Campus Sexual Violence Prevention Educators’ Use of Gender in Their Work: A Critical Exploration

Abstract

Recent studies indicate that sexual violence affects college students who identify as trans* or gender nonconforming (TGNC) at higher proportions than cisgender students with a full 29% reporting an experience with violence in a recent large-scale study. College sexual violence prevention educators (SVPEs) are critical actors in the effort to reduce the incidence of sexual violence, yet little is known about the practices they engage in to support the learning of students of diverse genders, and to educate students about the role of gender in sexual violence. This study explores the practices of SVPEs with respect to gender diversity, and the challenges and strategies they use to be gender inclusive in their work. Using an exploratory qualitative lens, 16 SVPEs were interviewed to better understand how they think about gender in their work, talk about gender as it relates to sexual violence, and deploy teaching and learning strategies regarding gender in their work with undergraduate students. Findings suggest that SVPEs face significant pressures related to compliance with Title IX, and that in terms of their practices related to gender, they occupy a continuum typified by gender defensiveness and unawareness, gender awareness, gender inclusion, and/or gender transformation. Recommendations include advancing opportunities for enhanced gender diversity education and professional development for SVPEs and the need for additional research on cisgender men’s and trans* survivors’ experiences with campus sexual violence.

Keywords

prevention sexual assault GLBT cultural contexts

Introduction

Sexual violence is a continuing source of intense and prolonged suffering on college campuses in the United States. Research has consistently demonstrated that approximately one in five cisgender¹ college women experience sexual violence, harassment, stalking, or other forms of violence against women during their time in college (Fisher, Daigle, & Cullen, 2014). Despite ongoing efforts to prevent it, the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses has remained relatively steady over the past four decades (Fisher, Cullen, & Turner, 2000; Koss, Gidycz, & Wisniewski, 1987). A significant deficit in the study of sexual violence on campus has been the near invisibility of sexual violence that happens to trans* students.

Avoidance of addressing the issue of trans* sexual violence can be largely attributed to genderism, the widely practiced assumption that there are two, and only two, genders (Hill, 2003). While trans* individuals are clearly at heightened risk of sexual assault (Grant et al., 2010; Rothman, Exner, & Baughman, 2011), best practice guidance for sexual violence prevention education on college campuses indicates that it should be conducted in separate gender groups (Banyard, Plante, & Moynihan, 2003), reinforcing both heterosexism and genderism. Given the increasing numbers of trans* students on college campuses (Marine & Catalano, 2014), and given the fact that many trans* individuals are targeted for sexual violence in their lifetimes (Lombardi, Wilchins, Priesing, & Malouf, 2001), it is imperative to identify strategies that can be used to support prevention of sexual violence perpetrated against this population.

An important aspect of the work of prevention and intervention for sexual violence on the college campus is the relatively nascent professional position known as the sexual violence prevention educator (SVPE). SVPEs are typically employed at colleges and universities and charged with creating programs to promote awareness of the causal and contributory factors inherent in campus sexual violence. Because they are charged with developing, implementing, and evaluating sexual violence education for college students, these professionals are especially important actors in the ongoing effort to reduce sexual violence. However, what has yet to be explored is how those who design and provide sexual violence prevention education conceptualize gender in the design, delivery, and evaluation of their work on college campuses. To that end, this study sought to examine how SVPEs understand gender as a social identity category, and how they think about, talk about, and conceptualize gender in their work. We also endeavored to know what are the possibilities and/or limitations for diverse understandings of gender as they relate to sexual violence prevention.

Literature Review

Incidence and Prevalence of Campus Sexual Violence

As noted above, sexual violence is common among college students and has remained so for nearly 30 years (Fisher et al., 2014). Sexual violence, including rape and other forms of nonconsensual sexual contact, is reported by one fifth of all cisgender college women across various institutional types and settings (Cantor, Fisher, Chibnall, & Townsend, 2015; Fisher et al., 2000; Koss et al., 1987; Krebs, Lindquist, Warner, Fisher, & Martin, 2007). Stalking, relationship violence, and sexual harassment are also common experiences for cisgender college women. While the circumstances and factors implicated in sexual violence occurrence vary for each survivor, research suggests that most of these survivors are victimized by someone they know, in a familiar campus location such as a residence hall room or fraternity house, when they, the perpetrator(s), or both parties have consumed alcohol (Abbey, McAuslan, Zawacki, Clinton, & Buck, 2001; Gross, Winslett, Roberts, & Gohm, 2006). Until recently, the vast majority of studies of incidence and prevalence of campus sexual violence explicitly focused on the experiences of cisgender heterosexual women and, to a far lesser extent, cisgender men (e.g., O’Sullivan, Byers, & Finkleman, 1998; Tillapaugh, 2017).

