Transcripts For CSPAN2 Jennifer Hirsch Sexual Citizens 20240713

Study of sex, power and assault on campus. The book is based on years of research a program called Sexual Health initiatives to foster transformation. Its the most comprehensive study to date. After the talk, we will have time for questions and answers and cspan is with us tonight recording the event and i would ask if you have a question please for your hand up and wait until i bring you the microphone so that we can hear your question is. I present doctor jennifer hirsch. [applause] its great to be here. Thank you for coming out. In every room there are survivors so if you start to feel distracted by what i am saying its fine to get up and take a break. The hotline is 18656 hope. Im going to start with a story. Austin was a sweet student. Its pretty much the sexiest story in the book but that isnt a story that im going to tell. Sorry. But he was a good guy. He developed a series of names to the kind of orgasm his girlfriend had to make sure it was a good experience for her. But actually Sexual Assault someone. He told us a story about in freshman year he was in a room with his roommate girlfriends roommate. So two people get shuffled into the same bedroom together. The girl was pretty drunk and said she wasnt interested in doing anything. Buthats when he started schoole was anxious, he thought he was behind his peers and wanted more experience. So, he got in her bed and started to touch her body. Then he thought to himself this isnt a good thing so he stopped. When austin told us that story come he became distraught because it was in the telling of the story that he realized what he had done with Sexual Assault and it was hard for him to put together what he had done, but she knew was wrong, but the fact he thought he was a pretty good person and people who sexually assault people are bad people. And i think it is one of the questions they are speaking to o him about the fact people can do things that are very harmful to other people without necessarily being bad people. The whole bad person and that person thing surrounded the conversation about the campus Sexual Assault and we bring a very different object to the problem. Our book isnt about fear, it isnt about punishment. Its about prevention. So much of the conversation has focused either on adjudication like we are going to punish our way out of this idea with the idea that the perpetrators are sociopaths and if we could only identify those men we could at least catch them and campuses would be safe spaces but if you think about driving into the effort that goes into teaching people how to drive so they can deal with a pretty dangerous thing there is many systems in place. We teach people how to not hurt other people so we pull back the curtain on what its like to be a student today. Its a deep and immersion in campus life. Some of them up to three times because they had experienced so many that it couldnt fit into one or two interviews. We had a team of researchers and it would be creepy for them to see their professors at parties so we hired younger researchers who were staff. They socialize as they go about their daily life. Wherever students went, there also went the research team. They identified themselves as researchers and went to a lot of parties. Then we talk with students into groups to talk about consent. This was all in the context of a larger project for Sexual Health initiative to foster transformation which i codirected with a friend and colleague. They had two surveys in the engagement portion and then the book is based on the research and talking with students as they go about their daily life. I can tell you another story. We settled right into the new York City Club life and came to the interview with a list of stories to tell. She would meet men and actors and not very famous athletes and she was very clear so they would go back to the hotel rooms and she didnt want to have sex so she would describe it as she would just give him a blowjob to get out of there and that was an assault protected escape but it made us feel what is the feeling of indebtedness that she owed him a blowjob so she stared to be cushier to two stories. First was freshman year when her roommates were encouraging her. At least that is impressive and she had in her mind a sort of mental map of how it would go. She said that this is going to be this low production. On the second day i will let him finger me. But that isnt what he was thinking. And so he was pretty emphatic when they were back in her room and she wanted to convince him he could sleep over and it would be nice to cuddle together and then she woke up in the night and he was humping her leg and she said thats gross what are you doing, so he stopped and then she was discussing it with her mom and she said he sexually assaulted you and she rejected it entirely. Her roommate also said that was Sexual Assault. So workin looking the story ovee tells us the next time she was assaulted which was at the end of one of her early years in school after people were not entirely moved off if she was one of the last people in the dorm into someone she described as a club model promoter said he had some really good pot and he was going to come to town and they could get stoned together. That seemed like a fun thing to do so they go to the park and smoke and then go back to the dorm and he wants to make out that sh she isnt that into him. So he tried to force the issue and paperback in her room and he was grabbing at her and she tried to convince him he needed to leave and he said he wouldve told the guard that they were smoking pot and she said i will tell them you were trying to rape me. So she managed to get him away that she was shaken by the experience and called her mom to talk about it and talking with her mom she realized maybe it wasnt so bad. He just said some bad things to me, and he did, but she said nothing happened. Im okay so its in that second experience she started to realize she didnt owe anyone anything. I