Sexual Violence on Campus

Chris Linder

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787439474
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación superior

Activists have been working to call attention to the problem of campus sexual violence for decades, and in recent years, policymakers, campus administrators, and researchers have begun to make serious efforts to address this issue. Despite this increase in attention, many campus leaders still struggle to effectively address campus sexual violence, often over-relying on policy to address sexual violence after it happens, rather than working to prevent it from occurring in the first place. Moreover, rates of sexual victimization on college campuses have not changed in 60 years, highlighting the need for a change in action, training and behaviour.
The root of sexual violence is power oppression, yet most policies and practices are based on identity- and power-neutral perspectives. Well-intended prevention efforts frequently focus on teaching potential victims how not to get raped, rather than teaching potential perpetrators not to rape. Further, most policies, practices, and research focus on only one type of victim of sexual violence: a white cisgender heterosexual college woman.
Strategies that fail to account for the ways sexual violence and power intersect cannot deliver effective solutions. Based on a wide-ranging review of research, combined with her 10 years' of experience as an educator and co-ordinator of services for survivors of campus sexual violence, Chris Linder advances a power-conscious lens to challenge student activists, administrators, educators, and policy makers to develop more nuanced approaches to sexual violence awareness, response, and prevention on college campuses.

CHAPTER 1

DEVELOPING A
POWER-CONSCIOUS
FRAMEWORK FOR
UNDERSTANDING AND
ADDRESSING SEXUAL VIOLENCE

The term power is frequently associated with sexual violence prevention and response, yet rarely defined or examined. In fact, power is a ubiquitous term that means different things to different people. Power can be used for good, bad, or some murky combination of the two. Generally, for the purposes of this book, I use the word power to mean access to the ability to control or significantly influence other people’s lives (Tatum, 2000). Power frequently comes in two forms: formal and informal.

Formal power includes positional roles that influence other people’s lives. For example, in many cases, supervisors and managers have control over employees’ work schedules, salaries, and work environments. Similarly, legislators and parliamentarians influence people’s lives by developing and implementing educational, health, and economic policies. Finally, police, judges, and prosecuting and defending attorneys have power in criminal justice systems. These individuals have significant discretion to influence people’s lives and well-being related to law and law enforcement.

Closely related to formal power because of the ways in which privilege and oppression operate, informal power also influences people’s day-to-day lives. Some people have informal power over others based on social identities and systems of oppression (Johnson, 2006; Tatum, 2000). Social identities include the identities given meaning through social constructions assigned to those identities, including race, gender, sexual orientation, and ability, among others. Systems of oppression include things like racism, sexism, homophobia, genderism and transphobia, classism, and ableism, among others. These systems allow and encourage members of dominant groups (e.g., white people, middle- and upper-class people, nondisabled people, and cisgender people) to have access to resources based on social norms and expectations (Johnson, 2006; Tatum, 2000). For example, because cisgender people are considered the “norm” in relationship to gender identity, they are generally safer in public restrooms, and practices and policies are set up with them in mind. Transgender people, on the other hand, experience higher rates of violence in public spaces, including restrooms, schools, and workplaces because they do not always fit societal definitions of “normal.” Similarly, white people frequently have access to greater forms of power than people of color with similarly situated identities. What I mean by this is that white middle-class men typically have greater access to power than middle-class men of color. This power takes the shape of access to institutions and resources, assumptions of “goodness,” and ultimately greater access to safety and security.

How does power relate to sexual violence? Examining the history of sexual violence in Western countries points to a number of ways that power is the root of sexual violence. Specifically, when Europeans colonized Indigenous lands in what is today considered North and South America, they used rape as a tool of power and control. Colonizers raped Indigenous people as a way to reward themselves for conquering villages and to keep Indigenous people living in fear so that white colonizers could control them (Freedman, 2013; Smith, 2005).

