It was a legit hard question

Rape and this presidential campaign. Damn. I’m not even going to touch the Republicans here. But while the left is really concerned about Clinton taking responsibility for her husband’s sexual assaults, I’m looking forward to all the think pieces on Sanders’s campus rape remarks from his supporters. It’s fine. I’ll wait.

I want to be very clear, Hillary Clinton has been inconsistent on rape survivors. That said, she has made statements about her victim blaming past. If we want to talk about that, I can get behind it. I’m not however here for trying to get her to take responsibility for Bill’s actions. People are going to jump on that and claim no one is doing that, but let me lay this out for you. Hillary’s husband has a shameful history of assaulting women, which he had when in office. You know him; he is a public figure, used to be President. Hillary can make statements about Bill’s behavior but at the end of the day his behavior. I also caution against acting like Hillary should be running from Bill or taking some kind of militant stance. I don’t know their relationship except it is marriage. I do know when I found out a friend of mine was a predator; I didn’t take it well. I believed it immediately, but I had also for years defended and dismissed his predatory behaviors. Just pointing out this is a complicated personal issue. Hillary has said she failed women in the past for her positions on specific cases, and she says she’s changed her position. As someone who has also changed my mind on some things that’s enough for me. I know where Clinton falls, and, what's more, I know that she might blame victims again. But I also know that women can count on Hillary on the macro level even if she falls them on an individual level.

Bernie Sanders, when asked about campus sexual assault, took a criminal investigation stance. This is a legit stance. It was a legit hard question. Sanders’s stance is the wrong stance. It is also a little troubling given Sanders’s positions on other aspects of the criminal justice system. Sanders advocates for campus sexual assaults to be handled by the police. Below is the statement, and it reads like someone who isn’t familiar with rape, but thinks this is the way women want people to respond to it.

“Absolutely it is, and you’re right, it is an epidemic. And here’s what I think has to happen. Rape and assault is rape or assault whether it takes place on a campus or on a dark street. And if a student rapes a fellow student, that has got to be understood to be a very serious crime. It has got to get outside of the school and have a police investigation. And that has to take place.
“Too many schools now are saying, well, this is a student issue, let’s deal with it. I disagree with that. It is a crime, and it has to be treated as a serious crime. And you are seeing not the real horror of many women who have been assaulted or raped sitting in a classroom alongside somebody who raped them. Rape is a very, very serious crime. It has to be prosecuted, and it has to be dealt with."

Let’s table the discussion about how the police don’t believe victims, the systemic racism and sexism, and all the other shortcomings of the criminal justice system, but I’m coming back here. Campuses are required to investigate sexual assaults because of Title IX, which protects students’ rights to equal education opportunities for women and men including education free from harassment and assault based on sex. Campus rape is a civil rights violation. Colleges have to investigate even when a sexual assault isn’t officially reported. Moving forward, I’m going to demand my left candidates know this. Low bar for the men feminist, just know what Title IX is. I naturally have issues with campuses dealing with sexual assaults internally in a backroom, but I’m also not here for compulsory criminal reporting. Also, if justice (and we can talk about whether justice comes from a criminal system or not) is only pursued through the criminal justice system, then it is seen as an individual crime not necessarily a failure of an institution to protect their students from civil rights violations.

According to RAINN, for every 100 rapes, only two rapists spend time in prison. According to Kate Harding’s book Asking for It, the majority of police believe rape myths including most are false accusations. Just some perspective before we start advocating for a single approach to dealing with campus rape…because it is working so well for those, who seek justice through the criminal justice system. This doesn’t even include how notoriously racist the criminal justice system is or the steeper prosecution and penalties for black men, which Sanders knows about because he has spoken about the mass incarceration rates among black men. I can’t advocate for an exclusively criminal justice response to rape and sexual assault in one breath and the dismantling of the criminal justice system in the next. That said, there is a fine line here. And if anyone deserves extensive and over the top prison sentences it is rapists.

Sanders’s has been good on women, but moments like this make me wonder how many women in his campaign are up close advising him on how to answer questions. Does anyone in his campaign know what Title IX is? That person should have been the person advising Sanders’s on this question. My rough estimate is five women at Sanders's headquarters of 21 staff with two vacancies, roughly a quarter of his staff. This is kind of like when people are like how many women do you need? I need half; we’re half the population so it shouldn’t be that hard to find qualified women, but that is a pipe dream I know. I need enough women represented that a campaign gets women’s concerns right. That can be one or 21. I don’t care.

Sander’s is a good progressive, but once again, I’m wondering if he has a gender problem. His campaign, his grasp of the issues, etc., which leads me to being concerned about women during his Presidency. I know I’ll retain my reproductive freedom—but when the Republicans come for Title IX again (and they will) will Sanders have our back? What about other nuanced issues facing women and the gender nonconforming? Will Sanders have someone in the room who can explain it to him? I don’t demand he have every answer perfect, but guys someone needs to be there to talk him through it. If in the end, Sanders truly believes the criminal justice system is the only way, fine, he’s wrong but fine. I disagree with the guy I vote for all the time, but I wonder if anyone in his campaign has any kind of background on gender-based violence. Finally, as Clinton can change her mind so can Sanders; he has demonstrated with the Black Lives Matter movement that he can learn. I look forward to his more nuanced responses on questions like this one moving forward.