Changing Campus Sexual Culture

The responses to the Rolling Stone expose of the University of Virginia’s sexual responses all say something like — this is from The Jewish Daily Forward‘s daily email — “A recent Rolling Stone article on sexual assault at the University of Virginia has galvanized students to change campus culture. But is it too little too late?” The answers all involve men showing greater respect for women, men learning that no means no, and universities and local police holding rapists to account, and some throw in calls for the regulation of frat house culture, and many include feminist analysis and calls for redefinitions of masculinity and the like.

And rightly so, including the last, though one might differ with them on what the new definition of masculinity should be. Such changes even if accomplished won’t solve the problem. The calls all assume the campus sexual culture. The kids should be free to enjoy sex in any way and with anyone they want. They just need to do it civilly.

But what if the sexual culture is itself the problem, and can’t be made civil enough? What if requiring men to recognize that “no means no” is the same as telling the mafia not to sell drugs to anyone under eighteen? However sincerely the frat boy or the low-level mafioso agrees to the new rules, the world in which they live, the world that forms their thinking and behavior, encourages them to act as they have done before.