Idiots in my Speech class

The BBQ Pit
1

Man, when some people have to come up with a Persuasion topic, they really pull out all the Stupidity Stops.

One girl’s speech was about trying to stop rape. Good topic, right? So I’m listening. She begins with a personal story of hers. It takes several minutes, since she’s obviously shooken up by it. She’s at the phone, there’s a guy there…

I expect her to say “I feel someone grab me” or something along those lines. Instead, she says (almost in tears at this point) in reference to that guy, “He flashed me.”

I practically say “And…?” I mean, sure, some people get disturbated easier than others, but come on… she saw a guys’ dick. She called this “rape”. At this point, I’m thinking, “Wait a minute… that’s a relatively mild experience considering the subject…”

But I shrug it off. Heck, not everyone can be a theatre person, right? :smiley: Anyway, she continues on with her speech. She puts up a poster of statistics about our college. There’re two rows, “Forceful Assaults” and “Unforceful Assaults” (don’t ask me how an assault can be unforceful). It details the stats covering the years '96, '97, and '98. At our school, for “Unforceful Assaults”, the numbers were 3, 2, and 3. For “Forceful Assaults”, the numbers were 0, 0, and 0.

She points at the list of three zeros and says (verbatim) “Clearly anyone can see the problem here…”

What the motherfuck?!?!? The fact that our school had NO “forceful assaults” in those three years is a PROBLEM?!?!?

She goes on, strangely… she says that in order to solve this “problem”, the numbers need to RISE so that people wouldn’t be so uncomfortable with reporting cases of “forceful assaults”. In short, she was saying the solution to rape is to have more rape.

By this point, I’m trying my hardest to not shout out “Bullshit!” The only way I can explain it is that she needed to find a problem, and when she COULDN’T find a problem, she invented one.

Bah… idiots in my Speech class… I won’t even start about the guy who gave a speech about Creationism…

2

She sounds stupid. What she was probably tryign to get at was that there were Forcefull assaults and no one was reporting them. That is the problem. I find it highly unlikely that there were 0 assaults on campus. That doesn’t excuse her lack of skills in getting the point accross.

In the words of Jay Mohr. You’re smart as a duck.

3

Still not as bad as a friend of mine who, several years ago, claimed that if women wanted to stop getting raped they should dress differently . . .

4

I remember when the Italian Parliament tried to pass legislation that said that women who wore tight jeans were partly at fault if raped, and had no reason to prosecute, as “they would have to help take the jeans off.” Gotta love society.

5

Well, a chastity belt might help. :smiley:

6

Sometimes after persuasive speaches, you’re allowed to ask questions of the speaker. Was this the case? Did you corner her after class and ask her to further explain herself?

I might go so far as to whip my dick out and say “Look here, this isn’t rape! It’s just my penis! Half the class has one. I sometimes use it to pee, but most of the time it just hangs to the right. It has sometimes been called a rapier, but they’re not the same thing.”

7

Thats a persuasion topic? Was she expecting arguement from the huge pro-rape lobby? My guess is that she got into all of the strange statistics and questinable conclusions because halfway through writing it she realised that it isn’t a very debateable topic.

8

Da’hell?

That’s not rape-it’s sexual harassment, but not RAPE. Being flashed may not be the most pleasant experience, but it’s not nearly as traumatic as being raped. (No, I have never been. However, I know people who have, and they would think this is a disgusting comparison). Almost as bad as those Taking Children Seriously people who compare forcibly changing a child’s diaper to rape.
:rolleyes:

9

There are many things far worse than being flashed. Without meaning to insult the subject of the OP, grow up. Shit sticks fly at you from all directions in life.

10

I agree with oldscratch. My best friend, who is now a police officer, worked campus security both for a small suburban private college and a large urban public college. People would be astounded at the number of crimes that go unreported, covered up and otherwise not disclosed to the public. The primary reason is that campuses need to appear safe to attract students as well as to appease the cities in which they are located, so the numbers are often cooked a little. Campus police and security officers often do not want to bring the city police in on these things.

Re: the OP, the speaker obviously was not good at collecting her information or organizing her thoughts.

11

tiggerell, actually a judge set aside a guily verdict, or lightened the sentence because of his view that tight jeans cannot come off without the person’s consent.

12

Obviously your friend was miguided, but don’t you think that in this day and age this actually may be good advise?

13

…I cant let that pass. Delta, changeing our mode of dressing is giving in to a terroristic act. The whole “she dressed like she wanted it” argmument is akin to saying “women must restrict their personal appearances and activities under penalty of horribly traumatic assault.” And that is never acceptable, even under the guise of good friendly advice.

As far as the speech class, I think the person giving the speech should have picked a more agressive form of attack to talk about, if anything because that is more persausive. Even I, a rabid femminist, can’t quite call indecent exposure rape.

Unreported rapes (and attempted rapes) on university campuses is still a big problem. Rape still has a stigma attached to it that makes it harder for people to report than a non-sexual assault. Added to that is the fact that campus officials are less than excited about having high crime on campus. Just a couple weeks ago, a woman was assaulted with a pipe in broad daylight on a rather busy path on the campus of the university I attend. I found out about this the next day, because I had managed to intercept a faculty email about the incident saying that the perpetrator was so dangerous that anyone seeing him should call 911 immeadiatly. If I hadn’t seen that email, however, I would not have found out about the incident until they put up inconspicous flyers at campus bus stops several days later. That means I could have spent several days walking around alone, at night, with no means of protection (our campus has is usually amazingly safe, and few people take safety precautions) for several days with an assaultant on the loose. I think they wanted to get the information out in the least conspicous way possible, so that students don’t call up there parents and say “guess what happened…”

Long story, but the idea is that there is a very real problem with unreported sexual assault.

14

BEsides…Rape is more about power and humiliation than sex…so the what you were wearing argument does NOT fit in!

15

I’ll give you one opportunity to explain why this makes any sense at all and then I will comment.

16

You’re posting from Afganistan, aren’t you?