While I was walking home with my roommate at night on an empty Huron Boulevard last year, two men in a car slowed down next to the sidewalk and rolled down the windows. The man driving the car beckoned and shouted at me.

While I can’t recall the exact wording, he asked me something along the lines of whether I wanted to get in his car and join him and his friends at a “Diddy party.”

As they laughed and drove away, I felt gross and dejected.

Thinking about it now, I have to ask, what was the joke? 

I could write about the horrific details regarding the countless instances of sexual violence committed by Sean Combs against more than 100 victims, accusing him of assault.

But I shouldn’t have to plead my case in order to convince you that jokes about “Diddy parties” and “freak-offs” indicate an alarming level of detachment from the seriousness of sexual assault that hurts survivors and normalizes rape culture.

When we collectively decide to take jokes about rape and assault out of the context of what these acts really are, we subconsciously decide that the multitude of sexual violence in the U.S., which affects college-aged women in particular, isn’t serious enough to merit solemnity.

Sexual assault and rape culture can be viewed like a pyramid. Reinforcing the attitudes tied to jokes about sexual assault will inevitably give way to the removal of autonomy and an increase in acts of sexual violence.     

University of Minnesota fourth-year student Caroline Petersen said the concept of the sexual violence continuum explains how sexual violence is perpetuated. 

“It spirals from oppression and microaggressions, which includes jokes about sexual assault and sexual violence,” Petersen said. “That’s how our culture of violence thrives, and that’s why we need to stop things at the source.”

A Harvard Kennedy School study on the connection between misogynistic humor and self-reported rape proclivity in men found that in the context of sexist humor, men more prone to hostile sexism felt “freer to express their antagonism against women through subtle sexist acts as well as sexual violence.”

Petersen said when microaggressions surrounding sexual assault go unchecked, the culture of violence begins to spiral out of control.

“When we don’t call it out or put a stop to it as a society, it’s going to keep being normalized,”  Petersen said.   

At the core of rape culture is sexism. Connecting the dots from sexist attitudes to sexual assault shows a disturbing pattern, making it clear how we consistently find our culture unable to dismantle the cycle of sexual violence.

University fourth-year student Lexie Gray said those who make light of assault in everyday scenarios contribute to this toxic culture.  

“Disturbing behavior and sexual comments and remarks that they talk about becomes normalized, and they use it as locker room talk,” Gray said. “But ultimately, it’s rooted in harm and it’s rooted in oppression.”

Besides the fact that you should see inherent issues in joking about sexual assault, you never know who around you could have been a victim of sexual violence.

Sexual assault happens everywhere, and our campus is no exception. A 2019 survey found that about 26% of undergraduate women experienced unwanted sexual contact during their time at the University.   

Gray said that although not everyone has experienced extreme levels of sexual violence, many more people consistently deal with hostile environments where sexism and sexual harassment are normalized.  

“More often than not, most people that you know are affected by it at some level,” Gray said.  

When you refuse to take sexual assault seriously, you’re doing a disservice to survivors. You’re dismissing the consequences of the culture of sexual violence that your peers, friends and family have to deal with every day.

Moreover, when you joke about sexual assault, you are saying you accept the laissez-faire attitude our culture has about sexual violence.

Using assault for laughs puts victims in an uncomfortable position, Gray added. 

“That can be definitely triggering for people,” Gray said. “And it’s hard to go about your everyday life and see comments like that.”

It’s often easy to detach yourself from accountability when it comes to the culture of sexual assault. But how you interact with those around you has the ability to directly impact what we collectively decide is and isn’t okay.

Gray said that to effect change, the first step is educating the people closest to you.

Changing how one person views the power of what they say and how they say it has a butterfly effect, Gray added. Making people think critically and come to the realization that there’s harm in what they say is critical.

At the end of the day, we owe it to ourselves and others to come to terms with the idea that our words carry more weight than we may have originally thought.