Drawing the line on rape culture

We all draw lines in terms of what we find morally and socially acceptable. These lines are often blurry until we encounter situations that clarify them.  

When I saw a recent news story about a group of students at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, chanting an apparently pro-rape cheer, one of the lines I’d drawn for myself got a little clearer — the one called “rape culture.”  

In a video taken during Saint Mary’s “Frosh Week,” both male and female students are seen participating in a cheer that is pretty offensive, even if it weren’t in the context of a college orientation event.

“SMU boys, we like them young. Y is for your sister. O is for oh-so-tight. U is for underage. N is for no consent. G is for grab that ass.”

Huh.

I think I see why 80 student leaders at that university have been assigned sensitivity training, two student organizers are facing disciplinary action and the president of the student union has decided to step down after a whopping one week on the job.

Obviously, the chant was inappropriate, but let’s look on the bright side.

At least students had enough integrity to stop this stupid, insulting display before it became some kind of annual rape-condoning routine.

Oh wait, no they didn’t.

This chant has reportedly been a tradition for five years. Think about that for a minute.
Saint Mary’s students have been chanting “N is for no consent” since I was in middle school, and the only reason they’ve stopped is because somebody put a video of it on the Internet.

That’s not integrity — that’s complacency.

This complacency is the problem, even more so than the chant. I don’t think the students in that video are rapists, even though the cheer clearly encourages sexual assault.

In my mind they’re just kids more concerned with defying the rules than the social ramifications of what they’re saying.

The real problem exemplified by the Saint Mary’s video is not that students are rapists, it’s that sexual assault is considered — at least by some — to be an appropriate area in which to disagree with The Man.

To me, this chant is just a way for students to rebel against authority, namely against the common message of “don’t rape.” These students are trying to express how free and rebellious and hedonistic they are more than they’re trying to advocate sexual assault.

In some ways this is good. We’re not dealing with a group of rapists here, espousing their warped dogma as they prepare to assault unassuming victims throughout the school year. Instead, we’re looking at ignorant, horny young people who are too dumb or too oblivious to realize how offensive they’re being.

Sexual-assault-encouragement should not be a tool to rebel against authority. It should be put on the “grossly inappropriate” shelf alongside racism, sexism, homophobia and religious intolerance.

Find another way to rebel. Find another way to celebrate.

This is where I draw my line on rape culture. Where you draw yours is up to you.

­— kkusisto@indiana.edu