RangerDave wrote:
TheRiov wrote:
This is one of those cases where if you narrow the definition of rape sufficiently you can get the statistics to say whatever you want.
I think the reverse is more the cause of the discrepancy between official measures and the numbers anti-rape advocates tend to cite. The studies they point to that show such high rates of rape derive most of their eye-popping numbers from sexual encounters that involved some level of diminished capacity to consent (i.e., intoxication), but they don't adequately distinguish between unconscious/incoherent, "really drunk, but willingly participating", and "drunk enough to do something I probably wouldn't have done sober, but willingly participating". I think most people would dispute that those latter two categories constitute rape, and, in fact, in a number of the studies, the majority of people counted as having been raped who fall into those latter two categories do not themselves think they were raped. And yet, anti-rape advocates treat those "drunk but willing" incidents as equivalent to the "completely unconscious" incidents in order to boost the numbers.
I don't disagree with this - although I would add to it that rape is a top-tier felony. It's generally considered one step below murder in severity. It should have a very narrow definition, much like murder does, and have numerous lesser-included offenses. In point of fact, it actually does; for example in Ohio you have Sexual Battery Aggravated Sexual Imposition, and Sexual Imposition - just to name a couple, much like murder comes in degrees and has various degrees of manslaughter below it.
Unfortunately, rape victim advocacy has a strong tendency to try to roll all of this under "rape" by using that term and "sexual assault" interchangeably. What's worse is that while the law recognizes nonverbal consent, it tends to regard nonverbal means of asking for consent as possibly assault. For example, if you're kissing some girl for the first time and she seems really into it and you go for a feel - and don't tell me you stop and ask every girl you kiss "may I touch your breast" - and she pushes your hand away, even if you respect that and don't make another move, the law could regard that as sexual assault and the rape industry definitely would. However, if she was ok with it, it legally wouldn't be - although some rape advocates would still try to claim it was because she didn't want it
enough.
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Khross wrote:
There is no Rape Culture here.
While the term "rape culture" is obvious propaganda designed to short-circuit reasonable debate, there is definitely a problem with the culture surrounding diminished capacity sex in college. The line between "really drunk but willing" and "incoherent" is obviously ambiguous, and far too many guys err on the side of getting laid. Moreover, one has to be a total shitbag to think bare willingness, as opposed to enthusiasm, is all that's required from a moral standpoint. Again, though, far too many guys are more than happy to pressure drunk girls into reluctantly having sex with them. It's not rape, but it's still shitty behavior and runs the risk of crossing the line into actual rape if the woman is more drunk than the guy realizes.
First, while I agree with you on the moral standpoint - and regarding the culture surrounding diminished capacity, although that's really a problem of drinking culture in college generally, not specifically about diminished capacity - , and I frankly wonder what kind of person wants to have sex with someone that isn't really that interested - I mean, sex with an unenthusiastic partner pretty much totally sucks - I also really
don't care about the moral standpoint as far as purposes of discussing how prevalent rape is. We should legislate against assault, not against being a douchewagon. I also don't care for the term enthusiasm, as it tends to create the impression that there's a dichotomy of "I'm really not into this but whatever" and "YES YES YES!" when in fact there's a large middle ground in which what we call "seduction" happens, and quite a few people of both sexes want to be seduced.
Second, as to the "Drunk girl" issue, where this becomes problematic is that A) people who are drunk do not always appear drunk. Alcohol affects each person differently, and it's possible for some people to be so drunk that they don't remember anything the following day - but at the time, they didn't actually appear all that drunk. On top of that, they tend to be around other drunk people, who may themselves be in no condition to determine how inebriated another person is. Finally, being drunk does not absolve one of one's actions, so if a person consents while drunk and they would appear able to understand what is happening to a reasonable observer then.. they consented.
To illustrate this, let's turn the entire thing around. When young men get drunk and get in bed with young girls who appear to be consenting, why are we placing all the responsibility for this on the male? "Beer goggles" is a term for a reason; lots of young men make attempts to get laid that they wouldn't if they were sober, and afterwards they do often feel a sense of shame or remorse, and they get shamed by their peers for it, but we don't worry about the moral standards of the young woman who decided it was a good idea to accept the advances of an obviously inebriated person. Instead, we give her an out. She gets to claim she was "pressured" into sex for some reason, and claim it was rape afterwards, even though the male may have been just as inebriated or even more so than her. In both cases, it's simply a matter of lowered inhibitions, but we don't apply the same standards to both sexes - rape advocates don't because victimhood is a source of power, and men don't because men want to be the "good guy" that "doesn't treat women like that", and no one wants to be the ******* that appears to be "making excuses for rape", or worse, have it suggested that one is a rapist. I mean, "how can you even suggest that girl who got drunk was legitimately consenting to that frat boy *******. Maybe you think it's ok to lure women into bed too?"
