Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Monday, April 8, 2019

Erik Nesler can be reached at 
egnesler@umich.edu.

FINNTAN STORER
Managing Editor

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building
420 Maynard St. 
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

MAYA GOLDMAN
Editor in Chief
MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA 
AND JOEL DANILEWITZ
Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. 
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

O

ver 
spring 
break, 
I 
met with my former 
classmates 
from 
a 
coalition 
of 
17 
international 
high schools around the world, 
schools built on the basis of a 
global 
education 
movement 
to unite people, nations and 
cultures for world peace. Our 
school 
breeds 
feminists 
and 
social 
justice 
advocates 
who 
engage in leadership for positive 
change. I presumed this diverse, 
socially aware group would hold 
a constructive discussion about 
the tricky topic of sexual violence. 
But I was egregiously disappointed 
when I was the only one — in a 
subgroup of five individuals — who 
expressed a dissenting opinion 
regarding the statement “rape is 
still sex.”
If we are truly — and not 
just 
fashionably 
— 
dedicated 
to combating rape culture and 
victim blaming, we have to stop 
manipulating language to equate 
rape with sex. In 2017, a New 
York Times letter emphasized 
the necessity to stop connecting 
rape and sex in order to prevent 
the perpetrators from framing 
the dialogue in this way. So it’s 
crucial for all of us to sort out 
the terminology and devise a 
productive lexicon to talk about 
rape and sexual assault.
First, we need to dispense 
the myopic mentality that cites 
simplistic 
biological 
notions 
to conclude rape is sex. In the 
biological 
definition, 
sexual 
intercourse, also called coitus 
or copulation, (but not “sex”), 
is a reproductive act in which 
“the male reproductive organ ... 
enters the female reproductive 
tract.” This definition itself is 
derived from a heteronormative 
understanding, 
and 
is 
specific only to heterosexual, 
reproductive aspects in animals 
and 
humans. 
It 
precludes 
the social and psychological 
implications 
of 
all 
sexual 
relationships and is insufficient 
to envelop all the acts we consider 
sex and all the acts criminalized 
as rape by law.
In reality, when we use the 
word “sex” in our social circles, we 
don’t mean mindless penetration 
or only penetration. We associate 
sex with sexual pleasure and 
intimacy — commonly between 
two 
individuals 
regardless 
of gender. Famous memes on 
mainstream media today, stating: 
“Yeah sex is cool but …” reflect a 
general consensus in society that 
sex is an act that is supposed to 
feel good for all parties involved. 
While the Shakespearean era 
was greatly influenced by it, 
today’s hookup culture sells 
sex as a need-based commodity 
that fulfills sexual desires of 
all participants. And rape and 
sexual assault are not relatable 
to the universal meaning of sex 
because they do not include all 
participants’ sexual needs but 
rather involve one abuser and 
victim.
So to those who say rape is 

“still sex,” your vocabulary must 
be so inadequate that the term 
“sex” 
serves 
two 
polarizing 
sentiments: sexual gratification 
and violation of a human being. 
The 
physical 
and 
emotional 
violence, in addition to the lack 
of consent, renders the act an 
entirely 
different, 
negative 
concept called rape. But this does 
not mean “rape is non-consensual 
sex,” and thus sex. That short-
sighted perception posits an act 
without consent and an act with 
enthusiastic consent to mean 
the same thing — obfuscating 
the necessary lines marked by 
legal systems to distinguish 
the treachery that endangers 
individuals.
When people have “consensual 
sex,” they don’t narrate, “Yesterday, 
I had some consensual sex.” We say 
“I had sex with someone,” because 
implicit in “having” sex is consent, 
so the term non-consensual sex 
itself is an oxymoron. We have 
been highlighting the importance 
of consent because it is a part of 
sex, not an outlier. The fact of the 
matter is that without consent, 
including victim incapacitation 
and 
coercion, 
it’s 
not 
“non-
consensual sex,” “bad sex” or 
“sex” of any kind. It is rape and 
sexual assault — abusive behavior 
penalized by jurisdictions.
The U.S. legal definition was 
reformed by the Department of 
Justice in 2012 to include victims 
and perpetrators of all genders, not 
just women being raped by men. It 
now states: “The penetration, no 
matter how slight, of the vagina or 
anus with any body part or object, 
or oral penetration by a sex organ 
of another person, without the 
consent of the victim.” Though the 
law does not explicitly mention 
the act of “sex,” I argue that by 
highlighting lack of consent in 
the definition, the law presumes 
the presence of consent in having 
sex — which is a legal act. Without 
consent, the law criminalizes the 
act as rape and our society must 
not counter-productively distort 
this understanding. 
Yet, my multinational peers 
in 
London 
argued 
that 
my 
legal 
argument 
“only 
applies 
to the United States.” So let’s 
look at legislation in the United 
Kingdom. It states: “Rape: A 
person (A) commits an offence if 
he intentionally penetrates the 
vagina, anus or mouth of another 
person (B) with his penis; B does 
not consent to the penetration 
…” The law assumes there is 
consent when the act is legal, 
thereby demonstrating the innate 
difference between sex and the 
crime of rape. So this argument 
“rape is not sex” is not specific to 
a nation and does not stem from 
right or left politics.
This is about common sense. 
When a thief steals someone’s 
jewelry, people don’t say they 
borrowed it without permission. 
If you argue rape is “non-
consensual sex” and “still sex,” 
you should logically say robbing a 
bank is “non-consensual loan, so 

