Beyond 'no means no'

I have a vivid memory of one night from undergrad.

A man and I were curled up alone in a dark living room when my roommate burst through the door.

“Where’s Rosemary?” she screamed before taking me by the arm and pulling me back to the party going on several floors below.

So ended a budding romance because my friends were worried I was about to be raped.

An overreaction? Maybe. But maybe not when you consider that almost everyone reading this knows someone who has been sexually assaulted. Some might even be survivors themselves.

According to the Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network, someone is sexually assaulted in the United States every two minutes.

If you’ve been reading the Indiana Daily Student lately, you’ve seen stories about reported rapes on or near campus.  

If you’re me, you’re infuriated because you realize we aren’t doing enough to raise awareness of sexual assault and rape.

There are conversations about the nature of consent. “No means no,” we’re told.

But we have to move beyond that — we have to confront the cultural narratives that make rape possible.

Marshall University’s Women’s Center defines rape culture as “an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture.”

In that environment, men are judged by their sexual prowess and women by their usefulness as sexual objects.

Men and women are reduced to caricatures that make them little more than objects — one acting upon the other — ruled by their sexual organs and nothing else.

I write this as a cisgendered woman of mixed racial background.

The perspectives of transgendered women, of women of color, of queer individuals and of male victims of sexual assault must be considered whenever discussing rape if we’re ever to have an honest dialogue about the issue.

As do the perspectives of straight men. A student in one of my classes once said he wanted to talk about the issue but was never sure how to approach it because he felt as if he was always placed in the role of the potential rapist.

All of us are framed by this cultural understanding of sex that traps men and women at either end of a binary — one always the victim of, the prey of, in fear of the other.

Changing that narrative — working to understand rape culture and to change it — that’s what I mean when I say we have to move beyond “no means no.”

I started this piece with a memory that was created because my friends didn’t want me alone with a man because he might rape me.

I know too many stories where you can replace “might” with “did.” The friend who was the victim of a serial rapist. The woman who lost her virginity when she was date raped at 15.

Rape is not an issue that will go away by ignoring it.

The only way to deal with the issue is to talk about it.

To talk openly and honestly talk about consent but also about all the narratives that create a culture in which rape is seen has something that just happens, not as the crime it is.

­— rompenni@indiana.edu