I have to correct myself on the name calling in the Prep School Rape thread. I just caught up with the thread activity and her comment was also addressed by another poster - fretfulmother.
I agree with @momofthreeboys about the absence of pre-gaming when I was in college. The drinking age changed from 18 to 19 during my freshman year and then from 19 to 21 during my senior year, so I was of legal drinking age for almost my entire four years of school. The move to 19 did not have as much of an impact on campus as the move to 21 did, according to younger classmates.
We would go to Happy Hour and then perhaps on to Regular Hours and then maybe even to After Hours…but generally not all three on the same evening. While a lot of beer was consumed, a great deal of time was spent waiting in line to obtain a beer and then waiting in line for the bathroom. And, yes, there absolutely were students who drank to excess but I don’t think it was as widespread as it is today.
I think the nationwide drinking age of 21 has moved drinking underground. It is easier for underage students to obtain and smuggle in a handle of vodka than a suitcase of beer. I have thought about this a great deal as I have read about drinking to blackout stage, independent of sexual assault.
I do not know what the answer is as I doubt we will be rolling the drinking age back to 18 anytime soon, but I do worry about binge drinking, both for its effects AND for the impaired judgment that then surrounds sexual encounters.
Neither of those things would have been the case at my school.
I’m sure it wasn’t, and isn’t. But it pretty much informs my view of young women as potentially empowered to be in control of their social lives as much as young men are. I find it tragic that so many young women don’t seem to have the view that it is possible, or even desirable, because you know, the boys might not like you. Where feminism is a stance of perpetual victimhood, rather than power.
Mattina Horner, the president of Radcliffe, did famous work about women’s “fear of success.” At some point around then, I recall her discussing publicly that women who graduated from the independent Seven Sisters had statistically achieved higher results in the professional world post-graduation than women in the male school-associated ones, including Radcliffe. There is something to be said for spending a significant amount of time in an environment where whether “the boys will like you” for speaking up in class or running for the president is a non-issue.
Was your negative response to Emma Sulkowicz because you saw her mattress performance as a stance of perpetual victimhood, rather than power? Or you just didn’t believe her? Or something else?
apologies to all for being off-topic but promise this is the last post.
I did not realize that she did not report this on her own, so I agree she deserves some slack here in that she tried to handle it outside the college circus bureaucracy. Therefore, I take back my comment about her trying to get her reputation back.
And given that she is a sophomore, I am also going to posit that she probably did not report it because she DOES KNOW about her blacking out condition and did not want to be in a position to admit she could not remember a thing because she drank enough to black herself out.
I didn’t believe her, based on all of the evidence, especially but not limited to her emails before and after the supposed incident, and I saw her mattress performance as part of a pattern of (loosely speaking, not technically) narcissistic behavior. I think she took advantage of the cultural moment to get revenge, gain status in her world, and not incidentally launch her performance art career. In an odd twist, playing the perpetual victim to gain power. I guess one could say “well played, Emma.” If one admired that sort of thing.
Consolation, I again agree with you. I am 60, so 18 was the drinking age all 4 years in college those of us who were 18, would grab a beer at the local pub after last class, toward the end of spring semester of our senior year in high school. I also think that I went to an undergraduate college with really smart, really strong women…or at least they appeared that way and have become in their own rights successful adult women. And I went to a very small college that was fairly self selecting and had a minimal helmet sport culture in that day…perhaps we did feel “more empowered” than the average woman you found on a huge public campus, I know we certainly felt empowered to make our own decisions. I too have somewhat perplexed at times with the attitudes of some of the young women that feel they need to be a protected class or that people will also treat them in a particular way or view them in a particular light…as we are generally perceived by what we present.
While I am certainly glad you had the experience you did, Consolation, I don’t think the party life at a women’s college is representative of what most young women in this country (who are at residential colleges) experience.
I learned a while ago that sex is not viewed objectively on CC; it is an agenda-driven topic that quickly morphs into rape if not following some subscribed meme, which is subject to change based on the newest theory/federal statue of the day peddled by/on college admins. No puns intended but this “what is considered rape” is a moving goal post.
In a nutshell, any sex act that does not satisfy all the check boxes and narratives many adults have now fabricated for young people is enough to raise the rape charge. Just by missing one check box or not following their narrative of how to approach sex allows the charge of rape to be substantiated, even though the female was complicit in the sex. A dumb sex decision should not be twisted to be called rape in this way.
And it will get worse with the nonsense of getting affirmative consent at every step of the way. Gees, who determines what is a bona fide step and what is not? This is just silly.
Unknowingly, people are making crimes where one does not exist and making young women feel that if they mess up and take a bad decision that they no longer have to take responsibility and can always blame someone.
Defining rape downwards to include bad sexual decisions and drunk sex by both parties will not stop sex and will not reduce rape; all it will do is make more sex subject to the charge of rape when two humans are acting normally and they (the male and the female) simply erred in what they decided to do.