While some scholars have expressed concern about the lack of attention to the experiences of trans* and gender nonconforming (TGNC) sexual violence survivors (Marine, 2017; Mizock & Lewis, 2008; Rothman et al., 2011), this omission has largely gone unquestioned. This is problematic, given that studies indicate that between 14% and 58% of trans* individuals have experienced some kind of forced sexual contact, ranging from sexual touch to rape, in the course of their adult lives (Heintz & Melendez, 2006; Kenagy, 2005; Lombardi et al., 2001; Xavier, Honnold, & Bradford, 2007). In terms of college populations, two recent studies demonstrate equally concerning trends. Wooten (2015) conducted a study of 219 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students on college campuses in Boston and Atlanta, and found that 52% of these students reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact in the span of their college careers. In addition, the only comprehensive large-scale study to date to include gender identities beyond cisgender women and men, conducted in 2015 by the American Association of Universities, revealed that 29.5% of TGNC students experienced unwanted sexual contact of some kind while in college, the highest percentage of any group by gender identity (Cantor et al., 2015).

It is important to resist the assumption that all trans* individuals are a monolithic entity. Looking more closely at data on specific trans* subpopulations, it appears that trans* women and feminine-of-center people appear to be at greatest risk of sexual violence and its aftereffects (Nuttbrock et al., 2014; Singh & McKleroy, 2010). Due to the relative paucity of research in this area, researchers and activists alike have cautioned against sweeping conclusions regarding the specificity of sexual violence factors and impact among trans* people (Cook-Daniels & Munson, 2010; Mizock & Lewis, 2008).

Sexual Violence Prevention Education

Sexual violence prevention education has been practiced on college and university campuses since the early 1990s, with varying degrees of impact and effectiveness. To conduct effective prevention education, it became imperative that the scholarly community name the causes and conditions contributing to the occurrence of campus sexual violence. This included the growing understanding that sexual violence was primarily an act of aggression fueled by alcohol, and perpetrated by cisgender men holding regressive attitudes toward cisgender women, such as an entitlement to sex on demand (Abbey, 2002; Fisher, Daigle, & Cullen, 2014; Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1997). Perpetrators are disproportionately engaged in campus environments and communities where hegemonic masculinity is cultivated and rewarded, including fraternities and athletic teams (Boswell & Spade, 1996; Corprew & Mitchell, 2014; McCray, 2014). Efforts to expand understanding of sexual violence causes and contributory factors beyond cisgender, heterosexual students have been relatively scarce, but at least one study suggests that some of the factors contributing to the occurrence of sexual violence among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans* students include societal silence about queer sexualities, and fear of judgment in largely heterosexist campus settings (Wooten, 2015).

While most scholars agree on the root causes and conditions that perpetuate the occurrence of sexual violence, prevention education efforts take numerous—and in some ways, contradictory—forms on college campuses. Some have focused on familiarizing students with the environmental conditions (e.g., being in an unfamiliar social setting and consuming alcohol excessively) that putatively lead to rape; this is commonly referred to as the “public health approach” and is typified by teaching students strategies (often tacitly directed at cisgender women) to avoid particular campus environments and to depend on one another for protection in risky campus settings (Gidycz, Rich, Orchowski, King, & Miller, 2006; Schafran, 1996). Other approaches focus on interrupting the sexist cultural messages that teach cisgender men to consider sex as an entitlement, and that dictate that women’s behaviors, drinking choices, dress, or other markers serve as signals to men about their interest in sexual intimacy (Choate, 2003; Gidycz, Orchowski, & Berkowitz, 2011). Some intervention efforts emphasize observing a simulation or realistic portrayal of a campus rape scenario to engage students in thinking about their role in preventing sexual violence (Iverson, 2006). Later iterations of this approach include prevention strategies that focus on involving students in looking out for their peers who may be facing risk of sexual violence, a more recent phenomenon, known as bystander intervention (Banyard, Moynihan, & Crossman, 2009; McMahon, Postmus, & Koenick, 2011). Research to measure the effects of these varied approaches in terms of their efficacy in preventing sexual violence has shown only modest, if any, progress in reducing incidence and prevalence on college campuses (Anderson & Whiston, 2005; Morrison, Hardison, Mathew, & O’Neil, 2004). Nonetheless, the role of sexual violence prevention education in addressing and responding to sexual violence has been institutionalized by the federal government in mandates issued in 2011 (Ali, 2011). Colleges and universities have since acted swiftly to adopt prevention programs, displaying what has been referred to as a culture of compliance, focusing on meeting the letter of the law rather than attending to the question of effectiveness or impact (Grossman, 2003).