Similarly, slavers used rape as a tool of power and control over enslaved people. Because the children of enslaved women became the property of the slave-owner, slavers frequently raped enslaved women as a way to increase their labor supply and therefore economic power (Freedman, 2013). These two examples illuminate some of the roots of the relationship between power and sexual violence – roots that continued to grow deeper over time. In the US post-emancipation, white men, especially those with formal and institutional power like police officers, used rape as a tool to keep formerly enslaved people “in their place” (McGuire, 2010). By raping Black and Indigenous people with impunity, white men demonstrated their power to control other people’s lives and create a sense of fear in minoritized communities (Thompson-Miller & Picca, 2016). A further demonstration of the ways white, owning-class men used rape as a tool was by falsely accusing Black men of raping or attempting to rape white women. In the period post-emancipation, white men mobbed and lynched Black people at alarmingly high rates, often in relation to false accusations of rape, or anytime that Black people started to gain some minimal access to power by opening businesses or attempting to engage in civil processes like voting or holding white people accountable for crimes through the criminal justice system (Giddings, 1984; McGuire, 2010).

Unfortunately, patterns of domination and control continue today. Perpetrators of sexual violence target women of color, gay and bisexual people, transgender people, and people with disabilities at higher rates than their white, straight, cisgender, and nondisabled peers (Porter & McQuiller Williams, 2011). This is likely because minoritized people’s very existence threatens the comfort and perceived safety and security of dominant people. Members of dominant groups have an investment in the status quo because they benefit from the ways systems are currently structured, including the ability to cause harm to people without fear of repercussion. Perpetrators of sexual violence, especially white, middle-class men, rarely experience any significant consequences or accountability for their actions, and when perpetrators are found responsible for committing sexual violence, middle-class white men experience considerably lesser sentences than men of color or working-class men (Alexander, 2010; Daly & Tonry, 1997).

LANGUAGE CONSIDERATIONS

The language of sexual violence is complicated and nuanced, and varies depending on context. For the purposes of this text, I define sexual violence as any act of nonconsensual physical sexual assault, including nonconsensual touching. Although some scholars use the phrase sexual violence to encompass sexual harassment (including verbal harassment and hostile environments) and additional forms of nonphysical violence, I am concerned about conflating physical and nonphysical sexual harm. Although acts of nonphysical sexual violence certainly lead to physical sexual violence, and the consequences of nonphysical sexual violence are significant, my concern about conflating the two relates to numbers. The reality is that almost every person who identifies as a woman or nonbinary person has experienced verbal sexual harassment at some point in their lives, in some cases, almost daily (Kearl, 2014). By conflating sexual harassment and sexual assault, I worry that scholars and activists dilute the significance of physical sexual assault and contribute to the narrative that women are over-exaggerating their experiences because we are not using accurate language to describe those experiences. Some journalists have begun to refer to this response to #MeToo, a movement in the US, where people, primarily women, are coming forward in large numbers to share their experiences of sexual harassment and violence, as a “sex panic,” resulting in a significant backlash against the movement (Sullivan, 2018). Although most people sharing their stories would not conflate sexist jokes and verbal harassment with physical sexual harassment, our collective inability to distinguish between types of sexual violence may result in a misunderstanding of the significance of the problem (Hamblin, 2018).

Although I use the term sexual violence to refer to physical sexual assault, I realize that not all research does the same; therefore, as I refer to other people’s work and scholarship on sexual violence and assault, I will do my best to clarify what definitions the scholars use. For example, throughout literature, scholars use the terms unwanted sexual touching, sexual coercion, incapacitated rape, forcible rape, and sexual assault to examine and discuss prevalence of sexual violence. Each of these terms has specific definitions that may or may not be the same across the research. To minimize confusion among people taking surveys about sexual violence, many researchers ask about specific behaviors, rather than specific terminology, then categorize the behaviors into various terms. I explore the definitions and specifics of these terms more throughout the book.

Scholarship about sexual violence frequently centers gender in its analysis; however, most scholars use binary language when examining gender and frequently focus on men or women in their scholarship. Although scholarship about sexual violence must examine constructs of gender as they relate to sexism, patriarchy, cissexism, and other systems of oppression, scholars must also work to intentionally include expansive notions of gender in their work. For example, throughout this book, when I refer to women or men, I am referring to all people who identify with the labels women or men. A gender-expansive definition of women or men refers to people who align their identity in some way with the constructs of women or men, and includes cisgender and transgender people. If I am specifically referring to cisgender or transgender men or women, I will explicitly name that. Additionally, some people do not identify with the constructs of men or women, and instead, identify as a nonbinary gender. People who identify with a nonbinary gender may use terms like gender nonbinary, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, transgender, or agender to describe themselves. Throughout this book, I will use the term gender nonbinary to refer to people who do not identify with the constructs of woman or man to describe their gender.

