Last week Professor Thomas L. Dumm wrote an article for The Amherst Student entitled “The Elephant in the Room,” concerning the Special Oversight Committee on Sexual Misconduct at Amherst and their questionable exclusion of the intersection between athletics and sexual respect issues on campus in their official report on sexual respect released recently. As per usual, the comment board on The Student website quickly overflowed with spewed vitriol and poorly thought out, overly simplistic criticisms. Another day, another superficial and ultimately meaningless dialogue about an important issue.
Responses on the board include statements such as, “This guy is the professor who would stereotype athletes in his class as not good students when almost 40 percent of the school body is on a varsity sports team,” a claim the author has no grounds for. “I would also tell you that a disproportionate number of investment bankers, management consultants, corporate executives and probably doctors were also athletes in college,” which implies that somehow being in a position of power and having social capital somehow equates to having superior morals and therefore being less likely to commit sexual assaults. “Girls tend to be more relaxed and friendly with athletes because they’re more attractive and personable,” which blames females for venturing into athletes’ dorm rooms and finding athletes attractive, rather than looking at the systems of privilege that put men, and often athletes as well, in a position of power and allow them greater opportunity to engage in sexual assault. This all isn’t even to mention the numerous statements which essentially argue that Amherst students are too intelligent and morally superior to rape. Apparently, I did not know that performing well on the SAT makes someone a better person. Great job, Amherst.
Students at this college continue to act out of personal defense more than anything else; as soon as Professor Dumm even opens up the idea that maybe we should even consider looking into how athletics relates to sexual respect, students feel personally attacked and retort, ignorantly, by over-simplifying the contrarian position and claiming that Professor Dumm was generalizing about student athletes. This is despite the fact that he at no point makes any statement judging the actions of athletes on this campus at all. He may imply that there is an increased likelihood of an athlete committing sexual assault, but never argues that a majority of athletes have been involved in sexual assault cases or that there is necessarily any guaranteed evidence of a relationship at all.
Maleness and masculinity, not simply deviance, are systems of privilege that lead to discrimination and rape, and by extension, athletics plays a role in masculinity and thus discrimination. Blaming only those who commit sexual assault and labeling them deviant is highly individualist and de-values the role of societal systems of cultural privilege; it favors the “I” and the “me” and not the “we.” Groups are meaningful social structures, and as members of a group, this is something athletes, and in particular male athletes, need to take own-ness for. Athletes are historically privileged in the US, and that carries with it implications that athletes need to be aware of, regardless of what they personally have or have not done, or whether there is even any statistical connection between sexual assault and athletics at all.
The typical response to this claim is that students who stereotype athletes, or males, are victimizing them and essentially reverse discriminating, thereby committing the same sin as misogyny. However, again, this operates under the idea that stigmatization is always the same. Stereotyping males, or male athletes, as misogynists is wrong and amounts to oversimplification, but it is not, and it cannot, be the same thing as calling a woman a “slut.” Maleness is a privilege as a rule. The same is true for athletics, which is privileged on most, if not all, college campuses and in society as a whole.
When people complain about black comedians making fun of white people in an attempt to show a sort of double standard with respect to racial jokes, they fail to see that there is no system of humor that has served for hundreds of years to oppress whites. They are not the same; blacks can then be racist, but it is not the same thing as white racism. Likewise, claims about reverse discrimination with respect to affirmative action are red herrings; reverse discrimination it may be, but reverse discrimination acts to lift people up to an equal status, not to push already oppressed people down. Thus, stereotyping athletes as rapists is horrible, but it is not the same thing as blaming women, for instance, for wearing revealing clothing, and this is something athletes who feel attacked by Professor Dumm’s statements need to understand.
Therefore, when I hear a male complain that they are being oppressed by the student protestors, a claim I have heard a good few times by multiple people, I do not, as a male, feel comfortable. It reflects a lack of understanding of privilege. It reflects a belief in the “me” and concern only on the actions of specific individuals rather than what those actions represent and the larger cultural, social systems which allow those actions in the first place. A student protestor held up a sign last semester that referenced an attack, followed by one of the attacker’s teammates saying, “Why are you such a slut?” to the victim. I hear people criticizing this statement often, but not the system of privilege that allows for it. This individual was not alone in his statement; he did not just say it because he was insensitive or deviant, but because he is a member of cultures which encourage these factors. So too am I, so even if I did not make that comment, I still have a responsibility to acknowledge the role our shared “maleness” played in this comment. This is not to de-emphasize those who actually do commit more specific sexual disrespect violations, but every male needs to acknowledge that their maleness places them in a group that is statistically more likely to commit rape, and they need to understand the implications of this statement. So to do athletes, even if most athletes have never sexually disrespected anyone, or at least think they have not.