Study Design

The present study was qualitative and exploratory in nature. In other words, our approach as researchers was consistent with Mertens’s (2015) suggestion that qualitative research methods include “exploration, discovery, and inductive logic,” and that “[qualitative] researchers attempt to make sense of a situation without imposing preexisting expectations on the phenomenon under study” (p. 236). Consistent with previous exploratory studies of gender in higher education (e.g., Marine & Nicolazzo, 2014; Nicolazzo, Pitcher, Renn, & Woodford, 2017), we intentionally chose to not situate our inquiry in any of the traditional qualitative methodologies (i.e., ethnography, case study, phenomenology, narrative, grounded theory). Instead, we constructed an interview protocol that would allow us to explore how gender operated as a discourse to expand, constrain, and otherwise influence the daily work of SVPEs on college campuses. Our approach was in line with Van Maanen, Manning, and Miller’s (2001) contention that “exploration . . . is arguably a more inviting and indeed accurate way of presenting social research than treating it as a narrowing, quasi- and rule-bound process that settles and confirms rather than unsettles and questions what one knows” (p. v). In this way, our exploratory approach allowed us to “describe routine and problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011, p. 4), particularly as they related to gender.

Theoretical Perspective

Due to the aforementioned lack of empirical research related to how gender operates as a discourse shaping the work of SVPEs, we undertook the present study out of a healthy skepticism for the extent to which these practitioners were basing their work in expansive understandings of gender. Further prompted by our own investments and previous work experiences in sexual violence prevention—which we discuss later—we framed the present study through a gender-based critical theoretical perspective called critical trans politics (CTP; Spade, 2015). Informed by Black feminist thought (e.g., Collins, 1999; hooks, 2000; Lorde, 2007) and intersectionality theory (Crenshaw, 1989, 1995), CTP places primary importance on the needs and lived realities of trans* individuals. In particular, CTP states trans* people should and do have agency to name their own genders as well as develop strategies by which to counteract and resist the daily realities of genderism, or the assumption that there are two and only two sexes (i.e., male/female), which are then linked to two and only two genders (i.e., man/woman), respectively. CTP also centers the voices of trans* people in discussions on social justice and equity, using what Spade (2015) called a “trickle up” approach to activism. This approach requires those seeking equity and justice to focus intervention strategies on those who are most on the margins. Echoing the concept of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1995) then, CTP demands educators must think not only of those most on the margins of collegiate environments but also that one think about these populations from a perspective that recognizes the multiple, intersecting identities these students often have. In doing so, educators can best understand the unique needs and complex issues facing these students and, as such, develop policies and practices to address best those who are often overlooked, forgotten, or rendered invisible through policy and practice.

Data Collection and Analysis

Data collection consisted of semistructured interviews with 16 student affairs educators whose primary responsibility was coordinating and/or performing their campus’ sexual violence prevention education efforts. Each interview was performed by only one researcher, with all interviews lasting between 50 and 90 min. Participants were sought via an open call for participants circulated through various sexual violence prevention education listservs as well as social media networks.

As data collection unfolded, we noticed most participants were White cisgender women, so we recirculated our call for participants with the intent to include people of color and people with various genders. Our second round of seeking participants also included our reaching out to people we knew who fit either/both identities and were doing sexual violence prevention education at their respective campuses. However, to increase the credibility and confirmability of the data, we made sure not to individually interview anyone we knew personally.

