Most discourse about rape prevention is stale at best and counterproductive at worst, so it was downright exciting to see a genuinely intriguing idea on how to prevent rape, coming not from a women’s studies department or a feminist blogger retreat, but from the sorority system. The New York Times reported earlier this week that many in the sorority sisterhood are starting to agitate to break the long-standing tradition of alcohol-free sorority houses, not because they are sick of having to wear shoes to parties but as a form of rape prevention.
Right now, most fraternities allow parties that serve alcohol and almost no sororities do, but sisters are arguing, according to the Times, that sorority parties would allow students “the option to attend Greek house parties that women control, from setting off-limits areas to deciding the content of the punch.” It’s an idea that is startling in both its simplicity and its brilliance. Of course it’s going to be harder for rapists to rape in female-controlled environments. It’s no cure-all and there are some implementation issues, but having more parties where women are controlling the alcohol and the space would be a really great step towards reducing the opportunities for would-be rapists to get access to potential victims.
What really jumped out at me is how different it is from the usual “rape prevention” advice that is out there. Traditional rape prevention advice is usually focused on telling women to give up freedom and control over their own lives: Don’t go out at night, don’t be alone with men, don’t drink alcohol, don’t wear sexy clothes, don’t don’t don’t’. Feminists object to this advice because it’s condescending and ineffective, but also because putting the onus on women to prevent rape often provides a get-out-of-jail-free card for rapists. After all, if you got raped, many people reason, it’s because you failed in your duty to follow that extensive list of “don’ts”. In the eyes of police and juries, that often makes it the victim’s fault and not the rapists.
Traditional rape prevention advice also has a deeper, more philosophical problem, in that it basically concedes to rapists’s power. After all, rape is a crime of dominance, usually of men asserting dominance over women. By telling women to give up freedom that men get to have, rapists win. Even if they aren’t dominating a woman directly by raping her, they are dominating women generally by taking away control over our own lives.
But this idea proposed by sorority sisters subverts that by suggesting that what women need is not less control over their lives, but more. Instead of telling women to give up freedom by going to fewer parties, they are telling women to seize power and not only party if they want, but to be in charge of the parties themselves. Instead of trying to fight rape by giving into male dominance, they are undermining male dominance.
All of which suggests that this can be more than just a small fix to reduce rapes that happen within the Greek system, but the beginning of a real paradigm shift. Instead of narrowly focusing on a bunch of individual choices women can make that will supposedly stop rape, perhaps the real key is to confront male dominance over the social sphere and find ways to give women more power and more control over partying, dating, and other social occasions that are all too frequently treated as opportunities by rapists. It’s a much better bet than telling women to give up enjoying their lives and live in fear of rapists.
Lead photo: Huw Williams (Huwmanbeing), via Wikimedia Commons
Amanda Marcotte is a freelance journalist who writes frequently about liberal politics, the religious right and reproductive health care. She’s a prolific Twitter villian who can be followed @amandamarcotte.
