"In the real world, when a girl is, say, kissing a guy in the corner at a party, if he puts his hand somewhere she doesn’t want it she removes it and says or indicates “no.” If he persists, she walks away and doesn’t have anything further to do with him.
Well then I suppose if she doesn’t run away or can’t get away, it was her fault. I mean, stupid her for thinking that her “no” was enough,
There is a big difference between “doesn’t run away” and “can’t get away.”
And the “loser” in the appeals process can be either the accuser or the accused. There are plenty of accusers who do not win their cases or their appeals. Those cases just do not get as much press not even on this forum. No process is foolproof including our criminal justice system, as we can see from the rash of recently released prisoners who had been wrongly accused.
I would agree that the advice I give my son is pretty much the same as I give my daughter. In fact it is the same advice that has always been given to women about how best to protect themselves - be sure of who you are letting close to you. Why is it now such a problem that men are being advised to follow the same tenent? Personally, I think it is just good advice in general regardless of one’s gender.
@Ohiodad51 and @momofthreeboys - you both seem to have a level of paranoia on behalf of your sons and distrust towards college aged women and universities that is hard for me to understand. I’m sure there are a few cases of false accusations, but the chance that something like that would happen to one of your sons is very very remote. Yet, your posts suggest a belief that false accusations occur more frequently than actual incidents. I’m not sure why you feel this data. The data does not support that. Have either of you read Missoula or watched The Hunting Ground? If not, I suggest you do. Perhaps then you wouldn’t be quite so dismissive of these claims and the damage that sexual assault can cause.
What would make you think that? I have three male children so as I parent I have not parented a girl. This is a parents forum and the original post is about what you, as a parent, tell your sons. As a female I get the ‘dangers’ and lived through my teen and twenties as a girl/woman with all the inherent dangers and sticky situations, boob grabbers, butt grabers and aggressive males that wanted in my pants. I also came of age when the drinking age was 18 so add alcohol to the mix which certainly qualifies as female perspective. I am continually bemused by people on this forum that think you have to be a qualified rabid advocate to be part of the sisterhood or you are a female-hater…no middle ground here!
Edited to add that paranoia is a stretch - are parents of daughters paranoid? I’m not paranoid probably more pragmatic and I’ve been told that I am pragmatic by more than one person, but I do make sure the boys know what to do if they have been accused…how they handle their sex lives is entirely up to them and grounded in whatever they learned or gleaned through years of parenting by my husband and I and what they have observed among us our friends and their friends regarding how men and women interact with each other on a day to day basis…
BTW, I have seen the Hunting Ground and I think they did a good job of presenting the female perspective although there were many real documented and public elements missing and it was more about the emotions but I don’t think the movie was ever purported to be anything but about the women and their emotions in the aftermath.You could do the same movie from the male perspective and pick Occidental’s John Doe, UofM’s Drew Sterrett, the Duke Lacrosse team and the Duke fraternity guys for the “other side” of the issue and have basically in essence the same movie, different agenda. Missoula was more interesting from an intellectual perspective because it was about one town, one university and one prosecutorial organization.
Find a post of mine where I am “dismissive of these claims and the damage that they can cause”. Also, find some actual data (in other words, not surveys put out by people with an axe to grind) that there are only a"few" falsified claims of sexual assault, or that the chance that my son will be falsely accused is “very, very remote” compared to the chance that my daughter will be assaulted. Lastly, I would appreciate an explanation of why the case at the center of Mizzoula is supposed to be representative of the state of relations between men and women on campus, but the case of Mattress Girl or any one of the other well publicized claims of utterly ludicrous examples of kangaroo court convictions of guys is irrelevant. Then we can talk about my lack of empathy.
And yes, I read Mizzoula, but have no intention of seeing The Hunting Ground because it is unabashed propaganda.
I don’t think documentaries need to be fair or present both sides. Hunting Ground glossed over most of the facts in every case or never talked about the events surrounds the alleged assaults and started at the point the women were in at the moment of filming and was entirely about the women and how they “felt” about what had happened to them. Plus I think the filmmakers took great pains to find ‘variety’ of race and cultural background in the women they portrayed regardless of the facts of each case which is how they ended up with Kamilah I believe. I can take that at face value and that weak link doesn’t change what the film is attempting to purport. It’s not really a “must-see” film if you have an intellectual curiosity about the headline news. But we’re straying off topic…
This seems to me to be a misstatement of the facts as we’ve heard them in these threads. We’ve heard over and over, both in our reading of cases in the news, and from people who have personal knowledge of the situation like @hanna, @al2simon and @pittsburghscribe, that in most of the accusations, one or both of the participants had been drinking heavily, as acknowledged by both accuser and accused. Not in all the accusations, but in most of them, alcohol is a factor. I’ve also read research saying that women who drink more are more likely to say they have been assaulted.
So a student who did not drink heavily and then have sex, and who did not have sex with women who drank heavily, would presumably lessen his risk of being accused of rape. I could imagine that a parent would tell their son, as a matter of prudence, to avoid mixing sex and extreme drinking, because it would put him at risk of being accused of assault. But I could also imagine that a parent might see that advice as too restricting, an unfair restraint on their non-rapist son.
Some parents tell their daughters not to drink heavily because if they do, they put themselves at higher risk of being assaulted. Seems to me those parents, if they believe false accusations are a significant risk, should also be telling their sons not to drink heavily because if they do, they put themselves at risk of being accused of assault.
“Some parents tell their daughters not to drink heavily because if they do, they put themselves at higher risk of being assaulted. Seems to me those parents, if they believe false accusations are a significant risk, should also be telling their sons not to drink heavily because if they do, they put themselves at risk of being accused of assault.”
