Instances of misogyny and sexual violence on Canadian campuses have sparked discussion about harmful attitudes towards women and why they persist despite efforts to eliminate them.
The most recent incident was a Facebook conversation among student leaders at the University of Ottawa in which they made sexual threats against Anne-Marie Roy, president of the university’s student federation.
Screenshots were sent to Roy anonymously in February. The story exploded in the media after a blog published the screenshots and a story was published in the Fulcrum, the university’s English-language student newspaper.
University administration responded predictably with the announcement of a Task Force on Respect and Equality. But while the reaction was necessary, it seems unlikely to have any significant impact on the attitudes behind the conversation. It seeks to deal with the problem as if it is part of a visible, rampant culture of sexual violence even though the problematic attitudes are often expressed privately.
The men involved threatened to “punish” a young woman with sexual assault. They made bets on whether they could have sex with her. They alleged she had sexually transmitted diseases.
As upsetting as it was to see these attitudes in writing, this was not an isolated incident. Many people simply do not hear other examples because these conversations take place privately.
“I was normalized to this kind of talk through hockey locker rooms,” wrote Pat Marquis, one of the men involved in the conversation, in an e-mail apology to Roy.
Alex Larochelle, another one of the men involved, wrote that he regrets his comments, “although private.”
This “kind of talk” should be equally unacceptable in a locker room or on Facebook with friends as it is anywhere else, even in “private.”
Someone tolerating comments like these because they have heard them for years or thinking it is fine to say them in a private conversation are just excuses for behaviour that is wrong. Blaming the comments on the venue or the culture dismisses the existence of sexually violent attitudes and does nothing to address the problems the conversation demonstrates.
The comments were graphic and violent in a way that would make many people uncomfortable, even among friends. But finding comments uncomfortable or unacceptable is not the same as standing up against them.
“Even though I knew things were wrong I would be extremely uncomfortable calling other people out on their mistakes,” Marquis was reported to have said in the e-mail.
The university administration made it clear in responding to the incident that the conversation was entirely unacceptable.
“The comments demonstrate attitudes about women and sexual aggression that have no place on campus, or anywhere else in Canadian society,” said university president Allan Rock in a statement.
Rock quickly announced a task force to seek solutions for the attitudes that seem endemic on campus. The task force will make recommendations “to promote respectful behaviour on campus, particularly towards women,” according to a press release.
“I think that it’s super important that the university formally has a group bringing as broad a base as it can to look at the issue and to figure out what kind of initiatives, programs, policies and activities need to be done in order to move forward,” says Caroline Andrew, chair of the task force.
While well-meaning, this response lacked any action to deal with the attitudes directly. A task force has limitations that prevent it from solving the problem in a conclusive way. It can only make recommendations to the university, rather than dealing with the attitudes where they exist.
“There are all of these things that happen in our culture that are completely unacceptable. So you can have all these policies in place to deal with those things but it really is not getting at the root of the problem,” says Leigh Naturkach, manager of violence prevention at the Canadian Women’s Foundation.
Action needs to be taken on the ground – in locker rooms, for example – where sexist attitudes are expressed. A task force alone simply cannot solve the problem.
“The university is too big and too complex a community to think that there needs to be one single reply,” says Andrew.
The only way to eradicate these attitudes is to follow through on society’s understanding of what kind of behaviour is acceptable. If a joke or comment has sexually violent undertones, it should be addressed as such and people should stand up against it.
“If it’s abuse, it’s harassment, it’s violence, all those things need to be named and not excused as culture,” says Naturkach.
If society wants to rid its locker rooms, bars and online conversations of attitudes that are harmful to women, talk of sexual violence must be addressed where it happens. Rather than waiting for cultural shifts or task force reports, action has to be taken in a concrete way by standing up for women in every situation.