What do you tell your sons about consent?

Parent Cafe
501

I have just started reading the links that were provided earlier, but I wanted to comment on the post by northwesty, #420, which included the statement: " Then there’s also the data that shows that the assault rates for non-college student women of college age are higher than for college women."

That is what I had thought. However, the paper "Incapacitated and Forcible Rape of College Women: Prevalence Across the First Year, but K. B. Carey, S. E. Durney, R. L. Shepardson, and M. P. Carey, J. Adolescent Health, 56, 678-680 (2015) includes the sentence:
“Annual incidence of rape among college women has been estimated at 5%, five times higher than the rate observed among noncollege women,” with a reference to the source, “Drug-facilitated, incapacitated, and forcible rape: A national study,” by D. G. Kilpatrick, H. S. Resnick, K. J. Ruggierio, et al., Charleston, SC: Medical University of South Carolina: 2007.

I am uncertain about the relative incidence for college women vs. non-college women of the same age. It seems improbable that Kilpatrick et al. made the error of comparing the rate among college women with the rate among all women not enrolled in college, which would include many women who are much older (and much younger).

northwesty raised the question, "why do we only care and do something about one . . . " I care about all of them. When it comes to doing something, I think there is a significant difference, in that noncollege women have only the courts for recourse. It is often impossible to meet the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which is required in the court system. Within colleges, it is possible in some cases to “do something,” even when the court standard cannot be met. I thought that the previous college standard of “clear and convincing” evidence was appropriate.

This may also be impossible to meet when there is conflicting testimony, but which at least gives some relief to some college women, when there is evidence that rises to the level of “clear and convincing.” There is no comparable venue or standard of proof for non-college women. Are you suggesting that some auxiliary, non-court system should be created for the general population, northwesty?

Another difference: In college environments, the victim and rapist are likely to continue to be in close proximity to each other, eating meals in the same location, living in the same building, or even on the same floor, attending the same classes . . . Certainly this is true in some cases for non-college women of traditional college age, but I think it would apply to a smaller percentage.

502

@northwesty “My hunch is that the data would say that training girls is the most effective. And that the title ix effort will prove least effective. But the data (rather than hunches) should determine.” It may be most effective. But think about the implications that means for the type of society we live in if the best way to prevent rapes is to teach victims how to defend themselves? The fact that people would be attempting in the first place is what is very alarming to me. I think that real progress would be fewer rapes AND fewer attempted rapes. Not just fewer rapes because people have gotten better at protecting themselves.

It’s under the same umbrella of what Roosh V is advocating (despite his claims that his article was satirical). He believes that legalizing rape in private spaces will encourage women to be more careful and protective which consequently will reduce the amount of rapes seeing that most women are raped by someone they know.

503

@ToBeHonestt

I’m sorry you went through that.

That is not a great use of resources because even though that impacted you, and I am sympathetic, but it still represents a small percentage of rape claims. We don’t educate people on the negative impacts of false reports of battery and theft. Even though you went through a difficult experience with a false report, it does represent a small amount of claims out there. False reporting frustrates the crap out of me because it distracts from the actual victims. It’s unfortunate that with people use the small percentage of small rape reports as evidence against legit claims whereas reports of other crimes don’t experience that.

504

@Consolation Rape is not about sexual attraction and it’s not the ravishment that you read about in some fairytales. It’s about power and it’s used as a weapon.

505

CaliCash: It’s natural and probably healthy for young people to question the beliefs and advice of their elders. Some of us on here lived the sexual revolution and the aftermath. We’ve studied the theory. We know the principals. We have been thinking about this for 40+ years. We aren’t completely ignorant. We aren’t basing our ideas on bodice ripper, romance novels. You don’t have to believe us. Roll your eyes. But be polite. You’ll feel less embarrassed 20 years on when you think back. :wink:

fwiw, I’m asking the few people still alive older than I am for advice before they are all gone.

adding: I don’t always agree with Consolation, but every word she writes is worth reading and seriously considering, especially if you are around 20.

506

500 "I am uncertain about the relative incidence for college women vs. non-college women of the same age."

You can poke holes in all studies on this topic. But the USDOJ stats say 18-24 non-college student women have higher assault rates than college student women. There’s also studies that show that assault rates in HS are fairly comparable to college rates.

507

@alh I always read what Consolation says on threads like these. A lot of times, I agree with what she says also. But I was simply comparing it stories from the past that feature ravishment. I’m not saying I know more.

508

QM. #500

In previous threads, some of us compared college to workplaces in terms of assault and harassment. I don’t know if you read those? We got off on some tangents about what different poster’s workplaces had done over time to address that sort of issue and what sorts of standards of proof (if any) were required in that situation.

