Why not to read 40 pages in a book and think it qualifies you to theorise about sexual assault
This article has been written by Anonymous. The cover illustration is also by them.
Trigger Warning: Mentions of sexual assault.
I’m your average run-of-the-mill feminist who is kind of tired of reading dumb shit on the internet, so I don’t usually bother responding. But sometimes, you read something that really ignites your inner feminazi, you know?
In a previous Quirk articled titled “Alcohol and Assault: Who’s to Blame?”, the author establishes a positive relation between hypersexuality, alcohol, and sexual assault on campus. While conceding that alcohol is not the sole cause of sexual assault, the author says that alcohol causes short-sightedness and puts you at the “mercy of your environment” (whatever the hell that means).
I am going to tell you three reasons why painting alcohol even as one of the reasons for sexual assault detrimentally impacts our understanding of the same. Then I will tell you why this idea of hypersexuality is just a dumbass way of patrolling sex lives.
First, let us break down why causation is so important. Sexual assault is a very specific form of gendered violence that uses sex and sexual acts as a way of reinforcing the power of one gender over the others. Like we learnt from the many readings in the History II course, (I’d suggest the author of the article I’m responding to take time to go through those again) inequality is what is sexual. The fact that a man, at any point, can feel the urge to touch a woman against her will and then act on that urge is not random. It’s based on years of understanding women as property and women as merely existing for the sexual gratification of men.
However, most of you already know this. The reason it is so wrong to associate sexual assault with alcohol is that it shifts the blame away from this patriarchal structure and onto a seemingly frivolous shot of vodka. In other words, blaming alcohol erases the systematic nature of sexual assault. It reduces it to a mistake that happens when you’re drunk. Sexual assault does not happen because people get drunk. It happens because people had those misogynistic ideas before they got drunk.
Second, let us tackle this idea about whether people in college understand consent just because they are in law school, because the author answers this in the positive. The author, in musing whether “lack of understanding of informed consent” has a role to play in sexual assault, opines that we have a good understanding of consent. Now, let us consider this point against the backdrop of sexual assaults on campus. When you superimpose this idea that people understand consent, and that sexual assault happens a lot while people are drunk, it leads you to this ludicrous pro-harasser stance that says people generally understand consent, and that alcohol just results in short-sightedness and lack of control.
All sexual assault is because of a lack of understanding of consent. Saying alcohol leads to short-sightedness and lack of control is justificatory behaviour that takes away from the fact that sexual assault is a function of lack of consent. This is no different from the typical “Oh, he just didn’t know what he was doing” BS that women hear every day.
Third, let us understand how the article in question, whether knowingly or unknowingly, has created a framework that blames the victim for assault. You will notice that everywhere in the article, the author says “here is what causes sexual assault”, not “here is why men sexually assault”.*
Know that there is a subtle difference between the phrasing. But my point is, that even when he is talking about short-sightedness and one’s acts being dictated by the environment, he never points this at the harasser, because the truth is that alcohol causes everyone to be let their guards down. And this is where the article blurs the line of “whose fault is sexual assault?”. This is because, the premise of the article appears to be that if you are choosing to drink, or be around people who drink, you run the risk of being sexually assaulted. So, if you make that choice, the consequences are something you need to be ready for. Not just that, it really fucks up the idea of continuing consent. For instance, if a woman and a man are drunk and the woman consents only to making out with a man, but he wants to have sex, the author really, really cannot say that that they were both short-sighted, and around people who were hooking up and that is what caused the assault. By doing this, the author makes the victim seem complicit in the crime that was committed against her just because she was also part of an environment that was consuming alcohol.
Finally, let us try to understand this word “hypersexuality” that was thrown around a lot but never really explained right. Hypersexuality is defined as a “dysfunctional preoccupation with sexual fantasy”.
While I don’t really think the author used the right word, I understand the essence of what he’s saying. College kids just wanna bang all the time (guilty). And in wanting to engage in intercourse/fuck/make love/ do the deed I don’t know whatever you want to call it, we’ve put sex on a pedestal and that is problematic. I get his point – sex should not have to be viewed as the end-all, and such a view often leads to environments where women feel pressured to oblige.
