Yale Daily News Editorial on DKE Rape Song Gets It Dangerously Wrong on Rape Culture
by Jodi Jacobson, Editor in Chief, RH Reality Check
October 18, 2010 - 9:06pm (Print)
Today, we published a powerful condemnation by Will Neville, our colleague from Advocates for Youth, of Yale's Delta Kappa Epsilon pledge stunt encouraging rape.
In a comment, one of our regular readers and participants at RH Reality Check, Crowepps, linked to an editorial by the Yale Daily News in response to what must have been the widespread reaction by women's groups to the DKE episode. I have to thank her for the tip.
And boy, does YDN get it wrong.
Calling the DKE stunt an effort to "push the right buttons to get a rise out of others," and the chanting "idiotic," YDN goes on to say:
And yet, as groups rushed to condemn the foolhardy DKE bros, they threw overwrought epithets, some almost as absurd as the chants themselves.
What was almost as absurd as the chants themselves? According to YDN, the response by the Yale Women's Center and feminist blog Broad Recognition that called the chants “an active call for sexual violence.”
We do not believe that a drive to inspire rape motivated the young, impressionable brothers on that cold Wednesday night. As the Center responded with histrionics, what could have been an opportunity for our campus to maturely and gracefully reprove public stupidity and affirm mutual respect turned into a daylong, private spat. Although the fight was, ostensibly, resolved on Thursday with DKE’s apology, the rest of us were left unsatisfied.
I can not speak to other issues raised about past actions of the Yale Women's Center also critiqued in the editorial.
I can say this:
Rape culture is deeply embedded in U.S. society and has found sympathizers as high up in the political food chain as Senators. Congressmen, and Presidential candidates. It is often tolerated in business. And many of those illustrious leaders of politics and industry come from Ivy League schools like Yale.
What the Yale Daily News misses, dismisses lightly, or completely ignores, is the fact that the majority of sexual and gender-based violence experienced by women in the United States and elsewhere in the world comes at the hand of intimate partners. Translation: People women already know. Their dates, their husbands, their partners. Their frat "brothers." Their male teammates.
In fact, as a series of reports by the Center for Public Integrity revealed, sexual assaults on campuses are widespread and are often committed by repeat offenders who suffer few or no consequences. Universities, by making light of such assaults, in fact perpetuate the culture of rape and assault that under-gird the notion that "No means Yes."
In fact, in an article on this issue for RH Reality Check, Sarah Martino wrote:
For the past twenty years, experts on sexual assault, victims’ advocates, and students and their parents have repeatedly called on colleges and universities to take rape seriously and live up to the standards that, beginning with 1990’s Campus Security Act, have been outlined in Federal law. And for the past 20 years most schools have not been paying attention. Last week the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) launched the second series in a three-part investigative report on campus sexual assault, exposing what they call the “culture of indifference” on college campuses that allows perpetrators to go unpunished and re-traumatizes rape survivors. Indifference may indeed be putting it nicely.
So YDN misses the point when it says:
Feminists at Yale should remember that, on a campus as progressive as ours, most of their battles are already won: All of us agree on gender equality. The provocateurs knew their audience’s sensibilities and how to offend them for a childish laugh. They went too far. But the Women’s Center should have known better than to paint them as misogynistic strangers and attackers among us, instead of members of our community; after all, they once partied in the brothers’ basement.
In fact, it is most likely that rapes on a campus like Yale do come from the attackers "among" them. And that is part of the broader problem. The very facts of intimate partner violence, of date rape, of transgressions made when too much alcohol is consumed, and the very fact of editorials like these in response is the foundation of the problem writ large.
Moreover, it strikes me as demeaning and insulting for YDN to state:
We would all do well to remember that, at Yale, the effectiveness and inclusiveness of women’s advocacy is inversely proportional to its radicalism.
At Yale, and at every other university and in every other frat house, they would do well to look in the mirror and see if their understanding of the issues is proportional to the reality of rape culture in and on campuses throughout this country.
Follow Jodi Jacobson on Twitter, @jljacobson
I agree wholeheartedly - but I must say, it was extremely gratifying to see the many online responses by Yale students and alums criticizing the YDN editorial that were cogent, impeccably reasoned, and rhetorically far above the editorial itself.
I was particularly impressed by the man who said he didn't want to send his son to Yale if by doing so he would be exposing his son to a corrupting atmosphere.
