Sarah’s recent post about the two types of education around sexual violence (risk reduction and primary prevention) and the need for colleges and universities to do WAY more of the latter than they do at present got me thinking about what I take to be some of the broader issues impacting sexual violence – both its occurrence and the conversations we have about it. (This is probably a good time to remind readers that I don’t speak for SAFER in any official capacity. The ideas that follow are my own and don’t necessarily represent the organization as such.)

Many of the items on the “how  to avoid perpetrating sexual assault” checklist which Sarah posted, it seems to me, need to be part of comprehensive, accessible sex education if they are to become visible in popular discourse, much less become behavioral norms.  There are a whole slew of complex issues that contribute to sexual assault, and I in no way want to suggest that quality sex ed is some kind of magic bullet. But I do think that the connection between sex/sexuality and violence so common in our culture is in part bolstered by the fact that many, many young people in this country are not educated about and encouraged to discuss what healthy sexuality and sexual behavior actually look like. Dominant images that portray controlling behavior as evidence of love, characterize sex as a prize to be won through aggression, and depict certain kinds of violence as sexy often go unchallenged, and I’d argue that this is partly because there just aren’t a lot of highly visible alternative images and values out there, and we’re not in the habit of having open, honest, informative conversations with folks (young people) who are in the process of learning about sex and sexuality.

The other thing that got me thinking about this  topic was a study (presented at the most recent meeting of the American Sociological Association) that received some news coverage last week. In part, the research found that sexual activity does not necessarily correlate with lower academic achievement in adolescents. It’s a bit depressing, but not surprising, that this particular finding was the hook for many stories on this study, and presented as “provocative” (to quote the Associated Press article I linked). Not surprising because sexual activity continues to connote delinquency, underachievement, and other signs of ‘trouble’ in teens, especially young women. This is not to say that being sexually active is never correlated with emotional and behavioral issues. Like many other behaviors, it can be a sign that someone is struggling with self-worth.  And (again like many other practices) sexual behavior can be engaged in in a self-destructive way. But putting sexual activity or intercourse in the same category as, say, drug use (that is, defining it as necessarily cause for concern or evidence of compromised emotional health – which is frequently how both are discussed in relation to adolescents) is deeply problematic. Not only does it malign what is in fact a normal component of human development (the emergence of sexual desire and sexual pleasure during puberty), it sets up a binary between “good” and potentially “bad” young people that rests on their relationship to sex and sexuality. I’d argue that this is especially dangerous, and especially relevant to a larger conversation about sexual violence, because it marginalizes teens who are sexually active. And the consequences of this can impede sexual health AND emotional development. To suggest an example: say you’re a sexually active young person who understands that behavior to be defined as “wrong” or “inappropriate.” You’re faced with a situation that feels coercive, or you experience an encounter that leaves you feeling uncomfortable or unsafe. How likely are you to reach out to the adults around you for advice on how to identify and practice respectful, mutually pleasurable sex? Not very, I’d say. Instead, you’ll probably rely on those dominant images and cultural themes – the ones that frequently encourage you to interpret stalking as a sign of love, suggest that if you’re a woman you owe sex to someone you’re dating, and if you’re a man you must always be ready and eager to engage in sex (lest you be labeled less than manly).

I do think the way sex and sexuality are discussed with and in relation to youth plays a huge role in the normalization and trivialization of sexual violence in our culture. And I think that respecting and honoring sexual desires and behaviors in teens and, consequently, incorporating comprehensive sex education that addresses consent, mutuality, and respect has transformative potential when it comes to norms around sex and violence. I wish that the study in question had more to offer here. What it does suggest is that sexually active teens in committed relationships tend not to differ from their non-active peers when it comes to grades and college expectations. (This is the ‘provocative’ part.Young people in sexually intimate relationships don’t ruin their prospects for a fulfilling, successful adulthood! Imagine that. ) It also suggests that teens who engage in casual sex do tend to have lower GPAs and greater rates of school-related disciplinary problems. While the data itself may be accurate, I wish that instead of setting up a dichotomy between teens having “good” and “bad” sex, the study had explored the actual qualities that make sex within committed relationships neutral or even positive (“Teens in serious relationships may find social and emotional support in their sex partners, reducing their anxiety and stress levels in life and in school,” as the AP describes the findings). Many, though not necessarily all, of those qualities can be cultivated even in sexual experiences outside the context of a romantic relations: trust and respect, sensitivity to others’ needs and feelings, willingness to express one’s own needs and feelings, to name a few. And that’s where I think the emphasis should be. It’s not that I’m interested in debating the merits or demerits of what is termed “casual sex,” but rather than I think we miss so many opportunities for positive change when we divert our attention from those core values that contribute to healthy sexuality.

