Brickbacon, you are really identifying with the rapist in this instance. The difference is that, while you have a plan to have sex with a willing woman, and would probably be turned off by one who was clearly disgusted with or afraid of you, a rapist has made a plan to have sex with a woman, willing or not.
Before he has ever set eyes on that woman, he has already crossed the line into evil or criminal thought by choosing to disregard all wishes but his own.
I had a long response typed out, but it was erased. So here is the short version.
I never said anything that could be interpreted as a statement that anyone deserves to be raped. Suggesting I did is despicable.
You have a bias toward the accuser. Thats is fine, but you need to acknowledge it. A person accused of rape is not a rapist. They only become a rapist when they are convicted in a court of law. Even if you were to evaluate all the evidence yourself, and come to the conclusion that someone was indeed raped, it would be 1000x better than just trusting the word of the accuser. I don’t see many people on your side even willing to listen to the story of the accused.
You examples are not analogous. People at college parties and on dates view sex as a possibility. Most people at a church coference do not. Plus 90% of mensa members are impotent redering sex a physical impossibility (see, I can make up stats too). Plus, many of the things you mentioned were done as part of your job. That is completely different than the examples I mentioned before.
Much as I hate to admit it, I think brickbacon is right to question this. In some digging around, I’m completely unable to find the primary source for this cite (There’s a National Violence against Women Survey 2000, but I can’t find a 2001 survey with this title). That survey concludes that 1/4 of women are raped or assaulted by an intimate within their lifetime, but I don’t think the word “college” appears in it anywhere. The closest I could get to finding a source for that 1/4 statistic was the Sexual Victimization of College Women Survey (PDF), which reaches its conclusion in a fairly suspect manner:
Unfortunately, I was unable to find any cite for their claim that 90% of rapes are planned; maybe a better Googler than me can turn something up. I wonder what that claim is based on.
Daniel
My point was that the “statistic” is bullshit. Not that there aren’t rapists that plan to attack a woman ahead of time.
Thank you Daniel.
But, The methodology on how they came about the stat you quoted is garbage as well. How can you even try to defend that? Even if it were valid, they are trusting the word of the “victim”. If you go by the FBI numbers, at least 8% of those people are lying. To trust anyone who claims they were raped is going to result in inflated and/or incorrect numbers. This argument should not devolve to dueling statistics (especially when many of the ones presented are made up). The questions was how to prevent rapists. The most effective way to do it is advise women of how to avoid getting in dangerous situations and to encourage them to be more assertive.
This is why I hated to admit you were right–you were right in this case for all the wrong reasons. If you got some evidence to show that people lie to anonymous phone researchers in order to inflate rape statistics, put up; otherwise, I’ll assume that equal numbers of people falsely answered “yes” to the rape question as falsely answered “no” to it.
That said, what on earth makes you think I was defending that statistic, given that I referred to it as “suspect”? To be clear, the statistic reeks to me: it seems likely to me that it grossly inflates the number of college women raped, given that other surveys say 1 in 6 women are raped or sexually assaulted during their lifetimes.
Daniel
Actually, lemme revise that: it seems far likelier to me that someone would falsely deny having been raped than falsely claim to have been raped when talking to an anonymous phone researcher. The admission of having been raped, when true, can be very painful and humiliating for a lot of people; any perceived gains of a false report of rape certainly won’t be achieved by reporting it to an anonymous researcher.
(In case it’s not clear what the problem is with the way they derive their estimate, try to figure out what the rape percentage would be for women who stay in a college environment for 20 years).
Daniel
I didn’t even mention the stat about 1/4 of college students. I agree that it is questionable.
The stats about rapes being planned are obtained by interviewing rapists:
http://www.powa.co.za/Display.asp?ID=13
“Interviews with rapists reveal that most rapes are premeditated and planned. Rapists rape to feel powerful and in control, not for sexual pleasure.”
“Many rapists are involved in sexually satisfying relationships at the time of the rape.”
I think a major issue here is that some people identify with rapists, and think “What if I had a miscommunication and was accused of rape”, but that just isn’t how rape happens. That is a false image of rape that makes rapists seem less evil. I’m pretty certain that brickbacon, no matter how much he thinks he is getting sex when a girl invites him to her room, would immediately stop if told “no.” I’m not questioning that at all - and that’s the whole point. A rapist has already planned not to stop no matter if the woman says no.
Rape isn’t a miscommunication, nor is it someone getting really aroused and not being able to stop. Calling it that just lets rapists off the hook. Rapists aren’t created in a sudden moment - they usually plan ahead, and they want power and control. There is no excuse or extenuating circumstance.
That last site also seems relevant to this thread, as it suggest these four things are common in places with lower rates of rape:
"there were lower levels of overall violence
there was mutual task sharing between man and women
women generally enjoyed higher status
there was strict condemnation and prosecution of all forms of rape"
Finally, I want to agree with this:
That is how I am using the term as well. If someone is falsely accused, then by definition I am not talking about them, and there is no need for them to get defensive.
Excuse me. That statement disturbs the hell out of me. You see, by that rationale, I could break into your home, rob you of everything that you own, break into your bank accounts and rob you of every penn you have and not be a thief until and unless I was convicted.
