Sexual Assault at Drake University Frat

Last week a Drake University senior was charged with sexual abuse after photos and video of him allegedly sexually assaulting an unconscious fellow student were found on his computer. What makes this different from the cases of campus sexual assault we usually hear about is that the victim was his fraternity brother. While incredibly disturbing—the video was found by the victim, who says that he has no memory of the multiple assaults, and he believes he was drugged—perhaps this shouldn’t be as surprising as it is. Statistically we know that 1 in 33 men have experienced rape or attempted rape, and research from the 90s published in the Journal of American College Health suggests that up to 10% of campus acquaintance rapes are perpetrated against men, usually by other men. But this is sadly something we just don’t talk about.

We do joke about it, though. While poking around online reading about this story, I more than once came across the gross term “bro rape” and was reminded of that horrible “comedy” video about “bros raping bros” that made the rounds two or three years ago. Salty Femme wrote about it over at Feministe, and she said it quite well:

This is a pretty ugly contribution to the stigma men face around being rape victims. It mocks and silences male survivors of sexual assault, all of whom deal with the same crap as female victims plus all the feelings around not being real men because real men, straight men, don’t get sexually assaulted. And here’s why this video is silencing male survivors of assault – a group of college boys can make a video mocking male sexual assault that millions of people watch and find hilarious and not feel guilty about it because sexual assault against men is somehow not real…The reason it’s so funny is because it could never happen, right?

The point about stigma faced by male victims is an important one—honestly, I rarely think about victim-blaming in terms of male victims because the language around it is often so gendered toward the “female” (short skirts, sluttiness, etc). But male victims do get the victim-blaming treatment as well. The following response to the assaults at Drake come from a website that touts itself as being written “by the common man, for the common man.”

I’m slightly confused by this story. Like what does “it’s very evident that the victim was incoherent at the time” mean? Does that mean he was passed out cold or was this dude just shitfaced and hooking up? Big difference right? Because I don’t care how fucked up I am I wouldn’t hook up with a dude…So to me this almost sounds like this guy was awake when this happened and knew the only way to save his reputation was to report Bertolone for rape. Because if you were passed out cold wouldn’t you try to keep this low that you got your dick sucked by a guy? Just beat the fuck out of him and tell him to move out or else you go public. Do people see what I’m saying? Something just doesn’t feel right about this story. I think the victim was sneaky into it.

So not only it is impossible that it was rape because a real man would never let himself be assaulted, a real dude would also never tell anyone about it because doing anything “gay” would just be too embarrassing. The comments on the piece are often in agreement (with a lot of jokes about teabagging, which apparently some guys do to each other as part of general frat/college hijinks? Only it sounds to me like sexual assault?).

Language and attitudes like these and “humor” like the bro rape video are directly responsible for creating a culture in which boys and men feel like they can’t come forward if they’ve been sexually assaulted. This combination of what dictating what “real men” do and don’t do, plus writing off sexual assault and harassment as “boys will be boys!” bad behavior is particularly dangerous on a college campus where hazing actually exists, there is a high occurrence of alcohol- and drug-related assault, and in a small community the fear of being labeled as “gay” or victimized is perhaps more potent for younger men. This is just one of the reasons why it’s important for colleges to make sure their policy language around sexual assault is gender neutral, and it’s really an issue that should be covered in sexual assault awareness and prevention education—without humor.

Men who have been sexually assaulted should check out Male Survivor

Cross-posted at Change Happens