@Ohiodad51 - we do not agree. I was trying to say that on a private anonymous survey a young woman is unlikely to “cry rape” if she had regrettable consensual sex, was groped in a mosh pit with no penetration, was French kissed without consent, was party to a fleeting incidence of “bad aim” in the course of consensual penis in vagina type sex or some of those other slippery slope activities that you and others brought up. Regardless of what some state laws might say and some Title IX inquests have explored, in this setting with these questions I would be extremely skeptical that the results are significantly skewed by reporting of these types of incidences.
Well…I’m older than most of you. I went to a nearly all white suburban Midwest HS. I never heard of anyone being “raped,” but there were certainly numerous times it was “rumored” that the members of an athletic team had forced one or more young women to give them oral sex. ( I wasn’t one of them, so I have no personal knowledge. I can’t say this really happened, but I can say it was rumored to have happened so often with the young women being publicly named that I do think it must have really happened.) The young men did not consider this “rape” and frankly I doubt the young women did. So, if they had been asked if they had been “raped” they would have said no. If asked if they’d ever been forced to perform oral sex, they would have answered in the affirmative.
I doubt any of the incidents was ever reported to parents, let alone the police. Of course, this was before the days of HIV.
In the Steubenville case and in the Savannah Dietrich case, the young men didn’t think they had “raped” the young women because they did not penetrate the victims with their sexual organs. Two fathers of perpetrators seemed incredulous that their sons could be prosecuted for the conduct involved.
And, to me, penetrating the anus of someone who agreed to vaginal incourse isn’t “bad aim” if that is what is being implied.
The Vanderbilt guys didn’t think they had raped their victim either.
I don’t think he said “penetrating”. The poster who posited that made it sound like an honest mistake fumbling around then making a quick correction after a faulty “attempt”. That poster was implying that a female in a consensual relationship who is subject to a fleeting case of “bad aim” that is quickly corrected might answer in the affirmative that she had been the victim of sodomy that occurred against her will. He seemed to think that if that happened in the course of a consensual act that the female could/would report that she had been the victim of an attempted rape which would inflate the survey numbers. In this hypothetical scenario the poster made it sound like a case of a nice guy who had no intention of anal penetration with or without consent and did not actually complete such an act NOT the type of situation where a young woman agrees to one act but not the acts that are subsequently perpetrated (e.g. sex with one guy but not his 2 friends or something) That seems preposterous to me.
Maybe I don’t know something because I’ve never done it at all, but I have a hard time imaging a guy “missing” the correct hole.
What about this High School scenario? Boy drives girl to remote, deserted area to make out. She says that’s enough. He says, “give me what I want or get out of the car.”
That wasn’t an unusual scenario in my day. Boys got a reputation. But a girl had to disclose and risk being labeled a slut.
cell phones make life safer
Trying to put this delicately, but it can definitely happen in the fumbling around attempt sense but the resistance levels are going to be very different so it is extremely unlikely to happen accidentally in terms of a “successfully completed” attempt.
Even if there are cases where the guy, in the heat of the moment in slippery conditions, did go, er, in the right church but the wrong pew, resulting in momentary anal sex when vaginal sex was intended, it’s preposterous to assume that this situation is common enough to skew the results. If this honest mistake is the cause of the high reported rape rate, what’s the cause of the high reported attempted rape rate?
No, this is grasping at straws.
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I seriously doubt it is a large enough problem it messes up the results of a survey on anal rape, if such a survey is ever done. It isn’t something to be concerned about if you just pay attention. And aren’t drunk.
crossposted
If we are talking about the study mentioned in the original post, note that they require the incident to be either “forced” or “incapacitated” to qualify. Definitions from the survey are below:
Forced – “Using force, for example holding me down with their body weight, pinning my arms, or having a weapon.” OR "Threatening to physically harm me or someone close to me. "
Incapacitated – “Taking advantage of me when I was too drunk or out of it to stop what was happening.”
Yes, exactly, but subsequent poster have raised all types of hypothetical situations that could somehow being skewing the numbers upward. I was attempting to refute those.
I don’t understand why so many are intent on refuting the reality that rape occurs on campus, that it is prevalent, and that yes, even ‘nice boys’ rape. Worse yet, imo, are the ones who find it necessary to analyse the victim’s culpability in a rape, as if that is some excuse. I don’t want to call them rape apologists, but one wonders why rape culture exists…
pardon the wacky syntax - I meant “could somehow be skewing” but it’s too late to edit.
Here’s another study of freshman women and rape, yielding similar results to the Brown/Syracuse study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2904876/
This study, which was done in Erie County NY, recruited high school senior girls who lived with their mothers (and possibly other family members) and were planning to go to college. The study was testing whether getting the mothers to talk to their daughters about drinking, sex and sexual assertiveness would reduce the number of incapacitated assaults the daughters experienced in their first year of college. It had a control group where the mothers were not instructed to do anything.
