This weekend Sexual Empowerment and Awareness at Tennessee put on the play “Extremities” in the Clarence Brown Lab Theatre. Walking in without any notion of what the play was about, it was clear from the first scene that it was going to be tough to watch.
This was an understatement. The play is about a woman who has her house broken into by a man who assaults and attempts to rape her. She is able to overpower him, however, and ties him up in the fireplace. What follows is the dilemma her and her roommates face in deciding what to do. Should they call the cops? Should they kill him?
It seems unrealistic in writing, but the portrayal makes it seem very real. It raises questions like “What would you do?”and “Is she justified in her actions?” But these are the questions that exist on the surface: it’s what lies beneath the obvious that really shakes you to your core. When the rapist enters her home and refuses to leave, it feels like a nightmare.
Ever since I’ve come to college, sexual assault has been at the forefront of many campus issues and conversations. I have lived my entire life at a distance from problems like these. I have been lucky to live a life free from discrimination.
I know that racism, sexism and other forms of oppression exist, but it’s so hard to fully grasp what they do to people until you see it happen firsthand — and even more so, have it happen to you. I’ve never experienced the latter. I’ve never experienced the issues that people of color face every day. I’ve never been raped or sexually assaulted. I cannot even attempt to know what it is like to have these things happen to me.
What this play did was bring me closer to this issue than I’ve ever been. It was uncomfortable to the point of making me nauseated, but it was exactly what I needed to see—what all UT students need to see.
My fear is that the people who needed to see it the most were probably at a party Friday night, or at the basketball game on Saturday. I know many men who need to take a closer looks at these problems: men who are good people yet dangerously misinformed, resulting in victim-blaming and slut-shaming.
This came to a tipping point for me when A.J. Johnson was accused of sexual assault. Some of my friends joined in with the throng of Tennessee fans proclaiming the football player’s innocence, and they completely disregarded the victim in the situation. (Daily Beacon Editor-in-Chief Claire Dodson did a phenomenal job writing about this subject in her column titled, “Stop the sexual assault shame,” and I don’t want to simply reiterate what she said.)
But I cannot emphasize enough how important it was for me to see this play, and I can only encourage my fellow students to do the same when similar opportunities arise in the future. I came in thinking that I was pretty knowledgeable about the subject of sexual assault.
What I realized is that looking at issues in unique way — like in an art form — offers the chance to take in the emotional and human side of an issue that is usually smothered in faceless statistics.
Thomas Carpenter is a junior in classics. He can be reached at [email protected].
