Thanks so much to Avital Ludomirsky, Amanda Yamasaki, and EW bloggers Katie Rodriguez and Jillian Hewitt (all leaders of SHARE or SpeakOut) for their timely and eloquent response to yesterday’s Prince column “The real ‘Sex on a Saturday Night.’” They correctly acknowledge that the perpetrator of sexual assault is the “initiator of the action, who may not necessarily be male;” define consent as informed, freely and actively given by all parties and mutually understandable in words or actions;” and then discuss how to apply responsibility in situations like that posed by yesterday’s column. They write:
The hypothetical situation presented by Neagu [the author of yesterday's column] takes away all responsibility from the initiating party. A murder victim has never been required to resist an attacker to prove that the attacker’s actions constituted murder. A drunk or sober driver who hits a drunk pedestrian is responsible for the accident, regardless of his or her state of inebriation. It is not common practice to refer to victims of other crimes as having “gotten themselves robbed” or “gotten themselves shot.” So why is it an acceptable practice to assume that a person is somehow responsible for being sexually assaulted?
Drinkers are responsible for physical consequences of their drinking, like hangovers and vomiting, etc. But I totally agree with the column in that they are not responsible for someone else raping them:
We pose the thesis that someone should be able to walk across campus naked and not have his or her bodily integrity disturbed by violence. Yes, the naked person would be breaking lewdness laws, but that violation would not entitle others to perform sexual acts on this individual. Agreeing to drink is agreeing to drink — nothing more.
I’d go as far as saying someone could be actively masturbating outside, and again, while completely against the law (and disturbing) it is not a free invite to anyone passing to join in the fun.
Seriously? You’re putting up that 1 in 4 myth (not to say lie) again? There are so many problems with that number that I can’t even be bothered to go through them all…again. For the fourth time.
At least you can agree that it would be worthwhile to put up a post explaining where that number came from and defending it against its myriad critics. Who knows, you might even convince me….
It’s a myth that 1 in 4 get raped. It’s not a myth that they get sexually violated. Perhaps you may not think a grope on the dance floor is sexual violation, but that happens more often than not and is still a serious breach of a person’s bodily integrity.
If it happened more often than not, the number would be 50+%, but I take your meaning, I think. You need to articulate and justify your idea of what a “sexual violation” is, especially because it seems so far removed from the common understanding. I’ve already discussed this at length on this site so I’ll limit myself to two observations.
Where is the physical violation in groping someone? You could say that someone’s right or personal space has been violated, but this is using violated in a secondary, metaphorical sense–not in the primary sense of criminal penetration that the word immediately inspires in most people. Of course, the noble crusaders of SHARE et al would never think of trading on such polysemy.
Surely you don’t think grabbing someone’s ass is as reprehensible as raping someone. And yet in this statistic they’re counted as the same thing. As Scooby Doo would say: ruh roh.