I am sure at this point, unless you live as a hermit with no connection to the world at large, you have heard of the incident that occurred at Cornell University. Regardless of your feelings on the matter, I want to make one thing absolutely clear: rape is morally reprehensible and evil and should be punished accordingly. I have no reason to disbelieve women when they claim to have been sexually assaulted, and I also firmly believe that the exact numbers are vastly underreported for a variety of reasons.
As the parent of a daughter, I am terrified for her.
I think there are quite a few factors that play into the current “rape culture” that is so prevalent throughout the United States, and I’d like to delve into them.
First, young men are taught and socialized to view women as objects and commodities. Second, young men view rape and sexual assault through a casual lens and it is often talked about in no more indifferent terms than you would about the math homework due or your chores. Third, young women and men are encouraged to commodify their existence and exploit their own bodies for monetary gain, which further objectifies one’s personhood. Finally, Greek life on college campuses are incredibly damaging and detrimental to young people everywhere and perpetuate the sexual violence all too common college campuses.
Reading this article on Wired made me sick to my stomach. Perhaps the idea of treating someone you don’t even know is so anathema to me that I can’t understand it, but this kind of callous, casual ruination of someone’s life is unfathomable. What could possess someone to so thoroughly despise women that they feel the need to propagate lies and share private information across the internet with their “bros” to, essentially, get one over on women?
Then again, history proves me wrong – the vast majority of human history has seen women placed in subjugated roles, forced to be subservient to men and a ruling class that views them as property. Women have always had to fight for a place in society – women have had to fight to have the ability to open a bank account or have a credit card, be the sole signee for a home or car, vote in elections, hold elected office, work full- or part-time, and the list goes on. Time and again, women have had to fight to be viewed as more than just a thing to possess.
It must stop.
Shane Gillis went on SNL and in his opening monologue, spoke about how women dress. I go to the gym 3 days a week in the morning. Most of the people at the YMCA are at least 50. I am one of the youngest people in there, and I’m 33. I wear baggy clothes and oversized shirts because that’s what’s comfortable for me. Nobody is going on national television and saying that “men at the gym dress like whores”. Even if you show up with form fitting clothing or revealing outfits, who cares? If that’s what’s comfortable for someone to wear, why are you so bothered by it?
So many men want women to be attractive, to appear attractive and “sexy”, but complain whenever they show up in clothing that women feel attractive in. They complain women have manicured nails or expensive hair or wear makeup, and yet they criticize and cruelly joke that women who don’t do these things are not attractive and don’t deserve love. Which is it? Why is there a constantly changing standard for women, and yet men are allowed to say, do, and act with impunity? I’m tired of it.
Growing up, lessons in church on modesty were almost exclusively focused on dress and grooming for young women. Young men got lessons on sexual purity and chastity. Why is that? I think that kind of teaching completely misses the mark.
Modesty is not a manner of dress or appearance – modesty is a behavior. Modesty is not being boisterous or loud or overly attracting attention for attention’s sake. As a young man, I was not modest. I would revel in being loud and obnoxious, all to make people laugh, which would help me feel good. But my behavior was not modest. And yet, I was never lectured or told “hey, that behavior is inappropriate and not becoming of a young man such as yourself”. I was lectured plenty on the evils of lust and sexual immorality, but never on acting appropriately.
This all returns to viewing women as commodities. The appearance of women is more important than anything else they could provide in our society. I catch myself falling into this trap all too often – I have been conditioned to compliment women on appearance, not behavior. I have gradually taught myself to focus on non-physical attributes to compliment, especially of my wife and daughter. Yet, I sometimes default to the statements of “you’re so pretty/beautiful” which, while true, is only one of the many amazing qualities of my daughter and wife.
Young men need to be taught to view women as peers and equals, as people with dreams and ambitions and desires, not just as a prize to earn.
It must stop.
While unfortunately not new, rape and sexual assault are all too prevalent in the world today. While rape and sexual assault can be perpetrated by women, the simple fact is that a large majority of rapes and assaults occur at the hands of men. At the risk of sounding too casual, Robin Williams famously said, “The problem with men is that God gave them enough blood to run their brain or their dick, but not both at the same time.” All too true.
The recent news out of Cornell University breaks my heart. Regardless of context, the fact that young men were investigated for sexual assault by the university, found guilty, and only punished by writing an essay is unconscionable. It is reprehensible. So often sexual assault and rape victims do not get justice. Rapists are often given slaps on the wrist or no penalty at all. To me, the issue with Cornell isn’t solely the rape – it’s that a group of boys did nothing to stop it, sent messages to one another encouraging each other to join in, and then when they were found out, were not punished. Writing an essay is not a punishment. Jail, loss of privilege, disenrollment, any number of other punishments could have been meted out, and yet this vile act was swept under the rug of 1500 words.
Rape must be taught to young men to be as repulsive and vile and evil as cannibalism. Imagine if that Snapchat thread had instead read, “Free human flesh for eating upstairs”. How many boys would have joined in? The fact that women can be seen so callously, so simply as a piece of meat to violate and use is sickening.
And it’s not just these callous actions – it’s the casual treatment of rape and assault. Due to algorithmic censoring, rape and sexual assault are referred to as “SA” on social media. Suicide is called “unaliving”. We take difficult terms and turn them into something that does not carry any weight. The problem with this is that it is unclear – what exactly defines “SA”? What does it mean to “unalive” oneself? No, these terms must stop. It is uncomfortable to talk about Rape and Suicide, but we cannot call them by another name to make ourselves able to stomach the content. If someone is forced into any form of sexual intercourse without consent, it is RAPE. Plain and simple. It is not “SA”. It is called RAPE. We cannot expect to speak about such heinous things while dressing it up to be more palatable.