In my opinion, an end to sexual violence will only come about with a transformation of how we educate ourselves and others about sex and sexuality, one that privileges agency over one’s own sexuality and recognition of others as autonomous individuals. Even though sexual desire and behavior is in part biological, it is something that we learn about, and I think we can do much better than we currently do when it comes to responsible education. In the process, perhaps we can turn that checklist and those behaviors that prevent sexual assaults from taking place into habits and values that everyone learns. I think we can all agree that preventing sexual violence is just important as preventing STIs and pregnancy.

If you’re interested in research and policy around sexuality, I suggest checking out the Guttmacher Institute and SIECUS. And if you’re looking for comprehensive, accurate advice and information, Scarleteen has been doling it out for years.

Most people reading this probably won’t remember the name Kyle Payne. His story broke right around the time I started working with SAFER in the summer of 2008, and it stuck with me over the past couple of years. For the best background, I would check out the series of posts that Cara did over at The Curvature, but the brief history is that Payne was an RA (resident advisor) at Buena Vista University in Iowa, who was charged with sexually assaulting an unconscious student and taking naked photographs of her. He pled guilty to the photographing, but not the assault, and was sentenced to 6 months in county jail.

The kicker is that Payne was also a sexual assault advocate. His blog is now set to private, but he used to describe himself there as follows:

Kyle is a social justice educator, writer, and activist. Much of his work is concerned with putting a stop to violence against women. For years Kyle has served as an advocate for survivors of sexual violence and other forms of abuse, in addition to promoting what he calls “a more just and life-affirming culture of sexuality” through activism and education. As a researcher, Kyle has studied the feminist anti-pornography movement and is particularly interested in men’s roles in confronting pornography and the rape culture. In addition to his pro-feminist work, he is involved with anti-racist, free speech, peace, and anti-globalization movements.

As repugnant as this description was in 2008, it gets worse this week as a commenter pointed us to this August 20, 2010 story about how Payne has been arrested again, this time for possession of child pornography:

After Payne told a counselor that he was continuing to use pornography, a police officer and two parole officers went to his apartment in Sioux City August 12 to examine his computer. His parole agreement required that Payne submit to such searches.

They found over 200 animated images of child pornography on the machine, and when questioned, Payne reportedly admitted that they might recover photographic images of actual child sex acts from his hard drive. Officers found software intended to “scrub” computer files to prevent them from being discovered. Payne had reportedly also downloaded child pornography onto his BVU student drive prior to his initial arrest.

It’s bizarre that this story got sent to us today—as we’ve been prepping some resources on housing rights for suvivors, I was just googling the original Payne story YESTERDAY to make a point about how schools need to have protocol for when a perpetrator of sexual violence is a member of the housing/res life staff. Re-reading all of the original posts about him, including the one written here by Ashley, I was again filled with rage at the hypocrisy (which honestly doesn’t seem like a strong enough word) of this man, claiming to be a supporter of women who suffer at the hands of men just like him. And tonight I am angry still, but I am also just deeply saddened by the fact that this story continues; that whatever therapy this man was going through wasn’t enough. So much of what I believe in—my social justice values, you might say—hinges on transformation, learning, redeeming oneself…and then people like this make me second guess the possibility of that at all.

I want to end this by echoing Ashley from two years ago, because it’s still really, really relevant:

This case is an excellent example of one of the myriad reasons a college should make the investment in full-time trained sexual assault advocates. They think that’s too expensive? How much will it cost when the school gets sued because some self-styled student “advocate” sexually assaults the person they’re counseling? How about the lost tuition from students too traumatized to continue with their schooling? The fallout from the suicide that happens when the counseling center is closed?

Seriously, you have three baseball coaches and you can’t hire one person to deal with sexual assault on campus?

It’s back-to-school time, and for the first time in three years I’m headed back to school too. It’s exciting, but also stressful and, especially if you’re headed to college for the first time, potentially kind of scary. Not only do you have to worry about doing well academically, making friends, securing work, etc., but you’re navigating a new social world and testing your own boundaries, all in an environment where we know sexual violence is a pretty big issue. Luckily, new and returning students have plenty of folks to offer them super useful advice on staying safe like, don’t walk around alone at night. In fact, don’t be alone ever. Also, watch your drink. Maybe you shouldn’t drink at all actually. To be safest, just don’t trust anyone, or yourself, and you should be OK. Wait, what?

