not just teach our young girls and women that they should constantly live in fear of being sexually assaulted or raped by someone. Blaming rape on the victim is WRONG on every level. It is unacceptable and needs to stop. It does not matter if a woman was drunk, wearing skimpy clothing or flirting with a man, this never ever gives a man the right to sexually assault or rape her. The end.
The rhetoric with which we talk about rape is wrong and seriously needs to be re-framed! We need to reanalyze how we talk about and discuss this very sensitive topic. This is why the “It’s On US” campaign is crucial for our campus. Rape and sexual assault really do happen and it is not women being manipulative and vindictive. We need to create a safe space where people feel comfortable reporting rape and sexual assault and we stop blaming the victim and asking questions like “what was she wearing?” I hope that we can continue to rethink the way we discuss this issue. One easy way we can do this is to discontinue making jokes about rape. Rape jokes are NOT funny and perpetuate the idea that rape is no big deal. So the next time someone says a rape joke around you, please tell them it is unacceptable!
Photo Credit: Not to Rape, Abolish Rape Culture, It’s on US