What appears different is the definition of being a victim. Victims of forcible rape were in a hugely higher category altogether than “you needed to kick 'em where it hurts” scenarios from years ago .
I’m not sure if it’s media or societal driven.
Advertising works better and has more lasting effect than most people realize. And it doesn’t matter if the ad is true or false. This particular example by Hanna promotes victimization in my opinion and is promoted not for product placement but as a public service announcement. Worst of all worlds.
Based on what my youngest says I would agree with that Zoosermom. My third says it’s not worth the trouble which is fine with me, but I hate to think that healthy, attractive, intelligent, well-adjusted young men are so wary…and they are. Bummer for the women, maybe that’s why on surface they seem pretty aggressive or at least compared to our youth so maybe that’s the norm now. On the other hand, I’m all for late marriages so it’s all good. He will be out of college soon enough and in the real world. The older two fortunately went through college before or at the very beginning of the crazy tribunal systems.
Gouf78, clearly the definition of “victim” has shifted. According to that description I would be classified, as others have also expressed, as a “victim” simply from some of the things that occurred along the way to marriage according to the new thinking. That is obvious. That is troubling to me in the context of some of our youth’s mental health. I’m not convinced this is “societal” driven…more agenda driven by a select group.
I’m very glad I was never unfairly kicked out of college. But if that fate were doomed to befall me, then being kicked out because I was having a threesome with two college-aged enchantresses who were “totally into it” is definitely the way I want it to happen 
On a more serious note - I shared with my boys my college observations while being close to a person who was a rape crisis counselor on a well known campus There were sad stories - like a group assault that never got reported because it involved a sports team and the victim was drunk and didn’t want to re-live the trauma nor face a skeptical court or campus review board. And there were stories of stranger, spousal or boyfriend sexual assault where the victim went to the police and there was little sympathy, compassion or even a comfortable setting and it all just made for compounding of the injury. All of these were and are an outrage.
I also shared some of the absurd male-bashing quotes of radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin and we had a good laugh over them. So in sum - be kind fair and compassionate, but see that there are politics and power grabs in all kinds of places including the wounded and the self-rightous. Being a male is good. Don’t feel shamed by radicals. Desire is good and normal. Make friends. Have fun. Pick brains.
@Zoosermom I like the phrase Title IX Mission Creep.
I very much appreciate @“Cardinal Fang” 's making clear that the state of the law is – as it should be – that withdrawal of consent after intercourse begins turns consensual sex into rape. However, the cases that support that proposition – the cases that actually got prosecuted – aren’t even in the ballpark of a Casey/Ryo encounter. So while it’s good to know that the black-letter law is rational, I still question whether that is the law that is effectively applied by prosecutors and juries. I have never been on a rape jury myself, but I have talked to enough people who have to know that it is very hard to get a conviction if there is evidence of consent, absent physical harm such as bruises, even without the additional factor of an ongoing relationship.
Here, for example, is the appellate court’s recitation of the facts in the Connecticut case:
The issue of withdrawing consent came up because, after the victim and her other witnesses told the foregoing story, the defendant testified that they were having consensual sex when the victim “suddenly snapped and started yelling rape.”
Early in deliberations, the jury sent a note to the judge:
The reason why the answer to that question was “no” was that it wasn’t sexual assault in those circumstances unless the victim was “compelled to continue intercourse by use of force.” And ultimately that’s what the judge told the jury a few notes later. That’s why absolutely everything in the Casey/Ryo hypothetical turns on the single, somewhat euphemistic word “restrained.” (And why the vagueness of that word in the hypothetical got my goat so much.) Sure, “restrained” might very well mean “compelled to continue by force,” and probably even the slightest application of force is theoretically enough to complete the necessary element of the crime, even if the force could easily have been countered by the victim. In the real world case, however, “force” wasn’t an issue at all, since there was a victim with extensive physical injuries who called the police immediately (and who of course denied ever having consented to anything like intercourse). And in a real world Ryo/Casey legal case, we would know infinitely more about what “restrained” meant because both sides would focus on that, understanding that it was the linchpin of the case.
I think the “street” meaning of this case is not that the police, prosecutors, and courts of Connecticut stand ready to send Ryo to jail for what was done to Casey, but rather they are not going to tolerate a legal definition that would let almost every rapist defend his case on the theory that “It wasn’t rape because I didn’t hit her until she tried to break things off when we were in the middle of it.”
