What We’re Saying When We Talk About Rape

Lena Sclove thrust her school into the national spotlight last spring when she called an impromptu press conference. Standing in front of Brown University’s iconic Van Wickle gates, the junior told reporters that Brown had failed to protect her, and hadn’t administered justice in its handling of her rape. She announced that Brown would allow her alleged rapist to return to campus before she graduated, expressing outrage at the decision.

Sclove’s name quickly became a rallying cry for rape survivors across the country. Publications including The Huffington Post and Slate covered the story as it vied to become the face of the campus rape epidemic. And on campus, a few of Sclove’s fellow students started a Facebook group titled “Justice for Lena and Survivors Everywhere” in order to organize a local solidarity movement. By its nature, students who weren’t with the movement were implicitly against it, a fact that forced students to consider, some for the first time, where they fell on the issue.

In response, Brown President Christina Paxson formed a committee to propose a revision of the university’s policy regarding sexual assault cases. But without an immediate answer, the confusion as to how Brown should handle these cases carried over into the following semester, this past fall.

And this past fall, campus sexual assault took a hard-nosed turn. When Emma Sulkowicz began carrying her mattress at Columbia University, she began carrying everyone’s. Columbia’s mishandling of her rape case was not Columbia’s own isolated case anymore. Neither was the University of Virginia’s. Neither was Harvard’s or the University of Kansas’s, and neither was Brown’s. These cases all became symbols, all signifying the same cultural battle.

While justice for rape survivors is inarguably a noble and necessary cause, the campus rape zeitgeist currently captivating the country is fueled by reports of “false accusations” and “victim blaming.” There exists an inevitable bias in almost all media coverage of campus rapes, as shown by the differential use of terms like “victim” vs. “perpetrator” and “accuser” vs. “accused” to describe the roles of those involved with rape claims. The use of these political terms in campus rape reporting creates a polarizing atmosphere that complicates what should be a clear impetus to get to the bottom of each individual rape case, in order to deliver justice to all those involved.

Fueled by the political nature of the coverage of campus rape in the media, the conversation of sexual assault policy boiled over at Brown. In November, a student group called the Janus Forum invited two women with opposing views on the existence of a “rape culture” to answer the controversial question raised by the “Justice for Lena” movement in a public debate. The event was titled “How Should Colleges Handle Sexual Assault?”

Brown’s president contacted the student body in a campus-wide email to inform students that the administration had planned an alternate event, to occur at the same time as the debate. This event was titled “The Research on Rape Culture,” featuring a speech by Brown assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior Lindsay Orchowski. The title alone made clear that “rape culture” was somehow at the heart of the answer to the question the Janus Forum posed.

The nature and origin of the politicization of rape can be illuminated through looking at the term “rape culture” that took the spotlight at Brown.

A closer look at the Janus Forum speakers, Wendy McElroy and Jessica Valenti, reveals the political nature of the acceptance and refusal of the term “rape culture.” McElroy, whose views have been published by Fox, has made her reputation by being a rape culture denier. Valenti, on the other hand, is the founder of the feminist blog Feministing.com and uses the concept of rape culture as pivotal in discussing rape in her writing.

The term itself is a slippery one. The New Yorker’s Joshua Rothman recently attributed its origin to a 1975 documentary film titled Rape Culture, about the prevalence of rape in prison. Women Against Violence Against Women attributes the original use of the term loosely to “feminists in the United States in the 1970s” on its website. And in an article published in Time last March, titled “It’s Time to End ‘Rape Culture’ Hysteria,” opinion writer Caroline Kitchens emphasized the valence of feminist gender-bias attached to the term, writing, “Recently, rape-culture theory has migrated from the lonely corners of the feminist blogosphere into the mainstream.”

Justice Gaines, a Brown undergraduate on the University’s Task Force on Sexual Assault, defines the term as “the idea that our society facilitates sexual violence without knowing what it’s doing.”

“Culture is one of the biggest facilitators of sexual violence on college campuses,” Gaines said. “When potential perpetrators feel that their behavior is endorsed by others, they are much more likely to perpetrate sexual violence.”

While not inherently political, the term has long been wielded by radical feminists to social justice ends. Bloggers like Melissa McEwan have twisted the term to fit and fuel a feminist agenda: “Rape culture is telling girls… to never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted, and if you are and didn’t follow all the rules it’s your fault.” When used like this, “rape culture” aligns with the use of “victim” and “perpetrator,” in that it presupposes guilt based on historic, cultural injustices.

Fear of over-correction on campuses—due to the use of this gender-bias-loaded version of “rape culture” in developing campus policy—is spreading at a rate threatening to overtake the proliferation of the term itself. In her Time article Kitchens wrote, “Rape-culture theory is doing little to help victims, but its power to poison the minds of young women and lead to hostile environments for innocent males is immense,” vocalizing the fear of many male undergraduates across the country, who feel threatened by new policies regarding rape on campus.

We saw this anxiety of over-correction emerge in the response to this fall’s Rolling Stone article about an alleged gang-rape at the University of Virginia, which rightfully came under fire for privileging the accuser’s testimony over that of the defendants’. We saw it again in Slate’s recent article revealing the expulsion of a male undergraduate at the University of Michigan on unfounded rape charges.

We see in these cases the stories of individuals and their actions playing out through the lens of an age-old gender argument. Taking sides on the use of “rape culture” and of “victim” versus “accuser” seems to be the first reaction in the handling and discussion of rape cases on campuses, which leads one to wonder: If we can’t be unbiased in the way we view and discuss rape, how can we hope to be unbiased in the way we investigate and arbitrate it?