Over the two years I’ve been writing for SAFER, I’ve carefully walked the line between trying to promote primary prevention education and techniques (primary prevention meaning approaching sexual violence prevention by focusing on the changing perpetrator behavior and cultural attitudes that enable rape and assault) over risk reduction techniques, without totally writing off risk reduction (risk reduction being the strategies most often given to women to ‘reduce the risk’ that they will be assaulted by altering their behavior, i.e., stay in groups, watch your drink). Because honestly, people probably shouldn’t accept drinks if they aren’t sure what’s in them. If you feel a situation is unsafe, whether it be a walk alone to the other side of campus or an aggressive person hitting on you at a party, you should listen to your instincts and call in a friend for company or backup. Some of this advice is good old-fashioned common sense that we should all have, because until we’re living in a rosier world where violence isn’t an issue, sometimes we’re going to have to make shitty sacrifices.

But that’s the thing—they are sacrifices. What frustrates me about hearing the same risk reduction techniques handed out to students every year (and let’s face it, they are always aimed at female students) isn’t just the fact that focusing on women’s behavior alone puts the sole responsibility for preventing violence on the potential victim, which I think unintentionally plays a role in enabling victim-blaming. It’s also that while telling you how you can help “protect yourself,” no one stops to tell you how fucking unfair it is that you have to do it in the first place. Few things make me angrier than the fact that I experience social situations or even just taking a walk differently than my male peers because of the threat of sexual harassment or violence. And by not giving space to that anger, these lists of safety tips, as well-intentioned as they are, continue to normalize violence as harassment as these givens—like: Men are potential threats. Learn how to protect yourself from them. That is all. This defaults men into being predators and women into staying scared. There is no room for progress, or envisioning a world in which women’s behavior isn’t seen as a predictor of the likelihood that they will be assaulted.

What if instead or alongside these safety tips for women, we distributed information on how NOT to be a rapist? What would that world look like? Can you imagine, security and anti-violence professionals across the country releasing lists every fall with advice on how to reduce your or your friends’ risk of sexually assaulting someone? For example:

• Don’t use alcohol or drugs to manipulate someone into sexual activity. Don’t stand by silently while your friends do it either
• Don’t ignore verbal and/or physical signs of discomfort when hooking up with someone
• Ask your partner what they want, or check in with them before taking things further
• Stand up to your friends who make jokes about rape
• If you see someone being aggressive or making clearly unwanted advances to another person, step in or cause a distraction
• Understand the long-term negative emotional and physical effects of sexual violence on a survivor

People who get all up in arms about critiques of risk reduction as standalone prevention effort or critiques of victim-blaming usually talk a lot about personal responsibility—women need to be responsible for their behavior too. And there’s a lot to unpack there, but let’s just address the “too”—the “too” implies that culturally we are already holding folks accountable for perpetrating or enabling violence. And by and large, we aren’t. And I could wax philosophical for a long time about why we aren’t—because it’s harder to do than telling women to protect themselves, because it involves talking about sex with young people which makes everyone uncomfortable, because it challenges long-established gender and sexual norms, and so on—but the end result is that we accept that women should go through life afraid, constantly questioning that one wrong move that might ‘increase their risk’ of being violated. And I am so, so tired of settling for that, every year, over and over again.

So this year when you go back to school, and during orientation someone tells you about how you can “keep yourself safe,” file that information away for a time when you might need it, with the understanding that the only person who can truly prevent rape is the rapist. But also, harness your frustration, and anger, and fear into something positive.  Ask if your school has primary prevention education also. Ask if they are going to address the responsibility each of your peers has to not violate each other’s sexual boundaries. If you don’t get answers you like, start talking about it to the administration, to student activists, to your school’s peer health educators, to us at SAFER. Don’t feel forced to settle.

Continued from Part I. Where we left off, Suzy had just discovered her school’s Low Income Student Alliance (LISA).

Suddenly, there was this camaraderie that I previously found difficult to foster in a decentralized urban campus. All of us, despite our generous scholarships, still have to work to pay for our tuition, books, housing and/or supplies. Most of us came from homes with single parents, parents with serious financial debt or parents who never obtained college degrees. Many of us are students of color. A few students have had to take entire semesters, or even years off of schooling due to financial stress. However, all of us had trouble finding the time and resources to implement a policy change that would benefit us as working-class students. We even had trouble finding a time to meet, because all of our work schedules would clash.

Little by little, membership waned; a few students left the Alliance because they left school altogether, in order to make a living. Some of the most thoughtful, intelligent people were forced to halt their educations because their socioeconomic status wouldn’t allow them to continue. When I asked one of these people about an upcoming student action, they said, “I don’t care anymore. I’m focused on making money now. I don’t have time to fight for my right to an education, when clearly it’s not meant for people like me.”

A Diversity of Tactics

One thing that has alleviated most of our organizational issues is the internet. Because most of us had trouble finding a common time to meet, we exchanged our ideas from our homes or jobs. We had to continue the momentum somehow; by setting up a listserve, we could outline some objectives, and notify each other of upcoming events and job opportunities. We arranged a blog, printed flyers with statistics we collected from the government and wrote a zine that we eventually sent to members of the administration. Each member of LISA shared their personal story, describing the difficulty of attending school in the city with limited resources.

