American Sexual Violence

Fighting the Silence of Sexual Violence: What America Needs to Know About Sexual Assault in College
Imagine a college freshman is studying with a good friend when suddenly the true intentions of the friend are made apparent. A guy is having a great time at a party until a girl he does not know forces herself upon him. A weak and tired girl is trying to make it back to her dorm room on a Saturday night when a group of frat boys discover her. All of these stories seem different, but they end in the same way: sexual assault. Assault can happen to anyone anywhere, regardless of gender or age. Sexual assault occurs frequently in college yet about “90% of sexual assault victims on college campuses do not report the assault” ("Statistics About Sexual
A study by the American Psychological Association reported that “throughout U.S. culture, and particularly in mainstream media, women and girls are depicted in a sexualizing manner” ("Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls" 4). These elements of media ingrain ideas of female inferiority, which could be one of the reasons why one in five women will be raped at one point of their life, yet only one in seventy-one males will be raped ("Statistics About Sexual Violence"). Though there are many reasons for why sexual assault might occur, the sexualization of females in the media has a large influence. Females are depicted as tools for sex in popular songs and are shown in scandalous clothing in pictures and advertisements shown across America. Authors of the “Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls” discovered that in the advertisements of two popular men’s magazines “80.5% of the women were depicted as sex objects” due to their sexual positioning in the photo or the lack of clothes (7) . In these photograph advertisements, 4 out of 5 women were “suggestively dressed, partially clad, or nude” (“Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls” 7). This type of media subliminally encourages sexual motivation in men because in modern media “sex is portrayed as a commodity whose attainment is the ultimate male challenge” (Curtis).
This lifestyle promotes drugs, alcohol and partying, all which are linked to an increase in sexual assault. The American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress reported that 75 percent of those who committed rape had taken drugs or alcohol prior to the rape as well as 55 percent of the victims (Curtis). This shows that a possible reason why the rape occurred was due to intoxication. “The Real Campus Sexual Assault Problem--And How To Fix It", an article written by Bradford Richardson and Jon A. Shields, confirmed these links. They reported that “even when alcohol is not used strategically [with the intentions of rape], its consumption can lead women and men to misinterpret social cues. While alcohol depresses women’s ability to assess risk, it diminishes men’s ability to accurately perceive women’s interest in having sex with them” (Richardson 29). This reveals the possibility of reducing the numbers of rape by encouraging students to avoid drugs and alcohol, since that may help reduce the numbers of sexual assault in college. However, the strong enforcement of bans on these substances is hard to maintain. There is a high probability that students will continue to use these substances after they have been prohibited due to the strong impact of media encouraging students to live the college lifestyle. Due to this college culture that encourages intoxication, sexual