Sexual-assault reduction classes are a form of victim blame

Florida Atlantic University now offers a course titled “Flip the Script”, which aims to reduce sexual assault on campus. It is estimated that undergraduate women have a greater than one-in-10 chance of experiencing rape or attempted rape. Flip the Script teaches these women to look for the signs that could lead to rape as well as how to prevent it. The course boasts impressive statistics, having been found to be responsible for a 31 percent reduction in rape. Even so, it is a form of victim blame.

As we all know, in the UK and America, classes aimed at tackling sexual assault have become all the rage among liberals. Huge numbers of young men are now encouraged to take consent classes to learn about the nuances of sexual communication. Perhaps some blokes need such lessons, but Flip the Script takes us in a direction that we should not welcome.

No one should have to take lessons in how not to get raped. This is no more sophisticated than telling girls not to wear skirts on a night out, or flirt with the guy by the bar. It puts the onus onto potential victims to ensure that they are not attacked. It suggests that the main thing between getting raped and not raped is knowledge. It literally says “you can flip the script”, as if getting raped was a choice of destiny.

Furthermore, sexual-assault reduction classes could cause serious psychological harm to victims. Imagine if you did not have time, or the inclination, to take one of these courses (Flip the Script is 12 hours long). The implication could be that you could have done something to stop this from happening. This is a horrible idea for victims to have to contemplate.

Again, people should not have to do courses to stop themselves being raped, nor should anyone assume that awareness training can stop the chances of being assaulted. It may merely be that awareness training encourages segregation of the sexes, which lessens the chance of these attacks.

The proliferation of these courses is no good thing. Not only do they victim blame, but they potentially exaggerate the level of campus assaults, scaring off young women who might want to go to university.

Having been an undergraduate only eight years ago, the furore around consent has always looked utterly hysterical to me. On behalf of a few bad men, we now talk down to the whole male population as if they’re predators, encouraging their rehabilitation by way of ‘consent classes’, which appear to teach common sense.

Campus assaults are often portrayed as epidemic, but I believe this is because we’ve conflated serious attacks with the results of sexual miscommunication, mostly caused by alcoholic inebriation. It has been found that alcohol is involved in 96 percent of college sexual assaults. The UK and US have dreadful drinking cultures, so it is no wonder that sexual relations have deteriorated, which by their very nature require the cognisance of both parties. This is not the whole picture, but cut booze out of the equation and we might be looking at a completely different profile of life on campus.