I reached sexual maturity level n the late '70’s. From my perspective, " hookup culture" was more of a thing in the days before HIV.
I was never sexually assaulted when I was under the influence of substances or at a party.
Outside of the incident waiting for an activity bus in jr high, I was assaulted once when I was getting a ride home from work, by someone who thought my buxom build thought that meant I would be " into it".
Once when an abusive ex boyfriend saw me walking home from work, and used a gun to convince me " he just wanted to talk", then raped me, and again when an ex boyfriend that I was still friends with, but he had moved out of state, asked me to pick something up for him, at his old house. His roommate thought I was " playing hard to get", when I declined his invitation to go out with him, but instead of accepting my response, he raped me.
Especially in the last case, this man had mutual friends, he was known to me, he just didn’t care, or apparently even think that he needed to censure his behavior.
Although I did not see him again until ten years later, when I was at an auction with my husband for a schmancy private school, and he was working for the auctioneer. He even had the audacity to approach me, which made me flee and pretty much ruined my evening.
I could not believe that he thought assaulting me, would leave fond memories. At the very least he should have noticed that I hadn’t picked up whatever his former roommate had wanted me to get.
Now I carry a knife, so if I am attacked, at least I can do some damage back.
I would not believe that women can fall asleep in Japanese subways, without any harm befalling them.
If that were so, why would they have had women only train cars for the last 50 yrs?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/05/15/us-japan-rape-idUST17815620070515
The Stubenville rape victim at some points was apparently able to semi keep her legs under her and stumble along with support for the first part of the proceedings. That was used to demonstrate that the finger penetration in the car wasn’t rape because she was “sloppy” and incapacitated but not actually completely passed out.
And wasn’t the woman at Vanderbilt also raped with a bottle? It boggles my mind that someone thinks this is not rape.
@momofthreeboys, are you really serious? First of all, we’re talking about non-consensual digital penetration here, which seems pretty rapey to me. Second, I realize you’re a mom of three boys, but maybe I could ask you to put yourself in the shoes of this dad of four girls and recognize that the boys aren’t always right, okay?
I was curious about the "3rd base aspect of this discussion and asked several female friends/family if they were making out with a guy, and “heavy petting” as we old timers used to call it, and the guy slipped a digit into them and they said “no”, they weren’t ready for that, if they would consider themselves raped. All of them were incredulous and answered no.
I think that is the point MOTB was trying to make. Most/Some/Many?? women make a distinction between 3rd base and, 3rd base when they are incapacitated. They also make a distinction when they were gladly allowing 2nd base but were not ready for 3rd, and a guy tried before they could say no.
I will probably get excoriated for say that, but when all the normal middle class women (both young and old) that I ask say the same thing, it makes me wonder how large a segment of women feel that “any penetration etc, etc, etc” is rape, no matter what the circumstance.
Without getting too graphic I can think of a few other extenuating circumstances that are probably legally rape but lots of people would not think so.
Let’s say a slightly drunk guy and girl mutually decide to have sex. The girl turns over and says “what are you waiting for?”. Guy obliges and because he is drunk honestly misses by an inch or two where he was aiming. Girls cries out and says “no, you idiot. I hate that. Fix your aim”. He does, and they go on to have satisfying sex and both have no regrets. Later when she is filling out a survey she reads the question- “have you ever had someone insert a body part, or other object, in one of your orifices when you did not want them to”. She naturally answers yes. Was she raped? If you ask the average woman I bet they would also say no.
That is why the questions matter. Nuances matter. Rape is a HUGE problem, especially acquaintance rape,and something needs to be done. That does not mean, however, that the surveys are getting a correct handle on the actual scope of the problem (both with low numbers, and with high).
Nevermind.
“Some victims’ support groups estimate that rape cases in Japan amounted to more than 10 times the National Police Agency’s official figure of 1,948 last year.”
If so, that’s about 20,000 rapes a year in a country of 127 million people. Compare that with a U.S. victims’ rights group, RAINN, which estimates about 300,000 rapes a year in the US, with 310 million or so people. In other words, taking victims’ advocates at their word, Japan is about five times safer for women than the U.S.
The purpose of the women’s cars is to help women and girls avoid feely guys who are a plague on crowded cars. Feely guys are bad, and there ought to be a lot more consequences for them, but getting your boob touched through clothing on the train is a world away from rape. There really is a lot less violent crime in Japan.