The administration’s interest in us peaked once we delivered the zine; they invited us to meet with them. We double-checked our calendars and drafted a proper platform and list of demands to back up our zine. After a couple of students briefly met with them in person, they made public the availability of emergency funds, which low-income students could use for supplies and bills.

Other secret resources for students gradually started popping up. Suddenly people were able to earn work-study money for their internships, or receive scholarships that had previously been kept hush-hush by the financial aid department. The correspondence between financial aid and low-income students has increased since the zine.

These resources had stayed hidden because people were too intimidated by the bureaucracy to navigate it or negotiate with administrators, but we accomplished the majority of our work from the comfort of our cheap computers. Even though I can’t afford a fancy Macbook Pro like many of my peers, I can still access the internet from any place at almost any time, whether it’s from my school, the local library, or even my phone. It’s safe to say that the internet is the most accessible medium through which anyone can learn about the issues, form a community and implement change, no matter if you’re living in a big city in the East Coast or a small Midwestern town.

Although most of LISA has parted ways, and even cities, have no doubt that we’re still scheming. We’ve even contacted similar organizations at neighboring private schools and state schools alike. Somewhere online, the momentum is picking up again, and it’s only a few clicks away.

This is part one of a piece written by Suzy, one of SAFER’s amazing summer interns. Look for part two on strategic organizing in the next couple of days.

Many college students in the US grew up believing in the same narrative. It starts with high school graduation, then it’s followed by the pursuit of a college degree, and it is guaranteed to end with a lucrative career and financial security.

By omitting the reality of student loans, a shrinking job market, and a failing economy, this narrative is, at best, an American fairy tale.

The reality behind being a college student hit me pretty hard from the beginning. After being offered a hefty scholarship to a school in New York City, I took advantage of the offer without any hesitation, eager to live my dreams of going to school in the city. I had borrowed just enough to cover what my school didn’t provide in tuition and housing costs, confident in my ability to balance a job and schoolwork.

However, when my dad was laid off from his job two months into my first year of college, it became clear that my parents would not be able to provide me with a safety net. Since then I have balanced 2 to 3 jobs at a time, all the while struggling to do well in 5 to 6 classes a semester. I even had to transfer to a program that was less challenging, so that I could reconcile my work schedule with my class schedule.

When money is tight, and your schedule is tighter

I always prided myself on my opinions, and my drive to change the status quo. When I noticed some glaring disparities—like the way the men at my coffee shop earned two dollars more than the women***, the rate at which my friends were being sexually assaulted, and the fact that no more than two gender studies classes were offered per semester—there was no way I was going to ignore them. Yet, I found that getting other people sufficiently riled up about it would take a lot of time and effort that I couldn’t spare, as long as I wanted to maintain good grades and keep my hours steady at work.

Rhiannon Auriemma, a junior at Eugene Lang College, understands my dilemma with organizing on a tight schedule. “The main disadvantage to being a low-income student activist is really a time disadvantage. I couldn’t afford to live on campus so I commute and I have a really demanding job on my days off… I haven’t been able to take a leadership role because I knew I wouldn’t be able to fully commit myself.”

Working your way through school is a tricky thing to do, and being a student activist isn’t any easier. You can burn out in no time if you don’t have the support you need to further your cause. Things like time, money, and contacts are all very crucial to carrying on a movement. And as a low-income student trying to revive the feminist movement at a school without a gender studies program, I was hard-pressed for all three of those things.

I had barely any time to manage a feminist group, much less meet on a regular basis without detracting from my hours at work; I had no time to run around the school and chase after bureaucrats for administrative approval, thus limiting my chances of gaining any funding; and I had a limited amount of friends or professors who had any interest in feminist analysis. It’s also difficult to foster a community in an urban setting like New York City where there are so many outside distractions and so little time. Things were looking pretty bleak.

Luckily, I found solace in my school’s Low-Income Student Alliance (LISA), a student-run support group for working-class students. There were plenty other students who, just like me, followed the social protocol of attending college, without any of the financial privilege that most students at our school had. Coincidentally, they were hosting their first meeting at the same time and place as the feminist group; thus, a beautiful and productive conversation was started, in which we discussed the intersections between gender, race and class. I realized that my issues as a low-income student were connected my issues as a woman of color. I also realized my issues were similar to many other people attending my school.

***Due to the gendered wage disparity, all the women eventually quit the coffee shop in unison, and the management caved and sold the place.

Stay tuned for part two…

Cross-posted at Feministing Campus