Both genders need to be advised to make good choices and what good choices are. They also need to be given examples of how to avoid or escape a situation that they might find themselves in. The college rape cases have really been lose lose situations for both sides. It is really sad.
We have talked about this a lot in our family. We as a family also all read Missoula last year. It was a very hard book to get through but it lead to a lot of good discussion about the potential issues.
“I would also tell my son that if a girl is really drunk, you just don’t do it.”
I say don’t mix sex and alcohol, period. I know that kids will still do it, but I want to at least make them aware of the danger if their partner has had ONE beer. How can you prove that somebody wasn’t drunk – especially if the accusation comes months or years later?
I personally don’t follow this rule. I don’t follow “yes means yes” in my marriage, either. But I can’t get thrown out of school over a dispute.
@pittsburghscribe , I have heard of parents using track my phone apps to"protect " their daughters, which would be one way a parent could become involved in such a scenario. (Eek, btw!)
We raised our boys from a very young age with the phrase “no means no”… they understood their body was their own and nobody, not Grandma or anybody, had the right to ask for contact or require it. We hoped to set an example they would extend to others. With girlfriends, my husband gave the boys serious convos about their responsibility to not gossip, exaggerate, or otherwise malign a girls’ reputation, which I know is retro but we thought it was important. I would share my outrage at gender stereotyping of women -as-objects AND men-as-predators. I wanted them to know it was okay to NOT be trying to hit on every girl ever.
We live in a college town. I read them articles about the window-falls, the walks of shame, the deaths, the alcohol judgement – we ask them, what should they have done? why didn’t someone intervene? what if it were your sister?
We talked about discussing sexual boundaries before things were clouded by hormones. And most of all, we stressed by example and life that a meaningful relationship with someone who cares for you will likely never lead to spurious claims or disastrous consequences – so be picky. Don’t be someone’s accessory, someone’s rebound, someone’s mistake. Be sure. Take your time. Value yourself. The same sorts of things people tell their girls…
Does this in fact happen? That is, does a guy get punished for forcing himself on a woman who has had one drink?
I’m not asking whether women lie, and say they had more to drink than they actually had. I’m asking whether there is a case where a guy was punished for the offense of having sex with a woman who was unable to consent because she had one drink.
I am such a dinosaur, in the eyes of many, but my sons have been taught that sex comes after marriage. I make no apologies for that. I have concern for my daughter because far too many other young men have not been taught this and assume that buying dinner means a ticket to sex. Many young men display such a lack of respect for women these days. Add to that their distorted views of sex due to pornography. So, in addition to the marriage concept, all of my kids stay far away from situations that would place them at risk of any of this. They have heard stories about the horrors of alcoholism and so they abhor alcohol. Really, they do. The closest my son has come to this was when he decided he had to babysit his two college roommates who were intent on getting drunk. So as they drank away, he kept an eye on them, telling them he refused to deal with the possibility that one or both might choke to death on their inevitable vomit. When one went running down the halls of the dorm, he corralled him back. And he has helped at least a few drunk sorority girls back to their dorms.
I have also filled their minds with scientific studies about the rampant sexually transmitted diseases afflicting their generation. In less than a decade, less than 10% of their peers will be STD-free. I have done all I can to encourage my kids to be one of those 10% and I hope they are. The question will be how easy it will be for them to find STD-free spouses. But that’s for another day.
The message to one son was very simple. Don’t have sex with someone unless you trust them completely. We can continue to debate all the things guys can do to try and protect themselves, but even recognizing that the cases we hear about in the news are extreme examples, the fact of the matter is that in college today a girl can destroy a guy’s life with very minimal effort if she chooses to do so.
Hanna, I think this advice, “We should tell them that if someone is trying to have sex with you that you do not want, state your wants clearly and leave,” though no doubt well-meaning, fails to cover many cases. If the man outweighs the woman by a factor of 2, has her in his grip, and is not listening to repeated statements, “No!” then good luck to the woman trying to leave.
You seem inadequately sympathetic to true rape victims to me.
I will join you in the dinosaur club. We’ve talked about sex and birth control to our children, but ultimately we taught them that sex preferably comes after marriage (including same-sex marriage) or, at the very least, as part of a long-term, mutually monogamous relationship. We also don’t drink and did our best to instill those values into our children. Do they follow those teachings? We hope so and we think they have, although neither of us is naive. We also taught our children, regardless of gender, that it is NEVER okay to engage in sexual activity without the total informed consent of the other person.
Although I think it is necessary to be realistic and give our children important information, we should also set high expectations for personal behavior and make it clear that we expect them, by the time they are in college, to behave like mature adults.
People often freeze up when they are subjected to a violent assault. It is an automatic response of the amygdala to great fear. People who do not freeze up are either very lucky, or well-trained in response. We had sessions of self-defense in phys ed, back when I was in high school. At least one woman was subsequently assaulted by an armed stranger. The phys ed “training” proved useless. If the man had not been armed, and if the training had been extensive enough to make the response automatic, then it might have been enough.
Also, hint: If a woman keeps saying “No!” repeatedly, she is probably not consenting.
