The Oxy Diaries. Things continue to heat up at Occidental College, where 37 students have filed two lawsuits and two federal complaints over the college’s mishandling of sexual assault cases on campus. On the heels of the lawsuits and accompanying press conference, as well as visible campus activism by survivors and supporters, more than 100 Oxy faculty signed an open letter of support demanding policy change. On May 6, the faculty voted overwhelmingly to express No Confidence in both the college’s campus attorney and Dean of Students.

On May 8, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights formally opened an investigation into Occidental’s handling (or mishandling) of assault allegations.  (This is the second such investigation by the DOE this year: In March, it opened a similar investigation into the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill’s sexual assault reporting and adjudication process.)

While the investigation should not be taken as a determination of guilt, survivors and their supporters at Oxy are seeing it as a positive step forward. Said Caroline Heldman, chair of the department of politics at Occidental and one of  many faculty who have worked with the Occidental Sexual Assault Coalition to bring attention to the issue of sexual violence on campus,

“In a sense, it’s a vindication of the survivors’ stories that their claims are real and legitimate,” Heldman said. “I’m just really happy that all of our work has led to this, this day, the start of a real investigation and not one run by the administration.”

Where Is Your Line? will continue to watch and report on developments at Oxy. Sociology professor Lisa Wade, who has also been active in bringing the issue of assault at Oxy to the fore, regular updates at her blog Sociological Images as well, for those who want an inside perspective.

A “decline in civility” at Dartmouth? On Wednesday, April 24, Dartmouth College took the unusual step of cancelling classes to deal with what it termed a “decline in civility” on campus.  The previous Friday, several members of Real Talk Dartmouth had disrupted an assembly of prospective incoming students to bring attention to Dartmouth administration’s perceived inaction in cases of sexual assault. Declaring “Dartmouth has a problem!” members of the group shouted alarming statistics about sexual violence on campus, including the troubling fact that in the past 10 years only three rapists had been expelled from the institution and the steady rise in sexual assaults on campus (from 10 to 22) between the academic years 2008-2009 and 2009-2010. (Members of  Real Talk Dartmouth, which is not affiliated with the college, also report that 95% of assaults at Dartmouth go unreported.)

In response to the protest, members of  Real Talk Dartmouth received threats of rape and murder on social media.

The college responded by canceling classes on Wednesday and issuing an email assuring the campus community that both the protesters and the people who threatened them would be subject to disciplinary action through approved college channels.

Hold up a second. Yes, that’s right. The email from the college officially equated the actions of protesters, who were trying to draw attention to violence on campus, with the actions of those who threatened them with sexual assault, bodily harm, and death for daring to speak out. Dartmouth administration characterized the escalating situation as a “decline of civility on campus.” (Just a thought: Maybe the real “incivility” on campus comes from a) having an administration that deals ineffective with sexual violence, and b) the attitude that threatening people with rape is an effective way to silence them.)

The full email from the chair of Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees reads:

April 26, 2013
To the Dartmouth community:

As some of you know, a small group of students disrupted the Dimensions Welcome Show for prospective students on Friday, April 19, using it as a platform to protest what they say are incidents of racism, sexual assault, and homophobia on campus. Following the protest, threats of bodily harm and discriminatory comments targeting the protesters and their defenders ran anonymously on various sites on the Internet.

With tensions high across the Dartmouth community, Interim President Carol Folt, the Dean of the Faculty, and other senior leaders across campus agreed that the best course of action was to suspend classes on Wednesday, April 24, for a day of reflection and alternative educational programming. This decision was made to address not only the initial protest, but a precipitous decline in civility on campus over the last few months, at odds with Dartmouth’s Principles of Community.

This unusual and serious action to suspend classes for a day was prompted by concern that the dialogue on campus had reached a point that threatened to compromise the level of shared respect necessary for an academic community to thrive. The faculty and administration together determined that a pause to examine how the climate on campus can be improved was necessary. This was an important exercise that the Board supports. It is also important to note that there will be an opportunity for faculty to hold the classes that were missed as a result of Wednesday’s events.

