Personally.I don’t think the alleged failure by men to report sex wth women while they were too drunk to consent is due to any “pretty healthy mental atttude regardng sex.” I thnk it’s because often the men don’t think they would have objected to having the sex if they were sober. And I doubt many of them come to with bruises on their throats or their bodies and with their clothes ripped.
However, some men will have sex with other men while drunk. And while some of that sex would be of the “drunken hook up” type some posters want to claim women later regret and cry “rape” about, I suspect that some men that happens to are every bit as traumatized as women are because they were physically overpowered, i.e., were sexually assaulted and raped by anyone’s definition, or had a type of sex they would not have agreed to or had sex wth someone they would not have consented to have sex with if they had been sober enough to consent…
And often those men don’t complain for many of the same reasons that women don’t, plus some others. But they too are really messed up by what happened.
My college alumni magazine had a feature story with several first person accounts of rape on campus. One was by a gay male. IMO, his description of what happened to him and how badly he was traumatized was the most bone-chillingly frightening of all the accounts. He didn’t report it. At least a few times a year, his path crosses that of his attacker who smirks or winks at him. His unnamed attacker was (according to his account) a popular varsity athlete who lives a straight life style. The victim didn’t think anyone would believe him. Having read the article, I thnk he’s tellng the truth–or is an extremely gifted fiction writer.
Anyway…I just wanted to object to the claim that women report more sexual assaults than men do ibecause of some weakness in female psyches.
I don’t actually know the history of the legal system, but could buy the idea that it goes back to the Greeks, and quite possible further. On the other hand, the Aristotlean system of scientific “knowledge” had to be superseded, centuries later, to make actual scientific advance possible. The history of the theory of motion is quite interesting.
As for the idea that the courts should deal with issues like this, rather than the universities: If you look at the legal timeline on the Brock Turner case, which you can find on wikipedia (check all the dates), vs. the timeline of Stanford’s response, it might give a hint as to why the university may need to handle some cases. Is the legal timeline okay with you? Or how about the legal timeline on the Owen Labrie case?
In terms of the main topic of the thread, mothers’ willingness to do anything to defend their sons, I don’t know that we have come any closer to “why” than love-inspired delusion. There is no doubt an evolutionary reason for the intensity of a mother’s love–it’s a survival advantage that it should be quite difficult to disrupt.
Whether, they would have consented had they been sober is both an untestable hypothesis and completely irrelevant to the question of whether they were sexually assaulted either legally or according to a university’s code of conduct.
@roethlisburger I thiink it relates to why they may not report it. I was responding to momof3boys claim upthread that it’'s because they have a healthier view of sex and their bodies than women do.
The treatment may not be so special. Colleges’ student conduct codes commonly prohibit various non-sex acts that are also illegal (e.g. hazing), and colleges do penalize students for such acts, regardless of whether the case is also going through the police and courts. For example:
What may be “special” in this particular class of sex crimes (where consent is in question and memories and evidence quality are poor, often partly due to alcohol or other drugs) is that it is difficult for third parties (including both police/courts and college administrations) to reliably get a decision that matches the actual event, resulting in failed justice for both victims and accused.
Maybe because it’s not always “delusional”…I think Nungessor’s parents had every right to be angry at his harassment. I think Drew Sterrett’s parents had every right to be apoplectic. Parents of any kid who has been treated unjustly has a right to be totally angry. The parents of the Occidental kid are probably furious, Jack Montague’s parents…and the ilst goes on… Trust but verify…trust but verify. I think it’s delusional to think that every accuser should be believed and I don’t “buy into” the theory that no one would report unless it really happened, otherwise we wouldn’t have so many unfounded complaints and so few accusers willing to follow through with an investigation, I’m not going to speculate what percentage it could be small it could be not small, but that doesn’t help the unjustly accused and punished does it?
I’m Catholic and have a Church annulment. It was interesting to discover the difference in procedures between canon law and common law as used in the US. In canon law, the parties are not permitted to hear the testimony of witnesses and witnesses are not supposed to tell the parties what they were asked and how they responded. Indeed, the parties are not supposed to know who the witnesses, especially witnesses against them, are. The supposition in canon law is that a witness is more likely to lie or omit adverse facts from testimony if a party can hear him/her.
For example, say someone is an addict–not my case–and the addiction existed prior to marriage. The other party to the marriage was unaware of the problem. Life living with a substance abuser is a nightmare, in part because the addict refuses to admit (s)he has a problem. The spouse suggests the addict’s sibling as a possible witness who can testify regarding the addicton. The addict’s sibling may be contacted by the marriage tribunal and asked to testify. The addict will not be told that the other spouse has named the siblling as a possible witness and/or that the sibling testified to his addiction. The Church feels that if the sibling knows that the addict will know that he testified for the spouse and has to say in front of his/her sibling that his/her brother/sister is in fact an addict who refuses to admit his/her problem and that this problem existed pror to the marriage-- the sibling is LESS lkely to get on the stand and tell the truth. The spouse who suggested him as a witness won’t know what he said either.
