Campus Rape Culture

Campus rape culture has become a topic of great concern over the years; concerning because “we know it exists” but “we can’t control it”. As per the statistics, one in every sixth woman on-campus experiences some sort of sexual violence or harassment every day, and with the stigma around the aspect and the victim-blaming practice, only some are able to build the courage to come out and talk about their violent experiences, however, over the level of exposure, this topic has gotten many women are coming out. So, the main question that starts to linger is; when it is such a talked about topic and with such high statistics of occurrence, what makes it so difficult to overcome, especially in North America? And to that my answer would be economic politics and the bases of radical feminism.

Radical feminism says that woman have always been given second place or second priority politically, economically, and socially that need to be changed, so to tie my answers together I would say, in a continent that is predominantly run by men and run on capitalism, when woman do come out to report their cases, their personal trauma is put in competition with the possible impact it could have on external tangible, usually politically economic variables that are tied with it and, when weighed, society puts the need of the vast over the individual. So, in case of sexual violence on campus, the authorities may be well far more concerned about their economic standpoint and reputation that keeps them on the podium. Universities feed on their reputation, and when a student becomes a victim of another that also funds (or maybe an asset to-) the university, universities are forced to look for alternatives that especially don’t affect them and their reputation and thus their funding. I once watched a documentary on-campus rape culture, where one of the Deans said “who would come to our university, if our letters said “congratulation on your acceptance…however do keep in mind that our campus maybe a hunting ground for sexual predators..” you see, no one wants to hear that…”. Every economically dependent institution would prioritize their reputation as it’s a source of their funding and, sexual violence and harassment cases, if put out in public, could affect that very aspect, they so much try to avoid, so naturally, most institutions would want to suppress these victims from having a voice, which unfortunately widens the grounds for these predators as they go on about victimizing other women in the very campus, with the confidence that there will be no consequences to their actions and thus making sexual violence an aspect in society that gets harder to be overcome with each occurrence.

On the other hand, the culture of victim-blaming also plays a role in suppressing the victims and their cases, as they are put in the hard light and blamed for allowing themselves to be in the situation that they “could have” avoided. In courts, opposing sides use “whacking” as a strategy to get the jury on their side, this not only convinces the jury (the majority of the time) in placing their vote on injustice but also emotionally worsens the victims' wellbeing, which could make them lose their case and leave them with a label of being a “slut”. This discourages many women to stand up to their perpetrators. So, to summarize, I would say that the only reason rape culture has become so hard to overcome is because of the radical strategies that have historically made their place against women in this capitalistic society.