In the Facebook event for “What Can We Do?: Advocating Against Sexual Assault and Standing with Survivors,” anti-sexual violence organization One Less describes what their roundtable discussion is not: “Rather than being an forum for criticism and frustration, we hope that this event can empower students to make a difference by helping those most impacted by this very sensitive issue.” The University’s institutional organizations have provided no forum for criticism and frustration. Criticism and frustration have become demonized, twin nefarious specters that threaten our apparently delicate community.
The recent editorial “Patience, persistence” is pandering garbage. To claim that “Responding to an act of violence with more violence only continues the cycle we so desperately need to break,” is to create a false equivalency so egregious that is difficult to imagine that there is not some kind of bad satire at play. To place vandalism and gang rape within the same overarching concept of “violence” is not only irresponsible, but dehumanizing and dangerous. Destruction of property is not comparable with the destruction of human dignity. Furthermore, this line of reasoning obfuscates the very meaning of rape culture. Rape culture is not a cycle of violence that is perpetrated by reactionary individuals who have failed to be positive, who have instead externalize their anger in what the Cavalier Daily Managing Board has ludicrously labeled as “violence.” Rape culture is a cycle of violence that is in part perpetrated by institutional complacency. To imply that vandalism is the real problem is insulting to our intelligence.
The problem with clinging to “constructive change” as a buzzword is that it actively discourages viewpoints that are oppositional to the “community,” which in turn is too often used as a buzzword to protect those in power. Instead we are fed the thin discourse of support and empowerment. There have been many declarations of “standing with survivors,” a universally friendly platitude that means nothing and calls for no real change or active support. For those with a proclivity towards taking an undeserved moral high ground, “standing together” is similarly appealing. We can do better than to act like a bunch of puffed-up PTA moms.
Force-feeding students easily digestible aphorisms that paint our culture as one to be reformed but not too much (“We need to start building, not breaking,” etc,) instead of encouraging real debate is nigh vomit-inducing. The dichotomy of constructive dialogue versus destructive dialogue is a myth. All dialogue is constructive. A community that will crumple under criticism is no community worth taking pride in. Our community will not crumple under criticism. Those who imply it will are cowards.
Before we swallow this hegemonic discourse of unity and positivity, we must ask ourselves: who would be damaged by criticism and who benefits from a definition of community that entails compliance? When the administration and every organization that is under its thumb discourage students from questioning, protesting and dissenting they are not doing so out of benevolence. They are not doing so to protect us. They are doing so to protect themselves.
Charlotte Raskovich is a third-year in the College. She also is the Humor Editor for The Cavalier Daily.
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