@momofthreeboys no, it’s pretty clear you DONT feel for them, because you indicate that you’re inclined to question if what happened to them was not rape because they are too afraid to report it. On many campuses, “the girl that cries rape” is accused of being easy, being melodramatic, falsely accusing for attention. They are shunned and tortured, particularly if the boy that raped them is popular or a student athlete with a “bright future”. People will blame them for what happened to them; ask them if they were wearing a short skirt, “asking for it”, if they said yes and changed their minds, if they just want publicity. Furthermore, you are not in a position to define rape and you are not in a position to say what did or did not happen to these girls. People who say “grow up or shut up,” are the same people that are stunned when these young girls drop out or commit suicide. Perhaps it is better that you are a mother of three boys. I can only imagine how painful it would be to hear my mother tell me to “grow up” if I was raped and struggled with the aftermath.
Extremely true.
An incident happened to me years back and I internalized it for years. It was until recently that I nonchalantly mentioned it in passing to my mom.
You truly do not know until it happens.
Qwerty568, your posts are very powerful. It’s great to read younger people’s posts.
Thanks for posting here.
To the extent that this is still 1950, and girls who accuse boys of rape are shunned rather than invited to the state of the union, don’t some of you realize that the reason many people refuse to take every single accusation of campus sexual assault at face value is because of the well publicized incidents that turned out either to be much less salacious then originally reported if not down right false?
And before you tell me that my opinion is invalid because I am a man or just don’t know, I have a daughter and a family member who was a victim of sexual assault, on a college campus, many years ago. So yeah, I think I have a bit of empathy, since that is apparently now a requirement.
@momofthreeboys and @ohiodad51 - I’ll let the advertising geniuses amongst us come up with some slogans, but the message is pretty simple, isn’t it?
Here are a few that have been done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLdElcv5qqc (Daniel Craig, Obama, etc.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sOXN_80ohM&spfreload=10 (what real men do when a woman passes out)
http://www.theviolencestopshere.ca/dbtg.php (don’t be that guy)
The ‘No More’ PSA is also one of my favorites, featuring quite a few well known figures. Quite a few here could stand to take its message to heart.
I like a few of those for the guys, but none of them have a message for the girls and I think that’s absolutely a piece of hte problem…this isn’t a male-only problem or a female-only problem…this is a young person problem.
amazing how many of these problems could be solved if people didn’t drink underage…
As I related a few pages back, none of the incidents involved substances, on my end, and as none of them originated during a social gathering, I don’t expect the male attacker could blame substances either.
Certainly when I was assaulted by 4 or 5, 12 & 13 yr olds, outside of the gym at my junior high school, I would be surprised if any of them had been drinking.
but it is typical that those who don’t want to admit that they have pushed someone more than they should have, or left a friend in a situation that was risky if not dangerous, want to believe that victims could prevent assaults, if they just didn’t drink/dress like that/ stay out so late.
We need to stop glorifying celebrities, from CEOs to sports stars who abuse women.
http://madamenoire.com/413549/famous-women-who-are-victims-of-rape/
The men are the rapists.
@Bay, per post #574, I don’t know the rape statistics, but it is a woman’s college so that would likely substantially reduce the incidence of rape as defined in the Brown study. There are male staff members and some male graduate students and they do file data with the Federal Government. Her school does not do what she was advocating but the fact that it is all female may not make articulating a policy on rape (as opposed to sexual harassment) to all freshman a high priority. I don’t think she addressed the issue of why there is such underreporting, but I do think studies of how police in the past treated rape victims as if they were the criminals would make it harder to want to report it to police. I am no expert in this subject but I believe that there was a study that reported that 3% of rapes reported to the police led to prosecutions. While there may be a very small proportion of false accusations, the big issues are a) police not taking the crime seriously in general; and b) the difficulty in proving rape in situations where there is little to no evidence as to whether the sex in that instance was consensual. DAs don’t want to prosecute and lose.
None of which address the point. Look at the three pictures in the Violence Stops Here campaign. Personally, I think anyone who needs to be told that having sex with a woman passed out on the couch is bad is probably too stupid to be able to read the ad in the first place. But OK. The one where the guy is holding the woman up, helping here into the car is I think a better one. While it is hard for me to imagine that someone could believe a person who can’t walk could still be able to reason effectively, I guess I get how some guy could think “hey she said it was ok, what’s the problem?” My issue, however, is with the first poster. A smiling woman not obviously inebriated, holding a martini glass under the legend “just because she is drinking doesn’t mean she wants sex” and “sex without consent = sexual assault”. It certainly seems to me that the point there is once a woman drinks any alcohol, sex is off limits, or at least the guy is on notice that whatever she consents to is subject to revision later. Isn’t that kinda crazy? More pertinently, aren’t we dealing with two, maybe even three, very different situations?
Two issues with this.