I am glad for an ally in that man. Unfortuantely the "corrupting atmosphere" is everywhere. It might be more concentrated at Yale than at many other places.
After reading this piece, I believe that Yale Daily did not just dangerously "get it wrong"in their editorial. I think the author(s) deliberately "got it wrong" and chose words that, though proper educated English, were chosen to offend as well as to minimize the incident and recast the DKE brothers vs. the Women's Center. This would not be because of ignorance, indifference or naive writing... but through deliberately using the Yale Daily News Editorial to deliver a misogynistic jab to the women's center as this case takes on an unepectedly high profile with Yale reaping the resulting criticism. Otherewise why use sentences like " As the Center responded with histrionics, what could have been an opportunity for our campus to maturely and gracefully reprove public stupidity and affirm mutual respect turned into a daylong, private spat." I wonder if there are any present, former, or allied fraternity members to DKE on Yale Daily staff.
This episode highlights two symptoms of the pathology that is the prevailing attitude toward sex in modern society.
Date rape - to which the Yale frat's chant certainly alludes - is at least partly enabled by society's present acceptance of extramarital sex. While the man (not that he deserves that title) in the case of date rape is always guilty in a society that does not accept extramarital sex, in the one in which we find ourselves his guilt or "innocence" hinges on the consent of the woman, rather than any objective judgment based purely on his actions. With no one willing to say that the act he desires is objectively wrong regardless of the circumstances, the acceptability of it becomes merely a challenge to be achieved. If he can get a woman sufficiently inebriated that she will give her consent or be unable to remember whether she did, he's in the clear.
The other problem highlighted here is society's acceptance of alternate (and abominable in my view) acts involving the sexual faculties. When these acts go beyond those that can provide mutual and equal pleasure - especially when they're viewed as an end in themselves - there is no limit to what someone may want to do or consider "normal." Once the aim of sexual activity is not to please someone else, selfishness sets in, and satisfaction becomes an elusive goal that is never fully achieved, leading to wilder and wilder acts in pursuit of the unattainable, and less and less concern for those we involve in them.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist or even the Pope to see the peril that we've put ourselves in.
While the man (not that he deserves that title) in the case of date rape is always guilty in a society that does not accept extramarital sex,
...while the married man (not that he deserves that title) in the case of marital rape is always innocent in a society that considers marriage to be a permanent grant of sexual consent.
in the one in which we find ourselves his guilt or "innocence" hinges on the consent of the woman, rather than any objective judgment based purely on his actions.
Yes, isn't it silly that the woman should be the one who decides what happens to her body, instead of the man?
With no one willing to say that the act he desires is objectively wrong regardless of the circumstances, the acceptability of it becomes merely a challenge to be achieved. If he can get a woman sufficiently inebriated that she will give her consent or be unable to remember whether she did, he's in the clear.
No, actually, that makes him a rapist. Though I'm sure he'll be happy to use your logic to protest that "he's in the clear" to a judge.
The other problem highlighted here is society's acceptance of alternate (and abominable in my view) acts involving the sexual faculties. When these acts go beyond those that can provide mutual and equal pleasure - especially when they're viewed as an end in themselves - there is no limit to what someone may want to do or consider "normal."
Yes, it's not like women have ever enjoyed anal sex. (Sorry that your wife's not one of them.)
Once the aim of sexual activity is not to please someone else, selfishness sets in, and satisfaction becomes an elusive goal that is never fully achieved, leading to wilder and wilder acts in pursuit of the unattainable, and less and less concern for those we involve in them.
You mean, like, rape?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist or even the Pope to see the peril that we've put ourselves in.
Yep. Once you stop caring about getting a woman's enthusiastic consent, it's all downhill from there!
I'm glad you agree that society's attitudes toward sex are pretty dismal, and that both men and women are responsible for them. Now the question is, how do we improve the situation?
The ONLY way you would think that BOTH men and women are responsible for these 'dismal' standards are if you believe that women are 'gatekeepers' and men are hormonal lunatics. Thanks.
Now the question is, how do we improve the situation?
I suggest you start with yourself
Date rape - to which the Yale frat's chant certainly alludes - is at least partly enabled by society's present acceptance of extramarital sex.
Ummm... being permissive or accepting of premarital sex is not also condoning rape. The two are absolutely separate concepts and any person who can't see this distinction obviously doesn't understand the concept of consent.
in the one in which we find ourselves his guilt or "innocence" hinges on the consent of the woman, rather than any objective judgment based purely on his actions.