still a loan.” This statement sounds 
like you’re trying to explain the 
criminal’s skewed point of view. 
So we must recognize that while 
rape may be received as sex to a 
perpetrator, it is not. To a victim, 
it is a gross breach of their bodily 
autonomy and personal agency, 
which is why sexual violence 
is considered a human rights 
violation that should never be 
confused with sex.
The University of Michigan’s 
Sexual 
Assault 
Prevention 
and 
Awareness 
Center 
has 
emphasized the dangers of this 
misguided 
path, 
stating 
“By 
framing sexualized violence as 
about sex and not about violence 
we focus on the perpetrator’s 
narrative and not the survivor’s. 
Focusing on the perpetrator’s 
narrative leads society to blame 
the victim and to not hold the 
perpetrator 
accountable 
for 
their actions.” In other words, 
associating rape with sex silences 
the victims’ traumatic experience 
with empathy for the perpetrator, 
which is as far from “listening to 
survivors” as a response could 
possibly can be. Survivors get 
to choose the terminology to 
talk about their horror, and a 
society does not get to sugarcoat 
the 
allegations 
against 
their 
perpetrators with the troubling 
oxymoron of “non-consensual 
sex.”
So in the future, reporting 
on disgraced Hollywood mogul 
Harvey Weinstein should stop 
recycling 
the 
words 
of 
the 
accused, such as his attorney 
stating that he: “...has maintained 
that he has never engaged in non-
consensual sex with anyone.” It 
should clearly state that he: “...
denied allegations of rape and 
sexual assault,” because those are 
the claims under investigation 
and trial. Public safety advisory 
emails should not report rape 
as “forced her to engage in non-
consensual sex.” How can one 
“engage” 
in 
something 
they 
haven’t even consented to? This 
crude 
participatory 
language 
is counterintuitive and negates 
the perversity of rapists. It fuels 
the persisting problem: When it 
comes to sexual violence, society 
inherently listens to perpetrators, 
not victims. 
It is urgent to judiciously 
frame our advocacy on victim 
blaming 
around 
the 
victim’s 
narrative. Many survivors don’t 
report their atrocities and when 
they do, they still bear the blame. 
How can we expect it to change 
when individuals who receive 
the most eye-opening education 
continue to say rape is still sex? 
From now on, I hope to never 
hear that preposterous statement, 
especially from young intellectuals 
who have the privilege of using 
their knowledge to implement 
productive dialogue. Words always 
matter, so choose them wisely.

DYLAN BERGER | COLUMN

It’s not too late to help Puerto Rico
E

arlier 
this 
week, 
the 
protracted 
controversy 
over President Donald 
Trump’s 
administration’s 
response to Hurricane Maria 
burst back into the limelight with 
a new conflict over federal aid in 
Puerto Rico. Still reeling from the 
devastating damage of Hurricane 
Maria, the people of Puerto Rico 
are in desperate need of federal 
disaster relief. As loyal American 
citizens, the people of Puerto Rico 
have every right to assistance 
from the federal government to 
get back on their feet.
Once again, however, an issue 
that should bridge the political 
divide has fallen victim to our 
toxic partisan politics. A GOP 
disaster 
relief 
measure 
that 
would have provided $14.2 billion 
in 
much 
needed 
emergency 
aid to Puerto Rico, including 
$703 million for Medicaid and 
nutrition assistance, failed to 
advance in the Senate this week. 
Senate 
Democrats 
opposed 
the measure, citing inadequate 
funding to deal with the crisis. 
Meanwhile, Trump has also 
resisted calls for further federal 
aid to Puerto Rico, accusing the 
island’s leaders of incompetence 
and corruption.
The ongoing back and forth 
in Washington over who is to 
blame for Puerto Rico’s woes 
is a distressing illustration of 
what’s wrong in America today. 
Our leaders, on both sides, are 
hurriedly attempting to seize 
the narrative on this crisis for 
political benefit. All the while, 
the 
people 
of 
Puerto 
Rico 
continue to suffer from a lack of 
action, discarded as props in the 
broader political battle engulfing 
America. We cannot continue to 
allow Washington to abdicate 
its responsibility to help the 
American citizens of Puerto Rico 
any longer. Instead, we must apply 
pressure on our representatives 
to provide robust aid. 
Hurricane 
Maria, 
which 
struck Puerto Rico in September 
2017, is the deadliest storm to 
hit the United States since 1900. 
Most of the carnage inflicted 
by Maria occurred in the six 
months following the storm, 
not initial impact. After an 
initial reported death toll of 64, 

