ANY INDIVIDUAL CAN BE VULNERABLE TO SEXUAL ASSAULT

Sexual assault can take several shapes, and have a number of effects on a victim, an advocate told a crowd of 30-40 people gathered in the MHCC Student Union in late April.

“It can include unwanted attention, it can be emotional, it can also be physical,” said Jenna Harper, prevention/education program manager for the Sexual Assault Resource Center (SARC) of Oregon.

Harper’s appearance on April 26 came as Mt. Hood recognized Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

She discussed sexual violence, which doesn’t always involve physical contact. “There’s things like public masturbation – which isn’t necessarily one person touching another person, but it is a form of sexual violence,” she explained. That runs counter to incest or violent spousal abuse, “all of those things are parts of sexual violence that include touching.”

More examples of nonphysical violence include actions like coercion and intimidation against someone.

“When we talk about sexual assault, a lot of times people think of, like, this really violent attack (and) that there’s a weapon present. But, more often we see coercion, and we see intimidation,” Harper said. Pressuring someone into performing sexual acts are such examples. Wearing someone down; guilting someone: “If you loved me, if you really cared about me, you would do this with me,” she said, describing one such tactic.

“Those can be very explicit threats, like ‘I’m going to have the kids taken away from you. I’m going to hurt the kids,’” she said. “Sometimes (those threats) can be actually said, but sometimes they can be a little bit more implicit.”

Verbal harassment is a prevalent form of abuse, said Harper. Women are often “slut-shamed” or put down because of the number of sexual partners they had, or simply because of the way they dress.

Falling victim to harassment isn’t limited to cisgender women, according to Harper. In fact, transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals fall victim much more often. “When you look at people intersectionally, people who have multiple identities and if you’re, for example, a person of color who’s also queer and you’re not a man – whether you’re trans or you’re not binary or you’re a woman – your chances of experience of sexual violence go up,” Harper said. “There’s a word we have for this: It’s called oppression.”

Harper then listed some numbers from a survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Oregon, the data show that 33 percent of multiracial women experience rape, followed by 27 percent of Alaskan and Native American women; then, 22 percent of black women, followed by 19 percent of white women, 15 percent of Hispanic and 9.5 percent of Asian women, said Harper.

Advocates can “take a look at some of these numbers and think maybe some of them are a little low because of the cultural differences and (work on) being able to talk about this and being open to talking about this,” she said.

Ultimately, Harper said that oppression in all forms happens to vulnerable populations who are marginalized in society.

She followed with a brief explanation of the #MeToo phenomenon, and that topic led to discussion of the recent van-vs.-pedestrians attack in Toronto. An individual who was not sexually active felt that he was owed sex by women, and constant rejection made him take revenge by driving a van into numerous women on foot.

Discussion of the “incel” (involuntary celibate) community went on for a while.

The root cause of sexual violence is entitlement, Harper explained. Perpetrators commit sexual violence because they feel they are entitled to sex. It’s a result of “saying that if you want it, you can take it because you deserve it,” she said. “And there are certain people who feel that way in our society more so than others.”

Harper described ways to make the sexual experience more fulfilling (and safe). Mainly, she said that it’s important to simply talk about it with partner(s).

“We should learn how to talk to each other: Does this feel good, do you like that? May I? Are you okay with this, could we talk about this first?” she said.

“For a lot us, it’s awkward. We need to learn it. We need to work on it, (and) we need to teach youth to learn it.”

Advocate Staff