Cardinal Fang is right, up to a point, when she says the Maryland case is very close to Ryo and Casey. In the Maryland case, both parties agreed that the 16-year-old defendant asked the 18-year-old victim if he could “hit that” and she consented as long as he stopped when she told him to. Their testimony also agreed that she told him to stop almost immediately, and that he did. He said he stopped as soon as she asked, and in fact never entered her vagina; she said she told him to stop after he had put his penis part way in, and he didn’t stop pushing for 5-10 seconds. What distinguishes that case from Ryo/Casey is the larger context: Immediately before that delicate exchange the defendant had been holding her down while a friend of his raped her in the back of her car, and she initially consented to the defendant only because she was in shock and wanted to get everything over with as quickly as possible, before realizing how badly she had been hurt by the first rapist.
The California case also, as it happens, involved the second assailant in a multiple-defendant rape, where the victim clearly resisted the first rapist but not so clearly the second.
So, sure, the legal principles in those opinions support what I think we all believe: that forcing a partner to continue with sex after the partner says to stop is seriously wrong, even if the partner initially consented. But the cases themselves graphically illustrate how extreme the facts usually are before police and prosecutors pursue a case that is going to turn on those principles.
First, I want to go back to Hanna’s post #334, specifically:
" ‘Her theory has the effect of discounting PTSD in the victim as an indicator of anything, with regard to a specific encounter.’ " [quoting me]
“I’ve never seen the accuser having, or not having, PTSD serve as an indicator in a case, so the idea of taking away a piece of valuable evidence didn’t even occur to me.” [Hanna]
Here is the problem as I see it: In a large number of cases of rape, objective evidence is lacking. If the man simply claims that the encounter was consensual, then it becomes a “he said/she said” case, and there is no possibility I can see of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
I agree that if the accuser does not have PTSD, it proves nothing.
On the other hand, if the accuser has PTSD that is clearly connected to rape, and that started very close in time to the incident, I would take that as an indicator that the woman was raped, despite what the man may say. It may indicate that the woman was in fear for her life. It would probably not be enough to establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but I would find it clear and convincing, personally.
However, Hanna’s idea, which she presented as a “theory” would imply that the woman might be suffering from after-effects of an earlier encounter, which had nothing to do with the specific case under consideration. JHS says that it would need to be proven that the woman was raped before. Would it? Maybe she did not report the earlier rape. Maybe she suppressed all memory of it.
I have two more comments, one relating to a recent post by Consolation, and one relating to the issue of “freezing,” since I brought that up, among other people, but the recent discussion is separate from the type of instance I was referring to.
@momofthreeboys I think all of us who have participated in these threads during the last couple of years have no doubt what your message is to young women on college campuses. You are pointing your cannon in the wrong direction. What I would like to hear is what your message is to the men who are actually responsible for the Dear Colleague Letter and the college tribunal system.
What is your message to Charles Ramsey, the Philadelphia Police Commissioner, who testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee attesting to the failings of police departments nationwide in handling of sexual assault cases? What is your message to Joe Biden and Arne Young, 2 men, who responded to that testimony with clearcut guidelines for college tribunals in 2011? And what is your message to the hundred’s of police chiefs who attended that summit in 2012 acknowledging the failings of their departments and acknowledging women needed some help?
These are the people responsible for the college tribunal system - what is your message to them?
“Secondly, @Hanna mentioned pages and pages ago that she wondered whether a situationally inappropriate response to a sexual encounter–such as freezing rather than simply saying “no” and getting up when no force was involved–might be the result of an earlier assault, especially since research shows that women assaulted in college were much more likely to have bee assaulted in HS or earlier. Hanna was immediately accused of making this up in order to clear her clients in court, even though of course she is not representing them in court.”
Hanna presented her idea as a theory. It seems to me as though she did “make it up.” Does the research literature support that claim about freezing during an assault?
In fact, does the research literature support the claim that women assaulted in college were much more likely to have been assaulted in HS or earlier?
The Canadian study linked by Cardinal Fang covers three Canadian universities, and refers to a sexual-assault resistance program. The program reduced competed rapes in a one year period from 9.8% among the control group (no resistance training) to 5.2% in the experimental group (with their resistance training). This contradicted earlier studies that showed that resistance training had no effect.
