Rape is Known, But is it Understood?

By Timothy Renzi

  Today, I woke up and rolled over in my bed to grab my phone. The first thing I noticed was an email that I received from the UNCC police department notifying the student population about a sexual assault in Pine Hall last night. The following quote is the police’s report of the incident: “On 01/31/2014 at 5:38 AM: a victim reported that an unknown male gained entry into her room. The victim awoke to the male sexually assaulting her.”[1] After reading that ambiguous statement about the crime, I began to ask my self what exactly has to happen for an attack to constitute as a sexual assault or rape.

On the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network’s (RAINN) website, they define rape as “…forced sexual intercourse, including vaginal, anal, or oral penetration. Penetration may be by a body part or an object” and sexual assault as “…unwanted sexual contact that stops short of rape or attempted rape”.[2] At first glance, the definitions of both crimes were parallel to my personal definition of them, but then I noticed how an assault with an object in a sexual manner could be deemed as rape.

I immediately thought about the TV comedy show Tosh.0, which aired a clip in one of its episodes of a kid getting smacked with a dildo repeatedly. This was done as a prank, but at one point in the video, the kid performing the action attempted to shove the dildo down the victim’s rectum.[3] According to the definition on the RAINN website, that victim was raped. This should shock most and make people really think about what they are doing when they bully or prank others. Even though you might think it is a harmless joke that is not bad, you have the possibility of being wrong. Imagine if the victim in the clip was mortified by what happened and decided to press charges. The kid who was just playing a harmless joke could potentially be charged with sexual assault or even rape. Hypothetically speaking, what if the UNCC police had to send out another email about a student getting sexually assaulted by a prank. 

For clarification, I am not trying to make the prank more severe or retract from the severity of the UNCC incident by comparing them. I am trying to raise awareness on what it actually means to get raped or sexually assaulted. People constantly use the term rape in contexts where it doesn’t apply, skewing societies actual understanding of what is to get "raped". If that wasn’t the case, then a kid would have never had a prank pulled on him by getting slapped and assaulted with a sex object. In what culture or society is that okay?

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[1] UNCC, Police. “UPDATE Sexual Assault Advisory-Pine Hall”, email message to Timothy Renzi, September 31, 2014.

[2] Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, "Was I Raped?" Accessed January 31, 2014. http://www.rainn.org/get-information/types-of-sexual-assault/was-it-rape.

[3] Tosh, Daniel, "Dildo Fight," Tosh.0, Web, http://tosh.comedycentral.com/video-clips/adw1ow/dildo-fight.