Misogyny is always making itself known. It rears its ugly head both explicitly in word and deed from people, or implicitly when it comes systematically from institutions of power. We know that prejudice against women is a reality that will always surface and manifest itself across American college campuses, but we must also be aware that we can lessen the negative impact of misogyny by educating people on what misogyny is, how it works and how to prevent it. Knowledge is power and education concerning this is crucial for everyone, but especially for the group who are the main offenders — cisgender, heterosexual men.
It’s important to continue the dialogue across our campus about how women are being treated and this discussion should primarily be active between male students. With events such as the recent UNC-Chapel Hill football player who accused of rape, told to “not sweat it” and told to keep playing football by the campus Department of Public Safety, or the WolfAlerts about female students being sexually assaulted on campus at night by unknown male predators, this conversation should be ongoing.
The kind of talks that men should be having among themselves should concern findings like the National Crime Victimization Survey identifying in a Campus Sexual Assault study that the highest rates of rape and sexual assault are reported among 16-19-year-old (10.4 victims per 1,000 women) and 20-24-year-old women (5.4 victims per 1,000 women). This finding also reports that previous studies collectively suggest that university women are at greater risk than women of a comparable age in the general population due to the close quarters women share with men on a daily basis on campus. In explicit numbers, a 2012 study by the National Center for Injury Control finds that one in five women experiences sexual assault in college and most of it is perpetrated by assailants known to the victim.
Along with conversations talking about the severity of these statistics, there should also be discussion and education on what proper consent is among everyone. A 2014 series of studies surveyed 86 male college students over 18 years of age found that 31.7 percent of them would have sexual intercourse with a woman against her will “if nobody would ever know and there wouldn’t be any consequences.” Though this is very troubling, the study interestingly finds that 18.1 percent of them wouldn’t do it if their act carried the label of “rape.” The lack of knowledge of what proper consent is should be a cause for alarm as much as the statistics of campus sexual assault. Education on consent, therefore, is so important to speak about.
Dialogue between men should consist of this and talking about how women who can’t handle “basic stuff” like sexual harassment don’t belong in the workforce, as Donald Trump Jr. foolishly said on the Opie and Anthony Show, doesn’t contribute to this dialogue. Though sexual harassment may be becoming more common in the workplace, it should, by no means, be regarded as something basic and elementary, and women should not be told to just handle it.
Treating women correctly in our society begins with simple things like men refusing to make sly comments or whistles at women that pass them by. Such actions can make women uncomfortable, anxious, frightened and angered. Women dress and beautify for themselves and don’t seek unwarranted confirmation from men. It is wrong to objectify women and say something that would suggest physical intimacy when no intimacy communicated between those women and men is made known of or consented to. The use of rape as a topic for humor is asinine. Ridiculing the horrors that women have and do face, as well as many men themselves, is a horrible act. It is not correct for men to dictate the way women should dress or to criticize them for it. It is a woman’s choice what she wears, and men have sexualized female bodies to the point of an unnecessary regard for the appearance and noticeability of their anatomical feminine features.
Famous Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes envisioned a world in his poem, “I Dream a World,” “Where wretchedness will hang its head / And joy, like a pearl, / Attends the needs of all mankind.” If Hughes can say, “Of such, I dream my world,” then, so can we. We can be more conscious of what women face in our campuses, in our conversations, at our parties and in many other spaces. We can work toward a world free of one of the many forms of wretchedness that Hughes speaks of.
