Equal Writes

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by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

If the past 48 hours have proved anything, it’s how much this campus loves a controversy.  Since the publication of Iulia Neagu’s op-ed in the Daily Princetonian on Monday morning, there have been almost 200 comments on the column, a response piece, and a mention on IvyGate and Jezebel.  People have called the integrity of the column’s author – and the Prince opinion editors’ sanity – into question, both reasonably and with the vitriol typical of the Prince comments section (a sample comment from this afternoon: “Dear author, if you get the crap beaten out of you or even killed, you asked for it. With this piece of shit you just wrote”).  I’ve heard people accuse the Prince of yellow journalism or simple stupidity.  Others have dismissed the author as a naive freshman who needs to grow up.  The excellent response to the original op-ed by leaders of SHARE and SpeakOut (including EW bloggers Katie Rodriguez ’11 and Jillian Hewitt ’11), published on Tuesday, is getting far less press.

With all of this, we have a fresh reminder of the fact that many students do not appreciate the seriousness of sexual assault on campus – or take the feelings of survivors into account.  I am sincerely sorry for all of the survivors on campus and in the wider community who have had to watch this unfold.  And I’m grateful for all of the Prince commenters who politely and productively expressed their horror both at the op-ed and the fact that it was published – there is rarely so much serious conversation on our newspaper’s comment boards.  But at the same time, blaming the Prince or Neagu is not really the point, and I’m ashamed that as an academic community, we can’t refrain from mudslinging as soon as the opportunity arises.

I can see two productive conversations coming out of this unfortunate column.  Whether it should have been published I really can’t say – I don’t know what processes the opinion editors used to approve such a controversial and potentially offensive column, but they clearly weren’t good enough.  The editors are all too aware of the public flaying that results from expressing any polemical opinion in our campus paper, and I hope they made Neagu aware of the probable repercussions.  I suspect, though, that they did not.  I don’t know, as I’ve said, whether this was because the editors simply didn’t know how problematic the op-ed was (a truly frightening thought).  Either way, we as a community deserve some kind of explanation from them.  What happened on Monday does not seem like good journalism.  And I would welcome a discussion of what good journalism on an insular, elite campus means.

But more importantly, this whole discussion needs to be channeled toward a conversation about how we talk about sex, and sexual assault, on campus.  Looking back to last November, when SpeakOut challenged our community to realize that sexual assault is not a joke, it doesn’t seem that we’ve progressed very far – discussions of assault are still theoretical or luridly entertaining, a hypothetical that exists on the same plane as an episode of a particularly trashy TV show.  We attack the author.  We criticize the newspaper.  We don’t give a lot of thought to the survivors who could be reading everything we write, because they are abstracted from the conversation.  “Sexual assault” becomes a concept, rather than a reality.

The fact is, that Neagu was beginning to hit on something in the last paragraph of her op-ed: these situations are often ambiguous, especially when assault occurs within relationships or under the influence of alcohol.  A woman may agree to have sex with her partner because she feels it is expected; a college student may drink with the expectation that lowered inhibitions will lead to some kind of sexual intimacy, and wake up having gone further than he or she wanted.  Consent is a tricky concept, especially among people who may have good intentions but don’t fully understand the repercussions of their actions, and many people react against the label of “assault” simply because it sounds so extreme.  The issues of blame, guilt and responsibility complicate matters further.  But I challenge our community to recognize that these are not ambiguities to be shied away from – rather, we should engage with them head-on.

Neagu’s objections to classifications of sexual assault were based in many gendered stereotypes that we have the power to break down.  Men are not always or necessarily the initiators of sexual activity (a heteronormative assumption if there ever was one).  The only consequences of sexual assault are not pregnancy or rape charges.  Perhaps it’s because we can’t fully let go of the clarity of gender roles – and the fact that there are still power imbalances between men and women – that we have trouble with the ambiguities.  We want to believe that we live in a community free of sexism, but what does that look like, practically?  What does sexual liberation look like – is it gendered?  And how do we communicate with each other in a way that allows ourselves to really ask for what we want, and say no to what we don’t?

All of this involves an open and honest conversation about the realities of sexual assault.  And yes, I wish that the Prince had brought this up in a more sensitive way, and that Neagu didn’t have to be publicly raked over the coals.  The thing is, her opinions, as disturbing as I find them, are very common.  And it speaks more to our community attitudes toward sex and sexual assault that the only way we can talk openly about these issues is in the comments section of the Prince.  For me, that’s the saddest part of this sad, sad situation.

There will be a dinner discussion called “What Is Consent?”, sponsored by SHARE, on Wednesday, March 3 at 6 pm in Campus Club.  I strongly, strongly encourage everyone who reads this to attend, so that we can continue to have a real conversation about these issues.