Haven’s Sexual Violence Support and Resources Ambassadors and ALANA Cultural Center Social Justice Peer Educators hosted a discussion on intersectionality and sexual assault on Tuesday, April 7, as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Colgate University seniors and Haven Ambassadors Endré Cattouse and Nickolette Trembly opened the event, titled “Be Boulder: Intersectionality & Sexual Assault Awareness,” by informing participants that the discussion would address sensitive topics related to sexual violence.
Following this content warning, Cattouse led students and faculty through a brief breathing exercise to help center participants before the presentation. Attendees were invited to engage in the grounding activity at their own comfort level as they prepared to enter the training space.
Cattouse structured her presentation by first examining the origins, applications and broader implications of intersectionality as a conceptual framework.
“Intersectionality is a framework for understanding how multiple social identities — such as race, gender, sexuality and disability — intersect to create unique experiences of oppression and privilege,” Cattouse said. “This framework recognizes the importance that discrimination is not experienced in isolation but as overlapping and compounding forces.”
Cattouse then situated the framework in its historical context, noting that the term “intersectionality” was coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. In 1989, Crenshaw introduced the concept of intersectionality to describe how Black women’s experiences were often overlooked by both feminist and antiracist frameworks. Crenshaw later expanded on her work in the 1991 paper “Mapping the Margins,” which centered on violence against women of color. The audience learned that Crenshaw’s influence extended well beyond the 1990s, as she continued her advocacy work by founding the African Policy Forum (APF). In 2014, APF launched the #SayHerName campaign to draw attention to the stories of Black women’s encounters with police brutality, testimonies that have often been overlooked by mainstream media.
The presentation then shifted to the issue of sexual assault on college campuses, where Cattouse maintained that while sexual assault affects all student groups, the risks are not evenly distributed.
In a 2019 survey of 21 participating universities by the Association of American Universities, undergraduate women reported the highest rates of nonconsensual sexual contact at 26.4%, followed by transgender, genderqueer and nonbinary undergraduates at 23.1%. Among undergraduate men, 6.9% reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact. Undergraduate LGBTQ+ students also reported facing elevated rates of harm, including harassment (65.1%), intimate partner violence (21.5%) and stalking (15.1%). Compared to their non-disabled peers, students with disabilities report higher rates of non-consensual sexual contact.
Cattouse noted that, although campus sexual assault statistics are striking, they obscure unreported assaults and prevent discussion about why those attacks go unreported. She tackled this issue by introducing the “ideal victim narrative,” a framework that explains how certain victims are more likely to be believed, supported and recognized than others, based on societal expectations of victimhood. The “ideal victim” is often characterized as a young, conventionally attractive white woman whose life is disturbed by a male stranger. In this framing, she is not considered to be under the influence of any substances and is attacked in a public or unfamiliar setting, such as an alleyway.
After introducing this narrative, Cattouse highlighted the limitations and dangers it poses to those whose experiences fall outside this narrow criterion. She maintained that this constrained framework can delegitimize and marginalize the experiences of those who do not conform to the norm. She explained that this can lead students to question or dismiss their own experiences, resulting in significant underreporting.
First-year Karla Hernandez-Romero said that she found this part of the discussion particularly engaging. She said that the “ideal victim narrative” helped explain some unsettling facts about the case of Gabby Petito, a young white woman whose disappearance during a 2021 cross-country road trip prompted a massive national search before her body was found, and her fiancé was identified as responsible for her death.
“In the hunt for Gabby Petito’s body, the remains of other missing women — many of them women of color — were also recovered, and I largely believe that they may not have been found if they were not looking for Gabby Petito, a young, white woman,” Hernandez-Romero said. “It made me think about how the ‘ideal victim narrative’ shapes whose cases receive more attention and resources.”
When combined with intersectionality, Cattouse said that overlapping identities create additional compounded barriers for survivors.
For example, Black women may face both racism and sexism compounded by what Cattouse described as the harmful myth that some women are “unrapeable” — a stereotype rooted in the racist hypersexualization of Black women’s bodies. Meanwhile, LGBTQ+ survivors may fear being outed and lack access to inclusive support systems. Cattouse added that undocumented students or international students may hesitate to report instances due to fears of deportation or unfamiliarity with institutional systems.
The presentation concluded with an invitation from the ALANA Social Justice Peer Educators for attendees to take part in a campus initiative. Participants were encouraged to decorate rocks with meaningful images or resources for survivors. The completed rocks will be placed in Haven or near the counseling center, serving as a quiet but visible reminder of hope, resilience and community support.
While painting rocks, first-year Ashanty Siguencia reflected on the event’s broader impact and how it created space for meaningful dialogue among students.
“Presentations like this are really powerful because they give students the opportunity to slow down, reflect and actually attempt to understand experiences that aren’t always talked about on campus,” Siguencia said.
Ultimately, Cattouse said that understanding intersectionality is key to understanding sexual assault more broadly. Without it, she said, many survivors remain marginalized — with it, there is greater potential to build a more equitable response to sexual violence — one that leaves fewer survivors without support.
