Madison Shumway
Life Editor
Clayton Koff
Staff Writer
Last week, Bengals donned denim in support of sexual assault survivors.
For the past four years, activists at ISU have hosted an event commemorating Denim Day, which takes place in response to a high-profile sexual assault case that involved blaming the victim for wearing tight jeans. This year, the awareness-oriented event featured speakers and jean pockets for attendees to decorate.
The event, which fell during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, rounded off a school year characterized by a collective conversation about sexual violence. The #MeToo movement, named after a hashtag that reached explosive popularity on social media platforms, began sparking discussions about sexual assault and harassment in October 2017.
“We knew it existed,” said Tera Joy Cole, an ISU English lecturer whose recent short story explores the normalization of sexual violence. “We weren’t in denial of its existence. But when a social movement begins, it forces us to look at what’s going on there.”
In November, the Department of Political Science hosted a panel discussion and screening of an episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which navigates themes of sexual assault. December featured the week-long Surviving Voices event series with a keynote speech by activist and sexual violence survivor Elizabeth Smart.
The momentum continued in 2018. In January, ISU’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee hosted Sexual Assault Awareness Week, during which activist and survivor Brenda Tracy spoke the day after a March Against Sexual Assault. The week’s events also included Green Dot training, the informational forum Sex in the Dark and commemorative tennis and basketball games.
“It just so happened that all of this stuff was coming up in the news,” organizer Jen McCaw told The Bengal in January. “It really adds to the importance of our awareness week, I think. We didn’t plan for it to be like this, but it’s a hot topic.”
On January 25, Tracy, who survived a 1998 sexual assault by college football players, told her harrowing story to a room full of student-athletes who were mandated to attend. Tracy, who is also the leader of the #SetTheExpectation Twitter movement, shares her experience at universities across the country to change campus culture and create an atmosphere where sexual assault will not be tolerated.
“I can rationalize rapists,” Tracy said earlier this year. “I can’t rationalize good people doing nothing and still having the nerve to call themselves good people. The truth is 98 percent of sexual assaults are committed by men, but only 10 percent of males will commit sexual assault. That means 90 percent of men are good people. I’m not here to tell you the 90 percent is the problem. I’m here to tell you they are the solution, and to hold the 10 percent responsible.”
The activist further emphasized her belief that men’s participation makes up an integral part of solving the problem of sexual assault.
“If women [alone] could solve this problem, we would have done it a long time ago,” she said.
Smart visited campus in December during a week of events addressing violence against women.
Surviving Voices, the year’s best-attended campus response to sexual violence, occurred in the midst of the #MeToo movement, and organizers embraced the timing.
“#MeToo helped us emphasize the message,” said Malliga Och, a global studies assistant professor who organized the week of events with her friend and colleague Betsy Brunner. “It was a happy coincidence that #MeToo started happening around the same time we wanted to have the event.”
The week’s slate of events included a screening of the sex-trafficking documentary “In Plain Sight,” a talk by international women’s rights expert Christine Hart, performances by dance and theatre students and a keynote address by Smart, whose renown helped validate the #MeToo movement in the Pocatello setting, Brunner said.
“Her embrace of the movement really gave further credence to it, especially in this community,” said Brunner, an assistant professor in the Communication, Media & Persuasion department.
The week of events, aimed at raising awareness of sexual and domestic violence and promoting resources for survivors, invited participants to share their own experiences with violence. A hands-on activity inspired by the Clothesline Project allowed attendees to write their stories on t-shirts, which were then displayed.
During the Q-and-A portion of Smart’s address, several audience members spoke to a full auditorium of past traumas, some sharing stories for the first time.
“I think it’s important not to force the message upon students or upon the community, but give them the space to come to their own conclusions,” Och said.
Though the organizers have not yet formulated definite future plans, they agree that Surviving Voices, and the broader sexual violence awareness movement, needs to maintain momentum.
“It needs to be consistent and persistent,” Brunner said.
The Intermountain Gender & Sexuality Conference, held April 12 and 13, provided another setting for discussions related to sexual violence. Presentations on sexual harassment within the video game industry and the sexual objectification of women in advertisements, for example, explored under-recognized forms of sexual violence.
Tera Joy Cole’s presentation, titled “You, Too: Pervasiveness and Normativity at Odds in the #MeToo Movement,” explored the seemingly universal female experience of sexual harassment and assault, which are often normalized and trivialized. The #MeToo movement, while new and imperfect, has provided a venue for women to share their experiences and combat the normalization of trauma, she said.
“So many of us have this collective voice, and if we can begin to share that, maybe it normalizes our experiences in a good way,” Cole said. “We can feel that we’re not as ashamed, that it’s not our faults that these things have happened.”
During Cole’s presentation, she read from her short story, “You, Too.” A series of vignettes told from a second-person perspective, the story follows a woman from youth to adulthood as she grapples with nonconsensual sexual encounters: a man touching her adolescent thigh, a college sexual assault.
These experiences are near-universal for women, Cole said. Underscoring this pervasiveness was the fact that Cole did not write the story in direct response to #MeToo—the connection, and subsequent title change, came later.
The movement has sparked realizations of the widespread nature of sexual violence, she said. But she hopes sustained dialogue can ultimately lead to change.
“Instead of just surviving, how do we thrive?” she asked. “How do we take what’s happened to us and make us stronger and help the next person?”
From documentary screenings and dance performances to keynotes and interactive arts-and-crafts, ISU students and faculty have responded to a global conversation about sexual violence with events aimed at fostering community-specific dialogue. Though such events have been considered a success, their organizers have indicated a need for maintained momentum and an end goal of tangible progress.
“We can’t be settling like, ‘We did good enough. We did what we did for the year, and we’ll move on to something else,’” Cole said. “This is a fight that has to continue until there’s real social change.”