Um, doesn’t everyone with any common sense tell their children not to drink heavily because it’s just a dumb, stupid, tacky thing to do in general? I see no reason to gender-ize it. I don’t want either of my kids drinking heavily because drinking heavily puts one at risk of both doing stupid / dangerous things AND of having stupid / dangerous things done to you. That’s not to say that they’re going to 100% listen – but c’mon, drinking heavily is just not a good idea for anyone no matter what gender.
I was going to say that Pizza…glad you jumped in.
Apologies if this point has already been brought up, but I think it is relevant to the topic of the thread, about advice to give sons about consent: As I understand it, universities are being pressed by the Department of Education under Title IX to use a standard of “the preponderance of the evidence” in deciding allegations of sexual assault involving students. If a university is requiring an accused student to attend additional information sessions, write an essay, or even to avoid future contacts with the accuser, then I think that “preponderance of the evidence” is okay.
But, despite all that I have written above, I do have serious doubts about this standard of proof, if an alleged assailant is going to be expelled. The standard at a number of universities used to be “clear and convincing.” That is weaker than the court’s standard of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt,” but it is stronger than “preponderance of evidence.” (Exactly where the dividing line is, I leave to the lawyers–I’m just arranging the standards in order, as I see them.)
If the standard has changed to “preponderance of the evidence” at any given university, then I think that people’s sons ought to be advised of that.
I have difficulty with the idea that one should simply leave cases to the courts, if there is a violent, forcible sexual assault, however. In many cases, there is no objective evidence whatever that the encounter was not consensual–no bruises or lacerations, no one close enough to hear screams or even shouts. The accused and accuser may know each other. They might even have gone somewhere together before, though I am not considering here any cases in which they have previously had intercourse. If there is no objective evidence, then I think the considerations are: 1) Reporting the assault to the police may be traumatic in itself, and 2) reporting the assault to the police is virtually certain to be futile. Would any prosecutor file charges in a case of this sort? I see no possibility of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, in such a case. Nor have any charges been filed against the assailant, in the experience of women students I have actually known, who have reported the assault to the police.
@“Cardinal Fang” leaving aside the fact that you added the modifier “heavily” to my statement in order to make your point, the accused’s level of intoxication is immaterial to a determination of assault. Given that, why would it matter if a guy had a couple beers before having sex? If the argument is that a sober person would be more likely to see that his prospective partner is incapable of consent, so what? We have seen over and over that women have appeared to be perfectly capable of making decisions, but yet later claim to have been impaired. These scenarios have led to suspension and explusion. So how is that a misstatement?
As @pizzagirl said up the thread, drinking heavily is not a great idea for a variety of reasons. But is telling my son (who doesn’t drink at all FWIW) not to drink before having sex going to help protect him from an allegation of assault? No probably not.
@quantmech, not reporting cases of actual rape or physical assault to the police is a horrible idea.
It’s going to protect him somewhat, just as it protects women from assault somewhat not to get falling-down drunk. In most of the accusations of assault (from what I hear from people with knowledge of the accusations) both people were very drunk. A malicious accuser can accuse any guy of assaulting her. But the guys who do, in fact, get accused of assault are guys who were very drunk, in the main.
Agree. The universities opinion about whether or not a student should report to the police has no bearing. It is not the student’s obligation to keep the university’s Cleary data insignificant. If you’ve been assaulted you need to report it to the police. Period. Not only is it the right thing to do it carries weight and the power of police investigation to any “claim” you have with the college about the accused. As a woman and a mother of a son I’d have a more difficult time processing emotionally an accusation of my son if the woman felt she had actually been assaulted or raped as evidenced by going to the police regardless of the circumstances. It would put my son in a more serious position than just dealing with college administrators but I have enough faith in the system after watching vicariously how it works several years ago. Believe me when I say I don’t lay awake at night “worrying” about this.
“As @pizzagirl said up the thread, drinking heavily is not a great idea for a variety of reasons. But is telling my son (who doesn’t drink at all FWIW) not to drink before having sex going to help protect him from an allegation of assault? No probably not.”
However, only having sex with women with whom he is in a reasonably serious relationship is likely the better “protection.” (And yes, I get that accusations can happen even when people are in a relationship, but it’s a heck of a lot more of an issue when it’s the hook-up-that-I-might-regret-tomorrow versus when it’s two people who are in a reasonably serious relationship.)
Maybe the advice should be “Don’t hook up with girls who have been drinking.”
It doesn’t matter if the GUY has been drinking–it’s the GIRL who’s been drinking and deemed unable to fend off the guy that seems to be the problem in these cases.
@Consolation It’s not an irrelevant comparison. I was comparing touching a limb to touching a body part that is commonly associated with sex. If a female is running her hands up and down a guys torso or arm or wherever, it’s just as in appropriate. But rubbing someone and touching someone are distinct actions. You would have to equate a prolonged grab of the butt or breast with prolonged contact on someone’s arm or chest. But a tap of the arm and chest are different to tapping a butt or boob. (Gosh this is weird to write.) Unsolicited contact in those areas is very obviously worse.
I never said that their should be discipline for catcalling although sexual harassment should be taken seriously. But it’s important to address rape culture in it’s most infant stages.
@pizzagirl & @“Cardinal Fang” you are of course both right. And it is not lost on me that ultimately the advice about sex really should not change in this particular era. You should not have sex with someone you are not at least at some level committed to. There are the obvious potential biological consequences which I think we as parents need to stress to our kids, both male and female. Maybe that makes me puritanical (or just old) but I think it is important not to miss the forest for the trees.
I simply tell my son NEVER to be ALONE with a girl he does not know really well. Matter of fact, I tell my daughter the same thing!
@Pizzagirl I’m assuming you’ve never heard of tonic immobility?
I excluded some parts for brevity.
Sometimes they don’t run away because they very literally can’t get away.