It might have been mentioned upthread, but a researcher found that when male college students were asked if they had, basically, forced sex on a female student, a good number reported they had. Then when they were asked if they had raped anyone, they said they had not. They did not know that their behavior was called rape. Semantics. I’m sure I’ve butchered the synopsis of the study, but maybe someone else knows the details or citation.
So, teaching consent is probably the best thing schools, families, and others can do.
Yes, I read that study as well. I think the “Golden Rule” of “do unto others as you would have others do unto you” has been lost and been replaced by “he who has the Gold–or power RULES!”
I’m sure if you asked the same men how they would feel if another person FORCED sex on them, they would find that upsetting/awful and more, whether or not they’d actually report it is another matter.
I was baffled by your post $1230, alh, so I looked at my comments. I see that I “dittoed” one of dstarks’s posts but, unfortunately, there was nothing in it about impending grand-fatherhood. No announcement forthcoming here!!
“The same young men who do know what is rape and what is not rape, the same young men that can become bystander advocates and friendly bros who remove their friends from bad situations but don’t want to get within 1,000 yards of a drunk woman anymore without other people to back them up - or so my boys tell me”
Well, that would seem to be a good thing that “good guys” don’t want to get within 1000 yards of a drunk girl, no?
Well if the “good guys” avoid drunk women, the only males left around said drunk women would be the predators, which is bad for the women–no one left to be a Good Samaritan bystander.
I remember when one of my college sons, fall term of sophomore year, called me to discuss how very weary he was of being sure his drunken female friends made it home okay from a bar or party. I told him he really was going to have to share his concerns with them, and that subsequent conversation seemed to solve the problem. He was never going to leave them or not go out with them. He just wanted to enjoy the evening, too. I imagine he had some concerns about drunken male friends, but clearly didn’t feel as protective. Since he has only brothers, maybe it was just easier for him to talk to the males about it.
Realistically, his male friends just weren’t at as great a risk in that situation. That is just a fact.
It’s a long road from finger wagging to engaging young men to be pro-active. Telling young men and women what they can do in addition to telling them what they can’t do and shouldn’t do. Right now we seem to be doing abit too much finger wagging and not enough educating on campuses. Some people don’t like Emily Yoffee…I happen to think she displays much common sense. Some people here don’t like what I have to say and some people don’t like Emily Yoffee. This is a particularly good article about bystander intervention for those that like to see other people’s opinions… One has to wonder how many “Swedes” there are on campuses. There were two of them. I hope there are many.
Turner hasn’t acknowledged he raped. However, he ran away. I think he knew it was rape. I think he just thought he could get away with it. No one wants to be called a rapist. I have read several op-ed pieces the last few days that point out how many euphemisms we use to avoid saying rape. We have a really difficult time looking at rape head on.
“One has to wonder how many “Swedes” there are on campuses. There were two of them. I hope there are many.”
Obviously there were no “Swedes” around during the horrific Vanderbilt rape. There were several witnesses who saw the unconscious girl being carried into a dorm room, but sadly no one intervened
If we don’t acknowledge rape culture exists, I don’t see how we can change it. I don’t see naming the problem, rape, as finger wagging.
The unusual thing about this case, in my opinion, is that (almost) no one is claiming it wasn’t rape. Usually, there is a denial that rape occurred. It’s a pretty big deal, again in my opinion, that we are concentrating our concern and sympathy on a rape survivor and we are outraged with her rapist.
adding:
Momofthreeboys: I read your slate link. Parents have been teaching their daughters how to avoid being raped since the beginning of time. Women, almost unconsciously, arrange their days and nights around protecting themselves from potential rapists. For my whole life, self-defense classes and assertiveness training have been recommended to help women protect themselves from rapists. We all know don’t drink from the common bowl, an opened container, etc.
These are all excellent common sense practices and I can’t imagine women will stop any of them in the foreseeable future. But they don’t stop rape. Rape still happens.
Women are tired of having to live on guard all the time. That doesn’t mean they are letting down their guard. They can’t afford to.
^^no alh, not in that sense…more in the sense that finger wagging at people as if they have no idea what is at stake as opposed to telling them what they can do is off-putting not that naming all sexual assault as rape is finger wagging. Although getting all the states in the nation to call all sexual assault rape is even more of an uphill battle, but a different battle than how we work with your young people on college campuses.
Pizzagirl, if your TL;DR applied to musicprnt’s post #1185, you might want to go back and take a look at it after all. It is well worth reading, and has more significant content than many of the short posts of this thread that aggregate to the same length.
