Why were KU students required to watch a video linking sexual violence to capitalism?
Capitalism churns out all manners of products — including, apparently, sexual violence.
At least that’s what students at the University of Kansas are being taught, in an orientation video and even in some classes.
In the midst of an otherwise constructive video on sexual violence — which was required viewing for all students this semester at KU — heroic international #MeToo movement founder Tarana Burke bizarrely connects sexual violence with capitalism itself.
“What we don’t talk about,” Burke says in the video, “are the systems in place that allow sexual violence to flourish. Harvey Weinstein can flourish because of patriarchy and capitalism. He sits right at the intersection of those things.”
So it’s capitalism’s fault that some men abuse women. As if profit begets predator. As if men under socialism, communism and dictatorships are such angels. Never mind the Red Army’s mass rapes in Poland alone, unearthed since the fall of the Soviet Union, or the Imperial Japanese Army’s “comfort women” — as many as hundreds of thousands of female sex slaves. What capitalist demons drove all that?
And here I was, naively thinking sexual harassment and violence occurs largely at the intersection of power and depravity, regardless of your ideology or economic system. Forgive many of us for thinking sexual oppression is more about one’s means than one’s means of production.
KU nontraditional student Hannah Robinow, 31, says she’s worked since she was 16 and never was made to feel uncomfortable, “no matter how profitable the company was.” But the video did make her squirm.
“It was really inappropriate to the context of the video,” Robinow says of the slam against capitalism. “It think it is very erroneous, and a dangerous idea to plant in the minds of impressionable young adults before they go into the workplace, or while they’re in the workplace. God knows how they perceived that.”
A KU spokeswoman says a different video of Burke is currently being used because it is “better suited to the program.”
Robinow shared the original video with her mom, who had to pause it within the first minute from roiling outrage. “I found it honestly tough to watch myself,” Robinow says.
Another KU student, senior Izabella Borowiak-Miller, said the goofy link between capitalism and violence against women has actually been a topic of discussion in several of her classes.
“Yeah, we talked about it today in Spanish class,” she told me, explaining the class’ hypothesis that a misogynistic form of Spanish rap is driven forward by capitalist greed. Another thing she’s “learned” in class is that the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is written expressly to drive drug sales and pharmaceutical profits.
Who knew?
KU is unquestionably doing the right thing in educating students about sexual violence, a haunting and particular problem on college campuses. Similar to many companies that require viewing of sexual harassment videos, the KU Sexual Assault Prevention and Education Center is more than appropriate in setting out a mandatory sexual violence curriculum.
But is it really necessary to tear down capitalism in order to build up women?
Out of galloping curiosity, I Googled “capitalism and sexual violence.” The top result was an article from — wait for it — the International Socialist Review, headlined “Capitalism and sexual assault: Toward a more comprehensive understanding.” Where else should you get the latest on capitalism, after all?
“Like imperialism and war, oppression is a necessary byproduct of the rule of capital,” the article claims. “Women’s oppression … can be ended at the individual or personal level only if we do away with the capitalist system.”
And over at SocialismToday.org, we learn that, “as Eleanor Donne reports, domestic violence, which is usually targeted against women, remains prevalent, and is linked to the roles that women play in capitalist society.”
“That is spine-chilling,” Robinow says of the few online steps it took for me to make it from the KU video to the noble battle to end capitalism. Robinow says she lost family members to both the Nazis and the Leninists, and would do anything to keep Kansas and the University of Kansas off that glidepath.
It’s not unanimous. Not by a long shot. Younger generations have warmed to socialism, unenlightened by the shadow of the Cold War or the actual battle against tyranny in World War II. A Gallup Poll last year revealed that Democrats of all ages prefer socialism to capitalism — with 57% of Democrats having a positive image of socialism, but only 47% feeling good about capitalism.
“It’s time for an economic revolution,” actor Mark Ruffalo urged on Twitter recently. “Capitalism today is failing us, killing us, and robbing from our children’s future.” That’s just nutty — as is the underlying premise that socialism could do the world so much better.
In the 1960s, young generations posed a number of urgent questions to society — most notably about war, race and gender. Society’s answers were sorely lacking.
Today, capitalism itself is being questioned, in stunning openness and in startling places.
So far, the answers have proved remarkably less than persuasive.
