To the Editors:

I know the issue is getting a bit dated, but I wanted to respond to some of the issues raised about sexual assault and sexism at Oberlin in the last few issues. As I myself am often torn and confused on these matters, I will attempt to dispense with blame as much as possible, and simply raise some points that I think may help facilitate discussion.

The assertion that neither mainstream culture nor sexism are present in Oberlin I find naïve and erroneous.
Maybe there’s a higher concentration of students here who have rejected popular fashion or have more diverse and obscure interests. But I still hear plenty of males joke carelessly about sexual violence, dominate group discussions, act aggressively in crowds and call anybody who thinks critically about gender a “Feminazi,” to give a few examples of the behavior and mentality that I call sexism.

We cannot be uncritically faithful to the legal system, particularly when it comes to sexual assault. Many sexual assault cases are not even given hearings and when they are, it is more often conducted as a trial of the survivor, asking them to recount a painful experience, questioning their lifestyle, making them defend the credibility of both.

Also, the “proper” procedure for reporting a rape to the police involves other invasive practices in questioning and in the collection of “objective evidence” that often act as further violations to the survivor. The presence of women in the judicial process does not mean there was not an element of sexism. As surely as people of color are taught they’re ugly or queer people are taught they’re unnatural or poor people are taught they’re degenerate, women can be taught sexism.

I believe it is the responsibility of any community to address issues that threaten the comfort and safety of its members and evidently someone in the College administration felt so as well, which is why the College has policies and resources relating to sexual offense that elaborate from the law’s treatment.

The U.S. legal system has federal codes, superordinate but not exclusive to state and local laws, that further protect the interests of those smaller scales of community. The College’s policies are another magnification for a smaller community, so it is not accurate to say that the College has no jurisdiction here.

I would like to point out, for accuracy’s sake, that the author of the original response letter, “…not a tale of heroism,” never stated his belief in the actual guilt of the suspect as objective fact.

And for as many times as it was repeated in subsequent letters that the suspect’s innocence was proven in a court of law, that was never the argument. The original author was questioning the integrity of the processes used to ascertain that innocence and the social forces that permitted that process to unfold the way it did.

As I stated before, the “standard of objective evidence” is more problematic in cases of sexual assault than in other legal contexts. I don’t pretend to know the best way to reform this, but I find the subtext of the statements “the accuser is then free to manipulate the facts” and “the accuser may change the time, date and intent of a sexual interaction” very offensive.

The implication is that someone who alleges to have been the target of sexual assault is likely to be lying carelessly or even maliciously as a means to tarnish the reputation of or otherwise harm the person they are accusing; in other words, saying that it’s common for women to “cry rape.”

This view refuses to recognize the disgust and shame that many survivors feel, amongst other painful things and that many people who feel those things do not tell anyone about their experience, let alone declare it publicly for everyone to judge, doubt or ridicule.

Equally odious to me is the implication that women revel in victimhood to wield power to “discriminate against men.” Given the high ratio of actual occurrences of sexual offense to actual reported incidences, the alienating methods used by the police and the courts to deal with these issues and the culture that encourages or at least justifies sexual violence (“She was asking for it. He couldn’t help it. She was wrong for not being clear.”), I don’t see how women are in a position to dominate men at all.

I would like to close by reiterating that I don’t claim to have the answers. And while I am pro-women and women’s rights and legal protection, it’s not as simple as that. I believe in suspect’s rights and due process. Further, I am reminded of times when allegations of the rapes of white women have been used as a smokescreen for lynching black men, a practice that variations of continue, sometimes more subtly, today.

I cannot simply be against one oppression without considering other intersecting oppressions and certainly that ought to be considered here. But I do have two pieces of advice, for men, that I think will help us progress in this discussion.

One, stop trying to make it look like women enjoy the status of being victims. Two, stop trying to victimize yourselves.

–Shareef Elfiki
College junior