Not waiting to report to the police works in their favor, getting a rape kit quickly works in their favor, telling someone right away works in their favor…
I posted this. I like this.
http://hollywoodlife.com/2015/04/23/amy-schumer-friday-night-lights-spoof-rape-parody-video/
If you want your daughters to yell and scream when they are raped, I’m sorry to tell you that “educating” them with talk probably isn’t going to achieve that goal. At least, talking doesn’t do anything for stress responses in other situations and there’s no reason to believe it’ll be any better for rape than for other stress situations. If they don’t do practice and role play, they won’t be able to overcome their natural reaction, whatever that is-- and their natural response might be to freeze up. There’s a reason that first responders train by doing: because training just by talking doesn’t work.
There are self-defense programs with actual simulated attacks. Those are better.
“There are self-defense programs with actual simulated attacks. Those are better.”
Agree. My kid’s college sponsored free self defense classes at the beginning of each school year. That’s the kind of thing that colleges can do to move the needle more than the adjudication focus that gets all the attention. Ounce of prevention…
I recommend Model Mugging. The system uses padded assailants so the students can practice full force self defense. Rather than saying, “I kick him in the head,” students kick their “rapist” in the head, or elbow him where it hurts, or whatever they need to disable so they can flee. And they practice yelling and screaming instead of freezing up.
This is a good program, but its existence just underscores that the 99.99999% of women who have not taken the program are likely to freeze up when attacked, and jerks who disbelieve an accuser because she froze up should just shut their traps and learn how real people in real situations react.
Unless your rapist is Jameis Winston. Which seems to indicate that we need to do more to pull off our own blinders when it comes to rape and football.
Or the girl that was gang raped at Missoula.
Jackson Katz addresses a lot of the issues that we have been talking about. He works with the U.S. Military and sports organizations in gender violence prevention and education.
He did a Ted Talk - “Violence Against Women - It’s a Men’s Issue” that was really interesting. I like him, he makes a lot of sense.
The Ted Talk is 19 minutes long but if you just want the gist of it you can start at minute 8. He is worth listening to.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jackson_katz_violence_against_women_it_s_a_men_s_issue?language=en
HarvestMoon1, fantastic link. Jackson Katz gets right to the heart of the matter.
Jackson Katz is correct.
I listened to the whole talk. I wouldn’t start at minute 8.
The way Jackson tells the story about John and Mary…
Love it.
The way we use language to perpetuate the social structure…
Starts out with the first sentence is John beat Mary. Saying the same thing with multiple sentences…by the time we get to the last sentence, Mary is a battered woman. It is all about Mary. John doesn’t exist. John was the victimizer and he doesn’t exist. 
The following is just common sense.
Let me just make a comment about yelling vs. freezing up and evidence. When a case is being evaluated, whether it is by police, or a prosecutor, or by a jury, you can think of pieces of evidence as little weights that go on one side of the scale or the other (and some don’t belong on the scale at all). Clearly, the fact that somebody did cry for help is evidence that goes on the “guilty” side of the scale. I think it’s true that the failure to cry out has often been put on the “innocent” side of the scale. If it’s really true that freezing up is common, then it doesn’t belong on the “innocent” side. However, it doesn’t get moved to the “guilty” side, and crying out doesn’t get moved off the “guilty” side.
@Hunt, you bring up things that nobody says.
Who says the above?
Nobody.
People do freeze up in certain situations.,That’s real and this doesn’t mean everybody is going to freeze up in certain situations.
@hunt, this is what I find interesting. You talked about whites accusing innocent blacks and getting away with it. I agree with what you said. It is a fact.
You talked about those in power having the advantage in the legal system. I agree. Another fact.
Yet, you didn’t talk about the disadvantages women have or the fact women have been treated as second class citizens throughout history. Things are improving but women are still treated as second class citizens. For some reason, you missed this.
Maybe nobody said that, but I think it’s worth pointing out, for example, that police are still going to ask if the complainant cried out or not. Asking that question does not necessarily mean that she won’t be believed if she didn’t cry out, but the case against the accused will be stronger if she did.
Again, I’m just pointing out that there is a significant difference between believing an accuser, and believing that the accuser has a case that can be proved. In the example with the wallet I gave above, I might believe the accuser, but I would almost certainly tell him that he was out of luck.