Consent is rather objective. She either agrees are she doesn't. If it was your bodily orifice being penetrated sexually, I'm fairly certain you'd want to retain the right to consent or not consent to said penetration. Again, not a difficult concept.
Certainly the average person usually understands that, for instance, although his neighbor has allowed him to borrow a hedge trimmer in the past, it is necessary to ask for and RECEIVE permission before walking off with it again, and that he's not free to just go rummage through the neighbor's garage and take it whenever he wants it.
And BEFORE all this permissiveness and acceptance of premarital sex and selfishness set in, BEFORE the last 50 or so years, back when all men understood clearly that sex was reserved only for marriage, everything was great.
There wasn't any sex before marriage. There weren't any 'bastard' children. There wasn't any prostitution. There wasn't any pornography. There wasn't any rape. There wasn't any adultery.
Oh, wait, yes, golly, there actually was! Apparently when the rules are very, VERY clear and any man should have been able to understand through objective judgment (is this my wife?) based purely on his actions (not my wife/don't touch) that what he was doing was WRONG, it has very little effect whatsoever on his behavior.
I've seen a lot of rape-apologist views on these here internets, but this one:
"While the man (not that he deserves that title) in the case of date rape is always guilty in a society that does not accept extramarital sex, in the one in which we find ourselves his guilt or "innocence" hinges on the consent of the woman, rather than any objective judgment based purely on his actions. "
probably ranks in the top ten. Way to COMPLETELY remove women (since we're talking heterosexual rape here) from the picture.
THE PRESENCE OR ABSENCE OF CONSENT IS WHAT DEFINES RAPE.
Date rape - to which the Yale frat's chant certainly alludes - is at least partly enabled by society's present acceptance of extramarital sex.
No. They are referring to rape, plain and simple. Rape is rape. Call it what it is -- it doesn't need another descriptive word ("date") in front of it. And apparently you are not aware that wives can be raped by their husbands. Consent to marriage is not consent to sex. Consent to dating is not consent to sex. Nor are you capable of understanding that dating/"premarital" sex and rape are entirely different subjects and have nothing to do with the other. Rape is not a "symptom of a larger problem" AKA "dating culture." Rape is a symptom of rape culture and misogyny.
the one in which we find ourselves his guilt or "innocence" hinges on the consent of the woman, rather than any objective judgment based purely on his actions.
What the hell is this shit? The consent of the woman (or other person) IS THE objective factor in determining guilt or innocence! The act is objectively wrong if he doesn't get a clear "Yes." It doesn't have anything to do with the status of their relationship, married or otherwise.
If he can get a woman sufficiently inebriated that she will give her consent or be unable to remember whether she did, he's in the clear.
No. Most people would agree that if one person is inebriated, then they can not properly give 100% consent, even if they uttered "yes" in a drunken state. It is still rape.
society's acceptance of alternate (and abominable in my view) acts involving the sexual faculties
I guess you've never heard of women who actively enjoy anal sex or oral sex? (just guessing what you are referring to here...)
his guilt or "innocence" hinges on the consent of the woman, rather than any objective judgment based purely on his actions.
It's Grey Duck.
Consent is an objective standard. Men like you have a difficult time accepting that women, married or not, have the power to say 'yes' or 'no' to sex. That makes you a large part of the problem.
Without rehashing each word, we can say we regret the tone, and many of the phrases, of our News’ View.
But our intent was not to offend. Nor was it to attack. Nor was it to suggest that the Women’s Center, DKE, the administration and our classmates do not have important work to do in promoting conversation about sexual culture and violence. We sought to comment not on whether rape still exists at Yale, but on the most productive way to discuss it.
Our intent was to offer a perspective on the events of last week, how the student response shifted from Wednesday night to Friday afternoon, how it compared to the response surrounding past incidents, and how we should respond in the future.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2010/oct/19/editors-note-regarding-the-news-view/
To me, having read all of it, it sums up pretty much as a huge non-apology. Particularly lame are the tone troll protests that he was only trying to point out that 'feminazis are so SHRILL' and 'REAL women don't like feminazis' although an honorable mention should be given to the sneery implication at the end of:
We hoped to remind the community that the Center-sponsored forum on Friday saw DKE and campus feminists speaking to each other as fellow students, not as different species.
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