Neither the disregard for the Dimensions Welcome Show nor the online threats that followed represent what we stand for as a community. As Interim President Folt indicated Wednesday in her remarks in front of Dartmouth Hall, the administration is following established policies and procedures with regard to any possible disciplinary action in both cases. As in every case regarding a disciplinary investigation, this process is confidential and respects the privacy of our students.

Dartmouth is not unique in the challenges it faces concerning campus climate and student life. We aspire to lead in responding to these challenges.

The Trustees and I are committed to addressing and supporting efforts necessary to resolve these issues, improving the campus climate and strengthening the institution. The Board’s Committee on Student Affairs is working with senior leaders and consulting with outside professionals to make progress on this front.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and questions with me at Stephen.F.Mandel.Jr.78@Dartmouth.edu

Best regards,

Steve Mandel ’78, P’09, P’11
Chair, Board of Trustees

(Emphasis added.)

In case you missed it, the administration is on record as saying that staging a protest against sexual assault on campus is the same as threatening another student with rape or other violence.

And that, right there — that’s what rape culture looks like.

SMU Task Force Reports Back: After months of meetings and discussions, the task force appointed last fall by Southern Methodist University president R. Gerald Turner has reported back with its recommendations. SMU has been accused of a secretive culture around the handling of sexual assault on campus, including an “opaque system of on-campus hearings known as ‘student conduct panels.’” When a (male) student was sexually assaulted by another (male) student in one of the University’s parking garages in the fall of 2012, SMU suddenly seemed to become aware of the culture of sexual assault on campus, prompting Turner to appoint the task force. (The charges against the student who was accused of the assault have since been dropped.)

As an SMU alum, I was frankly surprised that the campus administration suddenly cared. As I have reported, there was an undeniable rape culture on the campus while I was both a graduate student and an instructor there.

Turner’s task force returned 41recommendations for changing the campus attitude and approach to sexual violence. Among them are instituting anonymous reporting of sexual assaults on campus, providing all staff with a wallet card listing resources for students who have been sexually assaulted, funding of an after-hours sexual assault counselor on campus, and clarifying of policies and procedures surrounding investigation of sexual assaults. (You can read the full report here.) While these may all be positive steps towards better adjudication of sexual assaults that do occur, it remains to be seen whether these steps — many of which are focused on after-the-fact dealing with assault or prevention efforts that appear to be the same “how not to be a victim” tactics that characterize rape culture in the first place — will change the campus culture.

(image from http://www.fawziakoofi.org)

Many reasons were given as to why the act was so furiously debated prior to the delay, but the most prominent reason seems to be that the legislation was “un-Islamic.”

Citing things like:

“keeping the legal age for marriage 16,

providing shelters for victims of domestic abuse,

and limiting the number of wives permitted to two instead of four.”

Now, I disagree with the notion that equality is inherently “un-Islamic,” but as I am not an Islamic scholar I’m going to direct you to Google phrases like ‘Islamic Feminism’ or ‘Muslim Feminism’ because there is some really cool stuff out there about the intersections of feminism and Islam. Or you can even check out the Wikipedia page on it! However, that is an entirely separate article.

Also, honestly, I am somewhat perplexed about the idea that having two wives is somehow more secular than having four wives. But, I digress.

But before we start condemning the Afghan government for their gross neglect of women (which delaying the vote was), let us keep in mind that the United States House of Representatives let our Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) expire for an entire year before finally reauthorizing it in 2013.

And that we also got gems from our politicians, like Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) who explains her opposition to the reauthorization due to the bill being too inclusive, “When you start to make this about other things it becomes an “against violence act” and not a targeted focus act… I didn’t like the way it was expanded to include other different groups.”

Yes, because having an act against all types of violence would be bad?

But we shouldn’t give up on all of humanity just yet.

Fawzia Koofi is the woman we have to thank for the introduction of EVAW to the Afghan Parliament. And she is very cool.

She currently heads up the women’s committee in the Lower House. But don’t think that’s where her ambitions end. Koofi is also planning on running for president in the upcoming 2014 election. All of this in spite of the fact that the Taliban has tried to assassinate her because of her aspirations.

So don’t give up hope because there are amazing women all over the world doing incredible things.