After interviews were completed, all audio files were transcribed verbatim and we performed three rounds of coding. The first round of coding involved each researcher reading all transcripts line-by-line, writing memos for what they noticed during each individual interview as well as across all interviews. After coming together to discuss our collective memos, we elucidated a nascent framework for our data, which we went back to our transcripts to confirm through axial coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Upon finishing our second round of coding, we presented our initial framework and findings at a national conference for student affairs educators, garnering feedback from the audience. Both researchers then met again to modify our framework, which provoked a third round of coding to sharpen and add nuance to our themes. Furthermore, our utilization of a national conference presentation to seek and incorporate feedback about initial findings served to increase our study’s face validity (Lather, 1991), and the catalytic validity of our study was shown through the multiple comments we received from both audience members and study participants who conveyed that our initial findings had already helped them rethink the sexual violence prevention education work they were doing in more expansive, critical, and gender-inclusive ways.

Researcher Positionality

Both researchers have direct experience performing sexual violence prevention work in collegiate environments, with the primary researcher also having significant work experience working in nonprofit community organizations. In addition, both researchers have researched and written extensively on gender, feminisms, and the experiences of trans* collegians (Marine & Catalano, 2014; Nicolazzo, 2016a, 2016b; Nicolazzo & Marine, 2015), which were central to our framing the need for the present study. Specifically, we both noticed that trans* narratives and experiences, despite their increasing prevalence and social visibility, were not changing the nature of sexual violence prevention work. Furthermore, if trans* lives and realities were influencing sexual violence prevention education, it was only in terms of intragroup LGBTQ-related relationship violence rather than attending to the pernicious effects of systemic queer- and femmephobia on trans* people, as well as trans* oppression that saturates collegiate environments (e.g., Catalano, 2015; Jourian, 2016, 2017; Marine, 2011; Nicolazzo, 2016b). Thus, our own connections to the need for this research stemmed from our disconnections with how sexual violence prevention education continues to be performed: through a dualistic gender binary lens that suggests only cisgender women are victimized, and that sexual violence is only perpetrated by cisgender men.

Findings

Study findings are presented as a Sexual Violence Prevention Continuum (Figure 1). The choice to display findings in this fashion was intentional in that SVPEs are familiar with, and use, various continua in their work to explain the nature of sexual violence (e.g., the Continuum of Sexual Violence). Explained in further depth below, the Sexual Violence Prevention Educator Gender Inclusion Continuum contains five dispositions: gender unaware, gender defensive, gender aware, gender inclusive, and gender transformative. All dispositions are situated in a pervasive institutional compliance culture (Grossman, 2003).

Figure 1.

Sexual violence prevention educator continuum—Overarching context: Compliance culture.

Compliance Culture

Several participants—including Cate, Mac, Leroy, Luna, and Annie—were quick to discuss how increased external and internal pressures to comply with federal policies regulated their work as SVPEs. Specifically, participants spoke often, and with great depth, about how Title IX and the Department of Education’s “Dear Colleague Letter” (Ali, 2011), as well as how their campus administration interpreted these initiatives, were central to their (in)ability to do their work as they preferred. Cate explained, “I view myself as a compliance person. I make sure we are complying with Title IX. I help write and update policy. I’m one of four people, all of them have legal training, that [sic] do that every year.” Similarly, Mac stated,

The thing I quickly learned that part of being a sexual violence prevention educator on a college campus is having to know and understand Title IX and VAWA [Violence Against Women Act] and Clery and all of those bjillion different legislations at the federal and state level that really mandate a lot of the work.

Cate’s and Mac’s sentiments of the shifting nature and requirements of sexual violence prevention education on college campuses were widely shared across participants.

Making the connection between the increase of pressure to comply with the expanding list of federal and state policies and the execution of sexual violence prevention work, Leroy shared,

We’ve also got a lot of requirements and expectations from the DOE letter and Title IX [and] the Clery Act; I think all those pieces have wrapped up into how prevention looks and acts on a campus. Often when those policies and procedures aren’t inherently prevention-based [and] I think you see that effect [in] the work that we do in prevention.

Annie also talked about how needing to be in compliance with mandates and policies was influencing her work, stating, “We are mandatory reporters. So, students dropping by individually and requesting assistance, our numbers have dipped significantly as the whole issue of mandated reporting has come forward.” Both Annie’s and Leroy’s comments highlight how the web on policies, mandates, and regulations related to sexual violence prevention efforts on college campuses inhibited the work they could do. Therefore, rather than being an indictment of individual participants (in)ability to infuse gender-expansive perspectives through their education, the culture of compliance often prevented them from doing so. As Luna stated simply, “I have really been consumed by Title IX; I think that has taken a lot of people’s attention, whether for good or for bad.”

