ANYONE who approaches the issue of sexual assault from the lens of "preventative" measures risks being labeled a chauvinist who blames predominantly male crimes on females. I will nevertheless risk losing half my readership to advance what I see as the correct perspective, because uninformed debate is the most important obstacle hampering our efforts to solve one of the most critical security issues at this University.
Emphasis on eliminating the threat of sexual assault by means of preventative measures is often dismissed as "blaming the victim" for the assaults. But what preventative measures really call for is women taking a greater role in preventing assaults from occurring in the first place. The "blame the victim" rhetoric has been advanced widely, even by individuals who are actively trying to combat sexual assault. For instance, Christopher Einolf of One in Four was quoted by the Cavalier Daily ("The threat of sexual assault," Oct. 23) as saying that "drinking does not mean you are saying rape me. That's just blaming the victim." In reality, preventative measures focused on urging women to control their alcohol levels are designed not to place blame on them for sexual assaults that do occur, but to recognize and underscore measures to prevent assaults from happening in the first place.
To use a familiar scenario, if a girl walking alone on Rugby Rd. at 4 a.m. under the influence of alcohol is sexually assaulted, she should not be blamed for the assault itself since such an act is unquestionably the perpetrator's fault. But experts should highlight the importance of measures women can take to minimize their chances of being assaulted in the first place. Taking responsibility for one's actions that could facilitate a crime is not the same as being blamed for the crime itself. In failing to make this important distinction, we overlook the benefits of the prevention side of combating sexual assault.
Women should be made fully aware of the fact that some actions or behaviors they partake in can contribute to or facilitate sexual assault, just as men must be made aware of how their treatment of women contributes to the broad cultural attitudes that lead to sexual assault in the first place. Only if women accept and are fully aware that some of their actions do increase the likelihood of an attack will they be more likely to take these safety precautions more seriously. Therefore, to reduce sexual assault, men obviously need to change their abusive behavior and violence, but women also need to help prevent themselves from falling prey to perpetrators of sexual assault, instead of continuing to buy into the males-alone-are-responsible attitude pushed by some experts.
More concretely, women implementing preventative measures may help improve the reporting rates of sexual assault. A survey of 779 women conducted by University alumna Jacqueline Chevalier and Christopher Einolf showed that 17.6 percent of the study participants had been raped during their four years at the University, but only 10.7 percent of the alleged rape victims admitted to reporting the incident to the police ("The threat of sexual assault," Oct. 23). Experts posit that this low reporting rate stems from the fact that women feel a certain guilt or place blame placed on themselves for not taking adequate precautions to protect themselves from this situation. Logically speaking, combating this problem would include encouraging University students -- women in particular -- to take necessary, day-to-day safety precautions so that when these crimes occur, the victims don't feel guilty because they did all they could to prevent it.
Granted, overwhelmed by trauma, sexual assault victims can blame themselves even if they have done everything in their power to stop an assault. However, there should be no doubt that maximizing preventative measures may very well reduce the tendency for women to blame the assault on their own behavior. After all, The Cavalier Daily's spread on sexual assault last month ("Sexuality by the numbers," Oct. 23) clearly suggested that drugs and alcohol were a factor in 80 to 90 percent of sexual assault cases for both the victim and the perpetrator. To begin to solve the problem of sexual assault, we must attack the issue from both sides.
Obviously, prevention will not serve as a panacea or holistic approach to solving the issue of sexual assault without broader cultural changes in our society in general and particularly in men. Claire Kaplan, director of Sexual and Domestic Violence at the Virginia Women's Center, said in a phone interview that "until we eliminate all forms of oppression, rape will continue to exist." There are, of course, inherent problems with prevention as well -- the gray area of whom to trust (most sexual assault offenders are friends and acquaintances), for example, or the unfair burden placed on women to live in perpetual paranoia of being assaulted in a college environment.
On the other hand, this does not change the fact that to solve the problem, cultural changes in women must supplement broad cultural changes in "men's culture." Experts do not do women any favor by glossing over what preventative measures they can take to prevent sexual assaults from occurring. While it is hardly fair for women to be on their guard at all times, we live in an unfair world where that is perhaps the best way to prevent being sexually assaulted until broader cultural changes among men take place. After all, dealing with the reality of society involves both men and women coping with realities and accepting proper responsibility for correcting society's flaws and working together to combat them, instead of constructing fantastic, utopian worlds.
Prashanth Parameswaran's column usually appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at pparameswaran@cavalierdaily.com.
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