How "Law and Order" Gets it Wrong

When we think of sexual assault, the last thing we should
think about is television. Unfortunately, it may be one of the first things to
cross our minds.

The fact of the matter is, if you ask a random person about
sexual assault, they might tell you the extent of their expertise is a “Law and
Order: SVU” marathon they caught over holiday break. In these episodes, we’re
taken through a horrific crime, a thrilling suspension of habeas corpus by
Detective Spitzer, and a tear-jerking closing argument in the courtroom. The
accused sits apprehensively next to his lawyers and awaits the verdict. Guilty
or innocent. Jail or freedom. Right or wrong.

There are four major problems with this.

1. Shows like this frame sexual assault as a judiciary issue
rather than a moral one.

The moral permissibility of our actions is determined long
before we enter the court room. How a man behaves when he is with a woman
should be guided by his respect for her boundaries, not what will stand up in
court. While every sexual assault workshop teaches men that they should ask for
consent, the motivation for why they
should do this is too often lost. As men, we need to be asking for consent for
that reason and that reason alone, not to build a defense.

2. Having a judge decide on a verdict paints sexual assault
as a binary issue.

While there’s no denying that certain actions and behavior
are definitively wrong, the idea that there exists some “line” across which
sexual assault exists dilutes people into thinking that the issue is
self-contained. Something “separate.” Sexual assault happens when a man (the
vast majority of the time) and a woman are on separate pages, and the man
pushes the woman beyond she is comfortable. Realistically, this is a scenario
that can (and does) occur all too easily.

It doesn’t always happen on such a scale that the case it
taken to court, or even so much so that the woman decides to leave, but it
happens. Is it unrealistic to ask a man to stop and explicitly ask for consent
“every step of the way?” Maybe. And realistically, will there be instances
where men are willing to take sexual interactions beyond the point their
partner is? Absolutely. But by talking about
the issues and creating an atmosphere where two people can be open in
discussing what they are and aren’t comfortable with, these “miscommunications”
happen on a conversational level.

3. The accused man is nothing like us.

Too often, in talking to student organizations about getting
involved in educational programs regarding sexual assault, they will tell me
that they “don’t need to,” because they “know their friends,” and none of them
would ever do something like that. 

This, to me, is maybe the most preposterous claim that a
person could make.  To think that all
potential criminals could be identified before a crime is committed is ignorant
and irresponsible. Tom Cruise once starred in a movie called “Minority Report”
where future-telling, “Pre-Cogs” could help prevent crimes before they actually
happened; there is a reason this movie is found under “Fiction” at your local
movie store.

No person I know at Harvard is friends with someone who they
think would commit sexual assault,
yet it persists in being an issue on campus. As much as we don’t like to admit
it, the people committing sexual assault probably appear a lot more like us
than we would like to think. If we all know a woman who has been sexually
assaulted in their life, is it that impossible to think we know a man who has
committed one?

4. Whenever the accused rapist is exposed as guilty, whether
it’s in the courtroom or during an emotional confession during one of Ice T’s
interrogations, he always meant to
commit the crime.

I’m convinced that, especially on college campuses, sexual assault
happens just as much because of insensitivities and ignorance than it does out
of direct malice. These men think of themselves as “aggressive,” rather than
barbaric, or of the woman as playing “hard to get” rather than saying no. While
there is little way to stop the emotionally disturbed men who operate out of
direct malice, ignorance and insensitivities are things that can be eradicated.

There is no easy way for all of us to get on the same page,
but little by little, through efforts like those done by organizations like
MenSpeakUp, we can make progress. Talking about the issues, bringing them into
public forums and raising all of our awareness about this terrible reality is
our job as men. It’s time to do our share.

Because after all, this isn’t TV. It’s real life.

Carl Ehrlich is a senior and the outgoing Captain of the Harvard Football Team