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Analysis Of ' The Xyz Express ' By Sanday Relays Essay

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In a society dominated by patriarchal standards and plagued by its consequences, it is crucial to understand the variety of cultural patterns present in our everyday. Within the context of a university environment, in particular, individuals are faced with decisions and situations that hold potentially dangerous and damaging consequences. Whether we are enabling these situations directly or merely bearing witness to their results, we must all work to gain an understanding of these patterns and reflect inwardly about our values before we can make a legitimate social change. Below, I discuss three quotations that present issues especially relevant to college campus sexual assault, and how the authors’ discussion of these topics has affected me emotionally and intellectually.
In “The XYZ Express”, Sanday relays the stories of two women intimately involved in the culture of a typical fraternity and its brothers. One woman, Alice, expresses opinions consistent with the normalization of victim blaming and an absence of “collective responsibility” (72). Alice believes that women, including herself, who put themselves in certain situations are inevitably “asking for it.” She does not possess a clear definition of rape, especially because the girl featured, Laurel, “didn’t care enough to protect herself” (73).
Early in the narrative, Alice suspects that a girl was assaulted after seeing her the morning after a party. She claims: “Ignorance was fine with me. It wasn’t any of my

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