Continuum Dispositions

Participants exhibited various dispositions when discussing their views on gender’s place in their sexual violence prevention education work. We refer to these dispositions as a way to mark their nonfixity. Unlike the notions of stages or positions, participants sometimes conveyed multiple dispositions in their interviews. This led us as researchers to gain a nuanced perspective of the gender-based work participants did as well as how compliance culture may have forced them to assume various dispositions at different times or in different spaces on campus.

Gender unaware

Gender unawareness was marked by a lack of understanding of how gender diversity was important in prevention education efforts. It was a “close cousin” in our analysis to participants who exhibited gender defensiveness. However, what separated being defensive versus unaware was the tonality and approach to responses, as noted in Annie’s and Rene’s commentary. If resistance was the hallmark of a gender defensive disposition—discussed at length below—an unassuming lack of clarity was the hallmark of a gender unaware disposition.

Signaling the close connections between gender unaware and gender defensive dispositions, Annie demonstrated both throughout her interview. For example, when asked about how gender mediated the prevention education she oversaw, she made statements such as “I’m not sure I’m following your question” or “Well, it’s all gendered because sexual violence is a gendered crime.” Taken in the broader context of her interview, these comments could be understood as defensive speech acts. However, upon further analysis, the comments could also underscore a lack of nuanced understanding of gender diversity on Annie’s behalf. This latter analysis was further emphasized throughout her interview, as Annie made multiple comments about “traditional relationships” with “a woman as the victim [and] a man as the perpetrator.” The lack of any modifier in front of the words “woman” and “man,” and her use of the word “traditional” during the interview, highlight a gender unaware disposition. Similarly, Rene conveyed an unawareness of gender diversity when she stated,

Women sort of have a different perspective on bystander intervention and a different maybe—we don’t focus a lot on risk reduction anymore, ward off attackers. But women have been doing bystander intervention forever. They have been taking care of each other. The conversations are different. The comments [I receive] are like, “I hope you are saying this to men because they really need to be getting along too.” Stuff about male victims, it doesn’t seem to resonate as much with an all women audience.

Here, Rene showed a lack of awareness of gender diversity and how sexual violence prevention education could address sexual violence outside of cisgender/heterosexual constructs. However, she did so without a defensive tone or approach. Instead, she seemed more matter-of-fact about her approach during her interview. For example, when asked whether she talked about trans* people in her educational initiatives, she said, “No, we don’t. We haven’t dialogued about trans* students or things like that.” The lack of conversation, thought, or recognition, and this lack being stated without resistance or defensiveness, demonstrates the core of a gender unaware disposition.

Gender defensive

Although only one participant consistently displayed a gender defensive disposition (Annie), the disposition is essential to one’s understanding of how gender diversity is (not) infused through sexual violence prevention education. In other words, this disposition, marked by a defense of binary understandings of gender as it relates to sexual violence as well as an inability to identify examples of how gender diversity influences prevention efforts—delimits the ways gender diversity is (not) engaged as a lens through which to approach the gender-based phenomenon of sexual violence.

During her interview, Annie mentioned, “It is very important that we don’t always address the victim/survivor as ‘she.’ We will say that right up front. Men are also assaulted.” While this perspective seems to highlight an awareness of how gender influenced Annie’s prevention education efforts, she only mentioned trans* people once, stating that “direct mentions of different identities are included. Different ethnicities, issues of disability, trans* folks, sexual minorities. All of those get included.” When asked to share examples of “how those get included,” Annie’s answer was elusive. She stated, “I don’t have standard ways those different identities are included, but we include them,” and,

You have to pick and choose. Do I spend most of my time on the campus in general to make sure everybody gets some amount of information? Or do I cut into some of that time to focus more time into a specific population? . . . I think what is difficult is spending time on specific targeted issues within a broader context.

Not only was Annie unable to provide concrete examples of how a diverse understanding of gender influenced the prevention education she did, but she also discussed the “difficulty” of including “those different identities” in educational programming. Annie even went so far as to defend her practice by stating it was more important to provide general education (i.e., education that did not elucidate how gender mediates sexual violence) than “spending time on specific targeted issues within a broader context.” While the work Annie and others do is laudable, these data suggest that a gender defensive disposition could be dangerous, as it occludes realities around how sexual violence maps across people with diverse genders and sexualities.

