Opinion: Sexual violence prevention requires change in culture

UNC has been a national leader in its response to campus sexual assaults. This can be credited to the tremendous amount of work that activists and advocates have done to make the University a less hostile place.

Programs and initiatives like One Act and Project Dinah, in addition to the restructuring of UNC’s response to reports of sexual and interpersonal violence, have provided an incredible amount of support for survivors.

While the results of most campus sexual assault initiatives are not yet quantifiable, there are noticeable changes in students’ attitudes when they participate in intervention training.

According to a UNC study, students who participate in One Act training report higher confidence in intervening as bystanders compared to pre-training self-reports.

But the majority of programs that directly address sexual assault and the aftermath of its cases are interventions, focusing on the problem when all its contributing factors have already reached the point of violent physical and emotional manifestations.

There are broader attitudes that must be changed in order to grasp at the root of campus sexual assaults, and it must begin with men.

Along with current intervention programs and initiatives, we must also challenge harmful notions of masculinity. The UNC Men’s Project is one example of a group taking this approach, though such attitudes should be expanded and practiced by the entire community.

Social constructions of gender teach us there is a rigid binary of roles that we must fill. The parts of our construction of masculinity that contribute to rape culture are the same ones teaching men to be unemotional and aggressively dominant.

Men are taught to be this way, and the rest of society is taught to accept it before students even get to college.

All the factors that might lead to sexual violence stem from complex systems that can involve perpetrators’ personal histories, relationships and other factors that do not completely explain why certain men commit these acts while others do not.

It would be impossible to take the case of any individual man and determine whether he will be a future perpetrator.

Not all those who subscribe to traditional, less healthy notions of masculinity will commit acts of sexual violence, yet we must recognize them as a commonality among cases.

There is no single best approach that will eradicate sexual violence as a whole. Social problems are not and will never be that simple. But the community as a whole — especially men, rather than survivors — has a responsibility to change the attitudes and behaviors that lead to men’s violence against women.

We need to shift our campus climate to promote healthier masculinity, interpersonal relationships and sex practices, and we must be proactive in our methods.