Submission to The Social Lens: A Social Work Action Blog submitted by Thea Baines, UBC Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office volunteer and 4th year Honours History and International Relations student.
When I started studying at UBC four years ago, I was shocked and disgusted by the overarching and systematic rape culture present on our campus. During Jump Start, instead of getting useful information on consent, safe sex or harm reduction, fraternity parties were pushed (or, more fittingly, plugged) by AMS and AMS-adjacent organizations onto barely-legal teenagers. “You should go, it’ll be fun,” I recall an older student suggesting to me, “just know you might get groped.”
This message projects an idea that women’s bodies and the bodies of non-binary and trans students are inevitably going to be objectified, commodified and subjected to violence. Let us be clear: everyone deserves to feel safe and sovereign in their bodies, regardless of how they dress or where they go. However, by normalizing sexualized violence and seeing unwanted and nonconsensual sexual advances as inevitable and ordinary, this dominant narrative at UBC is exacerbating rape culture.
The anger I experienced as a first year student witnessing this immense disregard for bodily autonomy and self-determination was reinforced when we were isolated by the COVID-19 pandemic in the second semester of my first year of university. As domestic and sexual violence rates climbed across the country and the world, I resolved to find a community on campus where I could put this anger into action on campus. That is how I found the peer program at UBC’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office (SVPRO), a campus resource centre dedicated to combatting sexual violence and supporting survivors.
Here, I was able to educate myself on the intersections of sexual violence, rape culture and other systems of oppression in our society like racism, sexism and capitalism. By reading the incredible works of feminist, critical race and queer theorists, I have come to understand the personal as political. While neoliberal institutions and narratives encourage us to see sexual violence as an individual issue – one that can be solved through individual lifestyle and consumption changes like pepper spray, nail polish and whistles – feminism teaches us to contextualize social issues by understanding them as part of larger social apparatus.
Blatantly, our culture must change. And, because rape culture is perpetuated through language and interactions, we must all change as well. I firmly believe that we have a collective community responsibility to destabilize rape culture and dismantle the oppressive notions that sexual violence is expected or inevitable. Fundamentally, the only way to stop sexual violence and to make people feel safe on campus is to make it unacceptable in our community. Now is the time to call out harmful jokes and oppressive comments. Support and listen to women, nonbinary and trans people in your classes and communities. Educate yourself on consent and encourage your friends and peers to do the same. Don’t support institutions that are notorious for perpetuating rape culture and sexual violence. Better yet, if you are a member of one of these communities (such as so-called “Greek Life”), work to combat the toxic notions of patriarchy, heteronormativity and elitism within your institution that perpetuate sexual violence. Reach out to the abundance of services on campus, like SVPRO or the incredible student-funded AMS SASC for workshops, canvas modules and literature. Finally, and most importantly, overtly and explicitly believe survivors and condemn victim-blaming discourse.
The history of recorded North American anti-violence work starts with the fights of feminist activists in the 1970s and 1980s against systemic misogyny and normalized rape culture. Against a backdrop of increasing neoliberal austerity cutbacks to social services as well as a rising anti-feminist rhetoric of the New Right, activists and workers alike collaborated to start shelters, transition houses and rape crisis centres in cities and rural communities across Canada. It was only through the grassroots work of women, nonbinary and trans people in Canada, and especially the work of IBPOC and queer women, that we even have the vocabulary to define and fight back against sexual violence.
By reframing sexual violence within an explicitly feminist lens, feminist groups across the country began the difficult task of destabilizing patriarchy. Instead of seeing violence within the prescriptions of the government and legal systems which saw “battered wives” as private family issues, feminists publicized the issue, emphasizing the ways in which Canadian institutions, street life and culture perpetuate and normalize violence. This included protesting violent pornographic “snuff” films, advertisements which objectify women, and immigration policies which stopped migrant workers from reporting violence.
Although violence is still a large problem in Canadian society, as it is across the globe, the ferocity of the anti-violence movement in the 1970s and 1980s successfully improved the lives of women, nonbinary and trans people across Canada. Unlike the solutions of the state, which focus on institutionalization, new managerialism and criminalization, feminists inspired a grassroots plea to find inclusive and holistic strategies. In our contemporary society, one which many call post-feminist, we owe it to our predecessors to not give up the struggle. And, importantly, we can continually expand our movement even further into intersectional and transformational notions of justice. This includes ensuring that our movement is not only explicitly feminist, but also anti-racist, anti-colonial and trans-inclusive. The more people included in the movement, the more likely we are to achieve the goals of peace and equity.
By destabilizing the powerful hegemony of rape culture at UBC, we begin to work towards a better, greater society. In a city where poverty itself is a source of immense trauma, carceral and punitive systems of punishment do more harm than good. Instead, we must prefigure a world of transformative justice. We must deprogram and unlearn the misogyny, white supremacy, fatphobia and capitalist narratives that perpetuate rape culture. Additionally, we must address the violence of the state within our conversations about sexual and gender-based violence. This includes dismantling institutionalized violence of local forms of authority which push people – especially women of colour, women with disabilities, and trans women – into the violence of homelessness, addiction and prison.
Luckily, UBC already has an abundance of resources for sexual violence education, prevention and response. UBC SVPRO and AMS SASC are already doing crucial work to address harm and build a culture of consent on our campus. But they cannot do it alone – it is the responsibility of everyone in our community to step up and to say no to rape culture. I truly believe that we can build a better world, a world where everyone is granted the birth right of bodily autonomy. It is not an easy task, but building an accountable, respectful and inclusive community at UBC is a hopeful place to start.
THE SOCIAL LENS: A SOCIAL WORK ACTION BLOG - The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the original author(s) and do not express the views of the UBC School of Social Work and/or the other contributors to the blog. The blog aims to uphold the School's values and mission.
