NEWS' VIEW: Talking sex
As we debate Title IX and Yale’s sexual culture, we must move beyond anger and alienation.
NEWS' VIEW: Talking sex
As we debate Title IX and Yale’s sexual culture, we must move beyond anger and alienation.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
In the past week, the debate over Yale’s sexual culture has burst out of dorm rooms and into the public eye. An open, energetic discussion is long overdue, and both the Undergraduates for a Better Yale College (UBYC) and the Title IX complainants deserve credit for starting one.
Unfortunately, the recent fight over sex at Yale has often done more harm than good. Its rhetoric has sometimes been sensational, accusatory and alienating. Four Title IX complainants accused the UBYC, which seeks to end Sex Week, of “creat[ing] a culture of violence” and “threaten[ing] the safety of our campus” (“Exacerbating Yale’s rape culture,” Sept. 21). In turn, the UBYC chose to brand certain sexual choices as “right” or “wrong” (“Right and wrong sexual choices,” Sept. 26). An angry, unproductive debate over the semantics or existence of a “rape culture” followed.
With so many voices in the fray and two groups genuinely committed to improving Yale, there should be no need for inflammatory sniping. There are ideas here worth applauding. Although we enjoy and support Sex Week, the UBYC is right to question the health of our hook-up culture: one that does not help prevent sexual assault. We remain in full support of the Title IX complainants’ activism. We agree with the core tenet of their complaint: Yale has responded abysmally to sexual assault in the past, part of a national collegiate trend. By blowing the whistle, the complainants have pioneered a much-needed project of reform. We hope that a more public debate will accelerate that process.
But high tempers and point scoring have diverted attention from these issues — and from a real reckoning with Yale’s sexual climate. Labeling Yale misogynistic or rape-predisposed is unproductive. Instead, we should recognize that Yale encompasses multiple sexual cultures: both progressive and reactionary, respectful and coercive.
Most of us do not experience Yale through abuse, sexism, and rape. The term “rape culture” has not helped us identify the aspects of Yale that need to change. Rather, it has polarized the conversation and made it easy for people to attribute the Title IX complaint to sensationalism or ideology. At the same time, optimists must recognize that rape is real at Yale, even if we don’t see it. So too is the administrative and social oversight that allows it to happen. Rather than parsing hypothetical drunken-sex-scenarios, we should advocate the policies, mutual respect and concern that would preempt and prevent them in the first place.
The filing of the Title IX complaint last fall was a call to arms and the beginning of a conversation. More than an attack on the administration, its key purpose was to raise awareness and open a dialogue; after all, the University had already started planning its University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct. But since then, the conversation seems to have changed for the worse, while much more work remains to be done.
We can only hope that this first burst of anger and name-calling is a result of strong feelings kept bottled in for too long. But the kind of fear that silences, scapegoats or oversimplifies will not promote change. It will stifle it.
Comments
roflairplane 8 months ago
In turn, the UBYC chose to brand certain sexual choices as “right” or “wrong.”
Oh, heavens to Betsy! People suggested that certain moral choices are right and certain moral choices are wrong?
ac826 8 months ago
You're begging the question. To sarcastically state certain moral choices are right and some are wrong is to assume questions of sexuality are questions of morality. They're suggesting that a taste for chocolate is morally superior to a taste of vanilla.
roflairplane 8 months ago
Of course, tastes for chocolate and vanilla describe neither the most intimate human connection nor the impetus for begetting human life.
ac826 8 months ago
Is sex without the intended purpose of begetting life immoral, then? If not, why is sex without the intent of being the most intimate human connection immoral? Sex can make life, but not creating it doesn't make it immoral, and equally, sex can be the most intimate connection, but that doesn't make having sex that isn't intimate immoral. If you're determining morality by the possibility of an action, be consistent.
xfxjuice 8 months ago
This.
penny_lane 8 months ago
This proper use of "begging the question" has made me all weak in the knees. If I didn't have a boyfriend I'd be asking if you were a single straight male right about now...
theantiyale 8 months ago
You don't get it.
It STOPPED being "the most intimate connection" when sex was de-coupled from procreation and abandoned to recreation.
It is no longer the sole province of the 'epicures of intimacy' or the martials of purintanism.
It has been emancipated from the social 'spin doctors' of social engineering and runs rampant in the culture of fun.
RexMottram08 8 months ago
Hilarious... sexual choices are separate from morality?
River_Tam 8 months ago
Don't be silly. Everyone knows the only absolute "wrong" at Yale is voting Republican.
ldffly 8 months ago
I'll probably be saying this till the day I die. In the 1970s, spoon fed relativism would've gained no traction outside the English department. This is what deconstruction will do to you.
SY 8 months ago
YDN correctly points out that UBYC did not use post-modern words. Sexual choices = personal agency. Right = works for our culture, campus or community. Wrong = does not work for our culture, campus or community. Restated, "One's exercise of personal agency does not work for the campus and creates a violent and threatening culture when one's personal agency causes one or others depression, anger, feelings of rape, therapy or lawsuits."
RexMottram08 8 months ago
Isn't the spark of this entire controversy the notion that certain sexual choices (rape) are wrong?
ac826 8 months ago
Yes, but nobody is claiming right and wrong don't apply to any sexual choices and it's silly to suggest otherwise. There are no right and wrong in sexual choices between consenting adults.
SY 8 months ago
But there is personal agency between consenting adults that works or does not work, and causes one or the other depression, anger, or therapy.
ac826 8 months ago
And whether sexual choices work or do not work do not depend on the choices themselves, but the people making them. To act like the sexual act itself is moral or immoral because it makes some people depressed is to miss the point
RexMottram08 8 months ago
Hilarious. Consent is a pretty low floor for moral licitness.
ac826 8 months ago
Yup, that's exactly why suggesting there are right and wrong sexual choices is silly.
penny_lane 8 months ago
Rape is not about sex.
HighStreet2010 8 months ago
Yeah Rex, there're a ton of people out here saying that rape is the way to go. It's pretty controversial whether rape is right or not though. I remember reading a few op-eds here about why rape is the future for a better Yale, but I guess some people think it's wrong. I'll need to see some more in-depth analysis.
You really put your finger on the issue - before, I thought this debate was about whether drunken sex is rape (always, sometimes, or never?), whether our party culture contributes to sexual assault either by facilitating or normalizing the occurrence (related, sex week), whether Yale is doing enough to prevent assault and seek justice for victims, and what can be done to fix these issues should they exist.
But now I realize it was really about whether rape is wrong. Opening eyes everyday, RexMottramo.
RexMottram08 8 months ago
The Vagina Monologues glorify lesbian rape. NAMBLA advocates mainstreaming statutory rape. If we have battered down all moral standards except consent, are you really confident the last wall won't be breached?
ac826 8 months ago
Lesbian rape is wrong because of the lack of consent. Statutory rape is wrong because the child is too young to give consent. What moral standards except consent have been battered down that will lead to this last wall being breached?
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