Gender aware

The gender aware disposition was characterized by educators’ awareness of people with diverse genders; however, implementation of that knowledge stopped at discussions of inclusive language or using various gender pronouns when providing scenarios of sexual violence throughout educational programming. Participants, such as Cora, Leroy, and Lisa, who displayed this disposition also exclusively talked about LGBTQ sexual violence as an effect of intragroup relationships rather than something that cisgender/heterosexual people enacted upon queer and trans* people, which, as research suggests, is far more common and pervasive (New, 2015).

In talking about how she incorporated diverse understandings of gender in her educational initiatives, Lisa said,

I just present it [the existence of a many different genders] and then I go on with my presentation. There is not a focus on gender. We did recently do an extremely successful LGBTQ sexual assault panel, but that wasn’t my presentation. I helped a grad student organize it, so I was a sponsor of it, but I did not do it myself. . . . Unfortunately, there is a definite lack [of discussing gender diversity] in our presentations, and that is my fault.

Similar to Lisa, Cora showed an awareness of gender diversity through prevention education, but only demonstrated this awareness when working alongside LGBTQ populations. She stated,

We also talk about how . . . all these dynamics [of sexual violence] are applicable to LGBTQ students and certainly relationships. . . . When I do presentations for our queer student groups, we really go into more depth about that. About how it’s different, where are the numbers more predominant.

Cora’s comments show her awareness of sexual violence for queer populations, but only insofar as they relate to intragroup LGBTQ relationships. In other words, Cora’s disposition as being gender aware mediated how she framed sexual violence prevention education, with her suggesting that LGBTQ sexual violence was an effect of intragroup partnerships rather than one of cisgender/heterosexual people perpetrating sexual violence against queer and trans* people, which current research indicates is more prevalent and pervasive.

Leroy explained how gender influenced his work by discussing taking an approach to education that would work “for women, for men, [and] for folks who identify as neither.” He also mentioned that he “use[d] gender neutral names in every presentation,” but did not identify other things he did to recognize or highlight gender diversity. Not only did Leroy’s comments display a reductionist awareness of gender diversity—not all trans* people identify as “neither” women nor men—but the implicit assumption behind his using the terms “women” and “men” was the centering of cisgender women and men. This unstated modifier, then, acted as a way of centering cisgender people through education, while the phrase “[and] for folks who identify as neither” acted as a reductive placeholder for a broad and complex community of trans* people who are asymmetrically impacted by sexual violence. Furthermore, by acknowledging, but not moving beyond, using “gender neutral names in every presentation,” Leroy showed some awareness of gender diversity; however, this awareness did not rise to the level of addressing how sexual violence (prevention) is/should be framed through an understanding of systemic misogyny, sexism, patriarchy, and trans* oppression.

Gender inclusive

Participants who displayed a gender-inclusive disposition moved beyond just using inclusive language and recognizing various gender-expansive pronouns to actually implementing inclusive practices in how they developed and conveyed sexual violence prevention education. While participants embodying a gender-inclusive disposition (such as Laura and S) lacked an investment in institutional change, they did not stop at using inclusive language, itself a hallmark of the gender aware disposition discussed below. Speaking about moving beyond using inclusive language, Laura shared,

We are very cognizant of our material when we publish it . . . is it gender inclusive? Does it have a woman on it? A man on it? Even our colors—we went through a rebranding phase probably about a year ago where we were really intentional about the message because we also know that it’s not only women who are assaulted, but really men and child sexual abuse, victimizations of our students before they even get to college. Do they feel safe to report a victimization that occurred as children or when they get here? So for us, every little detail in terms of how we engage through our image and through the colors plays a key role on how people are going to perceive prevention on the campus.

Here, Laura elucidated how gender was instrumental to her work beyond presenting educational sessions.

Although not discussing marketing materials, S amplified the importance of framing sexual violence prevention education as a gendered phenomenon that is understood beyond cisgender/heterosexual experiences. As she explained, “Talking only about sexual violence in a heterosexual and cisgender context is not a neutral phenomenon; it’s leaving out important groups who are already subjected to these issues.” Pushing back against the normative framing of sexual violence as a cisgender/heterosexual phenomenon, S demonstrated an ability to develop approaches to prevention education that exposed this normativity as problematic and dangerous. Both Laura and S’s narratives spoke to a 360-degree infusion of gender into their work as educators, moving beyond the mere use of inclusive language during presentations.

