Sexual citizens A landmark study of sex, power, and assault on campus

Review by Booklist Review

Columbia university professors and researchers on the SHIFT (Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation) project, Hirsch and Khan interviewed over 150 students and even attended campus parties to get a better understanding of why sexual assault is such a widespread problem on college campuses. The authors found that many of the students they spoke with weren't given the basic building blocks for how to pursue their ""sexual projects"" whether their goal was a casual hook up, a relationship, or something else either at home or in sex-ed classes in high school. Even the notion of obtaining verbal consent wasn't always clear to students, the authors found, noting that some students felt pressured into saying yes to sexual advances even when unsure about what they wanted. Some of the students Hirsch and Khan spoke to didn't even realize they'd committed an assault until they discussed their actions with the researchers. Taking into account gender, sexuality, and race, Hirsch and Khan do an excellent job of exploring the complexities of sexual assault and how to make campuses safer for all students.--Kristine Huntley Copyright 2019 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Library Journal Review

Hirsch (sociomedical sciences) and Khan (sociology, both Columbia Univ.) draw upon a five-year collaborative project, the Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation (SHIFT), in order to investigate multiple forms of sexual assault on campus and identify their varied causes. Alcohol is a major element in many assaults, along with unequal power relationships related to age, gender, race, and economic resources. The authors explain the key concept of sexual citizenship, which enables young people to articulate their sexual needs and recognize that right for others. Colleges can support these efforts, they maintain, but parents, schools, and communities need to teach people to take responsibility for their autonomy, along with areas of personal development. This book offers a rich collection of student experiences drawn from extensive interviews, focus groups, and hundreds of hours observing student parties and interactions, all analyzed with care and references to academic research. VERDICT A readable and thought-provoking work on a topic of concern on college campuses. The SHIFT project generated many academic publications, but this book successfully reaches a general audience, specifically students, parents, and policymakers.--Elizabeth Hayford, formerly with Associated Coll. of the Midwest, Evanston, IL

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A serious study of the causes of campus sexual assaults along with proposals for tackling this very real problem.Hirsch (Sociomedical Sciences/Columbia Univ.; A Courtship After Marriage: Sexuality and Love in Mexican Transnational Families, 2003, etc.) and Khan (Chair, Sociology/Columbia Univ.; Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School, 2011, etc.) draw on the findings of the Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation, a five-year research project of which Hirsch is co-director and chief investigator. In their academic analysis, these two scholars use a wide variety of specialized terminology, including "sexual projects," "sexual citizenship," and "sexual geographies," concepts they explain at some length in the introduction. In a nutshell, the first concerns the reasons a person might seek sexual experiences, "citizenship" refers to a sense of right to sexual agency, and "geographies" to the social power of environments. As well as examining the causes of sexual assaults, the authors present numerous portraits of campus sexual experiences, consensual and nonconsensual, among Columbia undergraduates. These portraits are based on SHIFT's extensive interviews with students, focus groups, and hours of observations, and they often include lengthy excerpts of the student's remarks. In the concluding chapter, the authors offer ideas about improving sex education and creating campuses that support social cohesion and address issues of power, inequality, and mental health. They also advocate taxing the pornography and liquor industries in order to support funding for sex education, and they explore the economic consequences of assault. "If preventing sexual assault's emotional and social harms is insufficient to justify more attention to prevention," they write, "we can also point to sexual assault's vast economic impact"in 2017, experts estimated "the economic cost of rape" at more than $3 trillion. The authors assert that their intended readership is parents and young people heading off to college, but their presentation of SHIFT's findings and their discussion of methodologies seem more appropriate for an academic journal.A broad encapsulation of a significant sociological study that will likely overwhelm general readers but should interest fellow scholars. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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