The following piece discusses sexual violence. How do you confront an assaulter after hearing multiple accusations about their behavior, yet see them suffer no social consequences? For students, one of the clearest means of responding to sexual violence is social ostracization. However, the issue with isolating sexual abusers, particularly within small college campuses such as ours, is that there is typically at least one β if not many β mutual points of contact.
Approximately 80 percent of victims of sexual assault and misconduct know their perpetrator. For each charge of assault, there seem to be substantially more positive anecdotes that legitimize the perpetrator in the court of public opinion. During a sexual encounter, how many have introduced an element that was not mutually agreed upon before sex, such as choking, spanking, name-calling, and digital penetration? I use gender-neutral language here, but well over 90 percent of sexual assaulters are men, though I do not want to minimize the suffering of those who have been harmed by women or gender non-conforming people.
In my time at the College, I have experienced all of the above at the hands of men. I am touched against my will at parties at least once a semester. After a wardrobe malfunction, an acquaintance spoke explicitly about my body numerous times in the following months, always when we were in the company of other men. The accumulation of these acts of disrespect and corporeal violation is humiliating at best and dehumanizing at worst.
To apply exact terminology, I have been sexually harassed and assaulted dozens of times while at the College and throughout my life. Such a number is unfathomable, so I ignore it for my own well-being. There is little solace in knowing how many share my plight. The question then becomes one of accountability and of changing campus culture. I am not averse to reproach. However, when speaking face-to-face with people I know have been accused of assault, I am agreeable: I do not list their accusations, and at times, I smile.
A large part of this can be attributed to a lack of bravery, and some of it can be attributed to the way women are socialized. In any case, I am complicit in the campus-wide normalization of sexual violence. This complicity extends from the individual level to the institutional one: The College has failed to uphold accountability for the perpetrators of sexual violence by making statistics about Title IX proceedings inaccessible and failing to provide adequate infrastructure to prevent and address sexual violence.
