I finished the book. Thank you for recommending it dstark.
@alh… You have no comments on the book? 
It’s an excellent depiction of rape culture, written by a man. Rape culture hurts everyone.
I’m thinking about Hunt’s arguments that porn is fueling some of this. I really don’t want to have to watch whatever kind of porn is popular today to make up my mind about that. And I doubt we can keep young people from watching porn anyway. We can only talk their ears off about it being unrealistic.
And it isn’t clear to me anything is different than in the 70s when I was in college (long before internet porn was available 24/7) … just that now girls understand they have been raped and are sometimes willing to come forward and tell their stories, even when others try to shut them up. Acquaintance rape didn’t exist when I was in college.
These were heartbreaking stories. How do we fix this? Telling girls to keep from being raped has never fixed the problem. We are going to have to educate our boys and see if that works. How did these boys grow up to be rapists? Where did they learn to disrespect women like this? If we could figure out the answers, maybe we could fix it.
Even if one can’t get young men to stop watching porn, some real sex education is in order. Starting with, removing each other’s clothes can be sexy, but if you’re taking off her jeans because she’s unconscious, and whatever you are doing is making her bleed profusely over everything, you’re doing it wrong.
You’ll note that all these cases occurred where someone, maybe everyone was drinking irresponsibly.
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@psych-thanks for the description though I have no idea what a slackliner is (and neither does my computer because it wants to separate the 2 words.) I realized when I read your previous post that I did know some hippie types from a long time ago who were musicians and progressive and associated with UM.
Regarding the book, another important point that Krakauer made is that rapists are oftentimes repeat offenders. So when young ladies who are raped do not report because of the myriad difficulties in doing so, they are inadvertently leaving an opening for the offender to rape again.
@alh The question of how do we fix this is an important one. These men do treat the women as objects and not people. There are also issues of reforming the system so that it is easy to have a rape kit completed and making them readily available in hospitals and other medical settings. Perhaps training prosecutors to take on and follow through on more of the cases so that going through the process does not have to be quite so difficult and challenging for the women who chose to go forward with charges. That is just for starters.
Also I agree that the same problems existed in the 70’s and before. I think it just takes a long time for some issues to percolate to the forefront, as this one might be beginning to do.
I don’t think everyone watching porn or drinking to excess becomes a rapist.
We had this huge and successful education effort to stop drinking and driving. Maybe we can teach boys not to drink and ****, but after all this time on these threads I just don’t believe drinking is the cause of rape. In my bubble drunk men don’t accidentally rape sleeping women. That’s just inconceivable.
I think we should educate our kids about binge drinking because sometimes they are drinking themselves to death.
These threads are wearing me out, but talking about rape is the only way we will recognize it for what it is. When rape survivors refuse to be silenced, society is forced to respond in some way. Our generation has just pretty much accepted the status quo up to now. imho.
ETA: crossposted
That would be a uselessly simplistic interpretation of both reality and what has been said.
There is no question that the poor choices leading to the rapes chronicled in this book were rooted in irresponsible drinking behavior.
madamecrabster: I don’t think there is more rape today than in the 70s or when my mother was in college. The “epidemic” is not new.
One thing we have discussed on various threads was also brought up in the book. For most crimes, when victims report, police start with the assumption the crime actually took place. That is not necessarily true with rape. In the book, some believed 50% of rape reports were false. That’s a huge problem. Maybe someone already posted that in this thread. I am sort of losing track. Dstark has educated us about the police and courts. CF has looked up all the law. Thanks again.
For me, the book was sort of an overview of the discussion here for the last months/years. I am wondering how many of us have changed our views based on these threads? I have decided alcohol is a separate issue and that casual sex is probably more dangerous than I imagined for women, not because sex is wrong or bad, but because of these accidental rapists who should have been better educated. Some seem to believe casual sex is dangerous for men because of the possibility of false accusations. I am just fine with telling our sons, “don’t have casual sex because maybe you will be falsely accused of rape” though it disturbs me quite a bit to make women the “bad guys” in all this. Because mainly it isn’t women who are doing the raping. I don’t think women rapists, or vindictive women who regret sexual encounters, are a large enough concern to shift focus. Sure they exist.
CF: What would you envision as appropriate sex education? When does it begin?
There was one poor choice leading to each rape described in Krakauer’s book, and that was the choice the rapist(s) made to rape someone. None of the rapes, and none of the alleged rapes if they were true, was a result of miscommunication or accident. In every case, the rapist(s) raped women who were obviously not consenting.
JustOneDad: My sons are long done with college. During their undergraduate years, they told me some friends used overindulgence as an excuse for sex. They blamed their behavior on alcohol because they didn’t want to take responsibility. That was pretty interesting to me and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I am thinking about it in connection with blaming rape on alcohol. And how we no longer accept drunkenness as an excuse for car accidents.
I have to go now.