a study by researchers from the 
Milken Institute School of Public 
Health at George Washington 
University, 
commissioned 
by 
the Puerto Rican government, 
found 2,975 excess deaths in 
the six months after the storm. 
In those six months following 
Maria, the researchers found a 
mortality rate 22 percent higher 
than would be expected without 
the storm. The death toll in 
the months after Maria was 
particularly pronounced among 
the most vulnerable Puerto Rican 
populations. Those living in the 
island’s poorest municipalities 
had a startlingly- high 60-percent 
elevated risk of death while 
older, male Puerto Ricans had a 
35-percent elevated risk of dying.
While 
more 
research 
is 
needed on this catastrophe, it’s 
evident the bungled government 
response, both federal and local, 
led to the preventable deaths of 
so many Puerto Ricans after the 
storm. While FEMA emergency 
workers did heroic work on the 
ground to save lives, not nearly 
enough resources were directed 
to Puerto Rico in the days after 
Maria. A study by the BMJ Journal 
found the federal government 
was far slower in its response to 
Maria than comparable Category 
4 storms in the same time period. 
Within nine days of the disaster, 
victims of Hurricane Harvey in 
Texas and Hurricane Irma in 
Florida received $141.8 million 
and $92.8 million from FEMA to 
recover, respectively. Victims of 
Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico 
received only $6.2 million from 
FEMA in the same time period.
The 
lackluster 
response 
from FEMA and the federal 
government had a direct impact 
on the well-being of the Puerto 
Rican people. A prime example is 
when over 20,000 pallets of water 
were brought in by FEMA and 
remained sitting on the tarmac 
of an airport in Puerto Rico for 
months on end while Puerto 
Ricans were forced to resort to 
drinking unfiltered spring water. 
It’s unacceptable Puerto Ricans 
were required to put their health 
at risk by drinking potentially 
unsafe water while 20,000 pallets 
of water were sitting on the island 
either tainted by heat or unused. 

Both FEMA and local authorities 
shoulder the blame for this 
egregious act of mismanagement 
and poor communication. The 
heroic emergency work of FEMA 
and local authorities on the 
ground to save lives immediately 
after the storm’s landfall doesn’t 
make these appalling mistakes 
excusable.
The inequality in federal 
response between catastrophic 
storms on the mainland and 
Puerto Rico is abhorrent. The 
people of Puerto Rico are equal 
citizens of the United States 
and ought to be treated as such. 
When our nation has asked the 
Puerto Rican people to fight 
for our freedoms, they have 
answered the call resoundingly. 
More 
than 
200,000 
Puerto 
Ricans have served bravely in 
the U.S. Armed Forces in every 
conflict since World War I. We 
in the continental United States 
cannot turn our backs on our 
fellow Americans in Puerto Rico 
in their time of need. One of the 
many reasons our country is so 
exceptional is because we rally 
around each other during times 
of adversity. Puerto Ricans are 
very much a part of that tradition. 
Our government’s response to 
Hurricane Maria must reflect 
that.
Going forward, it’s evident 
that 
an 
improved 
federal 
government 
presence 
can 
make all the difference for the 
health and well-being of the 
Puerto Rican people. With the 
failure of the disaster relief 
package for Puerto Rico in the 
Senate this week, the Puerto 
Rican 
people 
continue 
to 
wait for federal assistance on 
matters of life or death such 
as nutrition and health care. 
While nearly two years have 
passed since Hurricane Maria, 
our commitment to our fellow 
American citizens in Puerto 
Rico cannot wane. It’s past time 
for our leaders in Washington 
to put partisanship aside and 
demonstrate that commitment 
with continued disaster relief.

Dylan Berger can be reached at 

dylberge@umich.edu.

