The problem with this is that than a rapist will tell himself, “I’m not angry and I don’t care about power. I’m just horny and want sex and this girl is too drunk to say no. But it’s not rape because it’s a sexual thing.”
And in this case, it’s not so much about power and anger, as it is entitlement. " I want what I want, and this bitch had better learn that MY needs and MY wants come first."
Demorian, we can indeed reduce the number of rapes if we reach people when they are young. Fighting against the whole “boys will be boys, kids will be kids, oh, you’re just a wimp, that’s why they bully you.” I think it starts with young kids who bully. People who start out with a sense of entitlement, that they want what they want, when they want it, no matter who stands in their way.
Kelly, Villa, Sven, I don’t have the time to reply to all of your posts right now. I’ll state off the tip of my tongue that I could be as wrong as anyone, but I’ll swallow my fraternity badge before I buy that higher rape incidence. What may be correlation does not equal causation. While I can only speak of personal experience, and I have known some pretty nasty fraternities, I do know that no national fraternal board would stand for anything like this. The “environment” that fosters this kind of behavior may be seen more readily at fraternity level, simply becasuse fraternities are universally among the most active and largest student groups on campus. The remainder of the student body has no oversight whatsoever, so I do not see how you can compare numbers accurately. If you can, I would like to study your methodology, because that would be a neat trick. The “rape-rich environment” you call, Kelly, is pretty much that of “a group of young men who are drunk.” I’ve seen far worse in co-ops and even the school band than I have in fraternities. Maybe you need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and try to be objective about it, instead of being prejudiced against social groups of any nature.
Does this “expressing the attitudes that lead to rape” include all dating, or women who get drunk and loose one night, or what? What are “attitudes that lead to rape”, and who is the objective judge, jury, and executioner to shut down houses? Do you expect to arrest people for “attitudes that lead to murder” or “attitudes that lead to casual sex regretted the next morning”?
Tomato, tomato.
I refer you again to my classifications of rape at the start of this thread. Yes, there are mentally ill men who have dark fantasies and perform assault and rape on women. Yes, there are drunk confused horny guys and drunk confused horny girls. There are decisions made that people wouldn’t normally make, and yes, there are people more sexually aggressive than other people.
You’re trying to stop the million ways to get caught up in a moment? What academic backing do you have that a public service announcement will trigger someone’s rape radar when they’re making out with someone half drunk off their ass?
I agree.
… now that you mention, something comes to mind. What was it… ah, yes. Sororities usually have regular health meetings about topics like this. Once again, my experience in the Greek/Hellenic system yields fruit of knowledge about how it works.
If the big theory here is to present the “you can say no” concept to sorority girls, it already happens. Sororities are generally run very strictly (and very visciously, but that’s another topic altogether). They have systems like the buddy system, keeping track of a friend throughout the evening.
I most whole heartidly agree with you on these issues. For what it is worth, my university does have co-ed bathrooms. Hell, my fraternity had all co-ed bathrooms and showers, since we usually had a few female boarders. I spent a year sharing a room with a female boarder that was completely non-sexual and comfortable for both of us. However, we found that it led to some drama when it came to room assignment and relationships breaking up.
A problem arises, though. Some less open-minded people start making claims about the co-ed relationships, and end up overruling those with more sense. Hopefully the next generation will be more adapted.
Right, again, I agree with you whole heartedly. **This [above] paragraph is the first point where anyone in this thread has made any real progress. **
A problem arises, though. (echo, echo, is this thing on?) Who is responsible for teaching young women about their sexuality? How are they to be familiar with their sexuality without having it be abused? Should masturbation be taught in school? At what age? To all of these questions you will find a chorus of a country screaming at each other.
Maybe I should give out and lend some history about myself. I am a bisexual male, and my father is transgendered (he came out soon after I graduated from university). I was educated about sex as a child, first at home and then at school, but not made aware of sexuality, which I didn’t have the pleasure of learning about until I was 17. After going through universities and a professional career a decade later, I appreciate what it all means.
