One in four women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. Considering this alarming reality, candid discussions and education surrounding sexual assault and rape are extremely important.

A recent event held on campus sparked discussion and encouraged that conversations about this topic occur more frequently. The CSUSM campus production of “Good Kids”, directed by Judy Bauerlin and put on by the School of Arts, addressed the Steubenville High School rape case. In this artistic rendition of a real life case, three male students collectively rape a young woman who is drunk at a party and document the assault on various social media sites.

While the play addressed many important aspects of rape culture such as slut shaming and victim-blaming, it complied with rape culture through its mystification of rape. There were scenes in the play that highlighted the male perpetrators explaining that the rape does not define them—in other words, they are more than the rape accusations against them. In addition, the focus of the play was on the victim herself and not on the perpetrators who were lumped in with the by-standers as “good kids.”

The content of this play was reflective of rhetoric currently surrounding rape and sexual assault. While we are becoming more and more willing to admit that rape and sexual assault are an issue, we are not willing to place blame on male perpetrators. We instead protect them by exposing their humanity and complicating the rape by asking irrelevant questions: Was the victim intoxicated? What was she wearing? How was she acting? What were these boys’ intentions? We will create as many scapegoats and excuses as possible before we dare call out male perpetrators as rapists.

While the play does ignite an important discussion, I fear that the content of the play leads our discussions in the wrong direction. As a strong indication of this misguidance, the post-production discussion quickly devolved into a conversation about how women and girls should dress while attending school. Whether or not the acts that these boys committed were truly ‘rape’ was still being debated. During the panel after the show one of the actors actually said out loud during the discussion, “dude, it wasn’t even rape.”

The play presented rape as an act too complicated to name, where there is no one that is truly at fault. I hope that future conversations start to demystify rape, and identify truths. These men did commit rape. Let’s talk about that.