by James A. Bacon
Over the past few days I have advanced the argument that there is a very real problem with sexual relations on college campuses, and in particular the University of Virginia, but I take issue with the characterization of the problem as an “epidemic of rape.” The root problem is a drunken college hookup culture.
As the close relative of a woman who experienced rape at gunpoint by a man who broke into her apartment, I see a world of difference between what happened to her and an incident in which, say, a man and woman get wasted, they have sex, and she decides the next day that she was too drunk to have given her consent. To anyone who has lived in terror through a violent rape at the hands of a stranger, not knowing if the man will decide to kill her afterwards, the campus anti-rape movement that conflates the two is both ignorant and morally repugnant.
That said, it is obvious that there is a very real problem of real and/or perceived sexual assault on college campuses in America today. Thousands of young women across America are feeling sexually maltreated and abused; some of them have been subjected to emotional or physical coercion of a less traumatic sort than rape at gunpoint. It is a national problem, and something needs to be done. But what?
One cannot address a problem unless one understands the true nature of the problem. That’s why I have spent so much time dissecting and demolishing the “culture of rape” meme that dominates public discourse today. Today I will discuss some preliminary thoughts on what needs to be done. Before I discuss my thoughts, however, I need to clear the underbrush of some seemingly plausible but ultimately flawed ideas that have been circulating recently.
First is the beguiling idea that college administrations should be compelled to report all alleged sexual assaults to law enforcement authorities. While most would agree that cases like the alleged gang rape at UVa’s Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house should be reported to authorities, that now-discredited story was dissimilar from the vast majority of sexual assault complaints that occur on campus. The truth is, as Nicole Eramo, UVa’s associate dean of students, has made clear, most young woman have reasons for not wanting to go through a criminal or administrative process. For many women, the alleged offense does not rise to the level sufficient to justify evicting the alleged perpetrator from campus much less sending him to jail. Few college victims possess the intensity of moral clarity that propelled my family member into pressing criminal charges. Women should be allowed to choose based upon the facts of their own experience, not have the decision forced upon them by legislators outraged by the horror of a now-discredited story.
A second beguiling but misguided idea is that we should drop the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 on the theory that banning the sale of alcohol pushes the drunken party hook-up scene into fraternity houses. The logic is that there is something especially pernicious about fraternities — a particularly misogynistic environment, perhaps, where alcohol is readily available in large quantities — and that reversing the ban on alcohol sales will take the partying out of the fraternity houses to locales less prone to binge drinking and misogyny. The evidence that I’ve seen does not back this up.
According to the 2007 College Sexual Assault Study (CSA study), only a small percentage of sexual assaults occurred in fraternity houses, as seen in the data above. While the party scene at the University of Virginia may be concentrated in fraternity houses, students don’t need fraternities to party. Even then, parties were the context for barely more than half of the sexual-assault episodes identified by the CSA study. Bottom line: Sexual assaults are strongly associated with excessive drinking, but there is little evidence that the problem is tied to excessive drinking at fraternity houses. Some may argue that lowering the drinking age and making alcohol more readily available to college students will result in less drinking. I’m open to hearing the arguments but I’m dubious. I suspect there may be other ways to tackle the problems associated with excessive drinking.
Any campaign against drunken college hook-up sex should have three dimensions: (1) cracking down on binge drinking, whatever the locale (2) holding men more accountable for boorish and/or violent behavior, and (3) urging women to stop putting themselves in situations likely to produce bad outcomes.
The first is to attack the binge drinking problem. Binge drinking leads to bad sex by breaking down inhibitions, causing bad judgment and clouding memories of who said and did what. (By bad sex, I mean sex that women don’t want to participate in but are either pressured into by peer expectations, psychological bullying or physical coercion, or sex that they regret in retrospect.) Eliminate the binge drinking, and you eliminate much sexual assault and regret sex.
How do we do this? Frankly, I don’t know. But college administrations need to make it a priority. Colleges should proceed through trial and error, sharing stories of successes and failures. They should cooperate where possible with Greek organizations, while recognizing that fraternities and sororities are only part of the problem and that other venues will emerge for binge drinking that are beyond the control of university administrators. We need to affect a values revolution as a society, encompassing not only students but colleges, parents, Greek organizations, Hollywood, bars and nightclubs, local law enforcement and everyone else. We must persuade young people that getting wasted, puking, peeing in the alleyway, falling off balconies, engaging in meaningless sex and all the rest irresponsible and contemptible behavior.
Next we need to change the way young men think about sex. College-age men are, by their nature, obsessed with sex pretty much 24/7. It’s in their genetic wiring, and their natural proclivities are reinforced today by ubiquitous pornography that depicts women as eagerly catering to male sexual fantasies. As long as men treat women as objects for their sexual gratification, and women let them, there will be a lot of unhappy women. This “culture change” needs to be reinforced at every level of society. Men need to respect the feelings and sensibilities of women. Men who subject women to any form of coercion to obtain sex should be shamed and shunned, even criminally prosecuted when appropriate. In the age of social media, it should be easy for women to “out” men with the most abusive and boorish behavior. However it’s done, we need to hold men accountable for abominable behavior, even when it doesn’t rise to the level of criminality.
Finally, we need to change the way young women think about sex. Ultimately, they hold the key. Women have undermined themselves through their own behavior. Too many have fallen prey to the idea that women should be as assertive sexually as men and that they should treat sex as casually as the most misogynistic of men. But most women seek more from sexual encounters than the almighty orgasm – they want loving sex in a committed emotional relationship. If they provide sex for “free” – rather than in exchange for some level of emotional commitment – most will find the experience unsatisfying if not humiliating. Indeed, some may find it cause for remorse and depression. College-age women have relinquished the greatest power they have over men. They need to take it back. They need to dispense with the idea that sexual promiscuity is “liberating” for a women, and they need to drive a harder bargain in their relationships with men.
Few of the ideas we hear from the anti-rape movement — criminalizing boorish male behavior, undermining the presumption of innocence, subjecting students to legalistic formula for granting consent — will make campus life safer or more rewarding for women. At its core, the campus “epidemic of rape” is a moral crisis and it can be solved only through a moral reformation. Government can’t do this. College administrations can lend only a supporting role. Change must come from all of us speaking out in thousands of forums just like this one.
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