The University of Virginia's awareness-raising about sexual assault seems to be about telling people to be more responsible bystanders, rather than telling people not to rape.
Rape is not a natural disaster that can't be prevented. Why isn't the University of Virginia telling its students not to rape rather than trying to put the responsibility to stop rape on everyone except the rapists?
"If you see something, say something" doesn't directly confront the people who want to rape and tell them not to do it.
The men who attend these schools need to be educated not to rape, no matter how many of their relatives have attended these schools or how much money they have.
The social and institutional pressures not to prevent rape or report are going to continue to be more convincing most of the time than the "Be A Snitch And Don't Worry About The Rest Of Your Academic Or Professional Careers Because It Will Be As Easy To Discredit All The Bystanders As It Is To Discredit The Victims And We Only Care About Our Wealthy Alumni And Their Kids And Our Reputation Which We've Already Protected With This Initiative To Blame The Bystanders" section of the University of Virginia website. Everything in quotes in this paragraph is my paraphrase.
I'm not calling anyone who tries to stop a rape or who reports it a snitch; other people will, though.
Copyright L. Kochman, August 31, 2015 @ 10:15 a.m.
