Carleton students gathered in Fenn Lounge on Sept. 20 to listen to and engage in discussion with Farrah Khan, a sexual violence awareness and prevention advocate.
Khan’s keynote discussion was part of the Carleton University Students’ Association’s (CUSA) BeFOREPLAYask, its sexual assault awareness week, which ran from Sept.12-16.
In addition to working as a sexual violence support and education co-ordinator at Ryerson University, Khan is an award-winning public speaker. Her lectures are aimed at educating listeners on issues surrounding sexual violence.
Entitled Pleasure Principles at Carleton, Khan’s talk addressed topics such as practicing consent, establishing boundaries, providing support to those who experience sexual trauma, and strategies to prevent sexual violence.
Khan engaged audience members by asking them to speak out about their own experiences in relation to topics discussed. She encouraged them to reflect on practicing self-care and providing support to sexual assault survivors.
According to Khan, while the topic of sexual violence is highly controversial because violence itself is pervasive, its prevention and remediation are most effective through community effort.
“The thing about sexual violence is, it is about coming to terms with the fact that we all cause harm, and we all have been harmed, and how do we heal as a community,” she told the audience. “How are you going to be ride-or-die for each other, how are you going to support each other? Those are the hard conversations.”
Khan also shared her personal experiences with sexual violence, emphasizing why it is important to understand consent and pleasure.
“When sexual violence happened in my life, when I was in high school, and when I was in grade school, because nobody had communicated what sex was, nobody had communicated what pleasure was, I was confused about how to even figure out if something wasn’t okay, or if something felt good,” she said.
Vesna Lukic, a women and gender studies graduate student said Khan taught her not to assume what other people believe about sexual violence.
“. . . I assume people have certain ideas about sexual assault and sexual violence but it’s more complicated than that, and so we should kind of be open to understanding it from different perspectives rather than trying to impose our own ideals onto them,” Lukic said.
According to CUSA president Zameer Masjedee, Khan’s lecture was the result of a joint collaboration between CUSA, Student Affairs, the Student Experience Office, and Equity Services.
Alexandra Noguera, CUSA’s vice-president (student issues), said that the objective of hosting the event was to raise awareness about sexual violence and to provide students with tools to prevent, cope with, and support those who may be suffering from sexual violence trauma.
Kahn’s talk aligns with the goals set out by the Our Turn Carleton initiative, which according to Noguera, includes enacting a consent team to address issues such as rape culture on campus, and to propose strategies to reduce sexual violence at Carleton.
“Sexual violence is a very relevant topic. It affects so many students from all different intersections,” Noguera said.
She added that the event was particularly aimed at first-year students.
“They are the ones who are the most at risk because they are entering such a new environment . . . a lot of them are far from home and they will start to feel lonely so they will be easy targets,” she explained.
According to Noguera, CUSA’s hope is that by starting the conversation earlier on in their university career, new students will be better prepared to prevent sexual violence before potentially harmful instances arise.
“We want to make sure that students know about consent and about all this sexual violence information before that time actually comes,” she said.
In the end, Khan said openly discussing pleasure is key to getting consent and ending sexual violence.
“There’s a lot of conversation now about ‘yes means yes’ and consent, but if we don’t even know what we want to have, or how to communicate that with someone . . . telling somebody that feels good, or that doesn’t feel good, or I like this position or not, or we’re embarrassed or ashamed about it then how are we actually going to prevent sexual violence from happening?” she said.
Photo by Aaron Hemens