The data for HS girls is not higher for high school girls, probably, at least if we look at rape rates per year. For the high school girls, 28% had been raped in the three or four years from age 14 to entrance to college. For the freshman women, the rate was 18.6% in the twelve months starting with their entrance into college.
I guess maybe we could hypothesize that a large proportion of the rapes in high school happened in the senior year, and also that some of the young women were repeatedly victims in high school. But looking at the data, we have no reason to believe the rate is higher for HS girls than for the first year college women.
Follow up question: If the guy continued after you said “no”, would you consider yourself raped?
emeraldkity: Thank you for sharing your story. So very very sorry.
I am going to do my best to be very careful how I say this, especially since I’m fortunate and lucky enough never to have been sexually assaulted…
I understand the argument victims of sexual assault/rape should be able to define their experience for themselves, and that, in some cases, survivors are telling us they did not consider certain experiences to be assault/rape (even though those experiences fit the current definition) and that they were not negatively impacted. However, I don’t think the fact some individuals seem to respond in this way justifies telling other individuals they have not really been raped when the actions fit the legal definition at this point in time.
Regardless how someone defines his/her own experiences, I can’t understand the impetus to dismiss the current definition of rape, including non-consensual penetration by digits and objects. Why isn’t it a good thing to just teach people not to do this? So no misunderstandings exist over what rape really is?
I agree with your second paragraph alh, but not your third. I think we have a social obligation to teach people not to do things that have inherently negative consequences e.g. safe sex to prevent AIDS or unplanned pregnancy and I think it’s a good thing for society to get messages out to the population about safe harbors for people who are in abusive relationships, where people can can go if they have been raped, where people can get help for PSTD and other mental traumas. But I don’t agree that society has an obligation to teach people what is PC sexual behavior. I think the law is pretty clear about where the dividing line is between what is none of the state’s business and what is criminal with the exception of a few states that stil have arcane laws on the books.
Writing poorly worded surveys simply render the data useless because it categorizes behavior that may not be criminal. I think there can be bias in the surveys if people who have never suffered abuse feel they have nothing to share so decline to take the survey. And there can be bias if the survey leads people to elicit responses that may or may not have been intended – which many surveys do to get a desired response. It is very difficult to write a survey with a high degree of accuracy. It does matter who is funding the survey, who is writing the survey, why they are writing the survey.
Having train and subway cars designated for females only is a great idea and would address the problems my daughters describe daily. Maybe separate seating areas on buses for women only too. Planes? Of course this will never work legally: who gets the back of the bus, male or female?
Come to think of it, how about men on one side of the street and women on the other!!
Maybe the Shakers had it right…
My wife wants enforced curfews for men. After it gets dark, all men must stay indoors. This is because the men do the vast majority of raping.
This study didn’t use a random sample. Flyers were were sent out and people decided whether to respond.
That makes it very likely the sample was skewed, and one would think that women who were assaulted would be more likely to respond than ones who weren’t.
Rape is a serious problem, but these stats reflect sampling bias.
In any study, people decide whether or not to respond. That’s not what makes it random or not random. It’s the sampling plan and whether the demos of those who responded differ appreciably from those who didn’t.
These college surveys look like they match the new federal guidelines.
If they are trying to get national statistics on criminal sexual behavior they have to overcome the different state language and classifications so the low hanging fruit is the federal classifications and language. Whether that language needs changing or not is another discussion.
252 [quote] But I don't agree that society has an obligation to teach people what is PC sexual behavior. I think the law is pretty clear about where the dividing line is between what is none of the state's business and what is criminal with the exception of a few states that stil have arcane laws on the books.
[/quote]
While I understand you are using “PC” as a pejorative, I don’t understand how you can say I think the law is pretty clear about where the dividing line is between what is none of the state’s business and what is criminal… since over and over you are saying where you think the dividing line should drawn and many of us are disagreeing with you. Fang has been explaining the law for months and you just don’t like it. Or at least, that is my reading of your posts.
Where exactly is the harm in teaching this PC sexual behavior? It seems a win/win for me. If we teach not to penetrate someone, with anything, without consent, maybe that cuts down on the nice guy rapists. That potentially protects men as well as women, when the concern seems to be men are being disadvantaged somehow by expanding rape definitions.