I think college is a workplace for students, so they should have safe space compared to all the rest of the world. However, as an overprotective mom, I am really 100% on board with safe space proposals.

509

Re #502, I don’t think that much in the way of resources is required. All that is necessary is for the college administration to have a policy (and make the policy clear to the students) that verifiably false rape accusations will result in expulsion – as is the case when a tribunal concludes that a rape did in fact occur. Some semblance of fairness is reasonable to expect, but doesn’t currently exist.

510

There was another survey done on 9 campuses and the results were ugly.
The surveyers worked very hard to get the questions right and for the survey to be random.

The survey @northwesty points to is an outlier. It’s garbage.

This survey is sponsored by the BJS.

Here is a highlight link.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/college-sexual-assault-study_us_569e928be4b0cd99679b9ada

Here is the study.

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ccsvsftr.pdf

511

“I want the college to say unambiguously that a person is allowed to revoke consent, that’s all.”

Everyone says this and everyone means it. I doubt you can find one college conduct code that does not say this clearly. The law on that is also completely clear and has been forever.

Saying it is one thing. Proving it is completely different.

“Yes means yes” doesn’t change anything about the requirement of consent or the revocability of consent. All it does is attempt to change the proof requirement for consent.

“Yes means yes” simply narrows down the legally acceptable forms of proof for consent. The policy of such a rule is the hope that by imposing more rigorous proof requirements you will reduce bad situations and improve behavior around sexual consent.

Very similar to why the law requires certain kinds of contracts to be in writing. Oral contracts can be legally binding and valid for sure. But figuring out the terms and conditions of an unwritten contract is always a huge mess. So the written contract rule cuts down on those messes.

So yes-means-yes is a good idea on paper. But a likely failure in practice.

512

“Turns out, the well-known psychologist Dan Ariely did an experiment comparing how men think when they’re sexually aroused vs. unaroused.”

A lot of truth in the old saying that, when your **** gets harder than your head, it does the thinking for you…

513

Because I’m old, I’m aware of lots of things that were once just good ideas on paper but now are pretty much norms in real life at this point in time.

I am going to use the condom example again.

And gay rights.

And prosecuting acquaintance rape cases.

514

509 "The survey @northwesty points to is an outlier. It's garbage."

On this point, it is solid.

The question is how the incidence rates compare between 18-24 year old women in and out of college. Not what the level of incidence actually is. If you use the same data gathering for both groups, there’s no reason to think that one group would be under-reported and the other over-reported.

Both groups could be under-reported. Both could be over-reported. But the ratio should be sound.

There’s massive problems with all the studies. The USDOJ studies have problems. So do the college survey studies.

But the apples-to-apples comparison of college and non-college women probably doesn’t have big problems.

Stark – does your study look at non-college students? If not, it isn’t relevant here.

515

The BJS study doesn’t make a point of it, but like the smaller study it shows that the number of women with lifetime experience of sexual assault is significantly greater than the number of women who have experienced it in college, in some cases as much as twice the number. Which means, since all the people surveyed were in college, that as many, and probably more, women were raped or otherwise assaulted in high school as in college. It also shows that a significant number of the perpetrators of rape or sexual assault on college women were not/ students at the same college. It varied by college, and ranged from about 30% to 55%. That surprised me.

516

@northwesty, the survey you like to use is so bad… You can’t infer anything from it. :wink:

I posted that survey because you keep posting garbage to make a point. I wouldn’t have posted the survey otherwise. :wink:

Also…
Posters here may want to take a glance at the survey.

517

This thread is titled “What do you tell your sons about consent?”

I can’t help but notice that the thread morphed into “What our daughters should do.”

518

I see a considerable difference between “It’s OK if they don’t say No” and “It’s not OK unless they say Yes.” I’m not talking about proof requirement, which is unchanged. I’m talking about how a person is told they should act. In the one case, they should stop when they are told “No” by word or action. In the other case, they don’t even get to start until they get “Yes” by word or action.

519

@“Cardinal Fang” , you may be right about obtaining consent in the first instance, although honestly I am not sure how much difference it would make in practice. But even in a yes means yes system, the exact same problems exist in cases of revocation.

@dstark, we should be, and some of us are, talking about both.

520

Well…if we are now talking about our daughters instead of our sons, we need a few more daughters to follow in Lorena’s Bobbitt’s footsteps.

Cut off a few @@@@@. The defense for our daughters will be, “We were fooling around and we were both drunk and I don’t remember cutting the guys private parts off but I do remember the guy never said no. I think he told me he wanted his @@@@ cut off”.