We spend a lot of time hashing and rehashing the problems of rape culture and sexual assault on college campuses.
To that end, IU groups have begun creating programs to enact serious change on campus. Within the past few years, IU fraternities signed a pledge saying they would make a renewed effort to educate people on rape and take steps to prevent it.
However, there is another aspect of rape culture that is often ignored solely because it is so insidious it goes unnoticed. People still, for whatever reason, think sexual assault is funny.
The Sigma Nu chapter at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, is now receiving backlash after a few fraternity members hung three signs over the balcony of an off-campus house reading, “Rowdy and fun, hope your baby girl is ready for a good time,” “Freshman daughter drop-off” and “Go ahead and drop Mom off too.”
The largest problem I see is not so much a lack of understanding of what rape and assault are.
Rather, there’s a willingness to joke about them, to take the gravity and seriousness away from the violence and thus undercut the experiences of the victim in order to justify problematic behavior.
Moreover, it represents a serious problem surrounding the stigma of sexual assault — making light of sexual assault challenges the seriousness of the crime and tells victims the only outcome of reporting said crime is humiliation, not help.
It is this aspect of the sexual assault debate that is often not discussed or recognized.
These students at ODU clearly didn’t understand the violent message they were sending and how it could even go as far as to put another person in the way of serious harm.
And I understand how they could have thought it was funny.
Before I came to IU and really began discussing and understanding what rape culture is as well as the harm it can do, I thought similar jokes were funny as well.
I would readily defend the victim of the crime, but I probably would have laughed if I had seen pictures of the ODU students’ signs.
There seems to be a disconnect — not just on college campuses but across the board — between knowing what rape and sexual assault are and understanding their emotional, physical and psychological effects.
If these students had understood the trauma victims experience, I highly doubt they would have hung the signs — or even had the idea in the first place.
Rape can no longer be funny.
The victims aren’t punch lines, and we especially need to start respecting spaces occupied by young women.
These signs were directed at freshman girls — young girls cannot continue to feel unsafe in the spaces they have fought to have.
If we want serious change, we need to start being serious.
ewenning@indiana.edu