Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, and The Offspring: Tackling Sexual Assault in Songs

Everyone knows how prominent an issue sexual assault is. A very broad category that includes rape, child abuse, hate crimes, incest, sexual harassment and stalking, sexual assault is omnipresent in society today. Most we do not hear of or see, they fly under the radar, while others are reported to authorities.

Living in the society we do today, where media dominates, and celebrities practically tower over politicians, sexual assault receives strong publicity. So does music. Music has never been more powerful, as it keeps up with technology in the form of free Internet sites (Pandora, Grooveshark, Spotify). Sexual assault and music go hand in hand. Maybe victims listen to music as a way of trying to forget about the assault. Maybe music is associated directly with the assault. Whatever the case, music and sexual assaults are related. Often times lyrics of songs get lost in the rhythm and beat of the ballad, just as sexual assault victims voices get lost post-assault. Here are a few songs that demonstrate the connection between sexual assault and music.

Love The Way You Lie-Eminem and Rihanna

This was one of the most famous and popular songs of 2010. The song highlights a bad relationship in which the boyfriend is abusive. Lines such as “‘Where you going?’ ‘I’m leaving you.’ ‘No you ain’t, come back,'” and  “I laid hands on her, I never stoop so low again, I guess I don’t know my own strength,” lend themselves to the horror that is sexual assault. The video helps show the abusiveness and is a good depiction of sexual assault.

Janie’s Got A Gun- Aerosmith

This song isn’t quite as famous as the first, but the artist and the meaning behind the words certainly are. The song is about a girl who looks for revenge on her father after being abused by him as a child. Lines like “Janie’s got a gun. Her dog day’s just begun,” and “She said cause nobody believes me, gonna be the same,” really show the emotional difficulty that the girl is going to go through as well as her pain.

Only Women Bleed-Alice Cooper

Yet another song that tackles sexual assault is Alice Cooper’s Only Women Bleed. The song, which is about a woman in an abusive marriage, shows how sexual assault doesn’t just occur at young ages. The line “He lies right at you, you know you hate this game, he slaps you once in a while, and you live and love in pain” goes through the cycle of sexual assault. It tells of the actual experience (slapping) and the turmoil the victim must live in following the assault.

As you can see, sexual assault and music go hand in hand. These three songs are primary examples of how sexual assault develops and the aftermath of it. Sexual assault is an important issue in society today. It is present almost everywhere. With more songs like “Love The Way You Lie”, “Janie’s Got A Gun”, and “Only Women Bleed”, perhaps sexual assault will come to where it belongs, at the forefront of society’s issues.

Amherst College and UMass Amherst: Safely Unsafe?

Sexual assault and rape are widely controversial issues across the country. Seemingly every day a new case is in the news. In college environments, rape is not uncommon, despite cases rarely being surfaced. Even in Amherst sexual abuse cases have been occurring.

Recently, in the Amherst Student, an op-ed article ran about an Amherst College girl who was raped on campus and faced endless trauma. The girl faced troubles with Amherst College faculty and felt like “a prisoner”. The piece was so shocking that Amherst College decided to cancel its classes in order to hold sexual misconduct awareness events.

Sadly, that is not the only sexual abuse case recently discovered in Amherst. An article ran in the Daily Collegian at the end of October documenting the rape of a girl in the Southwest residential area. Four males came to her on campus dormitory and raped her. The girl reported the assault to authorities and an ongoing investigation is in the works.

It is shocking that rape and sexual abuse cases so ubiquitous in the news are happening so close to us. How often is this occurring on these campuses?

Here are some facts from the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network that I am about to drop on you (brace yourselves, some are pretty eye opening):

• 44% of rape victims are under the age of 18; 80% are under the age of 30
• Every 2 minutes, someone in the U.S. is being sexually assaulted
• Each year, there are approximately 207, 754 victims of sexual assault
• 54% of sexual assaults are not reported to police; 97% of rapists will never spend a day in jail
• About 2/3 of assaults are committed by someone known to the victim

Those are some jaw dropping numbers. Universities need to find ways to prevent this from happening on their campuses. It simply isn’t acceptable. And if this continues occurring, parents will hesitate about sending their children to those universities. Safety should always be the first priority for universities, and that has seriously come into question at both Amherst College and UMass Amherst in the previous weeks.