Here, as a present, is Fawzia Koofi talking to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show:

Joe Francis, the founder of the Girls Gone Wild franchise, was convicted last week of an assault in his home after a night out in 2011. Girls Gone Wild is, of course, responsible for all those videos of young women at parties, flashing their breasts or engaging in sexual activities in return for merchandise and a slice of ‘fame’. In true GGW style, Francis met the three women in this case in a Hollywood club, where they were celebrating a college graduation. One thing led to another, he ended up taking them home, and after attempting to separate them from each other, a dispute ensued in which Francis “grabbed one of the women by the hair and throat and slammed her head into the floor.” The jury found him guilty of three counts of false imprisonment, one count of assault causing great bodily injury, and one count of dissuading a witness.

This seems pretty shocking, right? Not in light of Francis’ legal history. Whether it’s women accusing Girls Gone Wild of having filmed them when they were underage – related to which, Francis pleaded no contest to charges of child abuse and prostitution in 2008 – or women who never consented in the first place , the franchise and the man behind it is constantly courting controversy. Of course, if Francis didn’t insist on gravitating towards the youngest women – including those who are genuinely underage, for the purpose of exploiting their birthdays and thus their becoming legal – in establishments and scenarios where copious amounts of alcohol are being consumed, maybe he would find this happened less.

And then there are all his other victims. Claire Hoffman, of the L.A. Times, wrote extensively of her time with Francis for a feature in 2006, in which she detailed, amongst other things, her experience of him being physically aggressive towards her, and even rape. She also details his past abuses of women: Stephanie Van de Motter, the property manager of Francis’ apartment, who obtained a restraining order against him in 2000 after he carried out a campaign of harassment against her after becoming upset about the noise the garbage collectors made in the morning; Darian Mathias-Patterson, who sued Francis for the emotional distress he caused her – which included death threats, and may have contributed to the miscarriage she experienced just two weeks afterwards – after she helped arrange rental of a location for a Halloween party of his, and then informed him that he would not be receiving his $25,000 deposit back after they trashed the place; the woman who filed a police report against Francis in 2004, accusing him of drugging her, when she woke up after going back to his hotel room for a drink to find herself in bed next to him. The latter investigation was dropped by the police, citing a lack of evidence, with Francis maintaining that the pair had had consensual sex. Francis claimed that the young woman that revealed to Hoffman that she had been raped had partaken in consensual sex with him, too. How coincidental.

There is nothing wrong with women making the choice to participate in Girls Gone Wild type activities if they give their full consent and it is legal for them to do so. To suggest otherwise is to deny women their right over their bodies and who they show them to; to suggest that by placing themselves in these situations, or even by being drunk or being at a party, that they invite abuse and even deserve it, does the same, only with added victim-blaming. The problem is, though, that by using very young women generally too drunk to give informed consent, Francis has made a living out of exploiting women. Add to that his obvious anger management problem, and that’s a dangerous combination. Young women will continue to flock to him because thanks to our fucked up society, getting involved with a guy like him is a route to that Holy Grail, ‘fame’. Telling, though, is the fact that the only name ever on our lips is Francis’. Unfortunately.

Michelle McKee, an activist from Washington, and Alexandria Goddard, an Ohio-based reporter, were both frustrated that the now-infamous events in Steubenville, Ohio, weren’t receiving national coverage despite several attempts on McKee’s part to tip off reporters to the story. Goddard, a friend of McKee’s, used Twitter and her expertise studying teen’s social media usage to cobble together the sordid commentary by members of the football team of what occurred that evening, and eventually published her findings on her blog, Prinniefied. The collection of screenshots Goddard gathered from Twitter from students who were in attendance proved vital not only in implicating the rapists but also in displaying an overwhelming endorsement of rape culture.

Meanwhile, McKee reached out to Anonymous, aware of their previous campaigns against cyberbulling. Along with KnightSec, a subgroup of Anonymous, McKee was instrumental in starting the #RollRedRoll hashtag and subsequent campaign in order to bring attention to the case and Steubenville’s silence, which clearly prioritized the football players’ prestige and careers over the psychological damage the victim, who goes by the alias Jane Doe, suffered. Using a compilation of tweets from the perpetrators and those complicit in the group rape, and information from the high school web page, Anonymous created a video officially putting Steubenville on notice.