To that end, I remember growing up and playing video games, the phrase “he raped me” or “I just got raped” were so unbelievably common while playing in multiplayer games. Just as slurs and other words became commonplace, being “raped” by someone in a video game was just slang. And yet, that kind of casual treatment of the word completely robs it of its meaning. A rape is a violation. It is a violation of someone’s boundaries, their body, their personhood, their entire being. It is unwanted, not desired, and certainly not allowed. And yet, how often is that term used to describe someone dying virtually in a video game?
It must stop.
The current nature of the internet is such that it is harder to not stumble across porn than it is to accidentally find it. While I grew up in a time where the internet was very much like the Wild West and you could stumble upon beheading videos and all of the random “joke” stuff like Meatspin, it’s a completely different virtual world now.
Mainly, it’s different because of money. E-commerce has blown up, and the fact that pretty much anybody can make money through any medium on the internet is commonplace now. Previously, you had to have at least some working knowledge of building and maintaining a website, integrating with payment processors, and so on, in order to be successful at making money via the Internet. Now, there are so many ways to create different streams of revenue it’s easy to lose count. Create a YouTube account and get slightly successful, and now you have merchandise on a web storefront, you have sponsorship opportunities, users can watch ‘exclusive’ content that they pay for, and the list goes on. This is typically a net good, but does have its downsides. One that I don’t necessarily see that much is the over-commodification of existence. People become Twitch streamers because they want to make money playing video games. But for every successful streamer, there are thousands who stream to less than 10 followers for months or years before calling it quits. Younger generations are now seeing how “easy” it is to make money by just doing the things they normally do – playing video games, putting on makeup, reading books, watching YouTube videos and movies, going to the mall, playing pranks on people, and so on.
But how effective is it? Is the money made worth the effort put in? Growing up as a teenager who played World of Warcraft, I remember reading about people who would sell fully-leveled accounts for $500 on eBay or other places and thinking that was so cool. Now I think about the time it would take to get there and realize you can easily make far more than $500 in the same amount of time it takes to fully level a character. So many are allured by the promise of easy money and little work and are surprised when the money doesn’t flow.
This brings me to another point – OnlyFans. Nowadays, people can make an account and send out whatever images of their body they want into the inerasable void that is cyberspace. Young people whose prefrontal cortices have not finished developing can apply for and receive credit cards, rent apartments, drive cars, take out enormous loans for education, and take pictures of their naked bodies and intimate moments and sell for a low price. Subscribing to one’s ‘spicy content’ is as easy as a click of a button – no need to enter credit card information, since it’s already linked to your account and is even easier than tapping or swiping.
How many ‘content creators’ list themselves as being in the ‘top 1% of OnlyFans creators’? How many is that actual number, how much money do they make, and how much money are the other 99% making?
I do not intend to say that sex work is evil or the people who engage in it are. I have my own thoughts on sex work and its role in society, and, while I don’t think it is morally justifiable, I do understand why people do it. That said, the ability to commodify one’s body so easily in the digital age only heightens the treatment of other people as objects of desire and gratification and reducing people to one-dimensional objects to possess.
Has the proliferation of internet pornography (both professional and amateur) given rise to greater levels of sexual assault? I don’t know. But I do know that it almost certainly has caused the baseline behavior to treat women as objects to rise. Instead of asking a girl out on a date or getting to know her, a young man might look her up on social media and find out who she is. He might go digging for an OnlyFans account. He might harass her or ask for nudes. I don’t know. But I do know that treating women as objects and viewing them solely as something to possess and desire is wrong and will not lead to anything good. We must replace this behavior with human interaction, respect, and kindness.
It must stop.
Lastly, I would speak on Greek life. Not the residents and citizens of Athens and the various islands in the Aegean and Mediterranean, rather, the college students who pay money to have a constant access to social events, friends, and alcohol.
I am not poo-pooing fraternities across the board. I have friends and coworkers who were in fraternities and sororities. I recognize that there are some positive elements to these groups. However, time and again, Greek life on college campuses across the United States have shown themselves as unwilling or unable to police themselves, the actions of their members, or the actions of anyone attending their events.
The behavior of the fraternity brothers at Cornell University is just a symptom of a larger cause. I view fraternities less as social groups and more as a place where boys and men go to learn how to effectively rape, assault, and gaslight women while also being insulated from the negative consequences of their actions.
Why do fraternities continue to engage in hazing? Why do people continue to attend “rush week” and pledge to fraternities and sororities? Perhaps it’s because the concept of being in a frat is so anathema to me as a person that I cannot understand the appeal, but I have rarely seen anything positive come out of these institutions. In the case of Cornell, the members of an organization for men repeatedly showed contempt and disdain for the sanctity of one’s body, viewed a woman as “free pussy” and encouraged the reprehensible behavior of rape and assault. If that is not an indictment on the entire culture of fraternities in North America, I don’t know what is.
Referring to the article on Wired I linked to up above, Maddie Kowalski’s own sorority sisters debated whether they should kick her out or place her on probation because of the “negative publicity” that the crime committed against her was bringing to their institution. Instead of acting in any sort of normal, sisterly, friendly way, these women decided that their appearance and institution was more important than the feelings, needs, and well-being of one of their fellow sisters. That is morally bankrupt behavior.
It must stop.