There are statistics that suggest some relationship between athletic participation and sexual assault, and maleness is certainly linked. This does not mean athletes are worse people than non-athletes or that athletes are innately less understanding. If students, whether athletes or not, feel the discussion is heading in this direction, they should step up and present their perspective. However, their perspective should not be a desire to see this discussion dropped entirely; wanting to hush discussion on this issue only confirms the very need to discuss it in the first place. What students can and should do is talk about the role of athletics and sexual assault in an attempt to understand all sides of the issue. After all, if you are an athlete and you feel students are stereotyping you, you are not going to convince them they are wrong by trying to stop them from talking about sexual assault. What you can do is get to know the other side, form a working relationship with a wide variety of students and come to understand why any student who generalizes about athletes does so and hope to change their mind. Let them know that many athletes can and do understand issues of sexual assault, but part of this understanding is letting those protesting the campus and its reaction to sexual assault have a voice that needs to be heard an can teach us something that we all need to learn. Part of understanding and respecting this issue is understanding the other viewpoint, and we cannot and will never be able to do so without listening to complaints like Professor Dumm’s about athletics and sexual respect and taking action on them.
Which brings me back to the comment about dividing the community at Amherst. Yes, dividing Amherst is not good; this is a time for us to come together. However, if the discussion continues as is, most students will not really know why they are coming together. Sometimes a finger needs to be pointed at a system of privilege in order to inform those who subscribe to it, knowingly or unknowingly, the problems with that privilege. If students were to come together without really knowing what the victims of sexual assault are feeling, the togetherness they would advocate would be false and would accomplish little, which is more or less what has been happening over the past few months.
Blaming only those who commit sexual assault and labeling them deviant is highly individualist and de-values the role of societal systems of cultural privilege; it favors the “I” and the “me” and not the “we.”
Sorry, I'm not buying it. I understand your point about cultural context of sex crimes, but to suggest that the people who actually commit crimes aren't really worse than the people who that one time laughed at the sexist joke is absurd. Same with your 'if you're privileged or part of a privileged group, you shouldn't feel uneasy about stereotyping.' That shows a remarkable lack of understanding of how people actually experience life--not on the macro level (where yeah, absolutely men have disproportionate everything, no argument here) but on smaller micro-political levels, where it's entirely possible for a member of a privileged group to legitimately be oppressed.
Secondly: A lot of people aren't pissed at Dumm because they're blinded by privilege, it's because he either didn't understand the studies he cited,or because he didn't care that they don't bear out his point.
Finally, for someone so tied into identity politics, you might want to consider the fact that maybe some people are reacting negatively to crap like Dumm's because, inasmuch "athletes" is sometimes used to code for "strong and traditionally masculine black males," it's playing into a racialized system which is part and parcel of false rape accusations and lynchings against blacks. But you're too busy flagellating yourself for having a Y chromosome to notice that.
This is the real culprit that the politically correct universities never touch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4zSRkBMPng
Your second quoted statement "if you're privileged or part of a privileged group, you shouldn't feel uneasy..." isn't even from his article. Where did you pull that from?
Your point on the macro versus micro levels of experiencing life is irrelevant: Everyone experiences little discriminations here and there. But by and large, the macro serves the white, male, educated, American, English-speaking, athletic population, and that is what our discussion is about.
Your last point about "athletes" as suggesting "strong and traditionally masculine black males" is completely off the point. I do not believe that people actually summon that image to their minds when they hear that word, especially not on this campus.
Boom.
"Finally, for someone so tied into identity politics, you might want to consider the fact that maybe some people are reacting negatively to crap like Dumm's because, inasmuch "athletes" is sometimes used to code for "strong and traditionally masculine black males," it's playing into a racialized system which is part and parcel of false rape accusations and lynchings against blacks. But you're too busy flagellating yourself for having a Y chromosome to notice that."
C'mon. I think we all know that the image of an athlete on the Amherst campus is not that of a black male. You know very well that the athlete on this campus is a wealthy, white, private-schooled male. This is why you are so angry, because it's not about the "blacks". This is in fact, a racialized issue, but as I hope you know, race politics are not limited to black students on this campus. Let's not forget the issue here.
You must currently have, and are going to have a very long and disappointing life if you continue to:
1. Blame others for your problems.
2. Demonize half the global population "maleness... leads to discrimination and rape."
3. Also, there are no careers in feminist propaganda.
Do you know what leads to rape? Rapists, not half the worlds population. Grow up.