Or, to look at it another way, what if this is a same-sex couple? There's a reason rape advocacy is always trying to sweep these incidents under the rug - because rape needs to be a male-on-female problem for this paradigm to work. When both partners are the same sex, all of a sudden it's really easy to see that both parties are equally responsible for getting drunk and being foolish, and it's much easier to determine if force or coercion is actually applied or not, because the assumptions about how each gender behaves are suddenly irrelevant.
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More disturbingly, many people in college really do seem to think actually drugging someone isn't really "rape-rape". When the UVA story came out, many in the media found it hard to believe that "Jackie's" friends would discourage her from reporting the alleged incident, but that's actually remarkably common.
Is it? Jackie's friends seem to dispute this account of their actions. I don't believe this actually is terribly common.
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There are stats and studies to back that up
such as?
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but speaking anecdotally for a moment, I know two women who I'm close to that were drugged and raped in college, and both of them were told by friends that they shouldn't report it because (i) maybe the guy who had sex with her didn't know she was drugged (even though she was obviously completely out of it), (ii) she was flirting with him before, and she hooks up with a lot of guys, so maybe she was just misremembering, (iii) it'd be impossible to prove, and he's a really nice guy, so lots of people wouldn't believe her and would hate her for trying to ruin this guy's life, (iv) it's not that big a deal, since she wasn't, like, "forced" or hurt or anything, and hey, he's pretty hot anyway, right?, and (v) it's better to just let it go instead of letting it ruin her whole college experience.
Were they? RD, how do you know that these women were actually drugged and raped? In fact, let's put it another way -
how do they know they were drugged? Leave the rape out of it. "Rape drugs" are not new, but neither is the placebo affect and it is a very human tendency after doing something we're ashamed of to invent a reason it wasn't
really our responsibility. "Oh, I must have been drunk.. I would never have done that otherwise".
Of course, women do get drugged and raped, so maybe that did happen, but
we should not just take a victim's word for it. This is how the entire UVA problem started - just taking what a "victim" said as gospel truth. In these cases these people are your friends so you might very much want to believe them and you might take umbrage at the idea that they might lie - or even that they might just be wrong - but that's part of the problem with the current debate;
umbrage at the idea that any given rape claim is not 100% factual is being substituted for evidence that it actually is. This is how we ended up with this case, and the Duke case before it - excessive credulity to claims of rape that we do not give to any other crime.
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One of them told her best friend about it the next morning, and her response was literally to make a sympathetic face, pat her on the shoulder, and say, "Yeah, it happens," before suggesting that they go get some breakfast to make her feel better. These are all actual things their "friends" said to them, even though they were drugged without their knowledge or consent and **** by a random acquaintance against their will while incoherently trying to resist. That's both incredibly messed up and disturbingly common, which suggests there really is a problem with the culture surrounding this stuff.
Maybe. You and I were not there for these incidents. There is also a disturbingly common phenomenon of women who get drunk and horny, go to bed with someone, then decide they were "raped" later.. but don't want to report it because that might expose their story to factual scrutiny.
Since we're on anecdotes - I've dealt with a case like this - a girl comes into a hotel, wanting to tell the manager that she was raped there by 3 guys the previous night when they came back to the room and she was already having sex consensually with another guy.,
The reaction of the hotel was, "Ok, let's call the police. This sounds like a serious crime." The girl did not want to talk to the police, and it became clear why not really quick. It turned out that what had really happened was that she thought it would be fun to gang-bang this guy's 3 friends. When she was bragging about it to her friend yesterday, her friend told her, essentially "you're a slut." At that point it became "oh, you misunderstood me, I was raped!" The friend wanted to take her to the police, she insisted that they should report it to the hotel - because the police would quickly dismantle this bullshit, which she knew, and which was exactly what happened.
The simple fact is that accusations of a sexual offense are a weapon,
and they get used that way. There's nothing wrong with "believing a victim" in the sense that we should not leap to the conclusion she's lying, but we should not regard scrutiny of the incident as some sort of defense of rapists.