Building Gender-Expansive Sexual Violence Prevention and Response:

Honoring the Experiences of Cisgender Men and Trans* Survivors

Susan Marine & Dan Tillapaugh

NASPA 2017 Conference

Handouts

Counternarratives

“Critical race theorists agree that an oppositional voice to the dominant or master narrative (i.e., the dominant story or taken-for-granted truths) is an effective tool in making visible the structures, processes and practices that contribute to continued racial inequality. One of the greatest contributions of CRT is its emphasis on narratives and counterstories told from the vantage point of the oppressed….Minority perspectives in the form of narratives, testimonies, or storytelling challenge the dominant group’s accepted truths” (Zamudio, Russell, Rios, & Bridgeman, 2011, p. 5).

Counternarratives are an important opportunity to reframe our professional practice to lead to gender-expansive work. What are master narratives and counternarratives around sexual violence in higher education that would be important to name?

Master Narrative / Counternarrative
Cisgender heterosexual women are victims/survivors of sexual violence in college and cisgender heterosexual men are the perpetrators. / Victims/survivors of sexual violence in higher education include individuals of all gender identities as are perpetrators.

Case Study #1: Aaron

As a first-year student at his undergraduate institution on the east coast, Aaron, a white cisgender man from an upper-middle-class background, experienced sexual coercion. Identifying as “either straight or bi-curious,” he was stalked by a fellow student in his residence hall, who (on at least two occasions) entered Aaron’s residence hall room without his consent while Aaron was sleeping. During the first experience, Aaron woke up and “suspected someone was in the room . . . so [he] called out [his] roommate’s name.” Immediately, “this dark outline” of a person “disappeared out [his] door.” Shaken by the experience, Aaron and his roommate agreed to keep their door locked at all times. One night, his roommate left the room unlocked when he went to take a shower down the hallway. During that brief time, Aaron awoke to a find man standing over him with his hand outstretched, touching the sheets covering Aaron. Immediately, he confronted the man about what he was doing, and the man ran from the room. Aaron ran after him, demanding to know why he was in his room. A campus sexual violence prevention peer educator himself, Aaron’s experience with this event was traumatizing, particularly in light of his campus administrators’ unhelpful responses to his situation.

1)Aaron called his campus’ sexual violence response hotline and spoke to a student volunteer about his experience. However, the student volunteer did not know how to best respond to him because she did not see the incident as a sexual assault. Additionally, Aaron wasn’t sure that the resource was available to him as someone who identified as a man. How would you (or your campus) try to respond to these issues? From a gender-expansive approach, what would you try to do differently.

2)As someone who felt empowered given his role as a sexual violence prevention educator, Aaron confronted the dean on call at his campus who told him “usually these things can be cleared up if you just talk to the person.” Aaron asked “if a woman student reported this, would you give her the same response you just gave me?” Think about this particular situation. How are our responses to survivors perhaps gendered specifically? What concrete steps can be taken to ensure that all survivors are engaged in a survivor-centered approach rather than a compliance-centered approach?

Case Study #2: Aidan

A Black gay cisgender man, Aidan experienced sexual assault and intimate partner violence during his time at his institution in the Mountain States region where he received his undergraduate and graduate degrees. In his first semester of graduate school, he hooked up with a man he had met who disclosed that he had a girlfriend and was just interested in having no-strings-attached nonreciprocal sex. Throughout the semester, Aidan kept in touch with the man every once in a while. The man engaged in some manipulative behavior, asking for money or telling Aidan “all of this stuff that he wanted to do to me, and [that] he wanted to be with me.” After a period of not being in touch, the man contacted Aidan and asked for money. Aidan was unable to provide him with money and accused him of only being interested because of the monetary component of the relationship. The man “assured [him] that that wasn’t the case,” and as a result, Aidan invited the man over to his house, promising that they could have penetrative sex. He said that after the man arrived, an hour and a half late, “the kisses that he promised and the cuddling and all of that very quickly turned [away].” In an attempt to show his feelings for the man, Aidan allowed the man to have anal sex with him; however, the experience was “incredibly painful” and when he asked him to stop, “He told me no.” Aidan’s experiences were then complicated because of his work as a graduate assistant on his campus and because his coworkers and closest friends were mandated reporters legally required by Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments to report observed or suspected violence, leaving him without many other people with whom he could disclose and process his experiences.

1)Aidan’s story highlights the challenges of compliance-focused approaches to addressing sexual violence when compliance (rather than being student-centered) becomes the campus norm. How can we use the gender-expansive praxis to change this?

2)One of the difficult parts of the experience of violence for Aidan was negotiating his professional role, particularly given his identities as a Black gay man. He expressed feeling worried about how others would perceive him if they knew what happened, particularly the specifics of how his assault had occurred. This created some compounded trauma given the fact that he was one of few openly gay and Black individuals working at his institution. In what ways does your institution consider identity-based power dynamics that play a role in responding to sexual violence? What might need to change to do this work better at your institution?

3)Thinking specifically about the dual role of graduate student and employee, how would your specific campus handle this type of situation? How might you and your institution need to consider the ways in which to support survivors like Aidan?

Case Study #3: Micah

Micah, a white queer, transmasculine man, attended the same large private university in the Mid-Atlantic region for his undergraduate and graduate degrees. He was actively involved as a student leader on campus, particularly with the campus’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) Resource Center. Micah came out as trans during his first year of college, and early in his gender identity development, he claimed that he operated in “an assimilationist sort of perspective on my trans-ness. Just sort of wanted to be just a dude—a straight guy.” But during his second year of college, he “reconnected . . . back to a sort of queer framework” and started dating men. In his third year of undergraduate school, Micah was using Grindr, a social media application for men who have sex with men, and set up a meeting with a man who lived in the surrounding area. After meeting up for drinks at a local gay bar, they went back to Micah’s apartment and started to hook up, but they stopped because the man had had too much to drink. Micah awoke during the night to discover “[they] were having sex.” The next morning, Micah drove the guy home and afterward wondered if it had all been a dream or not and questioned “if it had really happened.” Two years later, he attended a session on sexual trauma survivors at a conference and while listening to others share their stories, “it really started to sink in about what had happened two years prior.” His experience at this conference brought up his past sexual violence experience and led to a challenging time in his life processing through the experience.

1)For Micah, his experience of violence had been deeply compartmentalized yet was very much real. He reached out and relied on contacts through his campus’s LGBT Resource Center where he also worked to support him through the disclosure of his trauma. Thinking about the ways that students often access spaces that aren’t necessarily geared towards sexual violence on campus, how might offices and departments at your campus become prepared in helping to support survivors? Are current practices of training and response adequate? If not, what needs to change?

2)Micah now works as a student affairs professional, but does not often disclose his identity as a sexual violence survivor. Yet, it is clear from his experiences in the field that trainings and situations arise that can be triggers for him around sexual violence. When you think about your own campus, what are ways that supervisors and colleagues work to create spaces where employees who are survivors of sexual violence might be able to feel safe about such disclosures or feel comfortable naming when they might be triggered or activated as survivors? If these spaces are not currently being made, how might you do this in the future?