Now, to rephrase the OP, how do you teach that to people, given the social constraints of American society and the booming voice of American media telling kids what to be?
As I said in the other thread, it is movie and bed time for me. Perhaps on the morrow, ladies and gents.
At least some universities do things like this. Can anybody provide a cite to show if programs like this make a difference?
When I was a freshman in college there were such programs in place at many universities. If I remember correctly they were part of the mandatory orientation that freshmen had to attend. I would have resented like hell being forced to endure a such a lecture. I don’t believe such programs would be at all helpful in preventing rape or abuse.
Marc
The number of child rapes in South Africa has gone down, after a LOT of education on the subject of “sex with a virgin will not cure you from AIDS”. But the people who did it would not ask the kid “hey, have you been raped before?” and in any case, I haven’t seen any statistics saying that kids would get raped repeatedly on different days.
Some people raped a 3 months old to be sure she’d be a virgin. How sick can you be? Evidently, lots, but then I know people whose first time was at 8 years (and voluntary, although they didn’t quite understand what they were doing).
Better sex education in general should help with a lot of other things as well; too many schools think that they’re all done with just telling kids about abstinence OR just telling them to use rubbers.
And I think that it’s still rape if you have said “yes” but there comes a point when he’s hurting you badly and you ask him to stop and he won’t. But maybe that’s just me, and yes, I do realize that a man’s ears are very distant from his penis… but if he couldn’t hear me when I said “stop stop stop that hurts”, how come he heard it when I said “Dios oh Dios” and got away from me, angry because he didn’t want his girl to talk in foreign? (hint: if you don’t want your girl to talk Spanish, move out of Miami and don’t date Latinas).
Not real data, but I’ll offer a personal anecdote: I went to a women’s college where I believe the school motto was “Watch your drink!” All through orientation there was this pound-it-into-you paternalistic mandantory lecture theme of “Go with a buddy. Watch your drink. Don’t drink it if you didn’t see it opened. Call the college’s cab service if you need it. You can call Public Safety from off-campus if you need to. Watch your drink. Don’t trust the bartender, even! Watch your drink!” It was all pretty eye-roll-worthy, really - what well-informed young college girl dosen’t know that? But of course I always watched my drink and went with a friend and didn’t let friends go off alone - but I don’t think I could have anyway.
But. In grad school a friend of mine from a big co-ed university and I said, what the hell, let’s go to Daytona for Spring Break and live it up like undergrads. So we did. And I can’t even begin to tell you the level of dumbassery I saw those girls (mostly from the big state universities) get up to! They’d drink anything, they’d go off by themselves with big crowds of drunk men (men outnumbered women by maybe 2-1 everywhere, too) - stupid stupid stupid! I have to give the city of Daytona Beach mad props for the efforts they went to to keep it safe - although I didn’t walk around at night by myself, I would not have felt unsafe doing so because of the overwhelming police presence. They don’t station cops in the hallways of your hotel, though! (Er, except one night where we heard THUMP THUMP THUMP “Police, open up!” for thirty minutes down the hall. Our curiosity was not satisfied but rumor had it that somebody was climbing on the balconies.)
Anyway, you just knew some of these girls were getting into situations they didn’t know how to handle - many of them were underage, or at least younger than the men. So I asked my friend from USC and some of the other people we met, “Didn’t they ever tell you in college to watch your drink?” I got some blank stares and some “Oh, you don’t think that really happens, do you?” So I’d point out that we were very definately outnumbered by the men, and the men (well, and the women too) were all profoundly, extremely drunk. “Don’t you worry about going off by yourself with ten drunk guys?” “Oh, they’re nice guys! They’re harmless!” and then a comment about my hairy-legged feminist man-hatin’ education. Were most of those guys harmless? Sure. Were those women stupid and naive? You betcha. But my thought is that some of them didn’t get the “Watch your drink!” message, even though it seems to be in every other Cosmo or Glamour, but some of got it and immediately dismissed it - “that won’t happen to me” or “these are nice guys!” or whatever.
