A letter from a WILL woman

TRIGGER WARNING: This article discusses sexual assault, rape and rape culture.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this article do not necessarily and/or sufficiently represent those held by each member of Women Involved in Living and Learning.

Two weeks ago, a letter to women was published in The Collegian. Since then, both past and present members of the university community have risen to challenge the ideologies put forth in the article.

One term that has become extremely common in this dialog is "rape culture." But what is that? And what do the contributor's words have to do with it?

Authors of "Transforming a Rape Culture" define the term as "a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women" (Buchwald et. al, 1993).

And we can see it everywhere: in music, from less obvious songs like Katy Perry's E.T. ("Imma disrobe you, then Imma probe you, see I abducted you, so I tell you what to do") and Enrique Iglesias' "Tonight" ("please excuse me, I don't mean to be rude, but tonight I'm fucking you") to more obvious ones like Afroman's "In Your Pussy" ("baby said she was a lesbo, unzipped ma pants pulled out ma wood, took her manhood").

We see it in movies like "Observe and Report," which makes a joke of the raping of a drunk, vomiting girl; in video games like "Grand Theft Auto," in which your character can sexually assault prostitutes and passersby; and in everyday conversations, with the all-too-common phrase of "I totally raped that quiz/team/etc."

At the heart of this culture lies the concept of objectification. Evangelia Papadaki, lecturer in philosophy at the University of Crete, defines the term as "denying a person's humanity in treating them as an object" (What is Objectification?, 2010).

Similar to the way a hammer is an object (we use it for our own benefit without considering its feelings), many people - oftentimes women in situations of sexual assault - are objectified and used for the perpetrator's benefit without consideration of her feelings.

Thus, it's easy to see how legitimizing any form of objectification contributes to overall rape culture. And that's exactly what the contributor's words do. He writes, "The less you wear, the more of an object you become."

This seems to indicate that it's not only permissible, but logical to treat "scantily-clad" women as objects; in fact, "Why wouldn't [they] be objectified?"

In addition, he writes that such clothing choices "make men into animals...[who] cannot tame their appetite."

Both of these statements contribute to a mentality that places the onus on women to prevent objectification - and subsequently, sexual assault - even though it is, more often than not, the men who are doing the objectifying/assaulting.

This is a form of victim-blaming, an attitude that lifts the responsibility off of the perpetrators and allows rape and sexual assault to perpetuate. Instead of focusing on the act and the assailant, we constantly call into question the victim's body language, what she was saying, and - of course - what she was wearing.

This problem is much larger than this single Collegian article. The contributor's ideologies both reinforce and are a product of a system of oppression that reaches beyond our campus, from courtroom trials and proceedings of sexual assault cases to our own interpersonal relationships with people all over the world.

This only makes it more imperative that we continue to speak up and speak out against such ideologies that legitimize objectification, victim-blaming, rape and sexual assault.

As the popular "Take Back the Night" chant goes: You've got anger, soul and more - take to the street and let it roar!