Recently, I covered how Goshen College declared on its website that male students who breathe heavily, whistle, and stare at women are the equivalent of rapists (yes, they really did). It was part of a set of “tips” for men to “stop rape.” It read:
“Don’t allow psychological rape or commit it yourself. Psychological rape consists of verbal harassment, whistles, kissing noises, heavy breathing, sly comments or stares. These are all assaults on any woman’s sense of well-being.”
I managed to preserve a screenshot of the page (click to enlarge):
A thread on Reddit was also started up to ask Goshen College to correct these horribly biased statements. This is what the webpage looks like now:
And on that same Reddit thread, a user named GoshenCollege recently posted this message:
“Greetings from Goshen College. I appreciate you bringing this webpage to our attention and sharing your concerns about it with us. It was an old page that had not been reviewed in a very long time. We have removed it and are assessing improved resources for our students to help them reduce sexual violence against anyone.”
– Jodi Beyeler, Goshen College Director of Communications and Marketing
Goshen College is still hosting one more page on sexual assault that demonstrates anti-male bias (“acquaintance rape prevention for men/women” – screenshot preserved here). We cannot hope to correct all the misguided and biased approaches to sexual assault on college campuses at once, but we can celebrate the baby steps as we make them.
Well done.
Editorial note: This item reprinted from A Voice for Male Students, which you should be reading regularly. –DE