Rapists are not what leads to rape. Rapists are people who conduct a crime that is essentially a social product. It is superficial to isolate the society in general from individuals who are implicated in social behaviors. Rapists do not just jump out of no where. They are inevitably influenced by social privileging systems that is propelled and perpetuated by groups in power. Rather than asking the author to grow up, why not asking yourself to step out of your little comfy "me" world a bit and see what is going on in the community that you are part of?
Do you know what leads to rape? Rapists and those who condone their actions. Rapists are going to rape no matter how much we try to "educate" them about consent. The only thing that is going to stop them is society--their friends, peers, employers, etc, actually ostracizing them for their actions--making it socially unacceptable to rape. That's why we're all involved. We (everyone) are all complicit in condoning rape by not being aware of why it happens and how we can help stop it.
Also, anonymous personal attacks are lame.
Its nice to know my 3 year old daughter is going into life with so many accommodations and excuses made for her, that she can literally do whatever she pleases and still be seen as the victim. Too bad my 6 year old sun will have to be the one to shoulder the burden for such special treatment.
The problem with all this new-wave feminism is it inherently finds all the fault to be with men, regardless of the scenario or circumstances. Normally id just brush it off and call them a bunch of fools. Afterall, i'm a women who stands to reap the benefits of this and i dont intellectually agree with anything they have to say. Plus, most men can manage to defend themselves from it, right? But than i realized how damaging this must be to my son... To grow up in a world where he is not only seen as guilty before proven innocent should an issue arise... but seen as guilty before any incident even occurs.
In the 60's and 70's women did have to deal with negative per-conceived notions that put them, emotionally and educationally, at a disadvantage(born to be home makers and, professionally, at best secretaries) but that is *NOTHING* compared to what boys grow up with now a days.
Being trained and molded to be mother and house wife 40 years ago > accusations of being a rapist simply for having a penis today. Every other member of our society(women, africans, gays, athiests, etc...) has advanced as far as rights and stereotypes go.
This comment demonstrates exactly the lack of understanding of the idea of privilege the article speaks of. Is it wrong to call every man a rapist? Certainly. Is it worse to call every woman a slut? I believe so. The key difference is that the two sexes are not, and have historically never been, on equal footing. Therefore one comment attacks a section of society that has been systematically favored, and the second attacks the section that has been systematically oppressed. Neither should be condoned, but the latter has a greater effect than the former.
In summary, I think your son will be alright, or at least better of than the women whose struggles you brushed off as nothing.
PS: Jake, thank you for writing this thoughtful response.
"a section of society that has been systematically favored, and the second attacks the section that has been systematically oppressed."
Ah, right, you mean the top 5% of males who have throughout history always gotten everything - including multiple wives, power, position. For the 95% of remaining males, historically the day-to-day realities of being "systematically favored" have been, among others:
1. Expected to put their lives at risk to protect women, even strangers
2. Expected to fight and die in meaningless wars started by the ambitions of the top 5%
3. Being valued for their accomplishments, and not for their inherent value as human beings
4. Being given the right to own their wives as "chattel", but with the caveat that their families own them as beasts of burden.
Indeed, systematically favored indeed!
This just proves what the author is trying to say: how obsessed the majority of people are with their "me" "I" world. This is not a case about your 6-year-old son, or any specific man, of males as a group in general. It is essentially about the social systems that perpetuate the conventional hierarchy. Feminists are not trying to point their fingers at someone and vent their anger. The criticism is not for finding a scapegoat, it is about evoking awareness about the essential fault of this system, whose colonizing influence should be resisted with every effort of our consciousness.
"Blaming only those who commit sexual assault and labeling them deviant is highly individualist and de-values the role of societal systems of cultural privilege;"
How many days at prison will you get for every rape committed by a male?
Anon alum, are you really suggesting that Dumm's article lays the foundations for racist thought at Amherst? He wanted the committee to do more research on a particular subculture at Amherst. That's it. No conspiracy theories there.
--> "inasmuch "athletes" is sometimes used to code for "strong and traditionally masculine black males," it's playing into a racialized system which is part and parcel of false rape accusations and lynchings against blacks. "
"Students at this college continue to act out of personal defense more than anything else; as soon as Professor Dumm even opens up the idea that maybe we should even consider looking into how athletics relates to sexual respect, students feel personally attacked and retort, ignorantly, by over-simplifying the contrarian position and claiming that Professor Dumm was generalizing about student athletes. "
Could not have said it better myself. That's exactly what I got out of the "discussion" on the comments of Dumm's article.
I'm a male. I don't rape. Not all males are rapists. Jesus. I hate this male-blame game.