Gender transformative

Two participants in this study, Marisela and Mac, exhibited a gender transformative disposition, and advanced an acute and steadfast focus on shifting the programming and education they did to be more gender inclusive. They also displayed an awareness of the complex nature of intersectional praxis and discussed their continued evolving understanding of gender as a construct. Finally, these participants not only discussed the need for institutional cultural change, but conveyed how they were creating broad-based coalitions of people across their institutions, as well as within their local communities, to motivate such change. This disposition was rarely expressed during interviews and was best demonstrated by Jane.

Discussing her investments with local community-based organizations and how this influenced her work on campus, Marisela stated,

A lot of my work outside of my job is around policing in prison and sort of the prison industrial complex. So I do a lot of helping people make comparisons between the power plays that go on inside interpersonal violence, in terms of domestic violence or sexual violence, and understanding those as power-based crimes that rely on marginalizing people, and then thinking through how systems like prison replicate those ideas . . . writ large. And I have spent a couple of years trying to sort of build a conversation on campus around the ways that especially women—queer and trans—[and] people of color—who are themselves the victims of interpersonal violence, because policing systems are racist—end up punished for trying to either defend themselves or avail themselves of protection from the state.

In this comment, Marisela showed an adept understanding of how policing and the prison industrial complex negatively impacts queer and trans* women (and people) of color. Moreover, she not only articulates this as a community-based concern, but one that framed—and therefore influenced—the way she approached her work on her campus. Marisela’s ability to make connections between state-sanctioned enactments of violent erasure, and how this then promotes her nuanced approach to sexual violence prevention education on campus via intersectional praxis was exemplary of the gender transformative disposition.

Mac also described a more systemic approach to the work, including attention to enlisting all community members in that effort. Addressing the focus on stoking institutional cultural change, they explained,

I think about culture shift, I don’t think about being one warm body in a room and convincing them [audience members] to no longer enact violence. I think about creating an environment where people are holding each other accountable and where violence is not tolerated.

Mac was explicit that their approach to sexual violence prevention was not to be a “warm body in a room,” but to encourage a culture in which students, faculty, and staff were “holding each other accountable.” This perspective differed vastly from other dispositions. Further emblematic of a transformative disposition was an intersectional approach to discussing gender. For example, Mac stated, “When we talk about gender . . . I wouldn’t want to make that conversation one-dimensional, because it’s a perpetuation of a White-normative story around masculinity and femininity, but really helping folks understand gender itself is racialized and classed.” Mac’s explicit connection of how systems of racism and classism influence—and therefore must inform—conversations around gender demonstrated the ways that expansive understandings of gender could be instrumental in transforming the very nature and direction of sexual violence prevention education.

Implications

The present study, and the development of the Sexual Violence Prevention Educator Gender Inclusion Continuum, suggests multiple implications for research and practice. Of primary importance is the continued recognition of how pervasive a culture of compliance delimits sexual violence prevention education on college campuses. By itself, this seems a fairly innocuous point, especially in light of the various other scholars who have discussed how policies, regulations, and mandates have circumscribed how sexual violence is framed as an issue (Cantalupo, 2011; Wooten & Mitchell, 2016). We found that compliance culture often inhibited how SVPEs could do their work in ways that reflected the plurality—and ongoing expansion—of existing genders. Simply put, it was not that some educators did not want to work in more liberatory ways in relation to gender, but they felt tethered by the constant need to focus on compliance. Words like “compliance,” “checklist,” “mandate,” “law,” and “policies” were pervasive across all interviews, as were the notions of not having enough time and needing to make choices about what participants discussed in the limited time they had with student audiences.

A further implication from the present study is that sexual assault prevention educators differ vastly in terms of how they frame sexual violence. In other words, while all participants agreed sexual violence was a decidedly gendered phenomenon, just what the notion of something being gendered meant varied greatly. Participants’ variant levels of understanding regarding gender meant TGNC people were overlooked at best, and dismissed at worst. Restrictive, binary understandings of gender—and, as a result, sexual violence prevention education—are reflective of the omnipresence of a gender binary discourse (Nicolazzo, 2016b) in postsecondary education environments. As this study suggests, the gender binary discourse within sexual violence prevention education efforts occludes how the devastating effects of sexual violence map onto trans* students’ experiences, or that the rates of victimization for trans* people are equivalent to or greater than the epidemic levels of victimization for cisgender women. When understood in conjunction with the effects of racism, classism, and compulsory able-bodiedness, it is clear that those students who are most on the margins (e.g., trans* students of color, poor and homeless trans* students, and/or trans* students with disabilities) are not even considered, and their experiences rendered invisible.