That so many of the perpetrators’ ribald tweets were linked to their real names, without any regard to future consequences, is telling about our cultural priorities. Rapists are free to tweet and share photos detailing their acts of aggression, with the calm assurance that they won’t be penalized in any way for their actions, no matter how disgusting; all the blame will be shifted to the victim. As Elizabeth Plank, a writer for the blog PolicyMic, points out in her article on the trend of viral rape, the documentation of rape on social media is a way to once again proudly violate the victim. She writes:

The fact that rapists want others to know that they have raped suggests that violating women is a rite passage, a legitimate method to climb the social ladder of masculinity — or at least the bastardized toxic masculinity that they covet). Forcefully penetrating an unconscious girl is not a source of shame, but a badge of honor in the march of toxic masculinity, passed on through cultural narrative and weak “boys will be boys” punishments. Instead of guilt, the rapists feel pride. They get to rape their victims all over again, with ever share and every nasty comment, with every “LOL” and every “what a slut.”

The most prominent mainstream media narratives for rape and sexual assault only serve to reify the dictates of viral rape, demanding to know what the woman was wearing or drinking in an attempt to re-shame her. In CNN’s coverage of the Steubenville verdict, anchors Candy Crowley and Poppy Harlow were far too preoccupied with how the guilty ruling would ruin the rapists’ lives to be concerned for Jane Doe’s well-being. As of this writing, CNN still has not made any sort of apology regarding their rape apologism for the perpetrators.

As Harkinson correctly notes in his article, Anonymous is a surprising ally to the movement to combat rape culture and rape survivors, considering its genesis from 4chan. However, Anonymous’s work has resulted in legal repercussions for the rapists in Steubenville, and national attention to Rehtaeh Parsons’ suicide following her group rape and subsequent relentless bullying. Their decentralized nature, broad reach, and unfettered access to resources civilians might not be able to utilize makes Anonymous a force to be reckoned with. (Their ability to quickly compile all the relevant evidence regarding Parsons’ viral rape is nothing short of remarkable.)

Aided by the work and dedication of survivors and feminists, Anonymous is taking an important step towards declaring that women will not stand for the continued proliferation of rape culture in both its online and offline manifestations.  Using new technologies not only to break stories about the effects of the cycle of rape and unrelenting harassment by peers on survivors, but also to control the narratives created about these stories is an important tool that feminists online must continue to wield to send a clear message: rapists and rape culture will no longer be tolerated.

In the lyrics and the music video, Ray J makes a number of blatant references to Kim – including featuring a Kim look-alike as the female lead in the video. The cover art on the single is even a blurry version of what is most likely a picture of Kim on the beach.

The single's not-so-subtle cover art

I am absolutely disgusted by the song, the music video, and of course, Ray J himself. Watch at your own risk:

First and foremost, his actions are blatantly disrespectful – I’m not Kim Kardashian’s biggest fan, but under no circumstances is it appropriate to publicly call out personal details about your sex life with an ex. It’s a violation of her privacy and an offense to her current relationship with Kanye West. It’s also just pathetic, because he is clearly using Kim’s fame (which is far greater than his) to garner media attention and promote his music and career. It’s sad watching him get attention, even if it’s negative. That’s what he wants, and at too high a price.

“I Hit It First” is degrading and incredibly mysogynistic. After reading the title (an abridged version of the song’s imaginative chorus, which goes: “I hit it, I hit it, I hit it, I hit, I hit it, I hit it first”), you might innocently wonder what the “it” in question is. A wall, perhaps? A baseball? Maybe a tree that he ran into with his car? But then you realize, oh no, wait – he’s talking about an ACTUAL HUMAN BEING. He is literally referring to this woman that he slept with as “it.” IT. As in, the same pronoun that you use when describing your toaster oven or the copy machine at work. She is not a person, not a partner – she is “it.”