Here’s the thing though. There is a difference between saying that putting sex on a pedestal causes sexual assault, versus saying that physical expressions of sexuality lead to sexual assault. This is something a friend told me after reading the article – “It seems as if the article seeks to blame sexual environments for sexual assault”. To put it really simply – I could be at an orgy, and if I say no to sex that counts as a valid choice. Anything after that is assault.
At the end of the day, this is only really impacting women’s desire to be or act or dress sexy, right? Women should be able to twerk, grind, #freethenipple or whatever it is that they want to do (without harming anyone else of course), without the fear that their expression of sexuality will lead to them getting assaulted. Otherwise, this is just moral policing.
Anyway, this is my two cents as a woman who has read slightly more than 40 pages. Dear Author, to clarify, I do not think your article had any malicious intent. It was just poorly researched and badly worded.
Sexual assault on campus is far more complex than just being a function of kids getting drunk. We need to take responsibility and identify the right issues. Without that, we’re never going to get anywhere with making campus safer for women and sexual minorities.
*Yes, men also get sexually assaulted and women sexually assault, please do not come @ me for being a fAke FeMiniSt.
Quirk Team Note: Other responses to “Alcohol and Assault: Who’s to Blame? can be found in the comments section of the original piece. We’d encourage readers to read those as well.
this ought to have been a comment on the article. it’s in bad taste and addresses the author instead of the issue way too many times. i understand that it’s tough to say ‘no’ to alumni, especially those alum that you look up to but this article almost amounts to bullying.
I don’t think it’s alumni. Don’t think alumni care about being anonymous.
Also +1 to the author of this article.
I think it’s a perfectly reasoned article and isn’t bullying in the least. She addresses the author because he is responsible for the previous think-piece and is addressing several assertions made by him. Infact she graciously attributes no ill-intent to the author of the previous article.
It isn’t really upto to you to decide whether this should’ve been a comment or not. It’s literally meant to be a response piece.
To anonymous: kudos for taking the time out to write and publicly engage with the previous author. Well-written & lucid.
M, read the article again. Anonymous took great pains to address the content of the Author’s article and did not personally address the author.
Also by putting in words like “bad taste” don’t attempt to impute malice. And by comparing this to bullying don’t trivialise actual bullying by mischaracterising what is a well reasoned, rational, calmly written response to a piece. It’s constructively engaging with the same and outing some real biases the old piece contained.
Read the article again to form actual opinions rather than just taking offence at everything because you can.
Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right.
While the original article was problematic in some respects, I find this article to be highly dismissive and condescending of the author of the previous article specifically.
1. I really do not appreciate the background image. It is obviously hinted that the woke boi here is the previous author. He does not say any of the things which are written in the background.
2. The article in the start admits that the previous article does not put alcohol as the sole factor. Then why reduce his argument to “kids get drunk” in the 2nd last paragraph? This is obviously a strawman.
3. The article constantly tries to put down the writer of the previous article for not having read more than 40 pages. This is a toxic way of showing their superiority over this subject-matter, and to me it seems to hint that “woke bois” (whoever the author of this article decides them to be) should not get to write on sexual assault on their campus at all.
4. I do not wish to engage in any tone policing. But calling someone’s arguments “dumbass” is not much different from calling them dumbass. I think such language made directly to another individual should be avoided on public platforms like Quirk. But maybe that’s just me.
5. Finally, it is a bit weird how Quirk is able to get a response published in less than 24 hours. When I was in law school, Quirk used to take weeks to publish. Does the team forego publishing procedure simply to salvage their “public relations”?
Concerned at supposed/invented (not actually) ad hominems, but not at the content of the previous article?
Misplaced priorities much?
1) He does infact say 2 of the things in the image. Calls for people to reduce or cut-out alcohol consumption, & states that assaulters are otherwise respectful men. The rest he does not say explicitly but it’s pretty clear by this point that that’s what has been expressed, intentional or not.
2) It doesn’t put alcohol as the sole factor but it removes (a) lack of understanding of consent (b) “bad character” (c) lack of respect for women, as factors. This places a large chunk of the blame on alcohol as the major motivating factor behind sexual assault.
3) It is not a “toxic way of showing superiority” but a much needed call-out at the author of the previous article not having done enough research before writing an article attributing most (if not all) campus sexual assault to parties and alcohol. The previous author makes it clear that he does not refer to any other sources for his article beyond his personal opinions and said 40 pages.
