After receiving vice president for student affairs Patricia Telles-Irvin’s email last week — which announced no disciplinary action would be taken against two fraternities after alleged sexual assaults — I, along with many other students, found myself feeling angry and betrayed at the University’s continual failure to fully deal with sexual assault. Many fellow students in the artistic community shared their anger with me, both online and in person, on numerous occasions. In times of crisis like these, the arts are particularly adept at providing comfort and impetus for action, and I have personally experienced the power of the arts to inspire on behalf of social causes.

However, despite outward condemnation of sexual assault, arts communities too often find themselves at a loss for how to tangibly affect change within our own workplaces, organization and social groups. And it is a loss that puts people at risk. Especially as we approach this year’s student organization turnover season, we must also come to terms with our artistic communities’ relationships with rape culture and other gendered violence, and seek to mitigate this in the coming year.

Firstly, we must abandon the idea that art-making is inherently always action toward progressive change. Art is as diverse in its themes as the people who create it, and as all people and groups operate within multiple intersectional layers of identity, their artistic messages will contain nuanced political ramifications. Not all people are concerned about making art more inclusive — whether in words or in practice — and so by nature, some art will be ineffective or even hostile to activism. We can’t act like the mere practice of making art, or assuming the identity of “artist,” is inherently a political action. To do so is not only exhaustingly self-congratulatory, but also prevents us from holding art to a certain standard. If a piece of art is counterproductive to the pursuit of inclusivity, we should feel comfortable criticizing or condemning it as such.

Secondly, we must stop the conflation of creativity with sexuality, as well as the further conflation of both these ideas with progressivism. While sex-positivity is absolutely necessary, and in fact serves to fight against sexual assault, expecting sexual activity from individual members of a community is harmful and creates an environment where people can easily be coerced into performing sexual activity that they do not wish to. When I was sexually assaulted by a member of my high school’s arts community, one of my assailant’s methods of coercion was threatening consequences to not complying with the sexual demands I was not comfortable with.

In addition to other ongoing forms of relational abuse, he used a rhetoric of “bohemianism” to manipulate my behavior and make me believe that if I did not satisfy his sexual demands, I would somehow become less creative, progressive or “liberated,” and hence become isolated from artistic and activist communities. The pressure of sexual radicalism as a prerequisite for inclusion in an artistic community’s social or even professional environment is immensely pervasive, and it is perpetuated by people who buy into this constructed notion of bohemianism. Sex-positivity means respecting all sexual choices, including the choice not to have sex in any circumstances; to do otherwise is to entirely disregard consent itself.

Third, we must specifically uplift marginalized people in our organizational practices. In order to provide effective representations of diverse bodies and experiences on stage, screen and image, we must ensure that our depictions are founded in truthful, lived experiences. This involves specifically and intentionally giving creative leadership opportunities to marginalized people. Uplifting traditionally marginalized people in any leadership capacity, artistic or otherwise, mitigates the dynamics of power and privilege that can contribute to abusive and coercive behavior ingrained in communities.

In my personal case, my assailant specifically weaponized his neurotypical and cisgender male privilege against my autistic and queer identities in a variety of tangible ways. He was empowered to do so by these advantages bestowed upon him, in addition to his wealthy and white identity. Repeatedly exclusively placing privileged people who have repeatedly demonstrated oppressive behavior — especially in artistic organizations that purport inclusivity — perpetuates an institutional power hierarchy that has disastrous consequences for marginalized people. These consequences include an increased likelihood of experiencing a sexual assault, as in my case, with an assailant who felt entitled to control my body because he was told by society that he was entitled to anything and everything.

I truly believe art is an empowering tool for social change. However, we cannot effectively tackle this task when marginalized people fear violence in pursuing it. Successful art requires immense emotional and sometimes physical vulnerability, and access to this level of vulnerability is entirely predicated on feeling safe and secure. If we continue to exclusively uplift and defend only those most privileged among us, we ignore and excuse the ongoing culture of sexual violence that exists in our communities, including artistic ones.

Lindsey Weiss is a Communication sophomore. They can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].