PurpleTitan, I was on a trading floor too and I agree with you. 
PurpleTitan, Iâm sure youâre a good judge of character, but can anyone really know if their friend is a rapist? In another thread, weâve discussed Jon Krakauerâs book, Missoula. In it, he describes the sentencing hearing of Beau Donaldson. Various witnesses testify on his behalf, on what a wonderful, kind, caring person he was. Yet he confessed to raping his childhood friend, so we know he did it. Those witnesses, if asked before he confessed, would have sworn up and down that he was not a rapist. But he was.
In the Vanderbilt case, friends of Corey Batey say he was a fine, upstanding citizen. But he is also a rapist.
Alcohol is a factor in a lot of these cases. Some people point out that alcohol makes women do things they otherwise wouldnât do, like agree to certain kinds of sex. But alcohol also makes men do things they wouldnât otherwise do, and alcohol makes people violent. Probably some rapists only rape when theyâre drunk. You might not have seen the drunk side of some of your acquaintances.
I have a daughter as wellâŠsheâs leaving for college this fallâŠand yes i have overall fears (more about drivers/traffic plus academic stress, etc) but i simply feel that this issue is twisted and overstatedâŠare some girls assaulted in high school and college? Yes. They were when i was in college. And they are now. Should we do something about it? Well, of course. Who would be against that? Then the bigger issue: Is there somehow an epidemic of rape and assault now that is overwhelming our campuses and making the decision to send girls to college a foolish choice? And then when I look closer at this study (they only surveyed one campus?!) than i really begin to doubt what these fears are being based on.
on a larger scale, the crime rate in the U.S. is the lowest that itâs been in decades yet if you ask folks about crime, many will claim that itâs skyrocketing.
i donât knowâŠiâm just in a aggravated mood right now.
In Missoula, looking at 5 cases, if I remember correctly, two women were allegedly attacked when they were asleep and at least one who was awake was not drunk.
Re #42
But you will tell your daughter the precautions to take to avoid becoming an easy victim should she encounter a sexual predator, right?
What is your explanation for 9% of women at Syracuse saying they were forcibly raped, or someone tried to forcibly rape them, in their freshman year? Seems to me itâs you thatâs doing the twisting: youâre squirming and wriggling, trying to deny the plain fact that 9% of women say someone tried to rape them by force in their freshman year.
Like all women, I have definitely told my daughters things they can do to avoid bad situations. I also told them to be clear and enthusiastic if they agree to sex, and to be clear, strong and not to worry about being nice if they say ânoâ. I would love it if more boys could absorb a cultural message about not pressing a girl who has said no, but I fear that our culture falls very short on their front - we still rely on girls to be gatekeepers while also blaming them if they are victimized for not keeping the gate as well as they should have.
If I recall there were more than 50 and less than 60 reported rapes during the time period of the bookâŠwhich the book stated was slightly less per capita than the national average. I donât know if you can draw any inferences about that. however, it is widely reported the the number of violent crimes and assaults has been decreasing overall.
I think most rapes are premeditated.
I am not just saying this because of the aboveâŠbut I think the above explains some thinking.
actually, nothing to see here.
Have not read the report, but the findings as reported in the press seem implausible. 18% of pre-college girls have been victims of incapacitated rape? And another 15% have been victims or attempted or actual rape? Does anyone believe that to be true?
Also a college incidence rate which is even higher than the âone in fiveâ stat that has largely been discredited? And an incidence rate that is 10 times (or more) higher than the stats reported by the US DOJ?
SouthernHope, yeah.
Off the record, those arenât the issues. 
Northwesty, when women keep saying they were raped, and you keep saying they werenât, I have to wonder why you think you know better than they do about what happened to them. This was an anonymous general health survey. The young women didnât know they were answering a survey that would be used to determine rape rates. Why do you think the women were lying? Or why do you think they believed they were raped, when actually, they werenât?
Iâm also dubious about the âjudgment of characterâ claim, that there canât be very many rapists because one doesnât know any rapists. I would have been skeptical of one rape claim against Bill Cosby, for example; he didnât seem like a rapist. But now we can be pretty sure heâs a rapist. Someone can seem like not a rapist, and still be a rapist.
If weâre talking about Krakauerâs Missoula, there were about 350 reported rapes in the relevant time period, which, he says, is a bit less than the average reported rate. But that is irrelevant for this thread. We are not discussing reported rapes. We are discussing all rapes and attempted rapes, reported and unreported.
Alcohol probably plays a big role. Iâm curious about the percentage where alcohol was consumed where force was involved.
Itâs a bit mind-blowing that serial rapists can get away with it, but there seems to be all sorts of reasons why victims donât report being raped.
It seems that if you want to prevent your daughter from being raped, along with giving them Mace, teaching them how to place a well-targetted knee/elbow, and teaching them not to get drunk in unsafe situations, imbuing them with self-confidence is key, so that they are willing to fight back when assaulted.
Do people read posts?
âon a larger scale, the crime rate in the U.S. is the lowest that itâs been in decades yet if you ask folks about crime, many will claim that itâs skyrocketing.â
According the US DOJ, this is true. Also according the US DOJ, the incidence of rape is at an all-time low â down 80% from 1973 to 2003.
So whoâs right on this? The data is all over the place and totally inconsistent.
But like SouthernHope, I just donât buy these one in five type stats. And this study says 1 in 3 (even higher) before college.
About that 20% figure (which drops to 9% on one campus when force is used):
It also may depend on what your definition of rape is. Some girls may not even consider being forced to have sex by their BF/husbands to be rape.