<p>Id love to hear how I was " asking for it" by standing outside my jr high one November afternoon waiting for the activity bus ( which didn’t come)
I was bundled up & I was 14 yrs old.
In NONE of my assaults was I under the influence of any substances.
Rape is a gender based hate crime, it doesn’t require the victim to be complicit.</p>
<p>emerald, apprenticeprof didn’t say that you or anyone else who is assaulted was “asking for it.”</p>
<p>Again, as always, this conversation is degenerating because of the reluctance to make distinctions. By the way, “rape culture” is an effective PR term, like death tax and marriage equality. That doesn’t mean there isn’t such a culture, but it can be used a little too freely to discredit arguments one doesn’t like.</p>
<p>All sexual assaults should be reported to the real police, not the campus police and not just the Office of Residential Life. Call the police right away. </p>
<p>Agree. But, a quick reading of this thread seems to indicate that some posters think being groped at a party is a sexual assault. That is not a police matter. It’s just not.</p>
<p>Coming on the heels of two posters saying they were raped, it sure feels like blame the victim.</p>
<p>don’t even think of having sex until at least the third date. Hooking up with someone you just met at a party carries a variety of risks, but one, surely, is that, with no established basis for intimacy and a high likelihood of some degree of intoxication, you’re setting up a situation in which issues of consent may be particularly fraught and regret more likely.</p>
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<p>Why would it not be a police matter? The unwanted groping is against the law, at least in California.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=240-248”>http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=240-248</a></p>
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<p>Please let’s not do this, emerald. At the time I actually wrote the post, I was coming off the heels of Sally, who had just used the term “rape culture.” BarnardMom posted in between the time I saw Sally’s post and the time I wrote the response. That’s how it works on message boards.</p>
<p>I quite clearly prefaced the extract that you quoted by saying that this WOULD NOT eliminate rapes. Obviously, there are many cases in which absolutely nothing the victim could have done would have made any difference - and even if a victim behaved stupidly, it should go without saying that this is not an excuse for rape. </p>
<p>I refuse, however, to pretend that we can’t talk about common sense precautions without “victim blaming.” That would be like saying that we shouldn’t talk about the benefits of exercise in preventing heart disease because doing so would be victim-blaming all the people who have survived heart attacks. </p>
<p>I maintain that, especially on college campuses, one way of reducing rape would be to promote a larger cultural shift away from the hook-up culture. But that will never happen, because then we’d all be accused of “slut-shaming.” </p>
<p>apprentice: "I refuse, however, to pretend that we can’t talk about common sense precautions without “victim blaming.” </p>
<p>Perhaps, but the common sense precautions are massively imposed on women because the effect, if not the purpose, of rape culture is to control women. So don’t go out after dark, don’t walk alone, take self-defense lessons, park in well lighted places and approach your car with keys in hands. A few years ago I slipped on the ice in the parking lot, and the keys, already out as I left the restaurant, cut my hand. My kids nagged me to stop taking out the keys before I got to the car. It took me months and months to break the habit. It comes back even now if I don’t watch out, but if I don’t take out my keys early, am I refusing common sense precautions? Am I taking risks in rape culture?</p>
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<p>How is being groped any different from being punched, in terms of it being unwanted aggression from another person? If someone walks up to you while you are minding your own business at a party and punches you in the face, you would likely consider it a “police matter.” </p>
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Well, is being “groped” worse or not as bad as being punched in the face? Or is it comparable to, say, being rudely shoved out of the way on the street? I might call the police for being punched, but probably not for being shoved. If we take a poll on who would call the police for what level of infraction, is that persuasive evidence as to what most people consider serious, or would it simply be a sign of “rape culture” if the results disagree with what some people think they should be?</p>
<p>Is it too incendiary to say that seeing all male/female interactions in the context of rape is also a kind of “rape culture?”</p>
<p>maybe it is too incendiary to see all male/female interactions in the context of rape (Andrea Dworkin wrote that book 30 years ago), but to deny that the raw aggression and expression of power in a grope is to promote rape culture. </p>
<p>A shove is by and large a shove. . . it does not exist, in one’s daily consciousness, on a line that goes from grope to torture, rape, and death. Because women grow up in rape culture, where their actions have to be weighed for provocation, a grope is different than a shove for many women. </p>
<p>That habit of having of my keys in hand saved me from a carjacking once. I would not advise anyone to break that habit. Or stop taking any of the other common sense precautions listed above. Male or female.</p>
<p>IMHO there is as much difference between a person laying their hand on one’s posterior and being “groped”–which to me sounds like something much more aggressive–as there is between someone laying a restraining hand on one’s arm and punching one in the face.</p>
<p>Let us consider Miley Cyrus. I watched the video of her unfortunate awards show performance to the rapey song. I was appalled when she slapped one of her black female dancers on the behind as if she were livestock. (The fact that she was engaged in a failed attempt to twerk sexily, cultural appropriation if I ever saw it, compounded the distastefulness. Not to mention all of the history and so forth surrounding black women’s sexuality and anatomy…) But what if she had reached out and squeezed her breast, instead? The outrage! In real life, we recognize levels of touching. They aren’t all the same.</p>
<p>Some people like to cite legal definitions. Others take a more nuanced view. No one would disagree that Emerald being surrounded by boys who tore her clothes off was assault and that it should have been reported to the police who should have prosecuted the perps. What happened to me was not, IMHO. And it most certainly does not exist on a continuum in <em>my</em> mind “to torture, rape, and death.” (I’m quite willing to believe that there are women who have been traumatized for whom this is true. What a horrible burden.)</p>
<p>But a lot of this “it is all the same” stuff reminds me of the extremists who were around when I was in college who would maintain that all heterosexual sex is rape.</p>
<p>Let’s think of how definitions work. If I write “theft,” no one thinks I don’t know the difference between snatching a laptop and armed robbery. . . and they probably think “who steals my purse steals trash,” but don’t touch my good name. Stealing psychologically important things like reputations and sense of safety are often seen as worst than property crimes. </p>
<p>Now let’s go to the issue of sexual assault. That is the big category, like theft. Just because someone uses the big category doesn’t mean that she is incapable of differentiating the subcategories. How stupid would that be? What I find very interesting is the refusal to recognize the big category as real, as a problem, as a legal definition.</p>
<p>The big category is real. But, there is a difference between taking a box of paper clips home from the office and robbing a bank. One does not lead to the other. Everyone recognizes that rape is real. Butt-pinching is not rape.</p>
<p>No one has defined “butt-pinching” (and bruising) as rape. The big category is sexual assault. I have not studied the relationship between minor sexual assaults and major sexual assaults. I suspect there is some correlation and overlap; maybe I’ll have time to research it now that the issue is raised.</p>
<p>The issue is assuming the “right” to something that doesn’t belong to them. Taking someone’s stuff is stealing. Walking on private property without permission is trespassing. No one has the right to touch another person (or their stuff or property) without permission. To continue with mamalion’s point from 5:06 am, we put a huge burden on women to avoid unwanted attention in a way we don’t with other personal property. It’s the same “men can’t control themselves” mindset that in some cultures leads to women wearing burqas.</p>
<p>@Flossy said "The big category is real. But, there is a difference between taking a box of paper clips home from the office and robbing a bank. One does not lead to the other. Everyone recognizes that rape is real. Butt-pinching is not rape. "</p>
<p>How about the difference between rape and $32 worth of crab legs? No punishment for the rape and community service for the crab legs. </p>
<p>What?</p>