I, too, doubt that it is. I’d like to see young women taking things into their own hands, though. How can we make that happen, when female empowerment has been redefined as the right to act like girls in a “Girls Gone Wild” video, and most of popular culture presents the major focus of girls as being hot (or, heaven forbid, not)?
I certainly raised my S to view women as fully equal, empowered individuals. From what I can see, that is how he has always treated them. This is borne out by the intelligence and strength of the GFs he has introduced to me.
Again true consolation…we can tell alot about our sons by who they choose to have relationships with. Even moreso than who “hangs” around their crowd, it’s who they choose to have relationships with. I never, ever hear about the hookups which I’m sure occur.
For me it’s not so much about Girls gone Wild…which they do it’s more about getting wild or aggressive and hooking up and then crying foul or worse calling it rape. To me, that is so diminishing to women who have been really assaulted and raped.
The Washington Post series had an interesting graphic about what people perceived as consent…and it included things like taking one’s clothes off which was split pretty evenly between those that thought that was not consent and those that thought it was consent. I don’t know but in our broader society but unless you are employed as a nude model for an art class you don’t take your clothes off with a guy in your chem lab unless you want something from him. I don’t care of you “can” do that legally, it’s a pretty stupid way to tell someone you are interested in him.
There is no doubt there is a kind of double standard when it comes to these kind of things, a lot of which is cultural. For one thing, in the case where a guy is passed out drunk and a girl has sex with him, it is very, very unlikely he would think of pressing charges, partly because men don’t have the guilt with sex, partly because among men they would be very, very reluctant to press any kind of sexual assault or rape charges against a woman, they would likely feel ashamed since as men they are supposed to be able to protect themselves. Too, men have a lot less guilt about sex, someone else referred to waking up in bed with someone you otherwise wouldn’t sleep with, in men’s terms that is known as ‘coyote ugly’ and at most it is a bit of a joke.
As far as why when it is boy/girl the boy is assumed to be guilty, I think that comes in part to the very real fact that when it comes to coerced rape , whether it is slipping a girl a date rape drug, or physically forcing them, the ratio of men doing it, even if you factor in the reluctance of men to report rape, to women is very, very high. I think in these cases that attitude carries over (and no, I don’t think it is right). I also think that the posters who question whether all these cases meet the standard of rape are truly rape, I suspect more than a few of them are cases where the person filing the complaint are doing so out of regret, but I also don’t think that is all of them or a majority of them, either. If it comes down to he said/she said kind of things, there is a problem, because often there is nothing more than the word of the supposed victim, and I am concerned about that, or that simply because a person doesn’t remember means that automatically it must have been rape. While I am a staunch advocate of not blaming the victim, and in some of these cases what was thrown at the victim (including the Stanford case) has been often nothing more than ‘shaming’ her for what happened to here, there also has to be developed some standards, legal and in university codes, that do take into account why the victim is pressing charges, and I really wonder if not remembering is a sole criteria for pressing charges.
The other thing that concerns me with these kinds of incidents is that with all the encouragement reputed victims are getting to report this, and the stigma of reporting it lessens, if they aren’t setting themselves on the path of creating a different type of monster, that of using this simply as revenge. Right now, like with ‘real’ rape, the victims are often reluctant to come forward because they fear retribution (and they shouldn’t), and like with ‘real’ rape (forced rape, being drugged), incidents of fake accusations are fairly rare. Thing is, if someone accused a guy of rape, then later on it was determined they were lying (well, okay, not always, Tawana Brawley comes to mind), they could face charges for filing false charges, potentially perjury and the like. What concerns me is with these campus cases is that there doesn’t seem to be much of a mechanism, if in fact they determined the victim was lying or was not raped, they basically just let it drift away. What I am afraid they are setting up is a situation where supposed victims could be doing this to get revenge on someone who they feel wronged them, if it is the kind of environment where there isn’t the reluctance to report these things, the stigma (which generally to me means if something is reported, it is likely real), and if there are no penalties for falsely accusing someone, why not use it in revenge? Like in the law, there needs to be penalties if in fact they determine the reporting was malicious, and I have been around long enough to know that there are always people who would not think twice of crying sexual assault, knowing it would at the least hurt the reputation of the supposed rapist…and I think that needs to be dealt with, it isn’t fair that the accused (likely a boy) is assumed to be guilty until proven innocent and the the supposed victim has no fear of penalties if they deliberately lie.
Now I have a question. At the traditionally women’s colleges, where it isn’t exactly a big secret that gay and bi women make up a not insignificant portion of the student population, has there been an issue with date rape and this kind of thing? I am not asking that snarkily, I haven’t seen any data on that, and I wonder if those schools have had to face these kind of issues…and I am asking specifically where a woman accuses another woman, given that these schools do have men attending them or where men attend parties there and so forth from outside.
It’s so strange to me how off rails this topic keeps getting and how people slant it towards their own experiences.
