Sexual Citizens by Jennifer S. Hirsch

Author:Jennifer S. Hirsch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2019-11-10T16:00:00+00:00

She’s still not sure what happened, much less how to think about. They remain friends. We are not writing in opposition to bystander interventions; rather, the examples of how students deploy these ideas underlines the need for programming that does more to help them think critically about status and power on their own campus. Moreover, there is a distinction between reactive and proactive approaches to bystander interventions; reactive ones train students to interrupt assaultive interactions as they are in process, while proactive approaches seek to promote broader critical conversations about respectful interactions.33 Given the fundamental role of formal and informal student groups in shaping campus sex, and the earnest desire of many groups to both reputationally and actually be spaces that discourage assaults, there is enormous potential in the proactive approach. It’s hard to know what to say about instances in which a person offers to get someone very safely home, only to then assault them, other than to remember that there is a point at which social analysis cannot explain individual bad behavior.

We have noted how designating some men as rapey has become a way for groups to claim a dominant social position, and to dominate other groups of men. Men in particular work to minimize their friends’ sexual aggression and highlight the aggression of other, unaffiliated men. This is, to no small degree, because of the increased stigma associated with sexual aggression. Men with control over space and powerful allies can use this stigma to augment their position by ostracizing others—and in so doing, to inoculate themselves, to a degree, from assault accusations. The public shaming of men who are socially vulnerable and the protection of men who are institutionally established augments the power of the already powerful. It also produces a distorted sense of the risks within the campus landscape.34

The power of the group can operate even for assaults that take place without any witnesses. Jaylene, who considered herself artsy, was drawn to Columbia in part for its New York location. Her wealthy family didn’t blink at shelling out large sums of money for a purely social extracurricular activity, and so she joined the Epicurean Society, which frequented restaurants around the city and gave her a chance to meet other students (all of whom were similarly wealthy). Spring semester freshman year she started “crushing hard” on one of the upperclassmen running the program. She had to say something. She trudged through the snow to his room. But then, overwhelmed, she abruptly left to go to a party, trying to “destress.” Having composed herself, she returned to his room and declared her feelings. He responded by reaching for her hand, then asking her to kiss him “to see if there’s a spark.” Jaylene’s only intention had been to have a conversation about her feelings—to see if he was also “catching feelings” for her—but she consented to the kiss. After all, she liked him. They moved to the bed and kept kissing, but things started “escalating sexually.” Because they

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