I think that where education is needed most is in reporting and openness - you wouldn’t think “it can’t happen to me”, maybe, if you really thought about just how many women get raped. If you knew that some of the people you knew had been. I think the campaigns you see sometimes that focus on the “_ out of _ women get raped” or abused or whatever, with images that make you realize that it dosen’t just happen to “Somebody else”, that you may very well know people it happened to or will happen to, can be quite successful. Of course, that’s educating the victims again - but I can’t help but think that if men knew the same statistic, it might help - that it’s not a rare thing, that it could be your sister or your friend, or that drunk girl. Awareness of how widespread the problem really is couldn’t hurt anybody, I think.
I partially resented the one I saw. I think that, done right, it might actually open some peoples eyes to the possibility of it happening in even seemingly ordinary circumstances. However, not only did they impress upon us that sex when one party says no is rape (which is obvious, but worth saying because some people just dont get it,) and that sex when one party is incapacitated is rape (which is informative in that while obviously morally wrong, not everyone knows the penalties for it are so high,) but they also emphasized, and I mean emphasized, that if two parties are just stark raving drunk, not incapacitated, and have sex, the guy is raping the girl.
Which makes no sense at all, is condescending to men AND women, and wrong wrong wrong. It made me question the mindset of the producers of the program. I know we shouldn’t poison the well, and take everyone’s individual arguments at their merits, but why should I listen to someone’s well-founded arguments when they have so many misguided and misandristic ones?
Even normally rational folks will scoff at common sense precautions, Zsofia. I think I once mentioned HERE, that I wasn’t going to apply to a job because it would involve going down to the North Side late at night and relying on the buses. I added that my fears weren’t unfounded, since the police had only recently caught a rapist right on my bus line-one girl was attacked less than a mile from my house.
People told me I was being silly, exaggerating the dangers, that I was making excuses, etc.
So perhaps then some stop taking precautions when they get the message that they’re somehow being too cautious-that they’re making mountains out of molehills, etc.
True, but the percentage of women who always say what they mean is fairly low in my opinion. That doesn’t justify raping, but it does make it hard to call women who do that psychos.
I agree 100%. I think the only area in which significant inroads can be made are “date rape” cases. But I think any efforts in that regard will be complicated by the fact that many reported cases are false and many cases involve the use of alcohol and drugs. It is hard to determine the objective truth in a situation where one or both parties involved were drunk or high.
I think the main way to do this is to teach women how/what most men think of them. Most guys (especially guys who might find themselves in a “date rape” situation) don’t want to understand you, be your friend, or consider your feelings. They want to have sex with you, then throw you away like a dirty tissue. That is not to say that men don’t respect women. They just don’t respect the kind that comes to a party in a short skirt wanting to get druink and high for free. The kind they want to have casual sex with. The lesson that women should take from this is that you should not socialize with people who don’t have respect for you. You shouldn’t be drinking in someone else’s house, going into their bedroom, etc. I know I going to have dozens of people claiming I am blaming the victim, and that is a valid concern. But, I think that the behavior of the victim is behavior which, if changed, would lead to the greatest decrease in date rapes. If you want fewer people to have to go through such a traumatic event, then you should advocate the method of greatest utility rather than what is PC.
Cite?
You gave yourself an out by saying “most,” but I think this (and the rest of your post) is still pretty offensive. I don’t think caricature is going to improve the situation. I think you actually are doing what KellyM voiced a concern about: if you say that all these things are true about men, you end up excusing them.
I’d have to see a definition, but at most, what you’re talking about is one kind of date rape.
I get pretty defensive (although I respect your decision). Fuck if I’m going to let a rapist- or the shadowy threat of one- dictate a single thing I do, except maybe how big the knife I carry with me is. I will take whatever job I want, I will walk where I need to and I will not hide in my house the moment the sun goes down. We have a word for sitations where one party uses the threat of violence to control the everyday lives of another party. That word is terrorism. It upsets me that America is so willing to let half the population live in this terror.
