Happy Frosh Week

This past week, I became a full-time student again. This past week, on the very campus on which I have resumed my studies, two sexual assaults occurred, while a third was thwarted. They say they occurred early Friday morning; I happened to be sitting in an 8:30 lecture mere steps from where it all went down, though I had no idea until the following day.

The university has decided to take the following action (quoted directly from the linked article) in the wake of these atrocities:

- effective doubling of York security patrols.
- increasing staffing at Vanier Residence.
- increasing staffing at other residences on campus.
- heightened on-campus presence by the Toronto Police Service.
- postering across campus, reminding students to be vigilant.
- alerts issued through all channels, including Web sites, direct e-mails and ongoing contact with student government and associations.
- on-site counselling for students.

While I recognize the necessity of putting the public on alert while the perpetrators remain at large, and of providing ready access to counselling for anyone who may need it, I'm perturbed by the fact that two women were raped, while another narrowly escaped, though her experience, I imagine, was still horrific. What perturbs me most about what happened is the notion that these need not have happened had we been aware of our rape culture.

So long as this is absent from our collective consciousness, no matter how many perpetrators we incarcerate, no matter how many armed police officers patrol the streets, no matter what the mandatory minimum sentence is, more women will be raped. So long as the Toronto Sun trumpets war while featuring full-page spreads of scantily-clad women, so long as it's easy to consume images and videos of women having semen splattered all over their faces and fists inserted to them vaginally and anally, men will have no problem believing women to be subservient to them.

I don't know what else to say, other than this:

Events like these make me ashamed to be a man; the fact that I feel powerless to stop them makes me feel even worse.