Guest column: 'Roman' times

When did rape become negotiable and the legitimacy of sexual assault claims become a point of contention?

It seems like a ludicrous notion, but the prevalence of this pro-rape mentality becomes clear by observing the numerous and growing examples of rape denial, apologism and ignorance.

Last month, director and actor Roman Polanski was arrested for drugging and raping a 13-year-old child in 1977, a sentence he escaped for more than 30 years by fleeing the country. Seems like a no-brainer, right? He raped a child, fled the country, failed to pay his victim in an out-of-court settlement when she sued him in 1988 and denied his victim any justice for more than three decades. But 138 individuals in the film industry, including big names like Woody Allen and Martin Scorcese, signed a petition against his arrest. The media coverage focused on Polanski's experience as a Holocaust victim, which does not take away from the reality of his crime. The Feminist Majority Foundation, an otherwise laudable organization, discredited the importance of the incident because it happened many years ago and Polanski has had a tough life.

How do we settle sexual assault claims made against companies funded by government defense contracts? These companies control whether their employees can bring cases of sexual assault to court and may force victims to resolve their allegations only in private arbitration.

Jamie Leigh Jones, an employee of Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad was gang raped, locked in a shipping container and threatened with job loss if she reported the incident to her company in 2005. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations Bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies that prohibit employees from reporting their sexual assaults and bringing their cases to court. A vote against this would essentially be a vote supporting rape, so who in their right mind would vote against this?

Oh, that's right, 30 senators — all who happen to be white, male Republicans. It is incredible to see this kind of victim-blaming among our elected officials in Congress, a place where legislators are increasingly willing to overlook grave human rights injustices to push their own agenda and political ideology.

Rape culture is cultivated when these things occur and people do not take sexual assault and violence seriously. One in six women and one in 33 men are sexually assaulted in their lifetime, and college-aged women are four times more likely to be assaulted, with 73 percent of victims knowing their assailants. We can no longer stand back idly while our elected officials, our celebrities whom we fund when we buy a movie ticket and our larger culture that we help define normalizes and excuses sexualized violence.

Find the contact information of the legislators who voted against Sen. Franken's amendment and let them know you do not support their actions. Support organizations that work with victims of sexual assault and violence. Have discussions with friends, family, professors and classmates about rape culture and the unacceptability of sexual assault.

As individuals helping to shape the future of our world, we have the power to emphasize that rape is always a crime and never negotiable.

Aliya Mann is a junior psychology major. She can be reached at amann12 at umd dot edu.