Coast Guard.
They can, but since rapists are disproportionately likely to have come from broken or never-formed families (cite) it would appear that those families do a much better job at training their sons not to rape than other kinds. So it is much less accurate to include intact families in the “we” that are allegedly doing such a bad job at socializing their offspring.
Regards,
Shodan
[QUOTE=Grumman]
How many rapists or rapist sympathisers do you really think are going to have an epiphany just because you tell them rape is bad? I’m fairly certain they already know you think rape is bad, they just don’t care.
[/QUOTE]
More often, they believe that rape (or sexual assault, really) is something that other people, bad people, do, whereas what they’re doing is just being a man or whatever. There are huge mental hurdles that a lot of people have about what these terms mean - rape is super bad, everyone knows that, so this thing that happened, which doesn’t seem obviously incredibly bad based on how I’ve been accustomed to think of things, clearly must not be rape. It’s the same hurdle that shunts this conversation to this bottleneck it’s at now: “rapists or rapist sympathisers,” as some people must imagine them, are not the people I’m thinking about, at least, when I talk about a failure to educate people about sexual assault. Back-alley knifepoint rapists are not public enemy number one when it comes to trying to reduce the number of sexual assaults that take place. It’s the sleazeballs who don’t know that what they are doing is sexual assault who are the issue. They don’t need to hear “Rape is bad!”; they need to hear “What YOU ARE DOING is bad”.
Almost two different things. A child from substandard family situation might not learn (or not-unlearn, if you get me) that sexual violence is a bad thing. A child from a poster “family values” family might not be taught that all unwanted sexual aggression is bad, or even subtly encouraged in the lesser forms of it.
ETA: See the post just above. A prize quarterback who’s getting the red-carpet treatment in life might not out-and-out rape someone, but family attitude and entitlement might push the line a long ways past a heartfelt “no.”
Quick quiz for everyone. Which of these is the leading cause of rape?
- Short skirts
- Alcohol
- Hardcore pornography
- Sex offender registries
- Rapists
It should be understood that while safety tips decrease the likelihood of assault, there’s no 100% guarantee of absolute safety. You could be doing everything you’re supposed to and still be blindsided by disaster.
It doesn’t mean that safety advice is useless. The advice goes a long way in preventing people from getting in dangerous situations, but it’s not a magic forcefield that can protect you from other people’s malice every time.
I don’t see the difference. The syllogism would run like this -
[ul][li]Men rape because they haven’t been taught not to.[/li][li]Men from broken homes rape at much higher rates than men from intact families.[/li][li]Ergo, intact families do a better job at teaching their sons not to rape.[/ul]This includes date rape. The cite to which I linked claims that most date rapes are power-assertive or exploitative, and that “this type of rapist is likely to have been raised in a single-parent family”. [/li]
Not all rapists, including date rapists, are the children of single mothers, but most of them are.
The original assertion was
It appears it would be more accurate to say “I think single mothers do a terrible job of teaching our young men how to act responsibly…”
Regards,
Shodan
From what I’ve heard about military sexual rape, it doesn’t sound like this kind of rape is the predominant presentation. I’m speculating, but I think aggression, anger, dominance, and misogny are probably driving forces moreso than mere self-entitlement. I mean, these women are getting beaten and verbally attacked during their assaults. This is not date rape stuff.
Those who are engaging in this type of behavior aren’t ignorant, IMO. They just don’t care about the harm they’re causing. It’s probably too late to make them care about it (because that would mean they would have to start seeing women as people), but the institution should at least send the message to them that the institution cares.
Problem is, the institution hasn’t acted like it cares. So the problem has grown.
As opposed to absentee fathers who do a terrible job of teaching young men…at all?
Two things: first, the warnings may seem pointless to you, but you are smart and well-educated and have been out on your own for years. A significant minority of your peers are none of those things. Remember, this is a country where people need to be warned not to iron their clothes while wearing them. To some people, the information in the poster is news.
Second, I don’t really get how the information you suggest (other than “call this number if you feel unsafe”) is useful. In what way are you more likely to avoid an assault because you know the statistics? You said it yourself: you’ve been drilled from puberty in the fact that there are Many Bad Men out there.