came all the way uptown and youre not even going to have a orgasm i guess, you came all the way to town and youre not even going to have a orgasm so that is when she moved from and about herself as someone that code that to having a clear sense of her own right or not have sex. And people have the right to have the kind of experiences they have and also to not have the kind of experiences they dont want to have and other people have the same rights in general become heterosexual menl men have been socialized to be very attentive to their own right to pleasure but not so alo attentive to other peoples rights to sexual selfdetermination and to care about what they owed other people and to their own right to selfdetermination including the right to say no. The point is not to say it was her fault she should have had a better idea of her own citizenship but rather the point is to think of what kind of world are we building where a beautiful, confident, otherwise very effective in the world young woman feels so indebted to other peopl people or for pleasd what kind of world are we building where someone is humping someone someones leg n they said they were not interested. Not what is wrong with that person but who raised that person to not know better. Instead of thinking about campus Sexual Assault is a problem we widen the lens to say its really all of our responsibilities to that includes families and faith communities and schools thinking back to the driving metaphor making sure people drive safely is not only the responsibility of one person. When parents talk with their kids about driving, they dont sit them down and explain how sparkplugs work. It is anthat isnt how you teace to drive and you also dont teach someone to drive by just teaching them about stop signs and red lights which is what the focus on consent does so instead, it is a complex behavior and involves being able to be attentive to a lot of different kind of input. I dont want to shock you but it is pretty similar to sex so we need to do that same kind of training so people can be prepared to accomplish this interaction without harming other people. One thing that is useful to think about is where is her mom and all of that and how much support she got from her mom and how important her mom was in being the person she could turn to when she needed to figure out what she was struggling with. She wouldnt have been able to speak with her mom if she was going to judge her, so they also didnt have a lot of stories about bad doing this in the book so another take away is the need for guards to step up and do some of the emotional labor around sex specifically that child rearing in general. So, one more story before i wrap up. And this is sort of the classic story that you might think of. Lucy was a freshman that had gone to boarding school, a very protective environment and she hasnt had much chance to socialize plus like a lot of students she was busy doing what you need to do to get into a highly Selective School so she had been socialized in general. She wanted to drink, was her virginity, go to parties, the popular. She and her roommates went to a bar with a mac to seniors and they were so excited to be getting attention from these seniors. So the seniors brought them during this and the bouncer leth a freshman in one their fake ids because thats what they do they like pretty girls and when they have not very good fake ids. So they bought them drinks and lucy was pretty drunk and excited to be hanging out with scott. He said they want to come back to my fraternity and she said sure so they stumbled up the avenue in the warm summer night. Scott was a College Student individually another girl catches up and she was trying to keep an eye on her friend because something was going to happen. Scott and lucy goes into the fraternity and ask the girls if they want a drink and they say yes. The alcohol is kept on the second floors of the way they respond to the rules is by keeping it upstairs. They went upstairs and he mixed them some drinks. Her friend passed out immediately and then scott said that they want to see my room. They had been making out and she did want to see his room, she enjoyed being with him and basking in the attention. They went upstairs to his room and he started to take off her pants. She said no and she said its okay, but it wasnt okay because he raped her and didnt listen to her. So that is the sort of classic story that you think of when you think about a Sexual Assault on campus and if you only think about that in terms of scott being a man and lucy being a woman cant you capture part of it because he was bigger than she was also a senior and he was also in a speech that he controlled not just in a building he lived in surrounded by his friend but also upon the third floor in a place where she had never been at an institution she had been for three years and knew all the rules and with College Students do and dont do. One of the things we do is complicate the way that you might think about power. There are different ways to think about power and what they can do to change campus Sexual Assault. So, we talk a lot about race in the en book and the way the landscape of the campus produces results. Every single woman that we spoke with in the interviews, every single one had experience and its not just a Sexual Assault problem, it is a Racial Justice problem. We tell stories of women assaulting men. We tell the story from the perspective of the assaulters whose words you rarely hear. To participate in the studies, people who look, people who sociopathic they are intentionally harming their peers to ask him to be interviewed. But there were three kinds whose stories we tell him about. There are those one of them starts the story i put on a tie and then he tells a story being invited to a Sorority Formal by someone he didnt particularly like. She was from a high prestige sorority and was excited to be invited because there is a clear campus. She didnt drink, she drank a lot, she was so drunk at the end