Sure, right after you give me a cite that shows every women that claims she was raped was indeed raped. It would not be enough to point out the results of cases that have gone to trial. Plenty of people have been convicted of rapes they didn’t commit, and vice-versa. My statement should have probably read “many people have the opinion that many accusations are false”, as to avoid confusion and to clarify that I was presenting my opinion and not something based on a cite. Your point is noted. I do however, think many claims are indeed false based on personal experience.
Perhaps it is offensive, but it is true. In fact, I would hope most women would be offended to the point where they don’t socialize with people who might hold those beliefs. With regard to your other point, I don’t know how telling the truth (as I see it) is excusing a rapist’s behavior. I am not saying “here is why you got raped”, I am saying girls should have more respect for themselves and their safety, and shouldn’t put themselves in a situations where it is compromised.
Perhaps it should be more aptly describe as acquaintance rape.
Why should I do that? You said “many reported cases.” As far as I know, the rate of false reports is the same for rape as it is for other crimes.
No, it isn’t, it’s just a smear. At best it’s your opinion and teaching it as a fact would be ridiculous and sexist. It’s on par with teaching that women are weak and irrational.
You’re not describing anybody’s beliefs, you’re describing what you seem to feel is the way men naturally think and behave.
Read her posts. If women are supposed to anticipate that all men are thugs, those who don’t avoid getting raped are responsible for it. I don’t see how you could educate away the attitude you describe.
Bolding mine. Dem, honey, if you think this is flaming, stay out of The Pit. I’m sure you are intelligent enough to recognize the difference between a disagreement with your observations and a personal attack. I said that my experiences with frats were different than yours. I did not accuse you of kicking puppies or wearing white after Labor Day.
No one is “tearing you a new one” for suggesting that women should learn how to defend themselves. It is a very good idea. However, by the time a woman feels the need to defend herself we, as a society, have failed her. This thread isn’t about preventing rape: it is about preventing rapists.
So unless you are seriously suggesting that any woman who doesn’t know how to fend off an attacker is thereby creating a rapist, your suggestion has no place in this thread.
And this:
It is really fucking scary to me that you could say that. Maybe there is something wrong with a concept of masculinity that leads most men to see a drunk woman as an “opportunity” instead of something to protect.
Bippy the Beardless’s suggestion about removing the shame of virginity is a good one. Educating women on how to clearly ask for or refuse sex is also a good idea.
From my experiences at frat parties, it’s less about the sex than the score (and having a higher score than your brothers). You don’t find that attitude unsettling? I’m happy that your fraternity was so wonderful, but try to be less defensive about the whole system, which has some well-documented and obvious flaws.
No, my point was that it would be impossible for me to provide a cite showing “x amount” incidents of rape are false. The nature of the crime precudes one from being able to collect that type of data. When something often boils down to he said/she said, it hard to determine where the truth lies. Most of the statistics I have seen have a built in bias in that they assume the victim’s account is factual and accurate. Just as many feel comfortable saying that “x amount” of cases go unreported, I feel comfortable saying many of the cases are false. Both are based on personal experience. I have ceded the point that I should have been more clear and presented my statement as an opinion.
Of course it’s my opinion. I don’t advocate teaching it in school or any forum like that, but I will certainly tell any women in my life that I care about. If you truly believe statisitcs like “1/4 of all women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime”, then the issue is far pressing than maintaining politcal corectness. You can teach your kids all about how women are as good at sports as men and the like, but I would rather see less people get raped. I feel my method is more effective.
Where did I said men naturally think this, or behave this way? I know plenty of people who do believe this though.
You act like not getting drunk and go up to somebody’s bedroom is a a Herculean task. There are litlle things a person can do to not get themselves into many of these situations. I find it harder to believe that people don’t anticipate many of these things. Of course that won’t stop somebody from dragging you into the woods or drugging you, but it will help prevent many of the “misunderstandings” that could be perceived as rape by one of the parties.
If I’d said anything even resembling that, you might have a point here.
What the hell does one have to do with the other? Your method wouldn’t even encourage women to take precautions, which is reasonable, it would just teach them to fear men.
“Most guys (especially guys who might find themselves in a “date rape” situation) don’t want to understand you, be your friend, or consider your feelings. They want to have sex with you, then throw you away like a dirty tissue.”
