“They peed on her. That’s how you know she’s dead, because someone pissed on her… They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson raped that one girl. They raped her more than the Duke lacrosse team… It isn’t really rape because you don’t know if she wanted to or not.”
These are perhaps the least disturbing quotes from the video released by the hacker group Anonymous, featuring 18 year-old student Michael Nodiano providing his own personal commentary on the alleged rape of a 16 year-old high school girl by two members of the Steubenville High School’s celebrated football team.
The controversial case centers on the supposed events of Aug. 11 and 12, 2012, when the two high school sophomores allegedly drugged the girl, dragged her around and sexually assaulted her. Pictures appeared on Twitter and other social media sites showing the girl trussed up and unconscious, held by her hands and feet by two teenage boys. The graphics are accompanied by such charming comments as “the song of the night is definitely ‘Rape Me’ by Nirvana.”
The Steubenville case is one of many recent infamous rape controversies — another being the notorious gang rape and murder of a 23 year-old Delhi college student. People protested both cases internationally.
These events are on the more horrific end of a spectrum of the persistent and insidious sexual assault that infects many areas of our society — including our college culture.
According to reports by the U.S. Department of Justice, an estimated one out of every four college-aged women has experienced an assault that meets the criteria of rape or attempted rape, and one out of five college-aged women is raped during her college years.
Yet no one ever talks about it.
To be sure, we have events like “Consent Day,” where we have a dildo ring toss and obtain our hot-pink quintessentially Brown t-shirts. The event, while fun and empowering, obscures the serious problem of on-campus sexual assault with the frivolity of water balloon condoms and sex vending machines.
Last week, the international movement “One Billion Rising” took to campus to protest, dance and discuss widespread violence against women. Yet there was little discussion about assault at Brown.
By most estimates — and my personal knowledge — a significant number of women on this campus are assaulted every year. Yet even here, at a progressive, liberal school, we’re reluctant to speak about it. It’s still somehow shameful for the victim. Everybody on this campus almost certainly knows a victim of sexual assault — and yet there is little outrage.
We were taught about sexual assault during first-year orientation. A brave, traumatized survivor spoke about her date rape, perpetrated in her dorm room by someone she thought was her friend. It was a noble speech. It was also horrifying.
And yet later I wondered: What was the point of it? To tell women to go out and not get in rape-y situations? Much like the warning speech about alcohol, it’s acknowledged that problems occur — so, as women, we should really be more careful.
Listen: If one in five college women is getting raped, somebody is doing the raping. In the aforementioned government study, at least one in 12 college men admitted to committing acts that fit the legal definition of rape.
So shouldn’t our culture, and colleges, be spreading the message “Don’t rape”?
The American rape confusion should come as no surprise to us. We couldn’t look at the news last year without seeing troglodytic politicians babbling about “legitimate” or “forcible” rape. As if the quiet, desperate struggles that occur in thousands of dorm rooms nationwide are somehow less real than the rapes that happen via the knifepoint of a stranger.
Yet even fellow Brown students seem to have trouble demarcating exactly what a rape is. Last semester, fellow writer Chris Norris-LeBlanc ’13 published a controversial column about the prevalence of on-campus rapes (“Rape happens here, too,” Nov. 28). The anonymous commenters were swift to retaliate:
“Rape is not always a black/white, cut and dry thing (especially when intoxicated co-eds are involved)… There are clear cut examples out there, including but not limited to violent and/or drug related assaults…Is it rape if a guy sleeps with a girl who’s drunk?”
In our culture, the definition of sexual assault is foggy. But rape — and sexual assault in general — are the most clear-cut things in the world. Instead of perpetuating victim-blaming, we need to teach a new message that clearly delineates what constitutes sexual assault:
If a girl is too drunk to wholeheartedly, happily consent, it’s sexual assault. If a girl wants you to stop and you don’t, it’s sexual assault. If a girl says “no” the first three times you ask and then eventually, reluctantly relents to the pressure, it’s sexual assault. Sexual assault is sexual assault, whether it’s by a stranger, boyfriend or husband.
It’s easy to hide behind a message that places some fault on the victim. It makes us feel better, the problem seem smaller. As women, it makes us feel protected: We’ll never be so stupid or so reckless, so we’ll never be assaulted.
But it’s time to recognize a new truth. The lesson we should be teaching? “Don’t assault women.” Don’t assault anybody. That’s all there is to it.
Cara Newlon ’14.5 is happy to continue this conversation at cara_newlon@brown.edu.
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