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.
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