Comments on: Fifth Thought: How (Not) to Play the Hunger Games

By: Barry

Barry — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:07:25 +0000

“It’s really clear that not only have we not made progress as a society in terms of sexual assault, domestic violence and harassment but that we are in an uncontrolled descent towards new depths. ”

I agree with the commenters who disagree – what we’re seeing is that what was formerly called ‘that’s life (suck it up, you deserved it, etc.)’ is being tolerated far less. I’ve seen some blogger make the case that we are in the start of an anti-rape culture social revolution.

By: Alum

Alum — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:00:34 +0000

“The second challenge is that this generation, whatever the quality of their education, is likely to be on average or on balance the first downwardly mobile generation in living memory. We’re involved in that inasmuch as we hope to arbitrage a bit against it, to give our students training and cultural capital that will enable some of them to ride against the tide.”

I couldn’t agree more. And, frankly, this is precisely the reason why the college and its faculty should resist the student demands for the formation of an ethnic studies department and mandatory coursework in ethnic and gender studies. It would be nice if the world was otherwise. But unfortunately a robust understanding of intersectionality isn’t much help in swimming against that tide, at least compared to, say, some basic familiarity with statistical data analysis or the ability to write a concise memo free of academic jargon. Adapting the liberal art’s education for a 21st century world and economy is a massive challenge already. Taking a time machine back to the 1980s to refight the culture wars isn’t a particularly useful approach.

-Swat alum, now a professor at another institution.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:14:47 +0000

That’s really interesting, Sarabeth.

I think we shouldn’t understate the degree to which “more visible” is new, though. I’ve always thought this is one of the subtle points on which social history and cultural history can diverge. Social history says: practices, behaviors, communities, etc. were there all along and then offers evidence to that effect. Cultural history says: but when they’re known or represented in new places or in new ways, something important changes. Of course this is also just continuity v. change, one of the class structuring themes of historical writing. My inclination is still to think that the changed architecture of discourse around these incidents is a significant event.

I’m really interested in whether people in their 20s and teens can work out some very different architecture around privacy, transparency and sexual agency, and whether we older folks can give them the space to imagine something different.

By: Sarabeth

Sarabeth — Sun, 12 May 2013 14:13:30 +0000

I’m a historian of rape (although not primarily in the US), and I’d have to agree with Maria that the narrative of decline doesn’t really fit here. I think much of what we see, instead, is that a huge swath of really nasty unquestioned assumptions about men’s sexual rights over women are being shoved into the spotlight, partly by technological changes–no way that anyone would be talking about the Steubenville case in an age before phone cameras–and partly as a side effect of the increasing entry of sex into public culture more generally. And what we are seeing about the way that our fellow citizens think about the dynamics of sexual consent is really ugly. But it is in not new, it’s just more visible. And in fact, part of this visibility also comes out of the work of a generation of feminists (among whom I include myself) who have had, I think, a bit more success in forcing these conversations that we sometimes are willing to believe, feeling as embattled as we often do.

By: Joey Headset

Joey Headset — Sat, 11 May 2013 02:27:03 +0000

Doesn’t seem like much has changed since I was a student in the late 90s. Speaking generally, college students don’t care about any issue as much as they enjoy making a ton of noise and drawing a ton of attention to themselves. A lot of Swarthmore Activism took the form of “You guys all need to come to our meetings so we can explain why everything you believe is wrong and why everything is your fault.” Your 4th Thought regarding respect is really fulcrum of this matter: you combine old school know-it-allism with the new strain of super-charged entitlement, and you end up with a group of people who are incapable of respecting anybody else.

By: Ben Berger

Ben Berger — Fri, 10 May 2013 23:00:27 +0000

“Proxy battle” is probably the wrong term. He meant more that students were acting on free-floating angst that, in his opinion, had at least as much (or more) to do with the economic uncertainty and downward mobility as it did with any of the outwardly discussed themes.

By: Ben Berger

Ben Berger — Fri, 10 May 2013 22:14:30 +0000

I was talking on the phone today with one of my best friends from graduate school (also a professor) and it’s amazing how similar our conversation was to this post. My friend insisted that much of what’s going on now is a proxy battle for the larger economic uncertainties and nastiness that you mention. If he ever comes to campus I’ll have to introduce you.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Fri, 10 May 2013 20:21:40 +0000

That’s a fair point. I suppose what I meant was that we’re going through a period of grappling with the fact that existing systems meant to protect against or sanction sexual assault have been seriously deficient–that’s happening across many institutions, not just in higher ed. But I also think there’s something to come to grips with in the sorts of reactions surrounding assault that we’ve seen in Steubenville that feels culturally worse to me if not worse in terms of numbers of incidents.

By: Maria Rosales

Maria Rosales — Fri, 10 May 2013 20:09:53 +0000

I have been avidly reading this series. Your thoughtfulness and honesty are compelling. And I am also a professor at a liberal arts school that is dealing with many of the same issues.

But I was brought up short by your comment that domestic violence and sexual assault have gotten worse. Reports of both have been dropping for a while, both in terms of police reports and in anonymous surveys. Also, many fewer people are killed by partners now than in the 1970s, which, since that crime is harder to hide, makes the drop in reports seem based in a real change.

(Domestic violence and sexual assault are both seriously under reported, but the evidence does not suggest they are more under reported now than in the past.)