Additionally, I use the term minoritized to refer to populations of people who have experienced harm as a result of systems of oppression. While some scholars have historically used the term minority to refer to populations of people who experience oppression and marginalization, I find the term inaccurate because it refers to a numerical representation of people when that is not always the same as experiencing systematic oppression. For example, in the US, women make up more than half of undergraduate students on campus (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017), so they are not in the numerical minority; however, given the culture on college campuses, they still experience significant harm as a result of sexism, which is an example of a system of oppression.

The term system of oppression refers to the systematic ways people experience harm, minimization, and consequences as a result of power, privilege, and oppression (Collins, 2000; Johnson, 2006; Tatum, 2000). Examples of systems of oppression include racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism. Referring to systems of oppression rather than the minoritized group puts the onus on the problem – oppression – rather than the people experiencing the problem. For example, scholars consistently examine the experiences of people of color in education, calling attention to lower graduation rates, GPAs, and additional educational benefits compared to their white peers, yet fail to name racism as the cause of these lower measures of success. Failing to name the system of oppression contributes to a deficit perspective on people of color in education, highlighting the ways in which they do not “succeed” in the same ways as their white peers (Harper, 2012; Patton, 2016).

Taking the problem of identifying and naming actors responsible for sexual violence one step further, I also use active voice as frequently as possible in this text. Active voice puts responsibility on people and actors for perpetuating oppression and minimization. When discussing sexual violence, scholars and journalists frequently make perpetrators invisible. For example, phrases like “women of color are assaulted at high rates” remove any actor from the discussion. Who is responsible for the action of sexual assault? Using phrases like “perpetrators of sexual violence target women of color at high rates” puts the onus on the perpetrators and subtly calls attention to addressing the problem of sexual violence by emphasizing the role of perpetrators and naming the harm caused to victims.

In the remaining part of this chapter, I describe the development of a power-conscious framework to examine issues of sexual violence on college campuses and describe the framework of awareness, response, and prevention that seems to be organizing many campus leaders’ strategies to address sexual violence.

BUILDING A POWER-CONSCIOUS FRAMEWORK

A power-consciousness framework requires scholars, activists, and policymakers to consider the role of power in individual, institutional, and cultural levels of interactions, policies, and practices. Identity and power are inextricably linked, so power-consciousness also requires attention to identity. I developed a power-conscious framework by reading and reflecting on the work of previous critical scholars and activists, including work about critical consciousness (Friere, 2000; hooks, 1994) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991; Shields, 2008).

Although some tenets of a power-conscious framework are rooted in similar assumptions as intersectionality, a power-conscious framework focuses explicitly on the relationship of people with power to systems of oppression. Scholars created intersectionality to center the experiences of women of color (Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1989, 1991), so using it in other contexts risks misappropriating the scholarship. I do not intend to use a power-conscious framework in place of intersectionality or to indicate that intersectionality only focuses on race and gender. Centering racism in the examination of sexual violence warrants increased attention from researchers and activists and will certainly be a part of the examination of power in this book. However, far too many white people – and white women specifically – have misappropriated and misused intersectionality by using it to examine oppression broadly rather than focusing explicitly on racism and sexism and their varied intersections (Harris & Patton, 2017). I use a power-conscious framework to call attention to dominant group members’ investment in power, rather than attempting to center and speak for women of color. Prior to describing a power-conscious framework, I provide a brief overview of critical consciousness and intersectionality.

