Indiana is among the 10 states making ostensible efforts to permit firearms at universities. The belief is if guns could be freely carried on college campuses, then women would be protected against rape.
This is just a problematic tactic conjured up by the conservative right to use the purity of young women as a bartering chip in the ongoing gun control debate.
Beyond its convoluted logic, this argument indicates how so many of the people making decisions about our country are still getting it all wrong where rape and sexual assault are concerned and are even reinforcing rape culture.
Such legislation frames rape and sexual assault in this romanticized, Victorian, foggy streets of London way in which a scoundrel Jack-the-Ripper-type stranger moves from the shadows and forces himself upon an unsuspecting and defenseless woman.
The reality is most rape and sexual assault takes place between people who know each other and in a setting in which the identity of the perpetrator is already known. Legislators and society need to move past this dark-alley-stranger idea of rape, because it doesn’t occur nearly as often.
Besides, if a woman were to be armed with a gun, where would she stash it? What if she’s at a party, doesn’t have her purse nearby and couldn’t have it on her body because her dress is too small? By the way, she should be able to live in a world in which she can wear a tiny dress without having to worry about being ?assaulted in the first place.
But here we are, once again putting the burden on the defenders to stop rapists rather than shifting the responsibility to the attackers who should end rape by not raping in the first place.
This legislation would only reinforce this unfocused approach to rape prevention.
If you don’t believe rape culture is spinning this argument, consider how Michele Fiore, a Nevada assemblywoman and sponsor of a bill to bring guns to campus, said, “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them.”
Yes, the future female members of our society whom the right is magnanimously trying to protect are “hot little girls” in the eyes of Fiore, which seem to me the predatory words of sickening disempowerment that ?belong in Maxim magazine.
Have these proponents considered the escalation that would inevitably occur? People may think armed students would send the message, “Don’t mess with me; I could be armed.”
But to those old-timey, dark alley rapists it only says, “You need to be the first one to pull your gun on this person.”
This breed of rapists won’t be deterred. The thing about rape is it includes the strategy to avoid consequences, whether that is being ?identified, caught or killed.
This is a crime scenario based on power, so rapists target those they feel confident they can rape and then get away with it whether or not they are armed with mace, a knife, a gun or Excalibur.
This misguided shred of faux-rhetoric would actually bring guns to campus and still not end rape.
Meanwhile, universities would have to deal with the consequences of putting guns in the hands of thousands of large toddlers with better motor skills who are often under the influence of mind-altering substances and have an ?invincibility complex.
gmleeds@indiana.edu