You say I have no sympathy for me accused of rape. 23 hours ago, I was comforting and old and dear friend whose life and marriage were ruined by accusations that he was a sexual predator. True that’s not rape, but being accused of actual rape could hardly have done more damage. I know first hand because when he first moved back here, I was the one he stayed with and the one who helped him get through this. Your statement that I have no sympathy for men accused of rape has no basis whatsoever in reality. Please retract this.
Most people at Mensa RGs and at SCA events view sex as a possibility. Indeed one running joke I’ve heard about RGs is that the leading “O” and trailing “Y” are omitted. As for your statement about Mensans and impotence, not only is it completely false in my experience, it is also highly insulting to me and several people I care about. By the way, I don’t use statistics unless I can directly link to them, let alone make them up.
To complete your hat trick, I doubt a potential rapist is going to ask if I’m on my way to work. Indeed, given the profession of most women whose work takes them onto the streets of Waikiki, my having been on duty might have been a suggestion that, if anything I was more available for sex than most women.
I’ll leave off here. Anything else I have to say is suited only for the Pit.
CJ
Sorry, I thought you were defending the latter statistic. I apologize. But I was not wrong. Did the cite say what type of interview it was or did you assume it was a phone interview? Anyway, you missed my point. I was saying that they methods they used to come to their conclusions are statistically invalid, but even if they were valid, you can’t trust the people being interviewed. That was my point. Although I see how you could assume I was arguing that more people lie about getting raped than people who lie saying they weren’t raped. If I was unclear I apologize. It was not a flawed argument, just poor articulation.
I feel you have a bias toward the accuser in a general sense. I do not mean to imply that you have no sympathy for people in your friend’s situation. I am sure you are a supportive friend. If you took it that way then I apologize. Also, that mensa thing was a joke.
You’re wrong in that, too. I know there are some incredibly stupid women out there. Whether I was inclined to believe someone who accused someone of rape would depend on the circumstances and the individuals involved. I can think of one man I know who might, remotely, be capable of rape, although it would be highly unlikely; I know several for whom rape would be unthinkable.
As for the Mensa thing, while I realize it was a joke, it was in incredibly poor taste. Trust me. I’ve been told I’m unattractive because I’m more than a little nerdy and, not knowing any better, I believed it. Fortunately, I now know people who disagree with that opinion.
CJ
Actually, I also must admit one of the reasons I changed to my current church is I was hoping they’d have more single men my age than my old one did. In other words, some people do go to church at least considering the possibility they may find someone to date.
CJ
My old church encouraged going to church to look for a date starting in Sunday school when I was about nine. Not that they were telling nine year olds to date, just that when they were ready, they should find their dates at church events. How better to find someone who shares your values.
You were triply wrong: first, you presume to criticize a cite you’ve not read (had you read it, their methodology, inclding the fact that they conducted phone interviews, is exhaustively detailed). Second, you presume that people lie in significant numbers to these phone researchers, without providing a shred of proof to bolster this claim. Third, you presume that such lies happen in a consistent direction–i.e., that significant more women falsely claim to have been raped than falsely deny having been raped–despite the fact that such a trend appears to contradict known post-rape behavior.
Nightime, the cite claiming that the 90% statistic is derived from interviews with rapists is interesting, but again, it’s a secondary source and doesn’t provide the corroborating details that I’m interested in. If, for exaple, this informtion was gained twenty years ago from interviews with convicted rapists, then it’s going to be skewed very heavily toward stranger-rape, as (I believe) there’s a disproportionate number of stranger-rapists behind bars compared to acquaintance-rapists. If the information was gained from some other means, I’d appreciate being able to look at it. Not because in any sense I want to excuse the rapists or trivialize the enormity of their crime, but because I think it paramount that we understand their motivations and attitudes, so that we can better deter potential rapists.
Daniel
here are two articles which negate all proposed solutions and offer the only real plausible solution we have, until we can reprogram genes or brains.
http://www.vachss.com/av_dispatches/disp_9301_a.html
http://www.vachss.com/av_dispatches/disp_9308_a.html
If there were no way to alter the incidence of rapes we would see that the incidence of rape does not alter from culture to culture or even over time within one society. We do see variations so I reject your hypothesis that nothing can be done.
We can reprogram brains to some extent. The process is called education.
Those are both opinion pieces by a person who clearly has a very strong, almost emotional viewpoint. I don’t see how they add any facts to this debate.
Nothing can be done in many cases. This has been proven nearly beyond dispute by empirical trials. How do you propose to educate someone who cannot be educated? This is analogous to educating a person who has severe organic schizophrenia into an unpsychotic state free of delusions and hallucinaitons. This education has some results, but in this case, you need a great deal of progress to claim education as a success.
I am not sure how you mean to educate sociopaths, and a large portion of people who rape, especially several times, are sociopaths (these are the people who I see only one solution for: life inprisonment, no parole).
not just opinion, but they contain facts about what we can do to deter rapists. any arumentative essay contains parts that ppeal to emotion. to say otherwise is pure bosh.
“A 1992 study of 767 rapists and child molesters in Minnesota found those who completed psychiatric treatment were arrested more often for new sex crimes than those who had not been treated at all. A Canadian survey that tracked released child molesters for 20 years revealed a 43 percent recidivism rate regardless of the therapy. The difference between those simply incarcerated and those subjected to a full range of treatments appears statistically negligible. And the more violent and sadistic the offense, the more likely it is to be repeated.”