Look up “objectification” in the dictionary and you could find a downloadable MP3 file of this song. Ray J’s language is dehumanizing; he dismisses this woman’s personhood, reducing her to the status of an object for fucking. Her sole value derives from her body and its sexual functionality – except for it’s not really her body, but his; his to look at, to touch, to fuck, to sing tacky songs about, and to use as he pleases. Because, as this song makes brutally, unavoidably clear, we live in a society that consistently tells women that they have no rights to or control over their bodies. Our culture overwhelmingly refuses to acknowledge women’s sexual agency, the fact that women are individuals who possess both desires and the capability to decide for themselves how to act on those desires. “I Hit It First” is a particularly shameless example of that mentality – by using the words “I hit it,” Ray J establishes himself as the dominant figure in this encounter - in all encounters - implying that the woman, his partner, played no active role in the “really bomb” sex that was had, and that he benefited socially from the encounter and the fact that everyone knows about it:

I had her head going north and her ass going south
But now baby chose to go West
We deep in the building she know that I kill ‘em
I know that I hit it the best
Candles lit with that wine, money still on my mind
And I gave her that really bomb sex
No matter where she goes or who she knows
She still belongs in my bed
Going hard in the streets, mobbin with my homies
Sippin’ on good, blowin’ on OG
Me and ghost sittin’ clean with the matching rollie
I did that first so everybody know me

Why Ray J feels that allegedly being the first person to sleep with Kim Kardashian (or any woman) gives him some kind of bragging rights is honestly beyond me. Kim is not a prize – she is a person who (regrettably, it seems) decided to sleep with Ray J, and that’s about all there is to it. Being the first person to have sex with a woman does not give you any kind of claim to her. I don’t care if you were the first, the last, the only, or one of 55 – the ONLY person with ownership over a woman’s body is the woman herself. Not her husband, her wife, her father, her brother, her boyfriend, or any other person she’s ever looked at, spoken to, or slept with. Only her. And the fact that we still seem to struggle with this concept is a key reason that rape and all other forms of sexual violence are still so prevalent in our society.

The media coverage surrounding this song has focused almost exclusively on Ray J’s subtle-as-a-gun references to Kim Kardashian and their relationship. Which, while mildly entertaining, is extremely problematic. Really, it doesn’t matter who “I Hit It First” is about – the real outrage should be focused on why Ray J, and countless other artists (Kanye West included), feel that it’s acceptable to speak about women in such despicably disrespectful terms. Why, WHY, do we let this slide? Why does equating a woman to a disposable item make a man a badass? Why are we teaching boys that it’s cool to disrespect their partners and girls that they’re only worth something if men want to have sex with them? These are messages that stay with us even in adulthood, degrading our most intimate experiences and fostering a sexual dynamic that is toxic for men and women alike.

So, what can we do about that? For starters, do yourself a favor and never, ever listen to “I Hit It First” again. Seriously. We all had to hear it once to be part of this conversation, but honestly, the music video alone sets the entire feminist movement back about 50 years. Check out this great article from Feministing to read another perspective on why the song is so harmful to women. And beyond just that, start paying attention to the media you consume. Take a moment to think about what you internalize when you hear the Ying Yang Twins tell you to “shake that shit, bitch,” or when Nate Dogg says “I’m looking for a girl who will do whatever the fuck I say, every day she be giving it up.” Lyrics like that do something to you; they influence the way you think about yourself even if you’re not actively aware of it. So be aware of it. We can’t stop this barrage of grossly misogynistic media overnight, but we can take steps towards shielding ourselves against its negativity.

At one time abortion was legal. The first anti-abortion laws in the 1800′s purported to protect women from dangerous, unskilled abortionists. Then a lot of garbage happened, and a Texas woman’s abortion case went to the Supreme Court and granted the legality of safe abortions, commonly referred to as Roe v. Wade.

Catholic dogma claims that all abortion is murder and has been since the Church’s inception. This is not true; in the 4th century CE, St. Augustine declares a return to the Aristotelian belief of “delayed ensoulment“, and that abortion is not murder until “fetus animatus“, or the fetus is more fully developed. The Catholic Church wavered on and off (mostly off) about abortion as murder until the 17th Century. Then Pope Leo XIII declared in 1886 that all abortion is murder.

Child abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests has been attracting media attention since 1985. Finding reputable statistics on child abuse by Catholic clergy is tasking, since Catholic sources cite a much lower figure than non-Catholic sources.