A final implication from the present study was that identity matters not only for how sexual assault prevention education occurs but also for who is doing this education. Overwhelmingly, those displaying transformative and inclusive dispositions were themselves members of (multiple) marginalized communities. There seemed to exist an attitude of needing to engage in transformative/inclusive work as a result of others not doing so. However, while this felt important to participants with various marginalized identities, especially those who were queer and/or trans* themselves, it also came with consequences. For example, both Mac and S talked about what their trans*ness meant in relation to their discussing sexual violence through gender-expansive epistemology, particularly as it related to what students may (not) take away from educational interventions. In addition, Jane, who identified as queer and a Black Haitian woman, stated she was often framed as “angry,” drawing parallels to the coding of Black woman as angry (e.g., Ahmed, 2010; Harris-Perry, 2011; Patton & Catching, 2009). The seeming necessity for people with marginalized identities—especially those who identified as queer and trans*—to take on the work of expanding notions of gender through sexual violence prevention education was not free from personal or professional concerns. Further studies about the effects of having (multiple) marginalized identities on SVPEs’ work could help unpack these important insights with more depth.

Conclusion

This study demonstrates a number of realities about providing interventions that are not only gender inclusive, but gender expansive. First, professional SVPEs face a number of challenges in providing comprehensive education, largely driven by the pressures associated with a culture of compliance (Grossman, 2003). This ethos compels those charged with attending to sexual violence prevention to focus on expeditious educational programs, as opposed to those which are effective, inclusive, and consequently, more resource-intensive. This study provides enhanced understanding of the fact that some participants appeared to progress in their understanding of gender complexity as a factor in sexual violence, though we do not yet know what forms of training, clinical education, or other experiences catalyze that understanding. Participants spoke of numerous, diffuse ways that they engage in professional development to expand their work, and universally lamented that little to none of these opportunities provide ongoing education regarding gender diversity and its intersection with sexual violence.

Participants often enacted multiple dispositions related to gender inclusion at different points in their narrative, suggesting scaffolded challenges (and successes) in transforming their own thinking as well as their practices. We were admittedly troubled by the concept that gender-inclusive education cannot be advanced on one’s campus due to lack of readiness, as some invoked the notion of “meeting students where they are.” This strikes us as a perfectly logical explanation (Routenberg & Sclafani, n.d.) for not attending to what is most needed in the work: urgently attending to naming, and preventing, the significant prevalence of sexual violence among trans* students.

Ultimately, SVPEs in this study revealed important new insights about the challenges associated with enacting gender-expansive prevention education while immersed in contemporary compliance culture norms and restrictions. We maintain that despite these constraints, SVPEs and scholars alike can and should be more courageous in our work, to enact tempered radicalism (Kezar & Carducci, 2007; Meyerson, 2003) and to engage in critically informed praxis that authentically centers—as opposed to merely gesturing to—the most marginalized on our campuses (Spade, 2015). Violence prevention work that is framed by binaristic understandings of gender signals a disconnected crossroads of need and practice. This work is crucial to transform thinking and practice to ensure that effective, inclusive sexual violence prevention education is provided to students of all genders, toward the ultimate goal of ending sexual violence once and for all.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the NASPA Foundation (Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education) in the completion of this project.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Susan B. Marine (pronouns: she/her) is an associate professor and program director in the Higher Education Master’s program at Merrimack College. She has 20 years’ experience leading initiatives in higher education for the advancement of women and trans* students of all genders, with specific expertise in sexual violence prevention and response, and advocacy for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community. She has published in the Journal About Women in Higher Education, the Journal of Homosexuality, Feminist Formations, and Trans* Studies Quarterly. She is the author of Stonewall’s Legacy: Bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgender students in higher education.

Z Nicolazzo (pronouns: ze/hir) is an assistant professor in the Adult and Higher Education program and a faculty associate in the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Northern Illinois University. Z’s first book, Trans* In College: Transgender Students’ Strategies for Navigating Campus Life and the Institutional Politics of Inclusion, was recently released by Stylus Publishing. Z has also published in the Journal of LGBT Youth, Journal of College Student Personnel, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly.

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