Staff Columnists
Rape: Listen, don’t blame
Last Wednesday, Student Life published an article telling the story of a rape survivor, who was given the pseudonym “Rachel” to protect her identity. For those unfamiliar with the article, a brief summary will hopefully suffice: As a sophomore, Rachel woke up naked after a night out at Morgan Street in the bed of another student, whose advances she had rejected the previous weekend, and felt pain in her vaginal region. She had blacked out and could not remember what had happened the night before.
Rachel never formally or informally accused the male student in question of rape, but many of the comments that have been posted on Studlife.com since the article’s publication would suggest that Rachel committed the most heinous of crimes by telling her story.
What those who commented on the article—particularly male students—seemed to be afraid of is a culture in which any male who takes a female home under the influence of alcohol can be accused of rape the next day, regardless of what she says immediately before sex takes place. And in turn, they seemed to fear that spreading dialogue about rape and labeling what happened to Rachel in these terms would in some way tarnish the “hookup culture” that many Washington University students partake in.
More than anything, I think the comments demonstrate that hooking up involves quite a bit of grey area and zones of comfort that vary immensely from individual to individual. And in any situation that involves such shades of gray, dialogue is especially important. Definitions of what the word “rape” implies may vary, but a larger point has been lost in this conversation: We need to talk about hooking up and we need to talk about sexual assault. Regardless of whether or not we feel that Rachel was “raped,” we need to spark conversation about how we each individually define the forced manipulation of a comfort zone.
Some of the students and alumni who commented on the article seemed to feel that Rachel was at fault for getting drunk to the point of blacking out—that she should be blamed for what happened to her. This is particularly dangerous language. We ought not to speak of rape in terms of “fault” and “blame,” because we all collectively inhabit the social fabric that allows stories like Rachel’s to take place. We are each responsible for perpetuating a culture in which we are too embarrassed to discuss our definitions of consent and will admonish a girl for telling a story that, regardless of its objective facts, involves a lot of subjective hurt and guilt. These are emotions worth listening to, and both hearing them and preventing them from happening to others is not only within our purview as members of her community, but also within our zone of responsibility.
And it may be said that all we really need to do is listen. We need to ask questions and get answers about comfort and emotion from whichever sexual partners we have, regardless of whether we court them romantically or take them home from Morgan Street. We need to seek consent if it’s not offered, and respect when it is not—and we need to do so whether we are men or women, drunk or sober or in the gray area in between.
Formal and legal definitions and accusations aren’t the point. The point is to take responsibility for what we do, in both action and dialogue.