Rape isn't just a women's issue

President Barack Obama announced he has shifted his sexual assault-preventative attention from the U.S. military to our college campuses.

In the wake of a White House council report that revealed about 22 million women in the United States, or about 20 percent, have been raped in their lifetimes, Obama gave a task force three months to develop a plan of action to both reduce the number of sexual assaults on college campuses and increase awareness about the growing problem.

While I applaud the president for seeking a solution, I found it ironic that presumptuous sexism underlined his charge to combat a crime widely viewed as solely a women’s issue:

“We can do more to make sure that every young man out there, whether they’re in junior high or high school or college or beyond, understand what’s expected of them and what it means to be a man and to intervene if they see somebody else acting inappropriately,” Obama said.

Perhaps before we communicate those expectations to “every young man out there,” it would be helpful for the president to delineate exactly what those expectations are, and what precisely he thinks it means to “be a man.”

Rather than fighting an erroneously gendered issue with an erroneously gendered mindset, President Obama needs to task officials with raising awareness about the ramifications of rape throughout all of society, not just among women.

A study done by the Center for Disease Control found that one in 21 men, or 4.8 percent, reported that they had been forced to engage in intercourse.  This study did not include men in prison.

In 2010, Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 140,000 inmates had been raped while incarcerated. Although that statistic includes male, female and transgender prisoners, the perpetrator and victim are almost always the same sex due to the gender-segregated nature of incarceration.

The expectation Obama implied — that “every young man” should “intervene if they see somebody else acting inappropriately” — is frankly ridiculous and offensive in its assumption that every assaulter is a young man and it is therefore their duty to prevent assaults.

This is a global issue. Sexual violence is one of the most prevalent and least-reported crimes in our society today, and a monster of this magnitude finds both blame and resolution in everyone, not just college boys.

This is not a question of “being a man,” but being a human. Rape affects everyone, and by accrediting a massive problem to a small slice of the community, Obama and those who employ similar rhetoric are perpetuating the power-dynamic psychology that leads to most forms of violence and victimization in the first place.

I appreciate the president’s intentions, but the ends do not justify the means. Declaring to young men that they are failing to fulfill society’s “expectations” and must “be men” is precisely the wrong way to end violence between genders, among genders and throughout the world.

Empowerment is indeed the name of the game, Obama, so empower everyone.

­— sbkissel@indiana.edu