Maybe the difference is because the Church, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t have a witness protection program :)!
Jonri, I never “claimed that” so go back and read what I wrote…I put out several possibilities why men might feel the way they do and don’t report as much as women…obviously I can’t “claim this to be true” as I am and always have been a woman.
I’m not sure the Catholic church is the best example of an administration that manages accusations, investigations and decisions the best…just saying…
You asked Quant not me, but no, not if he didn’t do the murder she’s not “delusional”… good grief people. Not all women are telling the truth. Not all men are telling the truth. That’s what our justice system is for.
Maybe is the operative word. it would be a claim without " Maybe because". Maybe someone else has a better idea why men don’t 'consider filing claims of nonconsensual alcohol induced sex.
Male body image is a problem for them: A massive “95% of college age men are dissatisfied with their bodies on some level” (Daniel & Bridges 2013).
Body image is not the same as sexual attitude, but I don’t see any evidence that men have a healthy sexual attitude (Viagra anyone?). As well I don’t feel comfortable weighing in on what is a healthy mental attitude about sex because it is so gendered. Men have defined the “right” attitude toward sex for millennium. In some times and cultures the correct attitude for women is frigid, and in others it’s promiscuous.
I do get tired of the endless celebration of masculinity, @momofthreeboys . It needs to be backed up with evidence for it to be convincing.
It’s a fair question, and an open one, how often problematic accusations are made, and how often they are resolved by imposing serious consequences on the person accused.
The men’s rights bar, and the right in general, does a pretty good job of publicizing cases they think are abusive. There seem to be a least a few dozen of those. That’s not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but it’s enough to cause a certain amount of terror on the part of boys and their parents. Of course, in many of those cases, we only have a one-sided statement of facts, and it may be there are other facts that make whatever happened seem more appropriate.
There’s also something else at play here. Historically, rape was terribly underreported because it was hard to get any vindication through the courts, and there was a substantial reputational cost to any woman who complained of a rape, as well as terrible unpleasantness in going through the legal system as a victim/complainant. However, if you provide procedures that make it much easier to get some vindication without exposing oneself to character assassination, with all kinds of protections against intimidation and other ways to be empowered . . . by gosh, that changes the whole equation. In that kind of system, false or marginal claims are far more likely than they were when women had to pay a huge price to pursue a claim.
My daughter would punch someone in the throat if he continued to harass her. She told a coworker many years her senior to knock it off when he made nasty comments like, “Boy, you look good on your knees” (while cleaning something off the floor in the restaurant). And he did.
I worked in a bar through college and grad school. A coworker of mine was absolutely terrifying to men who made statements to her. I think she helped keep us all safe. We were all afraid of her! That stuff just didn’t fly there.
I don’t understand not speaking up and calling someone out right on the spot (assuming safety and others around, of course) about objectifying women, and did he kiss his mother with that mouth? Would he like someone to talk about his sister’s (insert body part)?
People need to speak up. A bright light needs to be shined on that nonsense.
“I have read of no instances where men were turned away from Title IX offices. And in this environment that would be splashed crossed the press in a nano second.”
We weren’t talking about people being “turned away” from Title IX offices. We were talking about rules being applied unevenly on the basis of gender, and the fact that you can’t know whether this is happening.
How can you be so certain that male sexual assault victims who don’t get justice at their colleges would talk to the press about being assaulted? We all agree that there are thousands (millions?) of female rape survivors for every one who goes public. We all agree that many female victims avoid sharing their experiences publicly because there’s still a stigma about being victimized. Do you think there’s no stigma for male victims? How is a story supposed to get “splashed across the press” without the victim coming forward?
Speaking from a feminist point of view, is it plausible that everyone involved in enforcing Title IX at thousands of different schools is making decisions completely uninfluenced by patriarchal ideas about gender roles? I am thinking of the longstanding beliefs that men are always interested in all the sex they can get and that men can look out for their own safety while women need protection from others. I think those ideas are still in the oxygen we breathe. How can we know whether these assumptions are moving the needle in different people’s minds at different schools?
OHMom of 2: I was not talking about an employment scenario. There are already legal means to handle that. I was talking about equal relationships, students, coworkers, etc.
@TranquilMind In that case, fear of being seen as a problem-creator, someone who can’t get along, not a team player, someone who should just get a sense of humor and stop being such a b*tch, etc.
That stuff just didn’t fly there.