Video Learning // Addressing Sexual Violence for 18- to 24-Year-Olds
- The Friendship Center
- 11 minutes ago
- 4 min read
TFC’s Eric Parsons discusses the issue of college-age sexual assault, traditional prevention efforts, and what we can all do to help reduce the frequency of sexual violence in the college environment.
For this installment of our video learning series, TFC Education Coordinator Eric Parsons takes a deep dive into sexual assault affecting 18- to 24-year-olds, or what is considered college-age in research focused on campus sexual assault.
More than 30% of women and 15% of men who experience sexual assault at some point in their lifetime first experienced it in this age range. What's more, college women in this age group are three times more likely to experience sexual assault than women in general. Both statistics are worth emphasis—that's a six-year age range of an average global life expectancy around 70 years where people are particularly vulnerable to assault. Why? And are these assaults preventable?
The complex answers to these questions merit a LOT of discussion, and Eric will be the first to attest that it can be hard to know where to begin, but this video is a great starting place. Eric opens by discussing some overarching cultural factors that contribute to high rates of assault, including the well-documented vulnerability that freshman new to college campuses experience during fall semester (often called the “Red Zone” in our field) and the explosion in popularity of what's known as the manosphere—that is, the global online misogynistic culture that often promotes dehumanizing views of women and LGBTQ+ individuals.
Eric then shifts to a framework for understanding the factors contributing to the high rates of sexual assault on college campuses, how college students of all gender identities feel about it, and what the larger community can do help prevent it. This framework comes from Sexual Citizens, a book that Eric describes as a "lifeline." Co-authored by Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan and published in 2020, Sexual Citizens is the culmination of a research team's five-year immersion into the sex lives of college students.
Using the book's concepts of sexual projects, sexual citizenship, and sexual geographies, Eric unpacks why traditional approaches to prevention for sexual assault on college campuses—often in the form of orientation programs focused on consent, safe drug and alcohol consumption, and bystander intervention—have come up short in recognizing the social aspects of how college students behave, how they receive information about sex, and how sex fits into their lives.
By investigating what young people are hoping to get out of sex (sexual projects), how they view their sexual partners, and the way that space in the college environment shapes power dynamics, Hirsch and Khan's research team shows why assault is such a predictable part of college life. As Eric highlights, many of the young people the authors interviewed and surveyed were not clear about their own desired outcome from sex and didn't see a clear delineation between sexual assault and bad sex. As a result, the majority of the sexual experiences the students described started consensually, but after a certain point, stopped being enjoyable for one or both parties.
Hirsch and Khan posit that reducing the frequency of sexual assault in the college environment starts with helping college students recognize the rights, desires, and autonomy of themselves and their peers (sexual citizenship), and understanding how college students interact in and—crucially—who controls the physical spaces where sexual intimacy happens (sexual geographies).
Eric argues that, whether or not we have a direct connection to a college community, we all have roles in our communities and therefore, parts to play in promoting the sexual citizenship of others and helping young people especially recognize theirs. Parents and educators in the K-12 school system all have an opportunity to prepare young people for adulthood with age-appropriate conversations about respecting boundaries, consent for any type of touch, and how their actions affect others.
Adults can also play a critical role in setting young people up for success and healthy relationships by creating a culture of safety where it’s okay to ask questions about subjects that might be uncomfortable, including sexual intimacy. Eric closes by offering up some ways to start approaching these conversations, always with an emphasis on safety and giving young people honest, factual, and healthy information well before they have the independence to make their own decisions.
If you or someone you know is experiencing sexual violence, The Friendship Center can help. Check out our services page to learn about our free, confidential, 24/7 services and visit our sexual assault resource page to explore resources for victims and advocates.
If you find this video helpful, be sure to check out all of our educational videos. We add new ones on different topics on an ongoing basis and we’d love to hear from you if there’s a topic that you’d like us to cover that you don’t see a video for. For a deeper dive on any of these topics, consider checking out our education page to see some of the popular presentations we offer and learn how you can get in touch with us for more info about our education offerings.
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