My views on the recent sexual assaults

Now, this has nothing to do with Arts One. At all. But since Christina mentioned we should use this blog for other things, I thought it would be a good place to vent out my feelings.

It is not all my opinions, but just some I needed to get off my chest.

UBC and Rape Culture

So there have recently been 3 reported and 1 unreported sexual assaults on my university campus.

It has been a long week of debates and discussions, both positive and negative. It has been frustrating for me, listening to some of the misconceived notions of “feminism”, and hearing so many rape jokes being made. Even hearing people yelling “Don’t get raped” as a female walks at night have put me on edge.

In my opinion, UBC definitely needs some sexual assault education. Hearing some of the opinions swirling around, I feel sick to my stomach. So many people have turned this into something it is not.

Multiple female students have been assaulted. Luckily, none were raped. Keeping an extra eye out for females is fine, as they are this attacker’s victimology. Telling men “they will be fine” isn’t. Everyone should be aware of their surrounding when walking home at night, but not just simply women or simply because of rape. Just even for safety reasons, like robbery.

There does need to be a shift in culture from “Don’t get raped” to “Don’t rape”. This is so much more than putting the blame on men. Although a part of it is not blaming victims, a large part is the fact there is honestly not much I can do about not being raped. I can walk home with someone, I can be safe, but if someone really wants to attack me, they will. It needs to be known that anyone who attacks a student will be heavily pursued and captured. We need to have security patrolling and keeping an eye out. “Don’t rape” also means “Don’t blame a ‘victim’ for something they had no control over” and “Don’t make jokes about sexual assault”. It is not funny in any way.

Now I’m not even going to get into the Feminist arguments at play here, since I do not want to get riled up right now. All I’m going to say is feminism is not “Kill all men”, it is “Women and men are equal”. Stop propagating bullshit, and turning this into something it is not.

Lastly, we should all have the same goal here:

We want this assaulter caught, and we want campus to be a safer place. 

No matter what your or my opinions are on the above stated, in the end we should all be trying to attain this. We want UBC to be an awesome place, and we don’t need or want this fear around campus. This is our home, and we need to work together to protect it.

-Ola

5 thoughts on “My views on the recent sexual assaults

  1. Hey Ola,

    So first off I want to say that I agree with you.
    These sexual assaults have got to stop now before they escalating. It is a shame that in our western culture often the blame is put on the woman i.e “she was out walking alone at 3 a.m…how stupid” IT IS NOT THEIR FAULT.

    But I will say this, and I hope this doesn’t offend. As a man i get quite insulted with the idea of teaching the men “Don’t rape” not all men are rapist and I am finding more and more as I walk around UBC I am getting judged for being a large, tall white man. I don’t feel safe at UBC either, who knows what this assaulter might escalate too. We need to pin point the people at risk of doing these attacks early to make sure our streets/school are safe.

    • I think “Don’t rape” encompasses much more than stereotyping all men as rapists. It is that way because of the rape culture that exists right now. I don’t know about you, Seamus, but as a female I have literally grown up being told to “be careful when I’m alone” and watch out for “rapists”. We are raised to be wary of men.
      When attacks like this happen, we have no choice but to respond with fear. If you noticed, not a single news report spoke of how the women looked like. This could be a safety precaution, but at the same time are ALL women his targets? Or does he have a type?
      So I’m sorry that it becomes a thing where every white male is looked at with fear. But so far, it is the only thing we are told to keep us safe.

      And I definitely agree at this point no one can feel safe on campus. We have no clue what he is capable of, and that is very scary. You are so right in needing to pin point attackers early on. Or even just respond early on. It took 3 attacks before everyone really began to take charge of the situation. That is way too many.

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  3. Hello Seamus and Ola. Your exchange provided me with a lot of food for thought. I was just going to post a comment, but quickly realized that I needed to do a blog post of my own to address all the points I wanted to make. It’s here if you’re interested:
    http://fellowsjill.wordpress.com/

  4. Hey Ola,

    I agree, in our culture we put all the effort on the women to be “safe” and such. But at the same time we have to remember that women are not the only victims when it comes to sexual assaults. Men get raped, molested and assaulted often too but the media doesn’t pick it up because “men can’t get raped” and “how can a girl rape a man, he has to get it up”….if you saw on facebook the silent voices of rape, there were just as many men as women who were victims. I read once that 1 in every 2 people in Canada will get sexual assaulted in some way during their life. THIS HAS TO STOP, don’t you agree? We as a society need to educate EVERYONE and have the facilities in place to help not only the victims but the assailants also, because many of them are mentally unstable and have not received ample support.

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