A few days before Freakfest, my house fellow called a meeting for all of her residents. This meeting didn’t just cover UW Housing’s “no guest” policy for the weekend, nor did it simply stress that as educated young adults we should make responsible choices (although these two points were brought up).
It also covered an unexpected topic — consent. This brought about deep questions regarding the culture we have come to accept as a norm. That night we welcomed two representatives from Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment and their presentation served as a testimony to the ugly culture we are a part of.
PAVE’s objective here on campus is to educate the student body in order to prevent violence (dating violence, stalking, sexual assaults etc.). This is the first time I have ever heard from the organization firsthand, and I found myself riveted by their presentation.
After defining a few words, like rape and consent, the PAVE members engaged us in an activity in which we had to describe sexually active men and women. Unsurprisingly, the words we thought of for men (playa, stud, stallion and “the man,” just to name a few) were much more positive than the ones for women (slut, whore, tramp and ho). Next, we came up with common slang words for sex (banging, screwing and fucking).
If we decided to do the “pick one word from each category and use them in a sentence” activity, we would come up with something like, “That stallion just screwed the slut!”
That activity gave me a lot to think about. Even though I would rather hear the phrase, “Those two individuals just engaged in a totally consensual and safe act of sexual intercourse!” I know people don’t talk like that. All the words that we came up with for sex were actions one would associate with the use of some sort of power tool, and no one even mentioned “making love,” which is just sad.
It seems as though women are just viewed as sexual objects by society (even though the roles can be reversed during incidents of sexual assault and dating violence). Furthermore, this simple activity reaffirmed the existence and prevalence of rape culture in today’s society.
I’m hoping not to add fuel to the fire with the publication of this piece, especially so soon after the publication of a very controversial letter to the editor. But I do want to let readers know about the impact PAVE has here on campus.
The University of Wisconsin has numerous organizations which, like PAVE, seek to prevent dating violence and sexual assault. For instance, through the Tonight program first-year students were able to learn more about making safe decisions, talking with a peer that has experienced dating violence or sexual assault and the resources on campus that are available.
We are very lucky to have access to these resources, but I believe there is a slight gap that must be filled. It seems that programs and organizations tend to stress “before” and “after” dating violence and sexual assault, but they do nothing to inform students about what should be done during a confrontation. Perhaps a new org will step up to fill this void — maybe self-defense classes can be made widely available to students.
The possibilities are endless, and I look forward to seeing what our school community will come up with to combat dating violence and sexual assault here on campus.
Briana Reilly (reillybrianar
