Women in the World
12.22.15 | Zainab Salbi

Americans are horrified by the impunity that is all too common in some other countries, so why is rape and sexual violence on college campuses in the U.S. a controversial issue?

It’s surprising to many that The Hunting Ground, a film addressing rape on American college campuses has proven so controversial. When troops or militias rape and don’t acknowledge the act as rape — from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Rwanda — they are unanimously condemned by Americans. Rape in the streets of India is also an open-and-shut case in America’s eyes, if not always in India itself, where, just this week, the youngest convict in the 2012 Delhi gang rape was released from a correction center. Rape and sexual harassment in the streets of Cairo is also a non-controversial matter in America, where it is viewed from afar as unforgivable under any circumstances, while in Cairo itself it is a subject of debate: Egyptian police cannot be counted on to intervene to stop severe harassment and molestation of women in public places.

The vast majority of Americans are horrified by the impunity that is all too common in some other countries. So why is rape and sexual violence on college campuses in America a controversial issue?

In The Hunting Ground, directed by Kirby Dick and produced by Amy Ziering, interviews with victims of alleged incidents of rape on college campuses all over the U.S. make clear that young women’s complaints are too rarely taking seriously by college administrators. One after another, the women on camera describe being asked what they were wearing, whether they gave a positive signal to the man that may have created confusion, and if they had been drinking at the time of the incident.

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