• News
• Fringe
• Sports
• Editorial
• UH Section
• Archives

• About
• Join the Post
• Contact
• Advertising

• E-mail
• Print
• Text size:

Every 2 ½ minutes someone in this country is the victim of a sexual assault.

There are some things in this world that I will never, ever understand. One of them is lederhosen. Another, more important one is sexual assault. I was raised with the notion that if a woman will not sleep with you of her own accord you should just move on. However, there are some people on this campus who apparently did not get this memo, so let me spell it out for you:

RAPE IS NOT OK.

Every 2 ½ minutes someone in this country is the victim of a sexual assault. While I am aware of the taboo nature of this topic, it is something that I feel strongly enough about to write a column on - something that I am sure will get me grief from some idiot out there.

To put it simply guys, if a woman does not want to have sex with you, she doesn’t want to have sex with you. If she is passed out, she can’t say yes or no, so you should assume the answer is no. If she is dressing provocatively, all that means is that she wants to look good for some guy that she might consider sleeping with; that does not necessarily mean that because you noticed, the responsibility falls on you.

It bothers me to no end that most of the women I know have been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. It bothers me even more that these women have to work so hard to get the lunkhead who doesn’t understand the word “no” tossed into jail where he can find out how he made her feel.

There are many legal hurdles for a rape conviction, and the fact that only 39 percent of sexual assaults are ever reported does not help this problem. Of this 39 percent, assuming the person who did it is convicted, only six percent will ever see the inside of a jail cell. In a just society this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. However, there are many people in the legal profession who stand by the classic “she must have wanted it or it wouldn’t have happened” belief.

So any woman who actually goes forward with charges has a pretty low chance of ever seeing justice done, simply because she may have decided to wear something nice to a party one night.

There are many things that I hate that I have to say to grown men and women, but the fact that I actually need to trot out statistics and give you a stern shaking of the finger on this topic makes me nauseous. I would think that it is pretty cut and dry, but there are some people out there who simply are not capable of figuring these things out.

It does not matter why they did it; the fact that they did it is bad enough. Regardless if a person has never done this sort of thing before, it doesn’t excuse that they do it at all. I personally am very much opposed to the idea of “Take Back the Night” rallies, but only because the message that these rallies are meant to send should be obvious to everyone: You don’t kill people, you don’t rape people. It is that simple. Everyone knows it is illegal, and since most of the people who go through with it actually know the victim, it’s pretty ridiculous to do it and assume that you are not going to get caught.

On the other hand, keeping your mouth shut about being a victim of sexual assault is not OK either. While I am aware that it is a very traumatic experience, you should assume that if someone did it once they will probably do it again. Are you really willing to stand by and let someone else feel the same pain that you did?

People keeping their mouths shut about rape and other sexual assaults are exactly the reason there are so few convictions. Since so few people have the courage to stand up and tell someone what has happened, the justice system assumes that it happens much less often than it actually does.

There needs to be a change, and it may as well start with you. You did, after all, read this.

> Comments