April is Sexual Assault Awareness month, but I guess the Madison Police Department and the local press didn't get the memo. While highlighting that sexual assaults occur, both entities have ignored the real reasons rape exists.
In the aftermath of several recent sexual assaults of UW-Madison students, the police and the press have resorted to the quintessential rape rhetoric of blaming the victim, stating that the cause of the sexual assault was brought on by walking home alone at bar time while scantily clad and intoxicated.
The entire campus needs to come together in awareness to take down rape culture. The first step is through programs offered by campus organizations, such as Promoting Awareness and Victim Empowerment. As a student organization, PAVE works in partnerships with LGBT, Sex Out Loud, Frat Action Coalition and the Campus Women's Center to get the word out about ending rape culture.
Our society has grown complacent with rape and sexual assault, forgetting several vital things. First, it is never the victim's fault. Though personal safety is a necessary responsibility, when it comes to sexual assault, no one is ever asking for it.\ Even though females are four times more likely to be sexually assaulted, it does not mean that just because a woman walks home alone late at night she wears a sign saying ""please rape me.""
This leads to the second point. The underlying motive of rape and sexual assault is not sex, but power and control. This control stems from the way our culture talks about sex: We view it as a positive action for men and a derogatory action for women. Still enveloped in the common double standard, guys who get a lot of action are called studs or players, while girls who do the same are sluts or whores.
Furthermore, the way we refer in slang terms to the action of sexual intercourse is often violent in connotation: bang, screw, nail, etc. As Jenny Larsen, Peer Education program intern for PAVE describes, ""Once you list them off, it sounds more like shop class than sex.""
Also, these euphemisms for sex almost always pertain to an action done to someone else, not a communal action between two consenting individuals. Thus, these terms subconsciously permeates the idea that non-consensual sexual intercourse is a social norm and incubates the culture of rape.
This rhetoric stems from simple comments we utter in everyday life without realizing the blatant sexism that our words embody. Something as basic as a grade-schooler shouting ""you throw like a girl,"" if repeated enough, can lead to the gender role mindset that women are submissive and weaker and must be dominated by men.
Finally, the only sexual assaults covered in the news are ones in which an innocent passerby is attacked by a stranger lurking in the bushes ready to pounce on the next female who approaches. However, most sexual assault is premeditated.
There actually is a greater chance that a woman will be raped on a date by her boyfriend or while walking home from a party with a guy that seemed trustworthy and kind than in a random attack. In fact, 67 percent of all rapes are committed by someone the victim is acquainted with. Yet, we never want to dwell on those circumstances, for we do not want to think of the people we trust as possible predators.
Therefore, we must break out of our comfort bubbles and face the fact that though sexual assaults do happen, they can be prevented—and not only through the victim's circumspection. A proactive effort to tear down ideas of gender inequality and erase the rhetoric of female submission must begin immediately, before more victims must shamefully and unjustifiably bear the onus of sexual assault.
Kelly Schlicht is sophomore majoring in journalism. Her column runs every Monday. Send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
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