T

here is a disconnect on 
climate change between 
Democratic 
voters’ 
priorities 
and 
the 
attention 
it is given on a national level. 
According 
to 
a 
recent 
Pew 
Research 
Center 
poll, 
voters 
ranked the environment as their 
third most important issue. But 
that enthusiasm was not apparent 
during 
the 
2018 
midterms, 
where Democrats seldom talked 
about climate change, instead 
choosing to focus on health care, 
the Republican tax plan and 
corruption in President Donald 
Trump’s administration.
I have been wondering for a 
long time when a Democrat would 
run for president primarily on 
climate change. In 2016, national 
media gave it little airtime, and 
candidate Hillary Clinton did not 
prioritize the stark differences 
between herself and President 
Donald Trump on the issue.
A possible explanation for the 
recent lack of national climate 
change conversation is the partisan 
nature of climate politics. The 
same Pew poll highlighted that 
climate change is the issue with the 
largest partisan prioritization gap. 
Another possibility is that climate 
change conversations seem too 
apocalyptic to be inspiring. Or 
perhaps many Americans think 
dealing 
with 
climate 
change 
means losing jobs.
Jay 
Inslee, 
governor 
of 
Washington and current 2020 
candidate for the Democratic 
nomination, 
believes 
those 
obstacles can be overcome. By 
running as the climate candidate, 
he is trying to exploit the 
disconnect between the extent 
Democratic 
voters 
prioritize 
climate change and the attention 
candidates give it on the national 
stage. Coming from Washington, 
which 
has 
a 
sizable 
rural 
Republican population, he thinks 
he can make climate change an 
issue Republicans can get behind. 
And instead of prophesying doom 
as many climate advocates do, 
he is explicitly pushing a hopeful 

message, one centered on the 
potential jobs a transition to clean 
energy brings.
Though 
the 
rest 
of 
the 
Democratic field also calls for 
action on climate change, they 
do not make it a priority — it is 
just another on the laundry list of 
agenda items they have once in 
office. For Inslee, climate change 
should be the next president’s top 
priority.
Inslee’s message is especially 
significant 
because, 
for 
Democrats, prioritization shapes 
policy. In 2008, then-candidate 
Barack Obama had an ambitious 
legislative agenda, but since he 
prioritized the Affordable Care 
Act and the American Recovery 
and Reinvestment Act, he was 
unable to expend more political 
capital 
passing 
comprehensive 
immigration 
reform 
or 
his 
cap-and-trade plan for carbon 
emissions. 
If 
climate 
action 
proposals are just another item 
on the long list of policies 2020 
candidates need to prove their 
progressive 
credibility, 
I 
am 
skeptical we will see meaningful 
change.
Inslee’s bet does not seem to 
be paying off. While it is early in 
the campaign and Inslee does not 
have high national visibility, he 
has not been polling higher than 
one percent and often does not 
even appear in the top 12. He is 
not even the most popular issue-
based candidate — entrepreneur 
Andrew Yang’s campaign based 
on universal basic income has 
been about as successful so far 
(and he certainly has more of a cult 
following).
Inslee’s low polling is not a 
condemnation 
for 
prioritizing 
climate action on the national 
level, but it underscores the need to 
integrate climate into other issues 
Democrats are passionate about.
In that capacity, he is losing 
out to the other, faceless climate 
candidate of the 2020 Democratic 
primary — the Green New Deal, 
which is the proposed framework 
for fighting climate change and 

socio-economic inequality from 
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 
D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, 
D-Mass. 
Despite, 
or 
maybe 
because of, the right’s vilification 
of the proposal, it has polled well 
across the political spectrum, 
with more likely voters expressing 
support than opposition (including 
71-percent 
of 
Democrats). 
Historically, Democratic climate 
policy has focused on wonky 
policies 
like 
cap-and-trade 
proposals or carbon taxes. When 
these 
were 
the 
headliners, 
voters 
were 
unenthusiastic, 
which limited how intensely the 
Obama administration wanted 
to put themselves behind climate 
legislation, according to David 
Axelrod, President Obama’s senior 
adviser. These efforts also ignored 
the ways in which climate change 
will first impact marginalized 
communities.
Even though Inslee’s climate 
messaging is more nuanced 
than the climate politics of the 
past, by branding himself as 
the climate candidate, he has 
sidelined economic and social 
justice issues important to the 
Democratic base. And it does not 
help that Inslee, a 68-year-old 
white man, looks like the people 
who have often advocated for 
technocratic climate policies.
The recent report issued by 
the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change tells the world 
that we must drastically reduce 
our global carbon emissions by 
2030 in order to mitigate the 
worst impacts of climate change. 
That requires the United States 
gets on board and prioritizes 
climate 
change. 
The 
Green 
New Deal’s popularity, and Jay 
Inslee campaign’s lack thereof, 
proves that we cannot talk about 
climate change by itself, but 
that it must be fully integrated 
into other efforts voters are 
passionate about.

Ramisa Rob can be reached at 

rfrob@umich.edu.

Sexual assault is not sex

RAMISA ROB | COLUMN

CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION

Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the 
editor and op-eds. Letters should be fewer than 300 
words while op-eds should be 550 to 850 words. 
Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation 
to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.

Jay Inslee and the future of climate politics

Zack Blumberg
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram

Jeremy Kaplan
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland
Anu Roy-Chaudhury

Alex Satola
Timothy Spurlin
Nicholas Tomaino
Erin White 
Ashley Zhang

Solomon Medintz can be reached at 

smedintz@umich.edu.

SOLOMON MEDINTZ | COLUMN

