Sexual assault: Time to come to the defense of women

By Phil Grech | gargoyle@flagler.edu

Recently a friend of mine was physically and sexually assaulted at a party. After she pushed the guy off her, he called her a slut and a bitch. While her friends came to her defense, no male did and the attacker’s friends encouraged his behavior.

When she told me her story, she concluded it by saying, “Apparently reacting to being grabbed by strangers constitutes being a bitch nowadays.”

There are more offensive details regarding this guy’s actions, but they are being withheld to protect my friend’s anonymity. Those details, however, would enrage any person who believes women’s bodies should not be violated.

There is already much needed societal and media attention paid toward rape and attempted rape cases, but rarely do we hear of cases where rape did not occur, but the woman was sexually assaulted by being touched, grabbed or something along these lines.

Is this because it’s too commonplace? Do many guys see this occur so often that it’s not worth mentioning and not worth defending the victim? Fifty four percent of sexual assaults are not reported to the police, but in how many was the woman actually defended regardless of police involvement?

Many women are already strong enough to defend themselves without the help of a nearby male, but certainly not all are. In many cases when the woman does defend herself, she is called some pretty derogatory things. As my friend already noticed, not only is the victim in these cases not defended, she is further victimized just for defending herself.

Imagine you are at a party and you witness a man physically or sexually assault a woman. Do you do anything? Do you passively stand to the side and consider it acceptable behavior? Do you feel too afraid to break from your friends, look like the “bad guy,” and actually come to the person’s defense?

Is being an individual really that hard? What if your mother or sister was assaulted? Would the blood that courses through your veins boil because the men present were either too passive to do anything or believed that assaulting a woman is morally permissible?

Encouraging or refusing to defend a woman who has been violated does not seem like the type of behavior of a highly cultivated, sophisticated and evolved society. It sounds like the behavior of cavemen, dragging their knuckles through the dirt and communicating in grunts.

What will you do the next time you see a woman get assaulted or violated? Will you do anything? Will you imagine that it’s your mother or sister?

Can we evolve as a society to treat each other respectfully? I hope so.