of the night he brought her back to the room because he couldnt figure out how else to get to bed in time and then he described to us having sex with her as she went in and out of consciousness because for him its possible he really was a terrible person and just putting on a story but if he knew it was a bad thing he wouldnt have told us. So he told us a story about assaulting her and what he seemed to think he was doing is just coming in through an obligation that she had invited him to the formal and its true that unless you go to a formal with someone as friends it is understood to be content in a way that is problematic that part of what we do is lay out how students have sex instead of how we wish they did. So this is the oblivious we described as an act of entitlement. There are students that in the course of telling the story come to label what they did they know what they did was an assault and they are troubled by it and never figured out anyone to talk about with it so the hopes going about it but perhaps do some good so those are some other stories that we share. By way of conclusion remembering the book is about prevention one take home is schools, communities and organizations need to do more than just the places where children are safe from being assaulted. We need to ask them to step up if they think about the role they can play in the Sexual Assault prevention. Its really important to do this before college. We found in the survey at a quarter of the women who participated had been assaulted before they started college. The experienced some form of nonconsensual contact so that is a lot per quarter and the risk factor for being assaulted in college and for the Prevention Needs to start before hand. We also found in the same survey that women who had caugh gottenx education that included training on how to say no, which is absent were half as likely to be assaulted. That is a really big sign. That is as effective a vaccine is the flu shot and we spend a lot of effort making sure everyone gets the flu shot so we need to spend the same amount of effort making sure everyone gets Sex Education because that is part of what its going to take to get us to the herd immunity. Its not going to buy it self be the thing that keeps all assault from happening but it is a way to teach people to not insult other people. It also could help them learn about healthy relationships and the way to keep them from being the assault or. Parents need to step up and raise children who know better. In the same way that you dont just tell your kids dont crash the car. Teaching your children how to not an assault or involves the basic messages of how to be a basic decent human being and to not step on other peoples feet. So thinking about all the work parents do to help young people manage their bodies. Think about oral hygiene. Like every night you watch your kids as they brush their teeth. You watch them because you know they are a little sneaky and so the same level of effort not just around health and safety, and making sure that your kids have prevention methods that actually talking with them about how it figures into relationships and what its going to mean to them and their lives, those are the kind of values and conversations. Speed to be having. The final message is there is a legislative message. The movement has been amazing for keeping the problem of Sexual Violence on the front burner and hasnt always had such a clear policy agenda. Theres a lot of evidence that it works and yet theres so muco much variability from state to state. So everybody should after they read the book they should call the state legislature and demand that they provide education for kids because that is what we know as part of building contact with less assault on campus, so thats it. Lets talk. [applause] im curious to you have any numbers or statistics about how many young men and women do get unwanted advances in college or in the country every year . The rate that we found are pretty similar to those that have been shown at the campuses across the country. We found one in three women had experienced nonconsensual contact which isnt always great. It can be unwanted touching but that can be very scary if one in six. Those are pretty much the members that have been shown in Research Across the country and i think its important to note its actually higher for those in the same age group that are not in college so theres a lot of attention on women and college anin collegeand they ar. This is a problem all institutions face. You mentioned there are two instances and then you outfight said because of the power dynamic that can lead to people thinking they are entitled. Lets say the one of three people that have an unwanted account o and counter if its freshman freshman, junior sophomore as opposed to senior freshman at etc. People talk about i have a non answer to the question, but we do know into this as widely remarked on the beginning. Code is referred to as vulnerability. Because it is typical for women to have intimate relationships with men who are older and have the most possible partners in a world where senior men. In terms of prevention men and in particular older men need some were acknowledging their own social power. I dont know if scott was a good person or that person. We didnt interview scott but i can tell you in that instance where lucy said no and he said its okay, he wasnt seeing her as a person and was probably the most charitable interpretation he was unaware of his own power. It needs to be to help the people on campus that are more powerful to see tha that howardd engage in a conversation about checking themselves in a way they dont feel attacked. Its not their fault that they were born white men and its not their fault they were born into a wealthy family but by being in a fraternity and on the third floor they are in the position they are vulnerable to assaulting someone. Helping those young people think about how to move safely through the World Without hurting their views, those