I thought the point of all this teaching women to protect themselves is that we all acknowledge women aren’t safe on the streets.
I think real life, colleges and politics are producing in two conflicting messages, as thus there ends up being no useful message.
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I do believe parents say exactly the above to their daughters, but…
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the daughters get to school and hear the mantra of victim-blaming and you are not responsible front and center, and very little about to not drink so much as to be unable to help yourself. And then…
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schools reinforce the message by essentially implicitly promoted hardcore drinking by looking the other way.
So the end message is underage hard drinking is OK (will never be punished for it), hardcore drinking is normal and just fine (probably just opposite of what parents said), but if something happens to you there nothing you could have done that would have helped because you are not responsible (flat-out false and also opposite of what parents probably said). The result is a culture of drinking and acting irresponsibily, as whatever happens is not your fault and could not have been prevented.
Basically - left out of the entire message was responsible preventive actions.
- Poltically, the approach was and is this supposedly empowered thing that it is not your fault, but with little supporting help in how to be proactive in avoiding a bad situation. To me, it was and is the wrong focus because the victim-blaming does nothing to reduce rape. It just assuages females after rape occurred, i.e., useless as a reduction policy.
They do. See above, as the messages are far different upon hitting the college campus.
I would think most people understand that voluntarily drinking, getting naked and being in a bed in a dorm room is not the streets, as Meir was talking about. No curfew for the men or women would help since both people are in the dorm room voluntarily. Meir’s quote is applicable to the conditions faced in many provinces in India today, not the US college campus.
I’m pretty sure most parents here are telling their daughters not to walk around campus after dark by themselves. Why do they tell them that? Why do they have to tell them to watch their drinks? Why do we tell them not to drink at all?
I’m thinking it’s because women live with a pervasive risk of rape in every aspect of their lives. College is not a safe haven. That is why this thread exists.
I am pretty safe on my local streets, as are my kids. There is a much greater chance of getting hit by a car, then of getting assaulted or even robbed. I don’t think woman are unsafe on the streets everywhere.
I went to grad school in an inner city. There the fear was more getting mugged than getting raped. The risk was higher for women because we are physically smaller.
And we are talking about college campuses where all the literature agree that alcohol plays a huge part in campus sexual assaults. Alcohol also plays a big role in sexual assault off campus and in cases of domestic violence.
I agree AWC. That is why I think that in addition to Yes means Yes and No means No, there has to be some more emphasis on combating excessive drinking. I agree that while women are not at fault if raped, but I don’t think that women have no responsibility for the negative campus culture or the bad decisions they make when drunk.
Nobody is safe on the streets if you are staggering drunk. My oldest son got bonked on the head and his backpack stolen one night many years ago when he was in college. I KNOW with every degree of certainty he had to be completely sh*t-faced to have that happen. He was 21, so legal, but had been at the bar and was walking back to his off-campus apartment alone. Kids are stupid. We don’t need to separate the sexes in that regard. I didn’t even know what getting rolled meant (and apparently it has different meaning with young kids than my generation.) My husband had to explain what that meant. He was fine, didn’t get a concussion. They caught the guy because he stupidly went to a different bar and used my son’s debit card to keep on drinking and told three friends what he was doing. My sons got smarter and wiser about drinking and street safety. I about had a heart attack but I’ve mentioned more than once that raising 3 males has taken probably decades off my life span.
mom2and: I absolutely agree with you women have responsibility for changing campus culture.I am ashamed my generation didn’t really do anything about it. I think the end result of Emma’s mattress project is a changing of the negative campus culture. She has changed the discussion nationwide.
eta: I never took any logic classes, but I really don’t think you get to argue both that women need to protect themselves and that no risk exists. That is not directed at mom2and. Just a general comment.
I don’t think parents are telling girls not to walk around on most campuses after dark alone. The exception may be campuses in very gritty cities. I certainly never felt unsafe ON campus but did in the surrounding neighborhood. I don’t believe that most women are walking around thinking a rapist is going to jump out at them from every corner. I really don’t think that most college girls, especially on suburban campuses, are worrying about rape when walking back to their dorm from the library stone cold sober, even at midnight. Are you really that anxious about rape in every aspect of your life? I am not. I take appropriate precautions in parking lots after dark or in other more risky situations. But, as I said above, I am more worried about a car not seeing me when I got out walking at night than I am about a rapist. I have a healthy sense of fear when appropriate (my kids and husband think I worry too much). But I worry about a lot of other things a lot more than the possibility of rape in my everyday life. If I was drinking to excess at frat parties, that equation might change.
Here’s an example of the pervasive risk that women face every day of their lives, that men don’t have to think about:
There’s an informal bike race called the Tour Divide. It’s a self-supported race from Banff, Alberta, down through the rockies mostly on deserted dirt roads and paths, down through the Rockies all the way to the Mexican border. Riders have to carry all their own gear including tents and sleeping bags. They have to buy and carry their own food. It’s incredibly difficult, and the people who do it are tougher than mere mortals.