I really think that there should be much more concern about women who are being raped in college, relative to the concern about false charges of rape. I believe that Hanna is professionally involved with defending men who have been falsely accused. I am a university professor, who from time to time has to assist women who have been raped, beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt. It is often devastating. It is always at least very troubling,
If I had a son, I would encourage him to watch out for women of his acquaintance, and protect them from men who are inclined to rape women (there are a few). I would also encourage the attitude that rape is cowardly and it is for losers, rather than the current view among some that rape is macho.
My daughters have told me that they and every female they know who goes to a party, never ever leaves a drink, in case someone slips something into it. Predatory behavior at colleges is real.
That said, I know of two separate apparently unjust cases of young men who are most likely innocent, who were expelled due to a sexual encounter that they thought was consensual, that involved alcohol. And I agree with some of the lists above about possible motives for some young women to report, even if a minority of cases.
The whole issue is fraught with danger for both genders, and very complex. Not to mention that often both young men and young women do go to parties to “hook up.” Alcohol is a big factor, obviously, as well, so dealing with problem drinking is another element in the picture.
The positive side to all this controversy may be that the hook up culture changes. I have always told my kids that for many reasons (which I won’t enumerate, but to avoid harm to selves as well as the other), sex belongs in a relationship.
Most likely, for parents on CC who have only sons, the most pressing concern is actually false charges. But the sons of parents on CC probably have friends or acquaintances who are problematic, and if they could rein them in by social pressure, it would be great.
For parents on CC who have both sons and daughters, the danger to the daughters (of being raped) substantially exceeds the danger to the sons (of being falsely accused). From my experience as a university professor, this remains true if the woman does not drink at all, and does not go to fraternity or other parties.
I wanted to like all of Ohiodad’s post #46 except for the last clause.
I have a son and a daughter. I am more concerned that my son will be falsely accused than I am that my daughter will be actually sexually assaulted. I say this fully recognizing that the consequences of assault outweigh the consequences of being kicked out of college. However, I trust my daughter to use her judgment to do what is best for her. The fact is that in any scenario outside of physically violent intercourse (which all available data shows is a very small risk, and trending down) she is the captain of her own ship. Not so my son. I am sure that @hanna sees cases where women are accused by men of assault. But I am willing to bet that the vast, vast majority of cases pending in front of colleges right now involve a female accuser and a male accused.
There are a few sexual predators in colleges, Ohiodad1, and good judgment is not enough to be protected from them. Physically violent sexual assault might be on the down-trend, but as a university professor, I know too many young victims of it to think that the risk is negligible.
I think there is a distinction between the “I tried to leave but he physically held me down and he’s twice my size” scenario that QM is describing, and situations where “I was afraid I’d hurt his feelings if I left so I went along with it.”
I am a mother of grown sons, who were always the object of lots of female attention. On a couple of occasions while in visiting them at college, young women working at a coffee shop or bookstore handed one her unsolicited number right in front of me. I never worried about false rape accusations. It never even entered my mind. It bothers me a lot to view intimate relationships as somehow adversarial. We never preached abstinence before marriage. From a very early age we discussed safe sex and treating your partner with respect. Basically we taught the golden rule. I told them I considered them just as responsible for birth control as a partner and that potential side effects to them were much less. Since I am big on telling my kids stories, I told stories of my girlfriends who were hurt emotionally by boys not careful of their feelings. My sons had their hearts broken a few times. I didn’t know how to protect from that, then or now. I know one son had to be rude to distance himself from a female friend who hoped for a romantic relationship and I am sure that hurt her, but not as much as if it had become a physical relationship. There was no other way. He had to be careful to never be alone with her. Partway through college his friends’ group had to be responsible for contacting the appropriate resources so that she could be hospitalized for observation. She had on-going challenges and everyone in that group did their best to support her. None of them were willing to have sex with her though that is what she kept offering. They all recognized she was very fragile. My sons were the ones making sure your daughters got back safe to campus after party nights, even though they never drank themselves till they were legal, because they were super concerned being “caught” might derail future plans. They were there for the dancing, not the alcohol.
@QuantMech, undoubtedly true that there are situations in college and the wider culture for that matter where a woman can make all the right decisions and still find themselves victimized. Don’t mistake my point, I worry about that too. But I believe that all available reliable data shows that such incidents are generally in decline, while it appears that incidents involving allegations of nonviolent coercion or impaired consent are on the rise. In that circumstance, I trust my daughter (and my son’s girlfriend for that matter). My point is that in such situations it seems that it is the decisions made and the mental state of the female which appears to be dispositive in college tribunals, not that of the male.
QM: This thread is about what to tell sons, not about campus sexual assault in general. That is what Hanna was responding to. I don’t think anyone posting in this thread or others disregards how devastating sexual assault can be on the victim. However, I also don’t think that young women or their parents consider how this might impact the young man they are accusing, especially when the woman’s concern arises primarily from waking up the next morning and not really remembering what happened. Of course women have every right and absolutely should report sexual assault. The fuzzy definition of assault and impairment make these cases very challenging.
From what I understand, it is pretty common for drunken hook-ups to occur between two college kids. Often the woman is just as into it as the man is. Other threads have had pages of discussion on “how drunk is too drunk” which can vary by college and by situation.
The Daily Beast article was very interesting, although clearly one-sided. We don’t know if these boys were or were not guilty as charged.