After conducting a voluntary survey of its student body, MIT reported this week that 17 percent of female students and 5 percent of male students had experienced sexual assault. But the university’s administration and the students surveyed seem to subscribe to different definitions of that term:
M.I.T. asked about several forms of unwanted sexual contact, from touching to penetration, “involving use of force, physical threat or incapacitation,” that it said clearly constituted sexual assault — the kind that 17 percent of undergraduate women and 5 percent of undergraduate men said they had experienced. In addition, 12 percent of women and 6 percent of men said they had experienced the same kinds of unwanted sexual contact, but without force, threat or incapacity — some of which, depending on the circumstances, can also be sexual assault. Yet when asked if they had been raped or sexually assaulted, only 11 percent of female and 2 percent of male undergraduates said yes.
There was a similar result on sexual harassment. Among undergraduate respondents, large majorities of men and women said they had heard sexist remarks and inappropriate comments about people’s bodies … But the number who described what had happened to them as sexual harassment was relatively small: 15 percent of undergraduate women, and 4 percent of men.
Their consciousness obviously needs to be raised – and pronto. “The university is clearly using a broader definition of sexual assault than its own students,” Batya Ungar-Sargon concludes:
Perhaps the discrepancy lies in the staggering 44 percent of incidents related to being incapacitated by drugs or alcohol, which some students don’t regard as assault.
It seems unlikely that students would underreport sexual assaults caused by force, or a weapon, or threats of physical harm. Eighty-three percent of respondents disagree with the statement that “An incident can only be sexual assault or rape if the person says ‘no.'” In other words, 83 percent of MIT students can distinguish between a nonverbal lack of consent, and sexual assault. If this is the case, why does the survey then disbelieve the female undergrads when only 10 percent say they have been sexually assaulted? To take the 17 percent of “unwanted” sexual behaviors and turn them into sexual assault, despite the 7 percent of female students included therein who do not believe they have been assaulted, is to remove the students’ very canny ability to distinguish the criminal from the unwanted.
After pointing out some problems with the survey’s methodology, Elizabeth Nolan Brown highlights a finding that she finds disturbing:
Contra the affirmative consent crowd, it doesn’t seem that a lack of respect or enthusiasm for obtaining sexual content is a big problem: 98 percent of females and 96 percent of males agreed or strongly agreed that it’s important to get consent before sexual activity. But students are confused about how alcohol and intoxication affect consent, which perhaps speaks to increasing progressive activism around the idea that drunk people can’t give consent. Only about three-quarters of respondents said they feel confident in their own ability to judge whether someone is too intoxicated to consent to sex. And more than half agreed that “rape and sexual assault can happen unintentionally, especially if alcohol is involved.”
I just want to repeat that one more time: Half of the MIT students surveyed think it’s possible to “accidently” rape someone. When you consider undergraduates alone, this rises to 67 percent. This is what we get when people push an idea that rape is really often a matter of consent confusion or a drunken misunderstanding and not something that one person (the rapist) intentionally does to another. This is exactly what those of us opposed to affirmative consent standards mean when we worry about it muddying the waters of consent and confusing the definition of rape.
And the beat goes on.
The Dish 