I have a number of remarks on this topic that I haven’t had time to post yet, but will eventually, if the thread is not closed before I can manage to post them.
Momofthreeboys: You want to talk about alcohol education. You want the media to leave the Turner family alone. You want college women to take responsibility for protecting themselves. You want campus education programs.
I pretty much agree with all that. But, in addition, I want to talk about rape and how rape culture shapes our everyday lives, and especially how it negatively impacts our kids’ lives, both our daughters and our sons. Rape culture isn’t good for men or women. Rape culture is the root problem. Dstark named the problem right away when the thread began.
1212 by Cardinal Fang makes a really important point that I had not seen mentioned before on this thread, but was on my list of comments to make:
The reason that this prosecution succeeded was that there were two witnesses, the Swedish men who confronted Turner when they saw that something was wrong.
In most cases, there will not be witnesses, and this makes criminal prosecution very difficult.
An added difficulty is imposed by the mode of operation of the criminal justice system, that seems to make it imperative for the accused to make statements that defy common sense, denying that any crime occurred.
A second shout-out to musicprnt, for post #1238. The video by the Thames Police explaining consent by analogy to tea drinking is very well worth the few minutes it takes to look at it.
It has an item: “Unconscious people do not want tea.”
I would add a few things to the points made on the video:
Even if a person wants tea, it is improbable that the person wants to drink tea on the ground behind a dumpster, or on the concrete floor of a mechanical room.
People most probably do not want to be choked while drinking tea.
Even if a person wants tea, this does not mean that the person would like tea with Worcestershire sauce or jalapeño extract it in.
"I remember when one of my college sons, fall term of sophomore year, called me to discuss how very weary he was of being sure his drunken female friends made it home okay from a bar or party. "
Yet there is so much resistance to the idea of telling our kids - of BOTH sexes - no, it is neither cool nor funny to get yourself drunk enough that you need assistance to get home / that you can’t navigate safely of your own volition. And if it happens to you more than a handful of times, you need to get professional help to see why you think that’s “fun,” why you continue doing it, and you can’t expect other people to always be there to make up for your repeated poor judgment.
Note the obvious - this still doesn’t “excuse” a rapist or “blame” a victim of a rape.
@Pizzagirl, I don’t really think there is a resistance to that idea. I told both of my girls that, many times, they are sick of hearing it. I’ve warned them about not going out alone when it’s very late. I’ve gotten them pepper spray. I installed a security system in D2’s cottage. We’ve talked about how drinking too much could make them vulnerable to predators. Etc., etc., ad nauseum.
All that is different from what we frequently see after a rape occurs: “Well, she shouldn’t have gotten drunk.” “Well, what did she expect, going to a frat party?” “Hey, if you play with fire…” Once a rape occurs, the dialogue should not be about what the victim did or didn’t do to keep herself from being attacked when we are talking about guilt or the punishment phase. The victim’s failure to prevent herself from being attacked should have no place in discussions about a particular accused’s guilt, or after guilt has been established in a court of law, his punishment. When a specific victim’s clothes, attendance at a party, or alcohol consumption becomes the focus in a court proceeding involving punishment of a convicted felon, THAT is what constitutes rape culture. The same is true when the victim’s actions are the focus in a discussion about a convicted rapist’s punishment. The rapist deserves no slack simply because he had the fortune of coming upon a more vulnerable victim than we would have her be. If he had come upon a woman unconscious because she was in a diabetic coma, the outrage would be tenfold for certain posters, when in fact it should not be one iota different from the outrage expressed for a rapist who victimizes a woman who is unconscious because she was intoxicated.
Comments about how to prevent a rape are fine until failure to do so is viewed and/or expressed as a mitigating factor for the guilt or sentence of a convicted rapist.
That video has been posted before and I too think it does a good job. It bears linking as new folks add to the conversation…
alh…your last point, that’s difficult for me because I don’t believe in rape culture. I think the natural progression from the sexual revolution of the 70s is women feeling comfortable taking the lead in sexual relations, being comfortable with that and expressing their wishes, but I think it’s a misnomer to call today’s world a “rape culture”…which implies that it’s somehow “pervasive and normalized” and I just can’t support that. I think there is a myriad of things happening culturally around male and females related to sexual relations socially and because of high profile cases like this and some of the civil suits against colleges, potentially coming within the actual law. Furthermore when certain protagonists make it out to be a man problem I think it’s even more off putting to the very group they want to talk to.
Sigh, not sure I even want to start with the question of whether we still live in a patriarchal society. That will require an entirely new thread and there is the"no political threads" allowed rule.
