Sexual Assault On College Campuses

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Sexual assault on college campuses is one of the most prevalent and underreported crimes in the United States. The Department of Justice describes sexual assaults as any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. These behaviors can range from a misdemeanor, like fondling, to a felony, like attempted or completed rape. Typically, but not all the time, women are the victims of sexual assault, while men, not all the time, are the perpetrators. Sociologists would perpetuate the reason of these types of crimes is due to gender stratification. That being an unequal distribution of wealth, power, and privilege between men and women. This inequality is a result from centuries of sexism, patriarchy, and gender socialization. Gender socialization is the attitude that a society links to each sex. The reason for the frequency of sexual assault on campuses is due to these social influences in our ever-changing society. Patriarchy, sexism, and gender socialization are the underlying societal influences that prevent the safety of women on college campuses throughout the United States.
In the 19th century, men claimed the right to use physical discipline against their wives. These included beatings, physical assaults, and sexual assaults. There was no accurate measure of rape and sexual assault between husbands and wives partly because women were “supposed” to please their man, regardless of their opinion or objection. Though these practices are now consider deviant in most places, they are still set in stone in some homes across the United States. In 2007, the National Institute of Justice published one of the most extensive sexual assault studies to date. They took a survey of 5,446 women va...

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...tic or codependent on their man. Another reason these women stay in abusive relationships is because being labeled as a battered woman can be just as toxic as the abuse itself. These labels of being a “battered woman” is an example about why sexual assaults go underreported.
With all the information about sexual assault, it still so underreported and rampant in our society. From the results of patriarchy, sexism, and gender socialization, the stratification of women will never close. The process of telling women not to get raped is a form of victim blaming. Instead of this system, we need to teach men not to rape. It is because of these sociological factors that allow women to be a disenfranchised group compared to men. Once the level of inequality goes down, the rate at which sexual assaults, violence against women, and manipulation of women will go down as well.

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