An interesting line:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/22/us/campus-sex-assault-mothers.html
I’d quote more but NYT doesn’t allow you to copy the text.
As a reminder, even Brock Turner’s father defended his actions:
IMO, parents are a HUGE (as in, the vast majority) problem with rape culture. Exhibit A from the NYT article:
Yes. You do. Everyone needs to be taught not to rape- the same way we teach people not to fight, not to kill, and to be respectful.
Were you trying to quote stuff like this?
The article does mention two cases which, if you believe the mothers of the accused, may have been false accusations. But those are distinct from the case in the quote above, where Judith apparently tries to excuse having sex with someone too intoxicated to give consent.
This is in keeping with blaming victims of sexual assault instead of the predators.
The key here is what exactly is “too intoxicated” and until that point can be defined I don’t think it is right to call men rapists and to declare that women are victims and I will never depart from that feeling as a woman who was “gasp” young once and as a mother. I think we can all agree that passed out is intoxicated. Having to be carried because you simply can’t walk is intoxicated. If you are going to assign someone as a perpetrator be careful what you wish for or colleges will start assigning blame rather than simply calling accusations unfounded. As my mother used to tell me “it takes two to tango.”
I mean, these women are Moms. It isn’t reasonable to expect them to be objective. They are going to say silly things in an attempt to defend their child. I know what they are saying doesn’t make any sense, but I recognize that I don’t expect moms to be objective.
The Dads defending their daughter in the same situation are not know for being objective either. They are known for showing up with a shotgun, and a shoot first, ask questions later mindset. lol This is just the flip side.
Of course, parents aren’t objective. Why would anyone find that shocking? If we’re going to teach men not to rape, we should teach women not to make false accusations.
Getting drunk enough to be an easy victim of a sexual (or other) crime does not excuse the one committing the crime.
An analogous situation is that leaving your stuff unlocked and unattended makes it easy for someone to steal it. However, that does not excuse the act of theft, and someone who is caught stealing it can be convicted of theft.
'As my mother used to tell me “it takes two to tango.” ’
@momofthreeboys – your mother is right about tango. She’s wrong about rape.
I’m sorry, but there’s way too much sloganeering on both sides of this issue.
You can define “sexual assault” and “predator” broadly enough to make everyone one or the other, and many both. But in so doing, you cheapen the terms and undercut the effort to deal with people who actually deserve to be called predators and their victims. I think that’s what has been happening. The combination of the “preponderance” standard with star-chamber procedures and an emphasis on general and specific deterrence vs. resolving interpersonal problems is clearly delegitimizing efforts to reduce and eradicate sexual violence.
The vast majority of college kids are neither predators nor victims. However, the vast majority of college kids also have lots of bad sex, full of ambivalence, guilt, confusion, disappointment, frustration, and regret. Because that’s what 18-22 year-olds do, more or less the way 10 year-olds crash their bikes and skin their knees. It’s part of learning how to do better.
The current orthodoxy makes every incident of bad sex a potential significant disciplinary issue. As a statistical matter, hardly any of the bad sex actually turns into a significant disciplinary issue, I think mainly because the kids involved do not feel like they have been victimized in any meaningful way, except perhaps by their guilt-inducing parents. (King Canute would have a better chance of stopping the tide than college administrators would have of actually stopping bad sex.) Nevertheless, more or less randomly, every once in a while someone decides – often with prompting from others, who are both well-meaning and ideologically driven – that the bad sex was the fault of the other person involved, which makes it sexual assault, and we’re off to the races. With packs of PR consultants and national advocacy groups howling to join in. And colleges in the ridiculous position of adjudicating sex between 18-year-olds. Sometimes the decider isn’t even one of the participants, but a friend, an administrator, an upset parent.
Everything about that spectacle is unfair, to everyone involved. Including how effective at bringing the college to heel a sophisticated parent with funding and contacts can be, as described in the article. It’s a crappy system, and it tarnishes everyone involved, including the college. And worst of all, by creating a public class of unjustly accused, it sows confusion that the justly accused can exploit. As here – we’re not discussing the role of rape in the lives of women, we are discussing the technical standard of proof for some offense that isn’t exactly rape.
Do people spend a lot of time teaching their teens not to kill? I’m sure I got a lot of the ten commandments as a kid. If someone told me not to kill by the time I was a teenager, it was almost always a joke(ex. try not to kill your brother).
I don’t think the vast majority of college students are having “lots of bad sex,” because that’s what they do. Unless you came of age during the 60’s. Nowadays, in the advent of HIV and Herpes and other more highly published STDs college students are more aware and careful.
Nicely said JHS. It’s unfortunate that we have to define everything as rape and assault. There is a vast, vast, expanse of land between loving, caring sex and rape and assault. Call it bad sex, call it drunk sex, call it a hookup… whatever you want but it’s not rape and it’s not assault. And it’s so intangible I’m not sure courts will every be able to define it, and frankly I’d prefer not to have courts define what is “acceptable” sex which you almost have to do if you want to expand the definition of rape and assault. I’m not even sure how you’d establish a BAC level where it’s acceptable to have “legal” or “conduct OK sex…” And I’d bet money there’s an awful lot of college kids, male, female that really don’t want to answer that question “how much did you have to drink that night.” I think this is the point that just about everyone involved on the ground dealing with college kids is trying to say. I don’t see how you get to “conduct unbecoming a gentleman” without defining “conduct unbecoming a gentlewoman.”
My question is this - when drunken sex occurs - why is the male the accused rapist and the female the victim? Assuming fairly equal levels of inebriation - why is it not a mutual lack of good judgement - an incident to learn from and move on. Do you ever see the female accused of rape?
Please note - I am not referring to any situation involving more than 2 people and I am clearly referring to situations where both participants are drunk. If both are drunk - neither can legally consent - so both are at fault. Yet it is the male who faces rape accusations.
So, within this specific framework, I agree with the mothers in the article.
What was the BAC of the victim at the time of the incident? Does the university’s definition of consent differ from any applicable state or local laws? It’s pointless to try to read too much into these cases without more information than is provided in the nytimes article.
I think there are two things going on here: parents defending their accused children; and people feeling uncomfortable with where the line is drawn between consensual and nonconsensual sex. When they’re combined, things get really messy. Think about the following, for example: “I don’t think my son was falsely accused of supplying the heroin that killed his girlfriend, I think he was wrongly accused.” Or how about, “I don’t think my son was falsely accused of taking out his dad’s gun and, not knowing it was loaded, shooting his buddy; I think he was wrongly accused.” At least some people here would probably have different reactions to the parental justifications and defenses in the latter situations.
Not even close rosered55. Consolation is spot on. We cannot have a system, and one that I fought long and hard for, unless men and women are treated equally. Over my dead body will I give up my right as a woman to self determination. If both have been drinking…you have to start there. Period. Start there. After that comes force and coercion, which is defined legally and why so many Americans can’t understand why these cases aren’t going into the criminal system.
What if both people have been drinking and one accuses the other of rape and both are men?
Heck, we have at least one parent out here who does this.
It’s a slippery slope.
That it is indeed.