The importance of Denim Day

Content Warning: This article discusses sensitive topics including sexual assault.

In 1992, an 18-year-old girl was raped in Rome by her 45-year-old driving instructor. During her first lesson, he took her to an isolated road, pulled her out of the car, removed her jeans and forcefully raped her. She then reported the rape, and the perpetrator was arrested and prosecuted.

Seven years later, the driving instructor appealed the sentence and claimed that they had consensual sex. After the case made it all the way to the Italian High Court, the case was overturned, and he was released from jail. The court argued that because the survivor wore such tight jeans, she must have helped him remove them, which meant that she consented to sex with him. This argument became known as the "jeans alibi".

The women of the Italian Parliament were enraged by this verdict, and they protested by wearing jeans to work. News of the protest spread, and eventually the protests did, too. The first Denim Day protests in the United States occurred in L.A. in 1999 and have continued every year since. Peace Over Violence, a non-profit designed to prevent domestic and sexual violence, encourages everyone to wear denim every April 27 to show their support for sexual assault survivors.

Denim Day occurs in April, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The Loyolan reached out to Danielle Borgia, Ph.D., professor of women’s and gender studies, to discuss the importance of Sexual Assault Awareness Month at LMU.

"One of the main reasons that sexual assault is so prevalent on college campuses — all of them — is the strong silencing and detail about how common these assaults are. We need sexual assault awareness every month", she said. 26.4% of women and 6.8% of men are assaulted during their time in college.

Borgia acknowledged the intensity of victim-blaming as another reason for the significance of Sexual Assault Awareness Month: "The intensity of the victim-blaming — for a crime that has a lower percentage of false reporting than all other crimes, 2% — means that less than 20% of college survivors ever report the crime, and many do not tell anyone what they have suffered for years."

She also believes that "activities like the Clothesline Project, screening documentaries like 'The Hunting Ground,' [informed] education and responsible journalism all play a part in confronting the realities of gender-based violence on our campus."

When asked if she had any praise or criticisms for LMU's handling of sexual assault cases, she said: "In the last decade, there have been some improvements in the acknowledgment of at least a few incidents, largely due to parent and journalist activism. There have been improvements in the way LMU responds to survivors, such as the implementation of mycallisto.org and assault prevention education that has been established."

When asked what could be done to protect survivors at an intrapersonal level, Borgia claimed, "We all need to do more to dismantle rape-supporting attitudes and myths and to publicly, as well as individually, support survivors. We need to listen to the people close to us when they confide their trauma, believing them, not questioning them, affirming their own choices about how to handle it and staying present in their lives. As people with privilege, we need to stop abusing more vulnerable people to make ourselves feel more powerful."

At the university level, Borgia believes that "we need to be more transparent with students about exactly what to do in the moment of crisis to help a survivor, we must provide more counseling services to help our survivors heal and stay in school and we need to create an environment, both in the administration and the student body, of zero tolerance for perpetrators of gender-based violence."

When asked what she would like to say to survivors, Borgia said, "First, because it is the most crucial: Survivors, you are not alone. There are way more of you than you realize, and it’s not your fault that you were attacked. Many of us care deeply about you. A support network of survivors on this campus could go a long way toward helping people finish their degrees and making it safer for everyone else to do so."

If you are someone you love is a victim of sexual assault, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE to connect with a trained counselor. Contact LMU CARES for confidential care at 310-258-4381, located on the third floor of Malone (Malone 301). For emergencies, call 911.