He walked across the Bertolini Student Center lobby, an average looking guy, tall with dark, shaggy hair. He wore a long-sleeved shirt; open in the front, with a black t-shirt underneath. Nothing about him stood out until he passed by. Three words were printed on the front of that t-shirt, and those words might as well have jumped right off the fabric. In spite of outward appearances, this was not your “average” guy.

The day before, in the same building, Santa Rosa Junior College counselor Erlinda Peraza, as part of the Women’s History Month celebration, lectured on the pervasiveness of rape and sexual violence in our culture.

According to Peraza, rape culture is “a culture in which dominant cultural ideologies, media images, social practices and societal institutions support and condone sexual abuse by normalizing, trivializing and eroticizing male violence against women and blaming victims for their own abuse.”

The numbers she shared are staggering. In the United States, 293,066 people are raped every year, meaning someone is raped every two minutes. Nine out of 10 victims are female. On college campuses this crime goes unreported nearly 80 percent of the time. There is a strong probability the victim knows the attacker. 

“They look just like regular people,” Peraza said. “They are our neighbors, our friends, people that we know. Good people.” Rapists don’t fit the stereotype of some evil-looking person lurking in the bushes, some unknown assailant; the rapist could be your date, your cousin or your classmate.

Peraza noted that the Clery Act of 1990 requires colleges and universities to publish reports on campus crimes, including sexual assaults, and that a 2009 investigation found 77 percent of schools reported zero rapes in 2006.

These numbers have raised questions -do people feel uncomfortable reporting this crime? And when they do report the crime, do people believe them? Between embarrassment and regret, the crime is rarely reported. Responses vary, Peraza continued, with some colleges wanting to protect their campus from negative publicity and others involving committees to determine whether or not a crime has actually been committed.

In an effort to protect students from sexual assault, the recent White House report “Not Alone” noted that “One in five women is sexually assaulted in college. Most often it’s by someone she knows and also most often, she does not report what happened.” This report identified three steps to help bring this problem to light: campus surveys, engaging men in preventing sexual assault and effectively responding when a student is sexually assaulted.

The U.S. Department of Education threatened the loss of federal funding for schools that fail to address sexual assaults. The Office of Civil Rights noted 55 institutions of higher learning are under investigation for mishandling of sexual violence and harassment complaints. Last year California became the first state in the nation to enact a “Yes Means Yes” law, defining sexual consent.

In another video portion of the lecture, Bill Chappel of National Public Radio News said we now have “a clean definition of when people agree to sex. The law goes further than the common ‘no means no’ standard, which has been blamed for bringing ambiguity into investigations of sexual assault cases.”

SRJC counselor Rhonda Findling said, “We have got to change the culture we live in and the messages that encourage sexual violence.”

Peraza shared a story about news commentator and rape victim Zerline Maxwell, who in her article “Five Ways We Can Teach Men Not to Rape” wrote, “It is not just about intervening, but all of the things that lead up to it—degrading and oversexualizing women and girls—that contribute to sexual violence.”

Some men have taken action. “It’s about community accountability,” said Eesha Pandit, the executive director of Men Stopping Violence. “We require men to talk to other men in their lives and tell them about these programs. It is important that we have community networks that hold men accountable.”

More than 30 people attended “What is Rape Culture?,” including students and faculty members. They learned one in six women and one in 33 men will get raped during their lifetime.

Oh, and the words on that average looking man’s t-shirt? “Chicks, wanna f—?”