“The lesson that women should take from this is that you should not socialize with people who don’t have respect for you. You shouldn’t be drinking in someone else’s house, going into their bedroom, etc.”
It’s irrational fear, not wisdom or safety, that is being taught here. The general lesson is that women have to avoid doing things that men can do and shouldn’t go live their lives because men are animals. This isn’t bad because it’s un-PC, it’s bad because it’s absurd. The larger lessons you’re talking about go beyond political correctness.
Exactly, because women aren’t men and never will be. If 25% of men were sexually assaulted during their lifetimes, you might have a point. Women can’t do everything men can and vice-versa. I don’t think I ever said women should “fear” men. You said that. My point was that females should realize that “Joe Football” doesn’t want to get to know you or write you poetry, he wants to have sex with you. I think a lot of date-rape situations happen when both parties have different expectations of what will happen and different understandings of certain actions mean. When most guys invite you to their room after a night of drinking, it’s not to play monopoly. I think if more women realize this, they may take steps to prevent putting themselves in dangerous situations.
Obviously, yes. When you start getting into restrictions like “women shouldn’t go to parties where there is drinking,” I think that’s too much.
I didn’t say you used the word “fear,” but yes, you did. I’m not the one who came up with the ‘use you and throw away like a tissue’ line.
I doubt most women are that stupid. Your average guy who wants to have sex with a woman is still not going to force her into it.
I’m sure many of them do happen in that way. I’m not as confident as you are that educating women on what men are really like is going to accomplish much.
Again, you’re assuming that most women are complete morons. And in a sense, yes, here you’re blaming them again for not understanding the situations they wander into. Telling a woman that she shouldn’t go to a man’s bedroom unless she wants to sleep with him - because otherwise they are likely to be raped - is telling women to fear men.
Demorian: The “rape-rich environment” you call, Kelly, is pretty much that of “a group of young men who are drunk.”
That sounds as though the problem lies largely with group behavior among young males, particularly drunk ones. Perhaps we should supervise young men in groups more carefully, especially their drinking behavior. Perhaps colleges should have rules about the maximum number of drinks their male students are allowed to consume in an evening, or just have curfews for male students, the way some colleges used to for female students. Perhaps we should disband fraternities and restrict other opportunities for young men to get together in groups and get drunk.
This sounds pretty harsh, and I for one would be sorry to see the freedom of young men restricted in such a way. But if it’s really true, as people like Demorian and brickbacon seem to be arguing, that drunken young men are likely to be so avid for sex that they’ll force themselves on a woman even if she tells them to stop, then it sounds as though they can’t be trusted to behave responsibly, and unfortunately that means that their behavior needs to be restricted, for the sake of everybody else.
Certainly, men and women may have different initial expectations of what a situation means. brickbacon noted that “when most guys invite you to their room after a night of drinking, it’s not to play monopoly”. By itself, such initial misunderstandings wouldn’t be a serious problem; at most, they could produce exchanges like this:
HE: C’mon, baby (hic), let’s get those clothes off and get it on!
SHE: What? Why do we (hic) need to take our clothes off to play Monopoly?
HE: Huh? Did you think I invited you here to play Monopoly?
SHE: Yes, isn’t that what you meant?
HE: No way—I invited you here to have sex!
SHE: Oh! No, I don’t want to have sex, I wanted to play Monopoly.
HE: Oh! Well, I don’t have a Monopoly set, and anyway I’d rather have sex.
SHE: Well, I’d rather not, so I guess I’ll go home.
HE: No problem, sorry about the misunderstanding.
SHE: No problem, my bad. Bye.
HE: Bye.
No biggie, right? The problem seems to be, from what brickbacon’s arguing, that a lot of men couldn’t respond rationally to such a situation, but instead would resort to violence to get the sex that they initially thought they were going to get. If this is really true (and I’d hate to think it was), then obviously the solution is to place more restrictions on men’s behavior. If as a group they can’t be trusted to behave responsibly and nonviolently, then I’m afraid they need more watching.