Culture 11

Silence is not consent.

yes

yes

make sense. We are a very sexualized society, but we don’t
really deal with it in a healthy way or openly talk about it.

Watching Big Bang Theory while writing this article really
drives home this idea for me, the amount of references to
sex ina single episode is staggering. People do talk with
their friends about sex but if you think about it is always
behind closed doors, with close friends, which is good

but if those supports aren’t there what then do you do.
Open conversations about consent, sex, desires, and drives
don’t happen nearly happen enough or in constructive
ways. We don’t nearly enough allow for healthy ideas
about women to foster, because we are constantly, not
only overly sexualizing women in media, but demonizing
people who talk about healthier societal ways to act in
accordance to woman, aka feminist. However that is not

a new idea in fact it is a well know problem, then why is

it what we are moving forward at such a sloth like rate?

Let’s go back and look at UNBC and where the Woman’s
Centre comes in. Boyd and LeBreton work hard to help
women and men here at UNBC deal with these complex
issues. One of their most recent campaigns has been their
healthy and unhealthy relationships campaign, where they
give people a quiz, which helps them; determine which
type of relationship they are in. I asked Boyd what are
some of the characteristics of an unhealthy relationship;
“probably one of the bigger issues is control, as soon as
you start hearing about someone who is texting them
asking where they are, what they’re wearing, who they
see, [and] who their friends are.” When you look to the
roots of that behavior according to Boyd we are looking at
insecurity possibly even trauma that the perpetrators have
had. These sorts of relationships are not only happening
to women, men can find themselves in these sorts of

relationships too. It is important to identify if you are in
an unhealthy relationship and if so find ways to work on
the relationship or simply get out of that relationship.

UNBC has been good at responding to acts of sexual violence
in terms of how the Wellness Centre and security respond
to them, but preventative measures is where the school
seems to fall a bit short. A sexual violence task force is in
place at UNBC, however the Women’s Centre is waiting

on the recommendations from them to come out. It is

also worth noting that no university really wants to deal
with this issue to publicly because no university wants to
be known as a school with a problem with sexual assault.
That tends to drop enrollment numbers. I asked Boyd
about the greatest challenges facing the centre funding
and groups working together seemed to be a common
issue. Funding is always problematic in public institutions
cause of the limited resources and opportunities, so this

is where governments can take on being stewards of this
issues and put the necessary resources in place to help this

organization’s work to combat sexual violence in universities.

Another group dealing with this issue is the Moose Hide
Campaign. I spoke with an individual from the group
who talks a lot about men taking on this issue, some of
them perpetrators of sexual assault, or simply had very
misogynistic views in the past. Now they advocate for
men to take accountability for changing the culture
and helping end violence against women. They do this
through the sharing of stories and being open about
past transgressions in order to help heal and change.

If you want more information about the Moose Hide
Campaign, the First Nations Centre at UNBC can help.

If you want get involved with helping changing the climate
of sexual violence, reaching out to the Women’s Centre is a
good place to start. NUGSS also has a role to play and asking
them to take real meaningful steps to support initiatives
around UNBC to prevent sexual violence will go a long way. In
the end what is the idea of this article, what is the take away.
Well saying don’t rape people seems a bit obvious, and over
simplifies this issue. Sexual assault is a complex issue, society
does propagate a culture of over sexualization in media, high
schools don’t do an adequate job with teaching kids about
sex, and organizations that have a mandate to handle sexual
assault problems don’t always have the resource to deal with
the problem. So what is the answer, we can start with consent
its simple and easy to understand. As a society we need to
dispel all myths about consent replace them with the simple
notion that a person has to say yes to every stage of the
sexual experience, if they say no them don’t get mad, accept
the no and move on. If a girl is passed out at a part it is not
an invitation to have sex, and getting someone so drunk they
don’t know what they are doing is also not consent. Consent
comes from a mind that knows what is happening and can

be revoked at anytime. Beyond consent we should feel open
to talk about sex, it doesn’t have to be weird, we all do it, and
therefore we should learn to embrace it in a healthy way.

Finally, we need to learn to be ok with being feminism; men
need to learn to accept feminism and calling themselves
feminists. Feminism is not about man hating, anyone who
tells you that is wrong. It’s simple, I don’t think a woman
should be treated as less than a man in any facet of society.
Once we start changing how we as a society deals with these
things, we will begin to take away the shame associated with
sexual assaults cause in the end it is not that person’s fault,
they never asked for it, and their clothes did not open them
up to it. Stop blaming the victim and start fixing the problem.