They may be, but remember we expect juries made up of laypeople to figure out who is lying. Detectives have seen a lot of cases.
I don’t want to discount at all reports that women have been treated badly by police and other investigators, but I do wonder if some accusers interpret statements that their case can’t be proved as a failure to believe what they are saying. These aren’t the same.
Here’s an example of what I am thinking, with perhaps a less highly charged fact pattern. A calls the police to report that B has stolen cash from him. The police officer comes, and learns that A had B over to dinner last night. Several times during the dinner, B was alone in the kitchen where A’s wallet was lying on the counter. After B left, A was suspicious, looked in the wallet, and found that 200 dollars in cash was missing.
First, what questions will the police officer ask A about this situation? Will the police officer question B at all? What will the police officer think about the likelihood of successfully prosecuting B for theft if B denies taking the money?
And I’ll add, with some trepidation: what would we think if the police officer told A that he shouldn’t have left his wallet lying out in the open?
Detectives are weeding out cases now…
If detectives start with the premise that a crime was committed, they are still going to weed out cases for lying.
There aren’t too many convictions for acquaintance rape. I posted a link from a lawyer in Virginia who said he never won a case representing a victim of aquaintance rape. I am sure there are some convictions. I don’t think there are many cases where an alleged victim lied and there was a conviction. The lying alleged victim winning in court is an issue looking for a problem.
I believe in the book, as alh stated, a policeman said woman lie over 40 percent of the time. Now… That’s a problem for the victims.
Looking at UM and the cases described in ‘Missoula’, it looked to me that many times, the school did a better job investigating a case than the police.
When a school decided a case, we can see the reasoning laid out in black and white.
It used to be that you could get a conviction in a case of acquaintance rape–as long as the accuser was white and the accused was black. That history is part of what makes me uncomfortable about this kind of case.
Ok…
What about cases that don’t involve whites and blacks?
I posted a link that you read from Rebecca Campbell. The cops said the victims lie at a very high rate. The cops don’t believe the victims.
Then we read Missoula. At a very high rate, the cops don’t believe the victims.
95- Hunt: Since it seems to me we come from similar backgrounds, I've been thinking about this since you first brought it up and the question of who holds power. I don't see a comparison to the college cases we have been discussing where fraternity men and athletes have more power and prestige than the women they rape. These perpetrators seem to have more value in the eyes of the world than their victims and there is a knee jerk reaction on the part of many (in the book for example) to protect them and not ruin their lives. That is the opposite of the scenarios you allude to... imho.
If I believe rape is first and foremost about abuse of power, and objectification and dehumanization of the victims (female or male), then I don’t think it is the same situation at all.
To Kill A Mockingbird was brought up on one of these threads. I don’t think that is primarily a story about a false rape report, but a story about racism and white privilege. You may disagree. I don’t see it as having anything to do with Missoula.
The point I’ve made a couple of times is that if you are going to use a preponderance of the evidence standard in a case that is mainly based on the statements of the two people involved and little additional evidence, there is a huge danger of bias in favor of the more powerful, or attractive, or articulate, or wealthy, or whatever category person involved in the case. The point about race was that it wasn’t hard to get a conviction, supposedly beyond a reasonable doubt, in those cases because the white complainant was believed and the black accused wasn’t.
This could cut both ways, with erroneous convictions AND erroneous acquittals, depending on who the parties are. I don’t find this acceptable for such a serious matter.
Here’s what the data/facts actually are:
- In the U.S., the incidence of rape has declined very significantly over the past several decades. Depending on your source, a decline of 50-85%. Who knows why. Pehaps, we actually have had great success in educating men, women, bystanders, detectives and prosecutors. Or maybe it is due to sunspots. If you read a book like Missoula, you'd think things are horrifically bad and never been worse. But that is not true. There are still rapes and still awful situations. But far fewer today than before.
- The incidence of rape on campus has also been declining significantly. Not increasing, which is what you'd expect based on what you hear from folks like Sen. Gillibrand and Krakauer.
- The incidence of rape on campus does not differ significantly from the incidence off campus. Again, that's not what you'd expect based on what the media reports.
- Police and prosecutors and colleges have never been better at dealing with sexual assault. There are still bad apples and bad situations, and you can always do better. But massive positive progress has happened.
- Prosecuting acquaintence rapist is inherently a losing battle. Because there's rarely good evidence of consent/no consent. No matter what reforms you adopt in adjudicatory procedure, you will never come close to punishing all the bad guys. Because the best prosecutor in the world can do anything without proof. You simply can't get there from here. Ever.
Because of #5, I think the hyper focus on adjucation reform is a misguided use of time and resources. We should be focusing on other things to drop the incidence rates further.
Feel free to trash me for victim blaming. But educating my daughters to yell and scream may actually prevent them from becoming victims. If they are victimized, making noise may mean that their perp is likely to be punished. Hiring 500 or 5,000 more DOE OCR investigators will not do that for them.