4) You are engaging in tone policing. M says don’t refer to the author. You say don’t refer to the article. Exactly how does this not amount to tone-policing (in a literal response piece) ? I hope you were as stringent about your concerns with the previous article.
5) It’s a little weird how you felt the need to randomly nitpick this well thought-out and largely polite article. I repeat, I hope your standards were as high with the previous article.
@Concerned at Ad Hominems re to 5: No, we just have a much larger team now, so we have been able to put together a much faster turnaround time for reviews! We try to do at least one round of review for all submissions within 24-48 hours, even if we sometimes publish a bit later – when there are already other pending articles in the pipeline.
We’re really glad that you can see an improvement from when you were in law school!
Best,
Quirk Team
Hi! I just thought I’ll clarify two things really quickly
1) I have addressed the author of the article exactly three times- first when I say he’s read 40 pages, second when I suggest that he re read history readings, and third when I clearly say that I didn’t think it was malicious, and it was just not the best written article. And I stand by all of these. “40 pages” isn’t a jibe meant to defend elitism. It’s that as a 5th year man with considerable social capital who is writing about a VERY sensitive issue, he had the responsibility to do his due diligence before writing. I also still stand by the fact that I do not think the article he wrote was meant to be malicious, it’s just poorly informed (in my opinion)- but that needs to be rectified.
2) The fact that most of the criticism I’m getting on this is not about my actual opposition to the previous piece but about my “tone” reflects a really disturbing trend of curbing conversations around sexual harassment. I am angry. As are a lot of women. The previous article was insensitive to a lot of experiences. Don’t dismiss my arguments because you want me to maintain absolute emotional balance on a very sensitive issue.
Thanks, hope this clarifies things.
Thank you for writing this dear Author! 🙂
I completely echo the sentiment in your comment as well.
Daksh’s article was criticised for propagating (amongst other things) regressive, problematic positions, and victim blaming on sexual harassment.
This response only seems to be receiving comments saying that the author has somehow not been “nice enough” in her response.
That already exposes the double standard when it comes to assessing positions coming from men and women.
Seriously, readers please attempt to place yourself into any woman/assault survivor’s shoes and then read Daksh’s article. The content may be “academic”/ “pseudo intellectual discussion” for a section of the readers, but for a lot of us, it actively attempted to shift blame away from the perpetrator for causing harm to us – it challenges the cause, veracity, and impact of our lived experiences upon us. Trust me, you won’t feel so calm after trying to think of it from our perspective.
It’s absolutely infuriating to me, and yet this author has been able to completely civilly engage with it in her response. It’s commendable, and deserves to be appreciated.
Her article deserves to be read and understood in its entirety. So instead of trying to push her article behind some conveniently created veil of not being polite enough – READ THE ARGUMENTS SHE HAS PRESENTED and gain a better understanding of sexual assault!
Agree. It does amount to bullying.
This article is epitome of oversimiplification of what has been said in the previous article.
– At no point, I see Daksh shifting the blame on the victim.
– At no point, I see him saying that other factors like character and misogyny are not relevant. His clarification that was issued way prior to this article had comprehensively covered all the criticisms that have been raised.
– I believe a lot of the previous author’s lines have been taken in isolation just to bully him.
– Important thing raised in the previous articles have been completely ignored.
– (Part of comment redacted on request) –
Dear Whatever,
Please note that part of your comment has been redacted as it related to the private circumstances of the person referred to, without their consent. Thank you for engaging with the article!
Best,
Quirk Team
This article rightly calls out the utter garbage of an analysis in the previous one. It clearly stated that in the hierarchy of causative factors of sexual harassment alcohol and the so called “hypersexuality” are right at the top, even higher than the accused’s own guilt. I have seen universities in Europe that have a pub on their own campuses and incidents of sexual harassment are wayy less than that you see in NLS. A robust sexual harassment redressal committee and a campus discourse that is not eager to shift the blame on alcohol ensures that such incidents are promptly investigated and acted upon.
– (Comment redacted on request) –
Dear Taking forward whatever,
Please note that your comment has been redacted as it related to the private circumstances of the person referred to, without their consent. Thank you for engaging with the article!
Best,
Quirk Team
Thank you to whoever the fuck wrote this. What a shit piece of garbage the last article was. Kinda surprised law school nurtures such BS.