The prevalence of incapacitated attempted or completed rape before college, in this group, was 15%, very similar to the 17.5% reported in the Brown/Syracuse study. For the women with no intervention, 12.1% experienced incapacitated rape, attempted or completed, in the first year of college (not counting the summer after college), again similar to the 12.1% from the Brown/Syracuse study.
Was the suspect arrested and tried for various criminal actions that could land him in jail or prison if convicted? If not, why not? Even if expelled or suspended for a longer period of time, if the accusations are true, he got off very lightly if he just got a minor punishment from the school, rather than going to jail or prison.
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No surprise that serial rapists use alcohol as a weapon to make it less likely that victims will remember enough to get the rapists the punishment they deserve.
Yes, exactly.
I was talking with my two 20-something daughters today, and they both said, as if it was the most normal and well-accepted fact, that they and the young women they know are always careful to either keep their drink with them at all times at a party or bar, or have someone they trust watch it. This means, if they go to the bathroom at a party, they take their drinks. Also, they don’t ever let someone else make their drink at a party. They consider these self-protective strategies as obvious, and were quite matter of fact about it.
Then again, they may not have known this as freshman, which is why freshman are most frequently the target of predatory fellow-students.
What is odd to me is that the questions about forcible rape are simply but precisely phrased, while the questions about “incapacitation” are loosely and casually phrased, easily leading to misinterpretation. How can you possibly define “take advantage of” or “out of it”? Or for that matter “drunk”? Different people react to alcohol completely differently. After a few drinks, some become immediately and obviously drunk – vomit, slur words, stagger, act irrationally. Others continue to function normally – walk normally, dance, hold conversations, send texts.
A woman who has had a few drinks may make a decision to engage in sexual activity that she wouldn’t have made while sober, but that doesn’t mean that she’s very drunk, intoxicated or incapacitated. It could mean that her libido is intensified and her inhibitions loosened. Later, the next morning, or even up to a YEAR later, she may feel remorse, regret, guilt, or just a solid case of the ICK factor. By rights, she should blame the alcohol. But according to Title IX, presto, she can blame her partner. She is no longer a consenting participant but a victim.
I don’t agree that accusations generated by regret or revenge seldom happen, or that women who answer surveys have no motivation to use alcohol as an excuse for their own unfortunate behavior. I think often, crying “He took advantage of me while I was out of it” is a sensible (though reprehensible) face saving tactic, sometimes encouraged by parents and sexual assault victim advocates.
Again, I’m not talking about someone passed out, unconscious or has been given date rape drugs. Just someone who’s a little “out of it” after having a few drinks. The twist here is that under Title IX the net effect of blaming the alcohol for bad behavior is that someone else can be severely hurt – often in life changing magnitude.
And you must cut this flesh from off his breast:
The law allows it, and the court awards it.
The progression is like this: I drank too much (how much is too much cannot be defined), I had sex with X, later I wished I hadn’t had sex with X, and because X should have known I wouldn’t have consented to have sex with him had I not drunk too much, X must be a rapist.
The way that Title IX in being interpreted by college committees, a male who has sex with a woman who has had ANY amount of alcohol is vulnerable to being found responsible for sexual assault and expelled, because ANY amount of alcohol can in retrospect be extrapolated to intoxication/incapacitation/drunkenness/out-of-it-ness.
Under today’s Title IX, If the woman claims that she was too drunk to consent, then her consent – verbal or implied – is invalid. In the absence of evidence to the contrary the woman’s word has to be believed. If she says she was too drunk, then she was too drunk, however it is defined. In some cases witness testimony that could support the accused’s claim that his accuser didn’t appear intoxicated – like texts, conversations, witness statements-- are often not allowed or are disregarded.
This is a huge gap in the fairness of Title IX’s Dear Colleague mandates and the Brown survey. If you read some of these complaints you’ll see what I mean. All of these cases and many others are pending. I am hopeful that their resolution will lead to a shift in the way Title IX is interpreted.
http://www.avoiceformalestudents.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Complaint-James-Madison-University-John-Doe-filed-2015-5-11.pdf
http://www.avoiceformalestudents.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Complaint-John-Doe-versus-University-of-California-Santa-Barbara-filed-2015-4-3.pdf
http://www.avoiceformalestudents.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Austin-Morales-Salisbury-University-Amended-Complaint.pdf
http://www.avoiceformalestudents.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Drew-Sterrett-Complaint-against-University-of-Michigan-Ann-Arbor.pdf
http://www.avoiceformalestudents.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/john-doe-cornell-university-due-process-withold-diploma-filed-2015-3-19.pdf
http://www.avoiceformalestudents.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Lewis-McLeod-Complaint-against-Duke-University.pdf
http://www.avoiceformalestudents.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Complaint-john-doe-reed-college-sexual-misconduct-title-ix-filed-2015-4-14.pdf
On the issue of being too drunk to consent:
In this case, seems that both people were incapacitated. One was expelled.
This claim is unnecessarily gendered.