First, I’ve said this multiple times on this thread about a number of different things, but this is unnecessarily gendered. The rules generally being adopted by colleges (not to mention the laws in a growing number of jurisdictions) would find that a woman who had sex with a man who did not give consent had committed [insert your preferred term here]. (Same with a man who assaults a man, or a woman who assaults a woman.)
Second, who said anything about “the woman’s subjective, individual belief”?? That’s a strawman that’s been insidiously introduced into these discussions. Yes, initially bringing the complaint would presumably usually have its basis in a subjective reading of the situation (even if it was a clear act of the sort every one of us here would immediately label as ‘rape’), but determining whether that subjective reading was accurate is certainly not left up to the individual whims of the complainant.
As far as I’ve seen measures of the problem, this is correct for the most part but is not absolutely true.
I’d missed this last week, but here’s an opinion column from a recent Washington Post that takes the side of those on this thread who object to sex without explicit consent being called rape: [Column by Cathy Young](http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/20/feminists-want-us-to-define-these-ugly-sexual-encounters-as-rape-dont-let-them/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_1_na).
(Completely aside from the main point of the column, I don’t like the way the author throws around the term ‘feminists’ as if that’s a unitary group—but so it goes these days, I guess.)
Dfbdfb, I know. 
Fair point. replace woman with accuser and man with accused. Same point.
One, subjective, individual belief refers to the question of impairment and consent, which I thought was obvious from the original post. If it was unclear, my apologies. Two, the surveys we have been discussing ask only if the respondent believes an act was done without his/her consent. That is definitionally subjective. It is these survey results that are powering the discussion. As far as in the criminal process, you are correct, a subjective belief in incapacitation is insufficient to prove lack of consent. As far as violation of various college disciplinary policies, I have seen reports that are all over the map on how incapacitation is handled.
@Ohiodad51, I’m going to give you the compliment of believing your questions are sincere.
If you do not belong to a religion that teaches that premarital sex is wrong, then I’d suggest you tell your S that he can limit his risk if he only has sex with another person for the first time if she voiced her consent when they were both sober. I know, I know, that’s an absolutely mind boggling concept, but it really is the way to protect himself.
Note that this leaves open two possibilities. (1) He can have sex with a particular woman for the first time when they are both sober. If he uses this approach, he’s much likelier to be able to recognize cues that she wants to stop and she is much more likely to be able to convey that message forcefully. (2) Alternatively, he can talk about having sex with her and see how she feels about it when they are both sober with the understanding that they may both want to use alcoholic beverages before the encounter. So, for example, this conversation can take place on the phone. He might say something like “my roommate’s going to be away on Saturday night. I think it would be a good time for us to have some privacy for our first time together” or whatever. If he’s seen her a few times in a romantic context, he could just ask an open ended question like “How long do you think a couple should know each other before they have sex?” I can’t tell you the exact words–that depends on context–but if her reply to the first question is “Do you have condoms?” I think he can assume consent. If her answer to the second question is "well certainly a lot longer than ___ (the amount of time they’ve known each other), " he can’t assume consent.
If your S has sex with a particular woman for the first time when one or both of them have been drinking or using drugs with no prior discussion of having sex with each other, he greatly increases the chances that he will be accused of rape. Just as we tell our Ds not to drink to excess because you may open yourself up to a claim that you “consented” to sex you really didn’t want, we can tell our Ss that if their first sexual encounter with a particular woman occurs when one or both of them has been imbibing with no prior discussion of having sex with each other they increase the odds that they will be accused of rape…and even that they will rape someone because they will miss the NO cues or engage in silly logic like “she’s just playing hard to get.”
Another way to put this is that if a young man thinks a particular woman who has been drinking wouldn’t consent to have sex with him if she hadn’t been drinking…or doesn’t KNOW that she would, then having sex with her greatly increases the odds that he’ll be accused of rape.
Of course, he should also remember that a woman is entitled to change her mind. He should also know that having sex with someone who has dumped him is another good way of getting himself accused of rape.
I didn’t tell my son not to rape in so many words. I did tell him that drunken sex could be considered rape even if both parties were drunk. I did tell him that I thought that sex has an emotional effect that should not be taken lightly, and that I personally believed it should wait for a committed relationship. I did teach him, and give him birth control. As far as I can tell, he is not a rapist.
@jonri. Thanks for the honest response. I am not sure how realistic the pre act negotiating is, but I am very much afraid that is where we are heading. And what about my posts makes you think I am insincere, btw?
@mathmom, yeah I agree. My issue though is with someone who is not obviously drunk. Again, look at the first poster referenced above. The message seems to be any alcoholic consumption invalidates consent. I am afraid that Joni may be correct, and the only message is negotiate before hand, when you are both dead sober then hope for the best. As I said, not sure if it is realistic, but it is consistent.
The best thing I did for my kids is to love their mother and model a healthy, committed relationship in the home. My advice to my son was, as Patti Stanger says, “No sex before monogamy.” He seems to have mostly followed that.
And I doubt any rape victims have ever felt “feted.” Second victimization is the usual term used by women who have gone public.