It’s less common today than it used to be thanks to well-publicized awareness campaigns; women generally don’t accept drinks from the hands of strangers anymore, and don’t leave them unattended. Current studies suggest 2% of rape victims are drugged, which seems like enough to make it worthwhile to me. There was a fraternity at my college campus (I was there from 1999-2003) which was well-known for drink rape - though women continued going to their parties because hey, lots of hot guys there. :smack:
There are certainly men in prison because they didn’t understand that what they were doing was rape. See Jimmy Chitwood’s post.
Because boys will be boys and women don’t belong in uniform. So it’s a non-problem.
Just like kiddie-raper priests.
Do you think women who are victims of rape lack this kind of common sense moreso than women who are not victims?
If so, why? What is your reason for thinking this?
If not, and rape more often than not has zero to do with breaches in common sense, then what is the point of making posters like this?
I don’t see any sense in which the two are opposed. Of course, that assumes you were able to read my post all the way to the end, where I mentioned “fathers who abandon their children, or mothers who get pregnant by men who then leave” as two groups who do a lousy job educating their children against being rapists.
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright]
Current studies suggest 2% of rape victims are drugged, which seems like enough to make it worthwhile to me.
[/QUOTE]
I think even this is overstated. Your Wiki cite says that less than 2% of cases in which date rape by drugging was suspected, it turned out that one or other of the “date rape drugs” was detected. Notice also that other diazepams were detected at higher incidences than roofies, and that these drugs are also used recreationally and by prescription. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it an urban legend, but I don’t see it as something so common as to be put on every sexual assault poster in America.
Regards,
Shodan
I just do not understand why women go to places like that, knowing what could happen to them. I suppose it’s like a woman who dates her friend’s abusive ex-boyfriend “because he wouldn’t be that way with me”. :dubious:
I used to hang out with a woman (she wasn’t my friend - let’s not go there) who went to a college where there was a men’s dorm about which it was common knowledge that if a girl passed out at one of their parties, the boys would (allegedly) pull a train on her and then shave her pubic hair. :eek: In some circles, this was a badge of honor, and girls would do things like come out of the shower without a towel, that kind of thing. (One wonders how many of those girls shaved themselves, KWIM?) I posted this story on another board, and one woman replied, “As the victim of a gang rape, the idea that a woman would offer herself for sexual assault does not compute with me.”
This same woman, when she was in high school, was well known for being one of Those Girls who would have sex with boys free for the asking. One time, she was injured pretty badly because she went out into the country in a van with several guys (the number changed constantly, but was probably 3 or 4) and after they took turns with her, as they were returning to town, one of them opened the back of the van and threw her out. I always wondered how she explained that to her parents. I also wonder if she had ever experienced sexual abuse; women who place themselves in situations like this often did.
p.s. I have never personally heard or read about a case of date rape where alcohol and/or drugs were not a factor.
And what does this have to do with anti-rape posters in military restrooms?
I wonder if “If you are raped, go to the police.” would be too patronizing as advice.
A while ago read a story about a college student who was raped; she went to some sort of student crisis office associated with the college and was discouraged from going to the police, and the whole thing was swept under the rug (for a while). In the comment thread (not here) about this story, I got criticized for saying something along the lines of, “If you are raped, go to the police. Rape is a serious crime and out of the scope of what some college-affiliated middleman can properly handle.” Someone thought I was blaming the victim in the linked story, when that was not my intent at all. They said that a rape victim is usually very distraught and may not know where to turn, so I shouldn’t expect her to have had the presence of mind to realize when institution-linked authorities are trying to hush things up. I said that that’s exactly why should keep saying “In the event of rape, go to the police.” as general advice akin to “Stop, drop, and roll.”.
Maybe I am off-base; this isn’t a topic I think about all that much. At any rate, I also think that directing rape victims to contact the Sexual Assault Response Coordinator FIRST!!! is highly suspect.
Young people are known to act as though they are invincible, and thus they do things that look stupid retrospectively, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. I suspect this is especially the case when they think that rape can’t happen to them because they aren’t stupid and gullible like those other broads are.
In other words, they more likely than don’t “know” rape can happen to them.
A woman (or a man, for that matter) who’s been raped should not go to the police. S/he needs to go to the nearest hospital, and they will contact the police, in addition to collecting evidence and giving her Plan B if she wants it and if it’s warranted.
It’s not always young people who do this.
What does gender-neutrality have to do with whether or not it’s blaming the victim?
Because “more often than not” is not the same as “always”.