How a New Framework Could Change Sex Education
Communication is the key
I’m back after a wonderful week in the Outer Banks and ready to get back to writing. Before we look at this week’s article, I wanted to mention a podcast that Cynthia Schnedar alerted me to. If you read the last Chaise Lounge article on the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, you will want to listen to the last guest on this podcast. Thanks, Cynthia!
This week, we take a look at a new groundbreaking study that presents new ways of thinking about sexual assault prevention. I hope you find the ideas interesting and encourage you to listen to the End Rape on Campus interview with the authors of the study linked in the article.
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
As colleges begin their new school year in the shadow of the pandemic, now is a good time for administrators to reflect on how they can make their campuses safer in every way. While trying to prevent students from developing COVID-19 is, of course, the highest priority, college administrators can also use this time to examine the ways they can reduce campus sexual assaults once students return to campus full time (yes, I am an optimist!). Fortunately, there is new data that they can rely upon as they consider changes. The Sexual Citizens; A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus published in January 2020 by Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan is a roadmap of new ways to think about the role that universities play in preventing sexual assaults in the first place. Hirsch and Khan, both researchers from Columbia University, surveyed over 1600 college students, completed up to six hours of interviews with individual students, and had graduate student researchers go in the field with college students to see what exactly is going on in the modern college social scene. They came to the project with the goal of finding the drivers of campus sexual assault in the hope of developing some tools to make it less likely to happen. As Hirsch said in an End Rape on Campus webinar, “Campus sexual assault is a social problem, not just a higher ed problem.” Their interest lies in prevention rather than adjudication. Hirsch went onto say, “We have built a world where sexual assault is an expected outcome. We can build a different type of world.” Amen to that!
Findings and a New Framework
Hirsch and Khan developed a three-part framework for interpreting their findings which they call Sexual Projects, Sexual Citizenship, and Sexual Geography. The three elements of the framework inform the recommendations that follow.
Sexual Projects refers to the reason why someone might seek out sex, to begin with. People have sex for pleasure, for comfort, to keep a partner, to explore sexual identity, to create a child, to gain experience as a lover, to impress others, or for other reasons. It is important for each person involved to understand what their project is before engaging in sex as well as their partner’s project. Misunderstanding of the project leads to hurt feelings and sometimes assault.
Hirsch and Khan found that many of the students did not understand their own projects or felt shame around their desires. They had never had real conversations about sex with an experienced adult and found themselves conflicted. As a result, many used alcohol to dull these feelings so they could go about fulfilling their projects without deep reflection. Only later did they find regret in some of their sexual experiences.
Sexual Citizenship refers to the right of each person to have their own sexual agency and to recognize that others have their own as well. While this may seem like an obvious statement on its face, sexual citizenship is formed by social constructs. Historically, American women (and in many other cultures as well) have not been allowed to express their sexual citizenship lest they are labeled loose or whorish. Conversely, men are acculturated to have many sexual conquests and to boast of them. This is a paradoxical situation where men and women are placed on opposite sides of their citizenship with women culturally denied sexual satisfaction and men encouraged to seek sex regardless of their desire. As a result, many men view sex as a conquest and begin to view the woman they are with as more of an object than a partner. Women in these situations have not been taught that they can own their sexual citizenship or rehearsed how to get out of a situation where they do not want to have sex. How can we develop a culture where everyone’s sexual citizenship is recognized and respected?
Sexual Geography refers to both the physical space in which sex takes place but also the access that different people have to spaces. As an example, the authors discuss the difference between someone who is stuck at an off-campus party and wants to leave, but their friends with the car have already left and they do not have the money for an Uber or cab. Another example is the set up of a dorm room that only has a bed and a desk. If you want to sit together, you have to sit on the bed which has major psychological implications that frequently lead to either wanted or unwanted sex. The geography of a situation is an important factor as to whether an assault can even happen.
One of the top findings in the study is that students are coming to college with very little knowledge of their own bodies and how sex works, regardless of if they have been sexually active. Because sex education has been so heavily influenced by abstinence-only education proponents, American students are denied the information they need to stay healthy from both a physical and psychological standpoint. In other research, Santenelli et al. found that comprehensive sex education before college that included practice in refusing unwanted sex was effective. They recommend, “Sexual assault prevention should adopt a lifecourse perspective, including teaching young people before college about healthy and unhealthy sexual relationships and how to say no when sexual interaction is not wanted and yes when it is wanted.”
During some of the interviews outlined in the study, young men have a disturbing “aha” moment where they realize that they have crossed a line in a past encounter. They are crushed by the realization and frightened by its implications. Young women realize that sometimes their partners do not recognize their sexual citizenship and treat them as objects. In both these cases, the students did not understand that their sexual projects were incompatible. If one person comes to the situation thinking that they are there for sex and the other is only looking to find some intimacy without sex, there is a huge mismatch that is never spoken out loud if there has been no practice in doing so. Our society’s shaming attitude toward talking about sex is an enabling factor in allowing sexual assault to take place.
What would it look and feel like if people could talk about sex openly? While consent is obviously at the heart of any sexual encounter, what if we also talked about what we want from sex, and how we view others’ sexual agency? It may sound far-fetched, but many other countries, like Denmark, are beginning to talk about relationships, intimacy, and how to say no with children as young as four. In France, they are battling the problem of men not really understanding women’s anatomy by making 3D models of the clitoris and testing them on it. Remember the legislator who thought a woman could swallow a camera to obtain a gynecological exam? Or the one who thought a woman’s body “shuts down a legitimate rape”? We certainly need to improve basic knowledge of human anatomy of all sexes. And more importantly, we need to find a way to promote healthy discussion of sex and eliminate the shame of talking about it. We can think creatively about how to approach sex education in this country, and this study gives us the information we need to begin to tackle the issue. It is a matter of will, not a lack of knowledge.