Christina VarvisI’m sure you’ve all heard by now of the infamous Daryush Valizadeh, or “Roosh V,” who offended the world last week by trying to host an international meet-up for his anti-feminist, “neomasculine” dickhead cult. In his blog, which he advocates as a “safe-space” for men (finally, a place where men can be free of all of their oppression), he writes about legalizing rape if done on private property or how “a woman’s value significantly depends on her fertility and beauty.”
My ears were metaphorically bleeding after hearing about all of this — half because it’s shocking to know that these sort of people really do exist, and half because I immediately heard the thousands of ancestry screams of those who earned my right to vote. Also, I don’t care how fertile or beautiful one would call me, I know I’m worth the whole damn lot.
Valizadeh’s values made me think about sexual assault issues currently in the media and the existence of pro-rape culture — thoughts emerged such as “Why is there a culture for pro-rape?” and “seriously what the fuck?”
Last week was Sexual Assault Awareness week on campus. The U of A’s Sexual Assault Centre provided students with information on sexual assault prevention and education, as well as a bystander intervention workshop. There was also free popcorn and buttons.
“I think establishing as a culture of consent and talking about rape culture goes hand in hand with talking about sexual assault,” says SU President, Nanveet Khinda. “It’s really important to talk about consent because we just don’t. We don’t know how to talk to each other as human beings and that causes a lot of problems.”
The moral of this is that there shouldn’t be such a thing as a “pro-rape” culture. At last year’s Coachella, the photo of a man wearing a shirt saying “Eat Sleep Rape Repeat” went viral. First of all, who let you bring your horrendous graphic tee while you’re at Coachella, where your wardrobe should consist strictly of fringe, suede and boho-chic? And second, you do not deserve to be even remotely in the same vicinity as Beyoncé, Florence Welch, or anyone for that matter, scalding the eyes of the public with your pro-rape shirt. You can pro-fuck-right-off with that attitude.
The Sexual Assault Centre on campus offers a lot of services such as counselling, workshops and information on what to do if someone discloses to you.
“From my experience with the system and unfortunately, from my friends who have gone through it, the way our university handles these cases is actually quite good,” says Khinda. “It really positions us to be leaders and how we address this topic in a healthy way because I think a lot of universities struggle with it and they don’t want it to affect their reputation. We just need to get past that. That’s just not a good enough reason to not protect students.”
The Sexual Assault Centre is located in the Student’s Union building in room 2-705. You can contact them by email at [email protected] or by phone at 780-492-9771.