Did you even read the opening few paragraphs? Paragraph three: Jake states, "Students at this college continue to act out of personal defense more than anything else; as soon as Professor Dumm even opens up the idea that maybe we should even consider looking into how athletics relates to sexual respect, students feel personally attacked and retort, ignorantly, by over-simplifying the contrarian position and claiming that Professor Dumm was generalizing about student athletes."
In case you didn't notice, you just made yourself an example of that exact reaction. I suggest you go to the people who actually know something about these issues and ask them for insight. Swallow your pride, try to see how little you actually understand, and ask someone lese for help. Thank me later.
I thought this was a really thoughtful reflection, and an important one.
"There are statistics that suggest some relationship between athletic participation and sexual assault. . ." Oh, you mean the misleading "science" that Dumm mentioned in his article? The science that, as Professor Hunt points out in her article today (/?q=article/2013/02/20/woolly-mammoth-r...), is either outdated and flawed or comes to conclusions completely at odds with Dumm's description?
.
". . . and maleness is certainly linked." BREAKING NEWS: Rape is linked to maleness. This is a truly groundbreaking discovery.
YES: "Sometimes a finger needs to be pointed at a system of privilege in order to inform those who subscribe to it, knowingly or unknowingly, the problems with that privilege. If students were to come together without really knowing what the victims of sexual assault are feeling, the togetherness they would advocate would be false and would accomplish little, WHICH IS MORE OR LESS WHAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING over the past few months."
Thank you so much for writing this, Jake!
The occurrence of rape is considered to be completely the fault of the male, not aware that sexual offenses are perpetrated by many segments of the population. Seeking to only target males for this crime is tantamount to racially profiling minorities. Justifying victimization because of a belief that these people are privileged fails to see that any sort of accusation of sexual violence leads to filing criminal charges. At that point, society has guaranteed the accused a fair trial, through which the prosecutor will seek to prove the still-innocent accused party guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. Adding in these measures of mistaken social justice corrupt our justice system and our laws by inserting ideas into our consciousness about this or that person being guilty, because of how they seem to be, instead of actually objectively analyzing the situation at hand.
Another naive statement by the above author is his desire to justify victimizing behaviors against a previously victimizing group. If the latter had ceased said actions because they understood them to be wrong, why allow the former to continue engaging in such a behavior? The fact that one be a victim, a previous victim, a victimizer, or any other person should not excuse the person from engaging in a victimizing attitude. If something is categorically wrong, and recognized as such, it should be held to be categorically wrong in any situation.
The last point I woudl touch upon is the author's unfounded statement that maleness inherently leads to violence. Taking domestic violence as an example of gendered violence, we see that over 40% of males are themselves the target of domestic violence. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims-domestic-violence) Although I recognize this is a simplification of things, it does point out that violence is not inherently attached to any gender, but rather that any person can be both an instigator and a victim of violence.
Thank you for such a thoughtful response. A recognition of one's own privilege is something that is sorely lacking at Amherst. Acknowledging a position of power does not seek to blame the privileged, but rather make us all more aware of the consequences of our actions-and furthermore, acknowledging injustices within the system is a much more productive way of addressing the problems with sexual politics (at Amherst and any other American college or university) than trying to isolate individuals as the cause. As a varsity athlete at Amherst, I would support yor assertion that athletes felt immense entitlement and privilege at Amherst, and more self-awareness of this position of privilege would not only aid in the fight against sexual violence, but would perhaps help bridge the gap between athletes and non-athletes as a whole, as well.
Thank you, Jake, for writing such a thoughtful article. You've articulated exactly how I feel about the outcry against Professor Dumm's article. Many students at Amherst spend far too much time enjoying the fruits of their privilege and are unwilling to acknowledge that they are part of a culture that perpetuates rape and victim silencing, whether or not they themselves have committed rape. The anger against Professor Dumm seems symptomatic of a larger tendency to defend the status of the privileged majority.
I'm studying abroad currently and very grateful for the break from last semester's oh so stressful series of events, but I'm glad that conversation and actions are continuing. Thank you for writing this article, it means a lot to hear someone acknowledge 'out loud' how blinding privilege can be.
I would encourage everyone, no matter their gender/sex to think of another trait they have that places them in the privileged population. For example, being physically able is a tremendous privilege that is often overlooked, and at Amherst, we are all very mentally, intellectually, and educationally equipped. How has this particular privilege affected your life and opportunities? What inconveniences do people with out this privilege face on a daily basis? Even if you think you haven't negatively affected people without that privilege, I promise you have at some point. It doesn't mean that you did anything on purpose, but it does call you to notice how privilege affects you (and how your unprivileged traits affect you, too).