Critical Consciousness

Largely rooted in her work on engaged pedagogy, bell hooks builds on the work of Paulo Freire to advocate for a critical consciousness among feminist scholars and activists. Specifically, Freire (1970/2000) describes the process of conscientization, or the ways in which members of minoritized groups must come to see and understand the ways oppressors have taught members of minoritized groups to accept their status as the oppressed group. Using both consequences for acting out and teaching people to accept their role in systems of oppression, oppressors have successfully built systems that benefit them and harm others (Freire, 1970/2000; Tatum, 2000). Freire calls for an awareness of oppression coupled with action based on this awareness, or praxis, as part of a critical educational process.

hooks (1994) builds on Freire’s work, calling attention to the ways teachers and students must develop a deeper understanding of their own experiences with oppression and the ways they also oppress others. hooks calls on people engaged in critical education and scholarship to engage in deep reflection and consciousness-raising related to their own experiences with oppression as they intersect with systems of power and domination, including the “white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy” (hooks, 1994, p. 26). A critical consciousness, including self-awareness and an awareness of systems of domination, is the foundation of a power-conscious framework.

Intersectionality

Rooted in critical legal studies, intersectionality calls on scholars to examine the intersections of oppression – namely racism, sexism, and classism – to more deeply understand and address the ways women of color experience oppression and harm (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991). Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) advanced an intersectional framework specifically as it relates to white feminists’ erasure of women of color in movements to address interpersonal violence, including sexual assault.

Crenshaw (1989) uses the court’s response in the case of DeGraffenreid v. General Motors to illustrate the significance of the intersections of systems of domination for women of color, specifically Black women. Five Black women filed suit against General Motors in 1977 for discrimination based on sex and race because the company failed to promote Black women into senior leadership positions in the organization. The court granted summary judgment to General Motors, arguing that white women and Black men had been promoted within the organization, which illustrated that sexism and racism did not influence promotion practices at General Motors. The summary judgment based on the experiences of white women and Black men rendered the experiences of Black women invisible. As Crenshaw (1989) argued:

The court’s refusal in DeGraffenreid to acknowledge that Black women encounter combined race and sex discrimination implies that the boundaries of sex and race discrimination doctrine are defined respectively by white women’s and Black men’s experiences. Under this view, Black women are protected only to the extent that their experiences coincide with those of either of the two groups. (p. 59)

In 1991, Crenshaw further drew on her analysis of the DeGraffenreid case to illustrate the ways feminist organizations and legal systems ignored women of color in responding to interpersonal violence (Crenshaw, 1991). Crenshaw highlighted structural, political, and representational intersectionality to illustrate this erasure.

Structural intersectionality illustrates the ways social location influences people’s experiences with oppression. The “location of women of color at the intersection of race and gender” makes their experiences of sexual violence “qualitatively different than that of white women” (Crenshaw, 1991, p. 1245). Crimes of interpersonal violence directed at women of color are not only gendered but also raced. Women of color not only navigate sexist oppression but also racialized sexist oppression, including a number of stereotypes and experiences of harm directly related to their racial identities (Harris, 2017). For example, perpetrators of sexual violence may view multiracial women as exotic, Latina women as “hot and spicy,” Black women as jezebels, and Asian women as exotic and passive (Harris, 2017), resulting in different experiences of sexual violence than their white women peers.

Political intersectionality highlights the reality that people may experience competing agendas at the intersection of their identities. For example, given the history of racism in policing and sexual violence directed at women of color by police (Richie, 2017), women of color may not trust the criminal justice system or people acting on behalf of the criminal justice system. However, most interpersonal violence response systems organized on college campuses or through community agencies include a primary relationship and focus on police. Different from their white women peers, women of color must balance the tension between reporting experiences of sexual violence to police with their own safety and the safety of their male counterparts who may experience violence in the hands of police.

Finally, representational intersectionality refers to the “cultural construction of women of color” (Crenshaw, 1991, p. 1245), or the master narratives created without women of color about their experiences. An example of representational intersectionality exists in the professionalization of interpersonal violence response systems. As with most activism around issues of social justice, Black women originally led movements to address interpersonal violence, including organizing grassroots community organizations to support survivors of interpersonal violence (Bevacqua, 2000). However, as these community organizati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Developing a Power-Conscious Framework for Understanding and Addressing Sexual Violence
• Chapter 2 Awareness of Campus Sexual Violence
• Chapter 3 Responding to Campus Sexual Violence
• Chapter 4 Prevention of Campus Sexual Violence
• Chapter 5 Strategies for Effectively Addressing Sexual Violence through a Power-conscious Lens
• References
• Index