are things we can do. I know the research is ongoing and the process is ongoing we have a lot of campuses. They are not really focus on after the book. I havent enjoyed the high school talk ive given. I would like to continue on talking with young people and parents about the work they need to do to prevent assault and working with legislators until every state in america has comprehensive sex ed legislation, my work is not done. How do you manage or how would you see the process of sort of changing the process by which it is in the Public School sector because i know you eluded to sort of spark plug analogy so do you have any ideas of how to go about that . There are states that have changed their law so now all starting in middle school they get comprehensive Sex Education that is inclusive so it speaks to racial inequality and it makes sense and reflects the experiences of everybody. It has to be comprehensive. I think its a moment of opportunity because whatever people think about premarital sex no one wants their kid to knowingly assaults someone. So if we are launching into the World Without doing that i think this is a moment of opportunity and the system basically is to reproduce inequalities that we are swimming upstream and pushing against that. Right now if you are rich or you live in an urban area you are much more likely to get Sex Education that is more like the driving them to spark plug and if you are poor or in a rural area you are less likely to get any at all so we create a situation in which there is a thing we know works so we could do better. [inaudible] if you like there is more being open in the campuses for those that have been assaulted to talk about it and label it but theres not enough space for people that have committed the assault and ways of dealing with the violence people have an interest in proving their innocence. Im wondering if you have any insight about how the people that have been able to recognize that experience like how that happened and how did they manage to see this before coming to talk to you. Some of them had been in therapy and had a chance to do a oneonone therapy. You are right and make a point theres no institutional feedback loop that exist. You need to do the repair and learn to do better and right now we are not going to punish our way out of this and that punitive framework keeps people from telling other people that theyve harmed them because they dont know theres only a hard hammer, there is no soft hammer and they dont want to bring that down because people are in their Friend Network and sometimes people they care about, so theres no way of people getting feedback for ther the most part that says what you did hurt me, it didnt feel good. And that means the person is going to keep doing that and the person who was harmed doesnt get an apology. We are very again, the book isnt about adjudication of this peace with justice work and thinking about a place where theres a lot we describe in the book that isnt assault, but its unkind or just confusing or not pleasurable. Like it isnt feeling good to them and said t so to have somef resource where people have participated in experiences that dont feel good or feel troubling candyland work that out is important, and i think that is a framework that might leave room for assault to come forward and get some help working on that because we dont use the word perpetrator or offender we just call them household because in the same way people dont describe themselves, being a perpetrator isnt a sexual identity. So they are people that assaulted someone, they are not assaulsoldiers as they are but o need space on campus or in the world to learn to not damage the people around them. Thank you very much. Fascinating. Good work. Thank you all for coming out. [applause] he discussed his legal battle against dupont. When the data came out i thought certainly things will move forward. We will have standards now. More data than you could ever want on any chemical. No. At that point, epa says we have to determine if the chemical exists anywhere else, whether this is a federal problem. So testing began for the first time in this country, 2013, 2014. Public Water Supplies were required to Start Testing that there were still no federal guidelines than in 2016 the New York Times Magazine Article came out that summarized yesterday of this and it basically went through the history and point about the fact that testing was occurring across the country and this was found in other places. Within just a couple of months after that they came out with their first guideline ever for these chemicals into drinking water. No more than 70 parts per trillion. That triggered massive sampling because the department of defense realized these chemicals have been used in Fire Fighting and outside military bases and airports across the country. It started systematically going down the list and sampling for those chemicals and sure enough he was being found everywhere. In 2016 and 2017, almost every day some new communities across the United States and worldwide sampling began in other countries of the land started realizing theyv they ruined thr water, too. Under our settlement, one of the things that also happened is one supposed going or found, everybody in the community got medical testing paid for by dupont and the people that have met those diseases were able to go forward and dupont wouldnt dispute under the agreement drinking that water in those levels can cause those diseases. We had 3500 people in the community that had one of those diseases and the author claims. The first one went to trial in 2015 for the First Time Ever all of this information was leaked out to the jury, to the public, against dupont for having caused the womans kidney cancer. Two more trials against dupont, ever increasing verdict amounts including saying du pont acted with conscious disregard of the risk of what they did. It is terrific to be with you. I note we taught together at university of california Washington Center several year