On Dec. 17, Brown’s Task Force on Sexual Assault released an Interim Report of their final recommendation, which will be published in full this March. This report suggests immediate actions to be taken by the university regarding rape claims, in addition to more general suggestions regarding prevention efforts to be developed in the final report.

The report opens, “While we acknowledge the national backdrop, the historical use of sexual violence as a weapon of power and privilege, and the complexity of changing cultural norms on a societal scale, our immediate concern and priority is the Brown community,” reiterating the need to improve the university’s procedure for handling claims of sexual violence while emphasizing the need to treat each case individually. It’s a document that altogether avoids the “rape culture” terminology.

Justice Gaines explains that while an important concept to comprehend, the use of the term rape culture fails to be useful in certain areas of policy due to its polarizing, reductive nature. “Being able to go beyond this term and get into all the nuances of individual cases of rape is really important,” he said.

The language used by the task force to report their suggestions reflects this commitment to the individualized, unbiased treatment of all cases. Those involved in claims are referred to in the report as “complainants” and “defendants,” in contrast to the politically charged “victim/perpetrator” and “accuser/accused” commonly used to either vilify or exonerate the characters in news stories. That emphasis on individuality is encapsulated by a statement regarding sanctioning that reads, “Flexibility in the sanctioning process is desirable in light of the complexity of individual cases.”

The report also refuses to suggest any quantifiable sanctions in this effort to treat each case as unique and the individuals within it as equals. It includes sections that emphasize both parties’ need for academic support throughout the hearing process, that outline the rights of the respondent, and that emphasize the need to treat those responding to sexual assault claims as innocent until proven guilty through due process. The report also suggests a clear process by which those found guilty may appeal the Student Conduct Board’s decision.

By at once acknowledging the pressing need to reform sexual assault policy on campus to protect victims while also considering the need to preserve the rights of those accused, the Interim Report establishes precedent for fair, unbiased handling of these cases. And in doing so, it attacks the root of our politicized, over-correct anxiety.

While the concept of “rape culture” may be obstructive in the handling of individual cases, it’s useful in developing prevention efforts on campus. The battleground for equalizing the power dynamics involved in sexual assault is not in the realm of punishment; rather, it’s in the realm of education. In order to reduce sexual assault on campus, the Interim Report states, “Our vision is to change the culture of the Brown campus.”

Although the term “rape culture” is never used explicitly in the report, it’s impossible to ignore its implication in both the language and the suggestions regarding prevention efforts. This harkens back to President Paxson’s endorsement of Dr. Lindsay Orchowski’s lecture on “The Research on Rape Culture”—its empirical proof. And this posits that rape culture still has an important place in the development of campus sexual assault policy.

Rather than argue over the attribution of fault to the patriarchal nature of our culture—just as the Janus Forum speakers did—the Interim Report takes it as implicit that rape is a cultural problem, obvious in the fact that almost every campus in the country deals with acquaintance rape cases every year.

The Interim Report cites research that upholds the very basis of rape culture: that cultural factors perpetuate rape. It identifies some of these factors as those present in fraternity and male team culture and cites a 2005 study by researchers Locke & Mahalik that states, “Risky alcohol use and conformity to masculinity norms are associated with sexual aggression.”

This resonates with the claims against UVA Phi Kappa Psi fraternity members made in Rolling Stone. The University of Virginia responded to these claims by suspending all fraternities for the remainder of the past fall semester. And while radical, this response is not novel. Over three years ago writer Caitlin Flanagan called for the eradication of fraternities altogether for the sake of “young women’s good” in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal.

“Rape culture” puts a face on the campus sexual assault epidemic with which colleges are currently trying to deal, a face that tends to be fraternities and male athletic teams. Suspending fraternities is an effort to attack the places where the cultural factors that promote rape are most concentrated on campus, but it ignores the fact that rape exists outside of fraternities. By allocating our fear of “rape culture” to all-male organizations, we fail to address the root of the issue: cultural factors promoting rape exist everywhere.

The Interim Report states that “the culture of the Brown campus” is in need of revision, not just fraternities or athletic teams. Their recommendations are not confined to male-oriented groups. It states that effective sexual assault prevention programs should address the role of alcohol in these cases “as well as perpetrator profiles, high-risk communities, the role of identity, harm-reduction behaviors such as bystander intervention, and other evidence-based factors which can reduce and prevent sexual violence and promote a positive, respectful culture on campus.” In lieu of focusing on gender here, the Interim Report focuses on the way individuality relates to society. It implies that it is the responsibility of every student on campus to understand, and therefore to respect, the causes and implications of sexual assault.

When Lena stood up in front of reporters last spring she was calling for this respect. Through her vocal demonstration of the pressing need for this awareness, she began a shift. Students were forced to consider their individual roles in the cultural response to sexual assault, and in doing so were forced to ask the question first verbalized by the Janus Forum: “How Should Colleges Handle Sexual Assault?”

The attention to the prevalence and nature of sexual assault on Brown’s campus has arisen in answer to this question. Just as with Emma Sulkowicz and her supporters, as with those fighting for “Justice for Lena and Survivors Everywhere,” this attention has garnered the potential to diminish sexual assault on campuses everywhere. We’ve begun to acknowledge that this isn’t a battle of the sexes, or a battle between victim and perpetrator, accused vs. accuser. It’s a cultural battle. Words and reports won’t necessarily win it—but they’ll at least get us marching.