The Womyn's Center Newsletter: U.S. Rape Culture and Gay Bashing
Womyn's Center
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| • November 13-27, 1991 | Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students. | |
| The Alternative Orange: Vol. 1, No. 2 (pp. 4) | ||
| • August 26, 2000 | Webpage:  . | |
| DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.3) from original. | ||
Recent sexist, racist, and homophobic attacks reflect and are part of the long but too often forgotten history of violence on this campus. Several incidents since last semester make it apparent that acts of violence directed against both straight and lesbian women, gays, and people of color are not only all on the increase but in fact internally linked to each other. Just what are some of the specific forces that bind together and reproduce conditions which facilitate sexist, homophobic and racist attacks on this campus?
As members of a select, supposed “intellectual” community, we live within a space where these violent occurrances intersect in a very visible way. The fact that sexist, homophobic and racist attacks are concentrated on this campus, both in time and space, makes it easier to discover the connections which link them together. By making these connections we can advance a critique of the social forces which produce a sexist, homophobic and racist culture.
The S.U. administration, which rests heavily on funds from tuition and therefore U. S. capitalist economy, is tied to the Greek fraternity and sorority systems which perpetuate heterosexist, racist and homophobic codes of behavior, of what is and isn’t considered acceptable ― i.e “normal” ― behavior. The interaction between these perpetuates what many feminists have identified as a “rape culture” ― to which we would add “gay bashing” and “lynch culture.” This is not to say that each person within these systems has evil intentions, but that the systems themselves place people in relation to each other in such a way that they carry out dominant beliefs about “minority” groups in their behavior. Here is one of many links between violent incidents on college campuses: the acting out of specific, privileged groups against other, marginalized groups.
What happened last semester after the flyers protesting a gang rape at the Phi Delta Theta fraternity were circulated directly influenced and helped create the context for the appearance of the Alpha Chi Rho tee-shirt. The commonsense understanding of rape, the hostile reactions of the Greek system and the S. U. administration to feminists who postered the campus, the scapegoating of Pat Chang as the sole participant of the postering, the attempt to trivialize the political issue by reducing it to Chang’s lesbian orientation and marking all other feminists as lesbians all combined to create an atmosphere condusive to the production of the homophobic tee-shirts.
When the anti-gay tee-shirts first appeared, they appeared in this context, among other conversations about the affirmation of the Greek system and the administration. It is not coincidental that S.U. administration took no action against the Crows, considering the strength of the Greeks late last semester and the ongoing mutually supportive relationship, both financially and politically, that exists between the administration and the Greek system. It is also not coincidental that the percentage of students who are Greek members has increased significantly over the past four years, to 40% this year. These changes in student demographics reflect and create changes in the social context of Syracuse University.
At the time the tee-shirts were spotted around campus, a belief about gays and lesbians had been founded, a belief that centered homosexuals negatively, a belief that held much hostility toward them as a group. The university’s failure to do anything about the tee-shirts revealed its claim of being politically neutral to be nothing more than a sham, and that in actuality it acts on behalf of very specific privileged groups ― not surprisingly white straight males. Whereas the gay bashing, homophobic tee-shirts were considered a form of free speech and protected as such, the flyers protesting rape, gay bashing and homophobia were not and Pat Chang, accused of being a protester, was punished by the university. In this very specific way the university administration supports institutions like the Greeks which perpetuate sexist and homophobic violence.
So this semester, with two known incidents of racism under our collective belts, incidents down on Marshall Street that have been carefully forgotten, we continue to play off of, and out of, the situations from last semester, and from examples of racism since this school’s foundation. We continue to isolate each instance as it happens, wonder about it briefly, but when it becomes too painful or arouses too much guilt, we wipe it away, unknowingly waiting for the next act of violence to occur. If any real change is to develop, it will only happen by working against those ideological and institutional forces which dissociate acts of violence and by working to make visible the educational and societal structures that produce conditions which make rape, racist attacks and gay bashing virtually accepted practices. By focusing attention on these hidden structures we can critique those larger systems which perpetuate oppression of marginalized groups and thereby establish a new university system.
