By Graham Davis, President
and Founder
Last
summer I read an eye-opening book called Reviving Ophelia, by Mary
Pipher, PhD. If you haven’t read it, it is basically a series of
psychological case studies (Pipher being the psychologist) on
adolescent girls. One of the premises of the book was that men have
created a culture that makes it very difficult (if not virtually
impossible) for women to grow up mentally strong and healthy. We tell
our girls not to worry about their appearance, but we expect them to
look like models. We encourage girls to be ambitious, but if they’re
too ambitious then male chauvinism has its way of pushing them back
down. We urge girls to be independent, but don’t allow them out
after dark without a chaperone (and rightfully so…). Time and
again sexual assault entered into the psychological profiles of these
young women. I kept thinking “what if this was my mother, sister,
daughter, girlfriend…” Men have created this culture that ignores,
if not condones, sexual assault… and men need to take an active role
in transforming it.
Last
semester when I began thinking about how to get involved, I realized
that the fight against sexual assault is largely dominated by women.
Women are most affected by it, and thus women are most concerned and
pro-active in trying to stop it. The problem is, this makes it seem
okay for men to stay out of the picture all together. I had never
really considered entering the fight… I, who believe myself to be
respectful of women, was leaving the fight up to the women simply
because it didn’t directly concern me. I realized that this was not
fair. Aside from the fact that women tend to dominate the fight, the
anti-assault curriculum is largely directed toward women. All my life
I’ve heard “women, don’t walk alone at night . . . women, be
careful who you drink around . . .“ even such extremes as women,
stand by the alarm in the elevator so that if you are attacked you can
push it easily.” In this curriculum, the responsibility lies heavily
on the women. This is not okay. Women begin to take responsibility for
being assaulted. From there many tragic things can happen; women can
become ashamed of being assaulted, women do not report the crime,
women go through life feeling guilty about something they shouldn’t
feel guilty about at all.
The
focus of responsibility needs to shift. Men need to know that it is
unacceptable to assault women in any way. Both men and women need to
know that if a woman is walking home at 3:00 in the morning drunk and
naked, it is STILL the man’s responsibility if he takes it upon
himself to assault her. NOTHING justifies sexual assault. Now before I
hear it from the peanut gallery, let me say that I think that S.U.R.E.,
Safeplace, and other coed groups who speak mostly to a female audience
are valuable. I frilly support the education of both sexes. Men
Against Sexual Assault was created to fill the void that exists in
educating men on male responsibility in sexual assault. MASA will not
only fill this void, but it will also provide the outspoken male
presence that is needed to change this culture (slowly but surely).
An aside… many skeptics have looked at me
sideways when I tell them about MASA. “Changing hearts is a hefty
feat,” they say. I completely agree. I don’t expect to change
hearts overnight. In fact, I may never see any solid results. But if
this group changed one mind about sexually assault, then it would be
worth it. And if it changed none? Sometimes you have to do what you
have to do based on principle alone regardless of the expected
outcome.
