Sexual Assault Awareness Month: going from passive to active

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Sam Carlson
  • 436th Maintenance Squadron
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. --  "For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens" reported the 1964 New York Times article entitled 'Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police.'

The article then went on to detail the events of that night back in 1964 when Kitty Genovese, a 28 year old bar manager in Queens, New York, was brutally stabbed to death and then raped by Winston Moseley right outside of her apartment complex. Reports claimed that as many as 38 witnesses either heard or saw portions of the attacks from their windows above the street where Genovese lay dying, but none of them did anything.

"I didn't want to get involved" stated one of the witnesses. This lack of action on the part of the witnesses led to numerous psychological studies on what has come to be known as the 'bystander effect.' Basically, this social phenomenon states that the more people who witness an injustice occurring, the less likely it is that anyone will step in and do something about it.

Now I understand that this is a very extreme case, and many of us would swear to take action if we were to witness a scene like this, but it's also important to understand that this effect can be extrapolated into almost any facet of our society today.

Take for example, sexual harassment in the workplace. While perhaps less extreme than witnessing a murder, sexual harassment is an everyday occurrence in our culture. We have to understand that in order for sexism and harassment in the workplace or amongst our peers to be stopped, we cannot be passive witnesses. We have to be able to stand up and speak out against it.

What we need to start focusing on is how we can change the social norms in the male culture to breed intolerance for this sort of behavior. If it were commonly perceived as wrong or unacceptable for men to talk about or treat women in a diminutive manner, then it would become less and less acceptable for men to act and talk this way.

One basic principle that is essential in enacting this change is for us to realize sexual harassment, sexual assault and even rape are not individual issues. When we take a look at what kind of culture is producing men who find these things to be commonplace or even acceptable, we will gain a better understanding of how we can go about changing the culture in a way that results in changed attitudes in regards to these issues.

We need to look at where we get our ideas of what is considered 'manly' or 'macho.' When we look at the media where sexually explicit advertisements in which men's domination over sexually submissive women has become considered 'sexy,' where rap and hip-hop artists habitually degrade and dehumanize women, lyrically turning them into sex objects to be abused and discarded, we may start to reconsider what aspects of our society need to be reevaluated and perhaps eliminated from our lives.

What we may not realize subconsciously, is that this culture that we are living in, that we are raising our families in, that we are buying into on a daily basis, may not be the culture that we want to raise our daughters in, that we want to subject out impressionable young sons to, that we hypocritically renounce when it comes to those we care about, but that we are actually submerging ourselves in every chance we get.

When we do start to realize these things, we begin to see just how important it is that we not stand passively by while we facilitate others involvement in similar activities, but that we act. And we act aggressively.

If we are going to attempt to change the social norms that we are a part of, it's also important to realize just how profound our influence can be. When we take into consideration how powerfully influenced our friends and coworkers are by what they think that their peers expect, it's easy to see how we can change those norms. If we refuse to tolerate sexist attitudes and behaviors, if we stand up when we see something is wrong, if we actively speak out against sexual harassment and sexual assault, it becomes more obvious to our peers that they are in an environment where they cannot get away with saying and doing these things. We become not passive bystanders, but active bystanders.