The women’s record is held by the incredible Eszter Horanyi: 19 days. http://14erskiers.com/blog/2012/07/meet-the-womens-great-divide-mountain-bike-race-winner-eszter-horanyi/
Riders on the Tour Divide have to worry about grizzly bears, where the next water is, following the not-at-all-marked route, how they can carry and eat enough food, how to get through snow-blocked mountain passes. But here’s something the male racers don’t have to worry about: being sexually assaulted. Even incredibly tough woman Ezster Horanyi does have to worry whether wearing clothes that identify her as a woman will make her vulnerable to being raped. She’s riding through some deserted area, and instead of worrying about bears or mountain lions or crashing the bike on the rocks, she’s worrying about being raped.
http://salsacycles.com/culture/safety_while_bikepacking_one_womans_perspective
Women have to worry about being raped, every day of their lives. Stop telling us we need to realize someone could rape us. We know. We all know. Even the toughest of us know.
alh: Unfortunately, I think there is enough backlash at Emma’ project that the message may be getting lost in the hype. I hope I am wrong, but I don’t think she is changing the message.
I don’t think anyone said there is no risk, but that there is risk in everything we do. The greatest risk of sexual assault on campus is being drunk. That doesn’t mean there is no risk for a sober woman, just that the risk is much reduced. Thus, the logic is if you want to reduce your risk of assault, drink less. And that goes for both women and men.
As I said above, if the kid named John in Occidental case was pressured into drinking through hazing, that team should be punished.
No, women don’t have to worry about getting raped, every day of their life. They really don’t unless they are involved in a particular risk-prone occupation or live a high risk life. That would be akin to thinking every time you get in a car you might die or everytime you get on a plane it might fall out of the sky and might benefit from some counseling.
As a man, men don’t have to get drunk and sexual assault anybody. Men know this. There are men in this thread that know this. 
I can control myself as can the men I know. 
As a man, blaming alcohol on a man’s behavior is bs. Men don’t have to drink and assault. Most don’t. My fellow man does not get a pass from me.
Some of you women believe a pack of lies.
According to a study awhile back, 75 percent of sexual assaults on campus were done by men who have been drinking.
55 percent of women had been drinking before their assaults.
Frankly, if 100 percent of the women were drinking I would not give the men a pass, but it is closer to half.
99 percent of the sexual asaults are done by men.
If you really, really want to cut back on sexual assaults, look at the men who are doing the assaulting.
And some of the toughest of us, most capable of protecting ourselves, care about protecting others who are more vulnerable.
Alh: I am not sure how your statement relates to the discussion of college rape. I, too, care about protecting others who are more vulnerable. That still doesn’t mean that every women has to worry about being raped every day of their lives. That also doesn’t mean that we don’t work to reduce the number of rapes. If that is what you thought I was saying, then I did not communicate effectively.
DStark, What is your point? What pack of lies are you referring to? I don’t think anyone said that men get a pass if they are drunk or argue that less than 99% of rapes are committed by men.
Look at it this way: If I had a daughter who claimed she was raped I would
- get there ASAP and accompany her to the police to file a claim 2) Hire an attorney and a behavioral health counselor for her 3) Help her get a restraining order and move if she lived in the same complex or near.
AND if it were my last son in college and it was he said/she said and alcohol was involved I would:
- Get there ASAP with an attorney and try to file an injunction if the college was in the habit of presuming guilt and trying to remove him prior to any hearing 2) Hire an attorney and a counselor for him 3) Help him get a restraining order and/or move to a different dorm if they lived in the same complex or near
It’s really not any different in the early days until the investigation, the facts, the evidence and the trial are over. I have zero confidence…zero…that there is any college or university that is currently at this moment in time capable of handling this stuff. I have every belief they will figure it out over time.
I keep reading women should do x, women should do y, when it is men who are doing the assaulting.
Mom2and, what should men do so assaults are cut 99 percent?
Yale expelled three guys in 2014 for sexual assault, and numerous other guys were suspended or put on probation for sexual assault. Momofthreeboys, do how many Yale women do you think die in car crashes or plane crashes every year? Is it three? .3? .03? It’s pretty obvious that sexual assault is a bigger risk for college women than death by car crash.
No it’s the fear that I’m using as an analogy: hence my last sentence:
“If you really, really want to cut back on sexual assaults, look at the men who are doing the assaulting.”
Sure. Fine. So what are you going to do to change those guy’s behavior?
- Give them a lot of sensitivity training to change the "rape culture"? Warm bucket of spit in terms of impact.
- Pour more time and effort into the OCR/title ix college adjudication system thing? WBS. The four years since the Dear Colleague letter prove this policy is a dead end.
- Make parents of boys be more effective parents? Good luck with that.
- Reform all police departments so that they are better at handling rape? This actually is what we should do as job 1. But hard to accomplish.
- Reform all colleges so they are better at handling rape (while simultaneously not trampling on due process)? See #2.
Is anyone with a daughter going to actually rely on ANY of those things happening and working? I’m not with my girls.
The only thing that might make a difference with the boys during my girls’ lifetime is to drop the drinking age for the weak stuff and (correspondingly) hammer down hard on under-21 hard stuff.
I’m hard pressed to think of anything else that would move the needle.
What bothers me is that while we accept as a given we can’t change male behavior, we also accept as a given we can expect certain behaviors from women: the expectation they protect themselves. We think that is teachable behavior.
ETA: northwesty, I appreciate you are doing what you can to teach and protect your daughter. I applaud that.