2008 Woodie Awards
op-ed: Is not being a misogynist enough?
Felipe PrunedaSenties
Issue date: 5/8/08 Section: Opinions
I would like to use this space to respond to a piece published in these same pages a week ago, which argued that feminists on campus have of late resorted to offensive tactics, like distributing fliers that indiscriminately point fingers at heterosexual men and catalogue them as walking sexual threats, ("Is responsibility for rape social or individual?" May 1). As a heterosexual man, I must begin by confessing that I do not believe that flier and many like it signal out every single man as a rapist or rapist-in-the-making. And I know so because I did not feel alluded to in what really was the outline of a case where the very occurrence of a rape was put into question because of the presence of alcohol. It seems to me sexual crimes are superficially ambiguous but fundamentally unambiguous, so we must be careful not to fall into the perception that the only form of sexual violence is of the "gang-rape-in-alleyway" variety. The cases that appear most difficult and uncertain, like alcohol-drenched assaults, are the ones where our shared responsibility becomes most apparent.
The question, "Is responsibility for rape personal or social?" is absolutely pertinent here. If I had to answer it, I would say it is both. It is personal as far as the perpetrators are concerned, and social when it comes to how we prevent it before it becomes the staggeringly persistent problem that the numbers indicate it is, and how we respond to it when it happens. The flier dealt more with dubious, opaque policies that fail to properly address the issue, and thus it focused on the aspects of rape that concerns the Middlebury College community at large. The crime in itself is one thing, but the environment in which it becomes an epidemic (and many would argue Middlebury can be such a place) is, without a doubt, everybody's business.
So yes, the flier did involve men, but not accusatorily. Instead, it implicitly asks what men can do about sexual violence. Statistics as alarming as "90 percent of all rapists are male" do not suggest that all men are, always have been and always will be potential, dangerous sexual predators. Instead, they hint at the fact that other males could play an important part in preventing a considerable number of those rapes by virtue of our common sex. Sure, we cannot take responsibility for every single one of them, but that cases due to psychosis or extreme cruelty can often be out of our hands does not mean we cannot act against more casual forms of sexual violence - most of which are symptomatic of unjust gender politics that pervade every day life.
The question, "Is responsibility for rape personal or social?" is absolutely pertinent here. If I had to answer it, I would say it is both. It is personal as far as the perpetrators are concerned, and social when it comes to how we prevent it before it becomes the staggeringly persistent problem that the numbers indicate it is, and how we respond to it when it happens. The flier dealt more with dubious, opaque policies that fail to properly address the issue, and thus it focused on the aspects of rape that concerns the Middlebury College community at large. The crime in itself is one thing, but the environment in which it becomes an epidemic (and many would argue Middlebury can be such a place) is, without a doubt, everybody's business.
So yes, the flier did involve men, but not accusatorily. Instead, it implicitly asks what men can do about sexual violence. Statistics as alarming as "90 percent of all rapists are male" do not suggest that all men are, always have been and always will be potential, dangerous sexual predators. Instead, they hint at the fact that other males could play an important part in preventing a considerable number of those rapes by virtue of our common sex. Sure, we cannot take responsibility for every single one of them, but that cases due to psychosis or extreme cruelty can often be out of our hands does not mean we cannot act against more casual forms of sexual violence - most of which are symptomatic of unjust gender politics that pervade every day life.
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