By the way, I’ve had this personal experience, in which a person described an incident in which that person was the victim of a crime, and I absolutely totally believed that the person was telling me the truth, and that a crime had been committed. But I still had to say that I thought it would be virtually impossible to prove that the crime had happened if the perpetrator denied it. That made me feel very bad. But it was the truth.
@Hunt, that is very much a part of why acquaintance rape is so difficult. Is there a specific way a woman is supposed to respond in order for a rape to be considered a rape? People cannot be coached to react only in a certain way (by screaming). Women can be trained in self protection, but who is to say who the next victim will be. Will it be someone who has been trained or sensitized to the issue? Similarly, rapists may just be out there and look like anyone else. Perhaps they can teach themselves how to rape without leaving bruises. Prosecutors, police, jurors also bring their experiences and biases to the table.
That is an excellent talk by Jackson Katz. It reminds me of Jean Kilbourne who has been lecturing for decades about how the media’s images of men and women have led to more violence against women because of the increasing objectification and marginalization of them. She also covers topics of alcohol and tobacco and how they are sold to us and end up forming part of our culture.
Rapists definitely teach themselves how to get away with it. They have developed tools that help them, and environments that make it easier. They also pick their targets, which leads to a lot of our discussions about self-protection vs. victim-blaming.
@hunt, people need to be educated. That includes the police. I don’t think it helps to come up with constructs that don’t exist and nobody is saying.
I’m sorry, @dstark, but I think there’s this idea that the number of convictions in acquaintance rape cases could be substantially increased if only the police would believe the accusers and investigate better. I just don’t believe it. It’s my opinion that police and prosecutors are most likely already pursuing the cases in which a conviction is likely, and that you’re not going to see some large increase in convictions, or even prosecutions. It may be that some complainants will feel that they have received more respectful treatment, and that’s good, but they’re still going to be told that there isn’t enough evidence to seek a criminal conviction in most of these cases. Otherwise, all you’re likely to see in more prosecutions but a lower rate of convictions. These cases are inherently hard to prove.
Indeed, it’s this very problem with the criminal courts that has let people to try to find a quasi-criminal means of punishing people that wouldn’t require such a stiff standard of proof and so many procedural protections–and college tribunals have been pushed to fulfill that role. They definitely can get more “convictions” if they use a preponderance of the evidence standard, deny the accused protections like cross-examining witnesses and providing their own evidence, etc. But that’s just wishing away the proof problems. It’s saying that we don’t really care all that much about convicting some innocent people, because we have to do something. I think I’ve made it pretty clear why I don’t like that.
@hunt, Who wants to use a preponderance of evidence standard in a criminal trial? I don’t know anybody here who has said that.
400,000 rape kits were taken and nobody looked at them. When people started complaining and funding became available, guess what? People looked at some of these rape kits. They found rapists. We did not have to use a preponderance of evidence standard to find rapists.
I just had a prostate biopsy yesterday. Have you ever had one? I had fingers up my butt. 3 shots up my hole. An ultrasound device was shoved up my rectum for 5 minutes. 12 needles were shot into my prostate. I was thinking, who would do this to get back at somebody? I was equating a prostate biopsy with a rape kit. Who would go through a rape kit…just to get back somebody? Almost nobody. Yet…400,000 rape kits were sitting around gathering dust.
I agree it is very tough to convict somebody when there is aquaintance rape. That is just a fact. So when people say everybody should go to the police, what are they really saying? Hunt, what are they really saying? Let the victimizers go. That is the result if everybody has to go to the police.
So…some of us think, there has to be another way for college students who are victims of assault. Because, getting kicked out of a school is not as severe a punishment as a conviction of a felony, some of us believe a lower standard than reasonable doubt can be used at schools. UM believes that for example.
This doesn’t mean the victim should win 50/50 cases with a preponderance of evidence standard at a school.
Who believes a victim should win a 50/50 case? Who said a woman should win a 50/50 he/said she said case?
Who said this? Where do these arguments come from?
These arguments come from
People who want to keep the status quo, right?
Aren’t we talking about acquaintance rape cases? How often is a rape kit relevant in such a case?
Anybody who favors a preponderance of the evidence standard thinks that even a tiny amount of evidence over 50% means that party wins. And a number of people on this thread seem to think that if a woman files a complaint, that she is probably telling the truth. Well?