One study showed an effect of resistance training among women who had not previously been assaulted, but not among women who had not previously been assaulted. This work was done by Kimberly A. Hanson and C. A. Gidycz, reported in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 61, pages 1046-1052, in 1993. They had 181 students in the “treatment” group and 165 in the control group. To show that resistance training was not efficacious with women who had previously been assaulted, they needed previously assaulted women in the group of 181 who had the training and in the 165 who had not been trained, and they needed to compare their rates of subsequent assault. How many women do you think had previously been assaulted, in each of those groups? Given the likely numbers, I don’t think this can support the claim that “women assaulted in college were much more likely to have been assaulted in HS or earlier.”
I cannot get at the study by Hanson and Gidcyz without paying for it, which I am disinclined to do. Perhaps someone on CC has free access to the journal. Also, this paper has been cited 100 times, and I do not know to what extent the findings have been supported or contradicted by later research.
I do apologize for jumping to the conclusion that because Hanna was trained as a lawyer and because she is advising young men who have been accused of rape, that she was representing them in some variety of hearing. That is not the case. Nevertheless, the theory that she developed could have an impact on people’s view of the import of PTSD.
Before posting about “freezing,” I would like to put up a very short post highlighting the results of the Canadian study, linked by Cardinal Fang. This was a relatively large study, involving women students at 3 Canadian universities.
It showed that resistance training was effective in reducing the incidence of completed rapes within a one-year period from 9.8% to 5.2%, in the untrained vs. trained group.
If you look at those numbers for a few minutes, I think that one of the most important things to tell one’s sons about the consent issue is not that there is some politically motivated witch-hunt going on in general, but that there is a strong reaction to a real problem.
I have posted quite a while ago that I have serious reservations about “preponderance of the evidence” as a standard if an accused student is going to be expelled or suspended.
However, I don’t think you can contemplate those numbers and conclude that the people most at risk are men who might be falsely accused.
So, finally, on to “freezing.” The scenario I was contemplating was one in which the woman says, “No!” quite clearly and repeatedly, and an assault begins nonetheless. At that point, the woman freezes, much as soldiers sometimes freeze in battle.
I do not know of studies of soldiers who fire their weapons in a battle, and then–without the circumstances changing in any material way–suddenly stop firing. That seems to be to be more analogous to the posited situation in which the woman consents and then later “freezes,” mentally withdrawing consent in a way that is undetectable.
How common is that, really? If the woman actually is having a flashback to a previous rape, is she likely to just freeze up and say nothing, or is she likely to start screaming? Is there any evidence at all on this?
Whether the man is most at risk or minimally at risk, I want MY SON to have the knowledge, tools, and caution to protect himself. After his experience at that one audition, he is now aware that girls can act like pigs and shouldn’t be given any unearned benefit of the doubt based solely on gender.
Sorry but I am placing my money with “mother nature” on this one. And on the anecdote that I myself have sent no less than 3 formal dresses to my D since September on a campus that probably has some of the most “thinking” men on the planet. Things are humming along as usual, as least on that one campus.
Does formal dress = sex?
Come on, that’s a bit rude.
C’mon, zoosermom, you write "whether the man is most at risk or minimally at risk . . . " Can you show me any study that shows that between 5.2% and 9.8% of college-age men have been falsely accused of rape within a one-year period? And those figures from the Canadian study were just for “completed rape.”
Injustice is bad, no matter how it happens. I feel sorry for men who are falsely accused. But it seems to me to distort the facts to think that college-age men are more at risk of false accusations than college-age women are at risk of rape.
How much would it help to tell your sons always to have sex in the supine position; I.e., girl on top?
I am certain things are humming along on many campuses 
if not there would be nothing for the media to fixate on.
In what way is it rude? This thread is explicitly about consent for sex. The two things aren’t equivalent in my view and the fact that young people are doing other things together is exactly what we as parents hope they will do, instead of engaging in sex, drunken or otherwise, with people they barely know. I think it is wonderful that young people are having a safe good time together and also think it bodes well for not having assaults or allegations of assault.
What place does any mention of “sex” have in response to my comment that I sent my D 3 formal dresses?
Momofthreeboys and I both indicated that we thought boys might be sexually cautious in the current climate (again, the thread is about consent to sex), you disputed that by referring to something that is the exact opposite of what we are talking about. The answer to the question is that no a formal dress doesn’t equal sex and is, again, the kind of behavior we are specifically not talking about in this thread.