I often hear remarks that today’s society is too sensitive and too focused on political correctness. Ideas, phrases and words that were once acceptable in everyday society are no longer accepted. Certain actions too, that were once commonplace, are now seen to be problematic and morally reprehensible.
Baylor University’s response to an investigation of sexual assault on campus has once again turned the country’s eye toward this rampant problem plaguing colleges and universities across the country. Undoubtedly, there will be those who find the university’s actions too harsh, as well as those who question the legitimacy of women’s and men’s claims of sexual assault.
In questioning the legitimacy of victims’ experience, one can easily resort to a position that such claims are the result of an oversensitive society. There is a prevalent idea that the 21st century has witnessed a change in the meaning of sexual assault and rape. What in the past may have been accepted as flirtatious or “boys being boys” now falls under the label of sexual assault and rape.
Indeed, as historian Estelle Freedman has shown in her work Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation, terms like rape do change. This is not new nor is it the result of an over-sensitizing sentiment in American culture.
In the colonial and early Federal period, ideas of rape were far different from those of today’s society. Initially, rape was defined in terms of sexual acts that threatened the institution of marriage — an institution in which men were entitled to sexual intercourse with their wives, who had no legal right to refuse.
As society progressed, rape and sexual assault became tied up with questions of seduction. Men would seduce financially dependent women with the promises of marriage, only to break the arrangement after having intercourse. Seduction laws were passed but rarely were men prosecuted under the male-dominated legal and political establishment.
In the latter half of the 19th century, rape became inextricably linked to acts of black men committed against white women. As Freedman suggests, such a racialized understanding of sexual assault and rape created a double standard. White men were not capable of such actions, nor were black women capable of being victims.
The 20th century, in turn, has seen an expansion of society’s understanding of who can constitute a rape and sexual assault victim and who can constitute an assailant. Yet today, there are even presidential nominees who seek to identify racial groups, like Hispanics, with acts of sexual assault and rape.
Yes, the definitions of sexual assault and rape have changed. This is a good thing. Rather than privileging white men and allowing them to avoid repercussions through the protection of other white men, society must hold them both accountable for their actions.
After reading Freedman’s study perhaps the most terrifying aspect of historical conceptions of rape and sexual assault is how little things have changed. People wrongfully continue to believe that the husbands cannot rape their wives.
As a straight white male, I am a member of a segment of the population that has believed and continues to believe that sexual intercourse is an entitlement. Throughout history white men, little different from myself, have been raised to believe that they are “entitled” to “have” the women they want and think themselves incapable of committing acts of sexual violence. The question has and continues to be one of entitlement. If I or any other straight white man continues to hear such stories of sexual assault coming from across our country and continues to believe and perpetuate the idea that sex is an entitlement, we are just as complicit.