Earlier this week, a report ran in the New York Times telling us that one out of every four young women in college, including the most illustrious of our colleges, experiences some kind of sexual assault. The actual numbers reported suggested that on quite a few campuses, again including some of the most renowned, the figure was quite a bit higher, exceeding one in three. The violations described, in only rather sanitized detail, spanned the usual spectrum from unwanted touching, to rape.
These numbers are in equal measure astounding, and appalling. They are, as well, less than entirely reliable. They derive from a survey of undergraduates commissioned by the Association of American Universities. The strength of the survey issues from its sheer size: over 150,000 students from 27 universities responded. Its principal weakness is the one common to almost all survey research, a low rate of response. Less than 20% of those to whom the survey was sent completed it. Some analyses suggest that sexual abuses may be less common in the non-responders, insinuating the numbers are inflated. It may also be that in some cases, those most ashamed or disempowered were least inclined to participate, biasing results the other way.
So the numbers in hand are only directionally correct, but that more than suffices. They are staggering enough that the problem is enormous even if a bit smaller than it appears, and dire enough that urgent action is warranted in the absence of a truth even more dire still.
What action? That, it seems, is mostly beyond the purview of the 288-page report. The report was commissioned by universities, and addresses the campus "climate" as it relates to sexual abuse. The New York Times cited commentary by university officials. The implication appears to be that this is a problem of, by, and for our universities. While I welcome them to address this with every effective measure at their disposal, I beg to differ. This is our problem, too. This is a cultural problem.
I searched the entire text of the report itself for the word "culture," and only found it once, in the title of one of the university officials listed in an appendix. I searched the entire text for the word "parent," or "parents," and these did not appear at all.
I am writing to add them to the mix, and with a heated blend of passion and conviction. For I am a parent, of four daughters and one son. I have three daughters at three different American universities right now. This report is about families, and it is- actually or potentially- about my family.
The salient omissions in the Times story, and to a lesser extent the report itself, did not end with parents and culture. They extended to the perpetrators of these violations, on which topic the Times piece was altogether silent. The reality is flagrantly obvious just the same.
The victims of these abuses are, overwhelmingly (although not exclusively) our daughters. The perpetrators of these abuses are, inescapably, our sons. Our kids in college may or may not be reading the New York Times; they are not the intended audience for this story. We are; we parents. The message to us seems clear to me: we need to raise better sons than this.
We are told the dreadfully high percentage of our daughters seemingly subject to this trauma. The unasked, and thus unanswered question for us parents is: what percentage of our sons is implicated in these crimes? Is this just a few miscreants, running amok- a small, widely scattered group of serial abusers? Or, even more ominously, is a comparably high percentage of our sons the perpetrators as our daughters are the victims?
We need to know, and from this report at least, we do not. For now, it is best to assume that every son is vulnerable to so common an impulse, just as every daughter is vulnerable to its violations.
Our daughters need to be vigilant, and prudent. The report indicates clearly that alcohol, and to a lesser extent other drugs, figure often in the volatile mix that culminates in violation. Succumbing to the disinhibiting, incapacitating effects of alcohol or any drug in the company of young men buffeted about by the demands of their surging hormones is akin to putting on blood-laced perfume to swim with sharks in a feeding frenzy. It is egregiously imprudent, and our daughters should be forewarned accordingly.
But they are the victims, prudence or no. Though the relative incapacitation of our daughters, born of youthful imprudence, may aid and abet the abuse, it in no way exonerates it. It does not turn our daughters from victims to vixens. They are victims still.
Our daughters should be forewarned, quite bluntly, and thus forearmed. But it is on the perpetrators of these heinous acts that the full measure of our parental consternation should fall. The ferocity of our disapprobation, and the clarity of our counsel, should be directed at... our sons.
Our sons need to know that while the imperious demands of surging hormones may say much about what they want, they say nothing about what they may take. Our sons need to know that the imprudence of young women does not acquit the infamy of young men.
We, parents, are invited to wend our way through some difficult dialogue. The religious morality that pervades our culture may tend to impose a dangerously dichotomous brand of thinking on our sons, and it falls to us to qualify that dichotomy with a reality check. In a world of only good and evil, perhaps our sons think that what they feel defines them. Perhaps they think that for feeling what they feel, they are different from the "good" sons who feel otherwise. Perhaps they think that if they are catalogued as "bad" for feeling the impulses native to their kind, they are no worse for acting on them. But if they think that, of course, they are wrong.
Their fallacy was concisely, compellingly portrayed to us all in the vivid storytelling of J.K. Rowling. We may all constructively recall Harry Potter's torment at feeling a tug in the direction of the notorious Slytherin House. We may all take a lesson from his surrogate father, Dumbledore, who recognized the turmoil in his young charge, and clarified that it is what we do about what we feel that defines us. J.K. Rowling wisely recognized that Harry's innate goodness needed reassurance in this regard to fulfill its best destiny. Our own sons may be no different.
Nearly all elemental truths cascade through shades of gray. We can feel lust, yet act in a manner that makes us fully worthy of trust. There is no incongruity in it; there is choice. It is choice that defines us all.
We Homo sapiens, whatever may be done or said in protest, are creatures, a part of nature. Despite our capricious, arrogant, speciesistic inclinations to demarcate ourselves from the continuum of life, we are animals. We, too, are subject to the impulses of brute biology, the exigencies engendered by ancient struggles in a world rather red in tooth and claw.
We are just animals, and yet we are indeed rather more. For we are highly evolved animals. We are civilized. The invention of civilization has endowed us with the means, and the memes, to triumph over the tyrranies of brute biology. We have choices.
We can choose to speak with our children about things that are hard to say. We can choose to make explicit the parental expectations and aspirations attendant upon the conduct of our children. We can choose to teach that the impulses of biology do not make us good or bad, they just make us human.
The unwelcome hands of some of our sons upon some of our daughters redound to the shame of parent and child alike; they redound to the shame and violation of us all, and the prevailing deficiencies in our culture, and capacity for difficult dialogue. The appalling numbers in this report tell us this malignancy is culture-wide, and thus, we are complicit in it- if only for our omissions, rather than commissions. If only for leaving to cower in shadow uncomfortable truths that are best disinfected with a bright dose of daylight.
There may well be duties in these data for university officials. But there are duties in them for parents, too. The victims are, inescapably, our daughters. The report is shockingly silent on the fact that the perpetrators are, inevitably, our sons.
Fellow parents, we have choices. We can choose dialogue over diffidence. We can choose to make our expectations explicitly clear, rather than hope they were implicit. We can be honest with our children about the impulses to which our kind is natively subject, and the mastery over them required by the ideals that matter most: decency, and honor.
Fellow, parents, we can choose to raise safer daughters. We can choose to raise...better sons.
-fin
Director, Yale University Prevention Research Center; Griffin Hospital
President, American College of Lifestyle Medicine
Founder, The True Health Coalition
Author: Disease Proof