Castilla says child rape perpetrated by priests and abortions are harmful and deserve punishment because in the former crime, “their future is ruined” and the latter medical procedure is “murder”.

One benefit of living in the USA is a constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state. Unlike other countries where Catholicism heavily influences government, Roe v. Wade stands, even if the war on women has been trying to thwart a Supreme Court ruling. Abortion is not going away. The matter of its legality is a precedent to keep women safe from back alley coat hanger style abortions. The systematic rape of children is not guaranteed by any institution. Furthermore, adult survivors of sexual abuse often have a lifetime of depression, trust issues, self-blame, and other issues.

As a rape survivor who is convinced I would have had an abortion if impregnated by my rapist, I find Castilla’s statement appalling. A medical procedure is not a criminal act and should not be shamed. It’s a choice. Rape is a crime with repercussions for the victim. If Castilla is against abortion, then he should not have one.

Eventually I began to listen closer to the lyrics of each song. The words of Nipsey Hussle began to attack my eardrums and almost break me down. His personal narrative of overcoming adversity was overshadowed by his constant use of the phrases “pussy ni**a”, “bitch ni**a” and my personal favorite “bad bitch”. As my friend’s boyfriend continued to shuffle through his own iTunes playlist, reiterations of the degradation of the female body, image and entity became more prevalent. Ultimately, an angry mood overcame me.

Granted these music industry pawns we call rappers may not explicitly be committing acts of rape, how dare they use the female—me, my sister, my mother, my aunt, my female cousins, their mothers, their sisters, their aunts, their cousins—to uplift themselves. I think Kristen West Savali hits the nail on the head when she states:

“Even though certain conscious rappers may disagree, it is not authentic Hip-Hop culture – semantics be damned – when Black men are paid to prey on Black women. There is absolutely zero cultural value in replicating a global rape epidemic within the narrow confines of Hip-Hop vernacular. Corporate Hip-Hop has revealed itself to be a diamond-encrusted plantation where Black men are nothing but hedonistic slaves bound by whips and chains. It’s a place where rape culture is embraced, cultivated and financed, and women are drugged, told to “suck d*ck” or die.”

One need not explicitly use the word “rape” or refer to an instance of it, as did Rick Ross, to contribute to the rape culture. It is perpetuated by a very specific image and definition of masculinity. It continues to exist when a rapper’s message of self-worth and success is measured by how many “bitches” he can attain. This problem grows when the mistreatment and exploitation of those women are assumed to exhibit a rapper’s level of success and finesse.

Though many may argue that this kind of rap, and further the image of the black males, should not function as a prototype to live life, what do you say to the fatherless little boy of color living in an economically and socially unstable community? Or how about the other young man of color who hears these misogynistic lyrics and the manifestation of a rapper’s success in how they are able to mistreat women? The habit of referring to women as “bitches” or “hoes,” regardless of whether or not used in a “good” way, only contribute to the vicious cycle of the devaluing of women. This degradation, of both the female as an idea and the actual rape of her body, serves as the foundation of a misconception of masculinity found within a plethora of different rap songs. And corporate rap profits from this very caricature.

In this way, it’s not only sex but rape that sells.

video is explicit.

It is important to note that not all rap music perpetuates rape culture. We must be cognizant of over-generalization when critiquing the misogynistic nature of rap for making blanket statements is reductionist. Further, to do so would to contribute to yet another fallacy that runs rampant in popular discourse: that rap is to blame for the ills of American Society, or that other genres have not violated and hurt women as well.

In 1970, hip-hop emerged from the Bronx as a vehicle for the voices of the African-American community. Hip-hop was intended to serve as a kind of counter-culture to the negative and inaccurate portrayals of the black community within larger society. However, mainstream rap says otherwise. It continues to silence and undermine the uplifting, socially conscientious, and empowering nature of hip-hop.

Corporate rap music has not produced and maintained the rape culture; on the contrary, misogyny has given rise to this falsified notion of manhood within rap music. but even so, this music not only helps to perpetuate legacies of violence of women, but also continues to rob hip-hop itself of its greatest asset: agency through music.

Topics covered range from the #EducateCoaches Campaign to the amazing blog we’re running right here at Where Is Your Line?, and somewhere in the middle there’s self-care, dogs, and millenial apathy all mixed in together in one big melting pot of sex-positivity.

