Ladies, Know Your Rights. No Means NO!

Two University of Texas football players were featured in a recent blog post amid sexual assault charges. The internet went wild of the common, yet unfortunate news brief or college athletes engaging in presumably non-consensual sexual activity, according to the news reports. The football players have already been suspended by the Longhorn’s football coach, Charlie Strong, but the lives of the players and victim will never be the same.

Comments were posted across the internet, validating the rape claim as a typical action of a woman of a particular race, shaming the men for ruining their future when there are willing women left and right waiting for their next sex vacation, and arguing points of views behind their computer or smartphone devices.

Earlier this month, #JusticeForJada was a popular social media hashtag, prompting support for the 16-year-old Houstonian rape victim. But while women are encouraged to report rape incidents, false rape claims have created a bad taste in society’s mouths of whether the rape really happened, and further destroying the offender’s reputation. Has the woman crying wolf clouded the harsh reality of rape?

In college, freedom is at arms length — go to class when you want, eat when you want and engage in sexual activity with who you want under consensual circumstances. With so much freedom and the two sides to the story — in the case of the UT football players three sides –where is the line drawn between consensual and non-consensual sex?

One of The University of Texas’ organizations against sexual violence, Voices Against Violence, notes on their website rape is described as, “Any kind of sexual intercourse (penetration) – vaginal, oral, or anal – that is committed against a person’s will or is committed with physical force or the threat of force. Intercourse during which the victim is drunk, unconscious or otherwise considered unable to consent is also rape. Rape is a subcategory of sexual assault.”

The ridicule rape victims have received has sparked organizations at college campuses and anti-sexual violence pleas across the country in addition to VAV, such as Athletes for Sexual Responsibility, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sisters of Color Ending Sexual Assault.

According to the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network, 80 percent of rape victims are under the age of 30, including adolescents, college students and twenty-somethings. Notice I used “victims” instead of women; not all rape victims are women. While one out of every six women are rape victims, one in every 33 men are also victims of rape.

“No means no and yes means yes.” Will you take the pledge against sexual violence?