This wasn’t a drunken regretful sex situation. This girl wasn’t upset because she regretted saying yes to sex when drunk. She was upset because she didn’t even remember it happening but knew a sexual encounter had happened. I have never had a memory loss. Unless many of you have had hours long memory losses, I can’t understand why you think a person would be blasé about it and think nothing of not only missing hours but including a sexual encounter in those missing hours. She was freaked out and didn’t know whether the sexual encounter happened the way this guy she didn’t even know said it did. Maybe she wasn’t sure how truthful he was, maybe she was also freaked because he said when they met afterwards that he was too drunk to know whether she actually consented. Those things, I would imagine, would freak me out. I don’t actually understand why it wouldn’t freak out any person who has never had memory loss before. That doesn’t mean this guy is necessarily guilty legally of rape but I am still floored that anyone thinks he is sympathetic. At the very least he took off and abandoned a girl he helped get naked, alone and helpless in a bathroom at a party. I wouldn’t even leave someone I hated like that, let alone someone I just had a sexual encounter with.
It was drunken sex that is indisputable…the regretful part is debatable since she doesn’t even remember what happened so can’t say what she is thinking. I bet money she is regretful. Not quite sure why she wanted to derail the guys life.
Given that she “roofied” herself and, as a sophomore, had sex with a newly arrived freshman who was too drunk to consent, I am not sure why anyone thinks she is a sympathetic character. It was so early in the semester that they guy didn’t even know the rules that defined consent.
I agree with this now that I know she did not report it herself.
This makes sense because memory loss freaks everyone out when they realize they cannot remember.
This, I disagree with.
Why is it that the female in your scenario can drink and do things she would not normally do, but the guy cannot?
Why is not part of your scenario is that the guy, who was also drinking, freaked out about the situation he found himself in and did something dumb, just like the female did prior?
Leaving her like that was dumb, but jumping to the assumption that he was cognizant enough to be in his full senses and knowingly abandoned her is a double standard at work. You accept the girl was not responsible or smart when she was drinking, so why not give that same leeway to the guy who was also drinking?
I can easily see the guy freaking out as well and just leaving the situation without any thought as to the consequence. Alcohol has a way of doing that to everyone - reduced cognitive and logical function.
Are you a teetotaler yourself, awctndb? Just curious.
We all read the same article but based on our experiences see this situation differently.
All the cases that have been discussed on CC are different scenarios.
In most cases I felt the woman was victimized and had a case to move forward with.
In this case for some reason I am alarmed at her actions.
I feels she has issues she needs to resolve and has to do some serious self reflection.
I hope she has learned a lesson from this experience so that she can make better decisions in regards to alcohol use in the future. If she were my daughter I would have a serious conversation about her choices.
I would not be ok with this type of behavior and would have zero tolerance for it.
I personally find this culture of excessive drinking repulsive. I don’t see positive things coming out of this.
Look at the Vanderbilt rape case (Corey Batey was just sentenced to 15 years and I expect Vandenburg to get more). The woman did not have any idea that she had been violated and raped in numerous ways. She was completely unconscious and remembered nothing the next day. I believe she was drugged, but that never became part of the trial, since there was video and pictures that proved what happened. She definitely had too much to drink- but, again, remembered absolutely nothing about the horrific attack by 4 men.
I don’t think anyone is saying the guy in this case was a gem (personally,I think he lacked a lot of things, brain cells and empathy among them), the problem here is the girl in question assumed that since she didn’t remember, that it must have been non consensual sex. She freaked out, assumed it must have been she couldn’t consent, and filed charges it seems like, without trying to figure out what happened. Whether the guy behaved like a cad or a gem is irrelevant, the question is did he de facto rape her? The key thing here is does not remembering mean you were so drunk you couldn’t consent? In the Stanford case, the accused was found having sex with someone who was passed out, there were witnesses to that, and that from what i know meets the standard for non consent. She could have been fully in charge of her faculties and agreed to have sex with him, and not remember it later (no science on that, just based on my few incidences of drinking enough to not remember much the next day). Simply freaking out or regretting having sex should not be the basis for rape charges, and in incidents like this where the victim herself didn’t know whether she consented or not the university was correct IMO, in saying there was no way to know, and in those cases the benefit of the doubt should go with the accused.
I think this guy was an a-hole and I think somewhere along the lines he wasn’t given the brains and common sense that God gave sheep, among other things his behavior after the fact was enough to make people think he must be guilty because he acted like an a**.
And yes, I agree with others, that the answer to this is not in punishments and so forth, it is in drilling into the kids that sex and booze and drugs is fraught with minefields, and that it isn’t just about regret after the fact. If you get drunk enough that you can’t tell if the other person is out of it, there should be some sort of internal instinct (really simply having had it drilled into you enough it becomes an unconscious reaction) to stay away from having sex with the person in question. If you aren’t that drunk then this will work even better. More importantly, I also think that a lot of people, mostly young men, also have to finally learn the lesson that they aren’t entitled to have sex, the kid in the Stanford case was a prime example of that, and that if there is any doubt, don’t do it. I suspect it will take a while to sink in, like with drunk driving, smoking and other things, until the consequences outweigh the drive to do stupid things, crap like this will happen.