You can listen to the playlist here or download it to iTunes via Jaclyn’s site.

A post published recently at Thought Catalog, written by an anonymous author, recounted a situation where a friend was drinking with another person and was “taken advantage of.” No consent was given. The incident did not escalate violently. And thus, the author’s friend doesn’t call it “rape.” After all, a person simply took advantage of the body belonging to someone who lacked the capacity to exercise their own agency:

Just because someone thinks they weren’t raped doesn’t meant they were not raped by definition, right? Does state law define rape or do your emotions?

I know that I will always be there when he wants to talk about it.

But do I tell him he was raped? According to state law, he was sexually assaulted. According to him, he was just too drunk to realize what was happening and say no. In my mind, that is rape. But in his mind, it’s just an unfortunate incident.

But there’s one problem here: that is rape.

Let’s be clear about this: rape is a violent act of power and control exerted over another person. In the USA alone, one in six women and one in 33 men are the victims of an attempted or completed rape. Furthermore, a Harvard study revealed that 72% of college students who were raped over the course of the study were intoxicated. If the 72% holds true across the entire population of rape victimization, alcohol is a factor in approximately 12.37 million survivors’ rapes. (Ironically, rape survivors are 13 times more likely to abuse alcohol.)

Sexual assault support websites like RAINN have advocated on behalf of inebriated rape victims for years. Intoxicated victims are often blamed for their own rapes, although feminists and survivor advocates have been fighting this stigma and working for years to convince the world-at-large that anyone who is “physically impaired (due to voluntary or involuntary alcohol or drug consumption)” can’t give consent, making clear that sex you’re unaware of, unable to stop, or too incapacitated to have to fend off is rape. Furthermore, RAINN provides a three question checklist to establish if a rape has occurred. The pertinent question is:  ”Do both people have the capacity to consent?” If there’s no consent, there’s no sex. If there’s no consent, it’s rape.

The Thought Catalog author asks “am I victimizing him or is society?” This is a difficult quandry – respecting your friend’s experience is obviously important, as is supporting them in any way possible after any sort of violation. But as a proponent of blaming who is at fault, the perpetrator victimized the author’s friend, and I feel that needs to be recognized no matter what words we’re using to describe what happened. Danny Brown calls his assault “the incident,” and throughout history we’ve been conditioned to think of unwanted sexual activity as “bad sex,” “awkward situations,” and – worst of all – something that is our own faults. That doesn’t change anything about what happened.

Rape is rape is rape, no matter what it’s called.

Many of us wondered what could be done to prevent future rapes in the future. We wondered where to start when it comes to changing the cultures that foster such profound rape culture.

We took action.

The Line Campaign’s very own Carmen Rios, working as a change agent with the SPARK Movement and Colby College football player Connor Clancy, saw an opportunity for sparking change out of the tragedy in Steubenville. They started a Change.Org petition to work with the National Federation of State High School Associations to educate high school coaches about what they can do to help prevent sexual assault in their community.

65,000+ signatures later, NFHS agreed!

Tim Flannery, director of Coaches’ Education at the NFHS has officially announced that: “We are pleased to work with SPARK Movement and their partners throughout the United States to provide resources in sexual violence prevention to the millions of coaches, athletic directors, school administrators and parents who are involved in interscholastic sports in America.”

So what does all of this exciting news mean? NFHS will be working with SPARK, Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence, Futures Without Violence, Mentors in Violence Prevention, California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, National Sexual Violence Resource Center, and the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape—so we’re all in good company. We’ll be working together to bring resources to high school coaches across the country about what they can do to help prevent sexual assault in their community.

This is a huge deal. NFHS is going to provide access to sexual violence prevention resources to 11 million students, 1 million community members, and over 18,000 schools with a combined total of 80,000 coaches. We at SPARK, and at THE LINE, are excited and hopeful about NFHS’s willingness to work with a grassroots sexual assault prevention activist movement, and we anticipate the real change at the community level. This is a win for us all! So crack open the Cristal. After the slew of terrible news we’ve had about rape culture as of late, we all deserve to sit back and bask in what could be the beginning of a very new kind of world.