How about we consider this... and I quote:
"The research is quite convincing that the vast majority of rapes are committed by men who are serial offenders. There is considerable evidence from community-based research and from sex offender management research that these serial offenders begin their offending behavior during adolescence and that it becomes a continuing pattern of predatory behavior into adulthood. While this research has been “out there” and accumulating for many years, even decades, it is only recently that data have been pointing to the same phenomena in college environments.
These data paint a picture of sexual violence in college communities that is at variance with what many people believe, including many people who are working hard at preventing such violence. To give an example of some of the implications, consider this. The data suggest that approximately 60% of college rapists are serial offenders, and that on average they commit six rapes. This would mean that if you had 100 rapists on a campus, they would have committed 60 x 6 + 40 x 1 rapes, or 400 rapes during their college careers. Of those 400 rapes, 360 (90%) would have been committed by serial rapists.
There are significant prevention implications here. For we can be quite confident that the behavior of those 60 serial rapists cannot be changed by outreach or education. As we learn more and more about them, we learn that they look very much like sex offenders that we have been dealing with in our criminal justice system and in our sex offender management programs for many decades."
- Dr. Lisak, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and director of the Men’s Sexual Trauma Research Project
Meanwhile...someone tell Leane to sit down...and the other 10 people, who must have read every other word in order to blatantly miss the well put points Jake made, can join her.
Jared: Right. We can't change individual rapists. What we need to change are the systems (rape culture, patriarchy, etc.) that support them. We're all complicit in upholding these systems, which is why we need to examine our privilege in order to begin dismantling them and thus taking away from rapists the social license to operate.
By the way, here's a great piece on rape culture: http://www.shakesville.com/2009/10/rape-culture-101.html I'm sure we can imagine the specific ways it manifests on college campuses too.
Thank you so much for this. As an alum who lived through more incidents of sexual harassment and two incidents of sexual assault in my years at Amherst, thanks Jake for writing in support of Professor Dumm's article - which, really, articulated such a simple and basic request, and identified what is truly a wounded sense of privilege amongst current and former students, faculty, and staff.
Seriously, the only privilege that I felt was wounded by Dumm's piece was the privilege of knowing my tuition dollars went to professors who upheld minimum standards of intellectual honesty in making their arguments.
But apparently the fact Dumm violently assaulted the standards of academic proof doesn't matter when he says what you want to hear.
News flash - everyone at Amherst is in fact privileged relative to most of the U.S. population. Just saying.
Professor Hunt says, the SOCSMA studied every rape complaint made over the past ten years before concluding that student affiliation didn't matter. Where's the data? The committee's failure to publish their results (while persistently citing them as a defense) is raising more questions than it answers.
Amicus, what kind of "data" do you want published? Clearly there is a concern of victim privacy that means any "data" published would have to be devoid of any personal details or identifying data to the point of being uselss- it would be hardly the "proof" that you would want to disprove you conspiracy theory. If you won't believe the committee's statements, and its unethical to show you any sort of original data, then what would satisfy you? I feel like this is the conundrum of the birthier movement all over again.
For me, this is not a "thoughtful reflection". It is only "thoughtful" in the sense that it regurgitates typical leftist-Marxist rhetoric about privilege and systems of oppressions. The heavily SWPL culture at Amherst of course applauds such brilliant attempts at self-flagellation. But I do not, and I suspect many others don't - it is only that they are afraid to share their views, because most of the establishment at Amherst, their incompetence and past failures at dealing with sexual assault notwithstanding, subscribes to such thinking.
The reason I am not sympathetic to such rhetoric is because it is as bit as discriminatory as their self-confessed opponents - racists, sexists, etc. It paints everyone with the same broad brush, although the realities are often vastly different. You think every single male has benefited from "male privilege"? Ask the effeminate male who has been bullied since he was little. Perhaps the top 1-5% have benefited from such privilege. For the rest, the benefits are so small compared to other facts about their socioeconomic conditions that it is not only ineffective, but possibly offensive, to point out to them that they have "male privilege".
And of course Walters' kind of rhetoric ignores the often all-too-real-but-ignored flip side of male privilege: female privilege. A homeless woman arises more sympathy than a homeless man. An injured girl incites more calls to action than an injured male. The death of a woman is an outrage to both men and women. The death of a man is a matter of course. Of course, feminists and Walters would no doubt point to these realities as evidence of "benevolent sexism". So even when men are disadvantaged, it's men's fault, and so we have to condemn men even more. What great logic.