Vanderbilt scenario. Nothing the girl could have done to protect herself from her predator boyfriend. And you can’t train the sociopath out of the sociopath. All you can do is prosecute. Maybe bystander intervention. Maybe. But sociopaths hang out together and are trying not to get caught. Also, when they moved the passed out girl from the bar to the dorm, they must have passed both guys and girls. No guys called 911. But no women did either.
Violent stranger rape - Women have to be proactively defensive. Sorry. Can’t think of anything else.
Drunken hookup leading to sexual assault. Yes, train the guys. Bystander intervention. I think lots of ideas that have been discussed could help reduce this. But I want to train the women too because I can count on them wanting to protect themselves. It’s the last line of defense.
Rape is too ugly for me to mess around with. If it respects everyone’s rights, is feasible, and helps prevent assaults from occurring, then I’m for it.
Added:
Drinking has already been mentioned as an underlying cause. Curtailing binge drinking is a good thing even if sexual assault wasn’t being discussed. So I’m for it.
Hookup culture is also an underlying cause. Maybe it would be good to address that too. But I’m too old to know what to do.
About the Vanderbilt case: I don’t know whether the rapists encountered both men and women. But they were carrying a woman who had been seeing one of the guys. If Vandenberg could lie to the victim and say that he had been taking care of her that night, surely he could equally lie to concerned bystanders, “She’s had too much to drink, we’re bringing her back to the dorm to sleep it off,” or something. That would be plausible to people who knew both of them.
And of course there is the added benefit that if we could also convince college males to drink less we would reduce the occurrence of male on male violence. When I read of frat pledges having oven cleaner poured on them resulting in third degree burns, I cannot even process such barbaric behavior. When you read the fact of theses types of cases, the behavior is almost always fueled by alcohol.
And then there is the poor pledge who had sense enough to say he had enough to drink. That didn’t go over too well and he was chained to a radiator and force fed shots. He managed to escape but was so inebriated that he fell out of a third floor window when he tried to slide down a drain pipe. Some of the other incidents are so egregious I would not even feel comfortable posting them.
So lets just acknowledge that a reduction in male drinking would go a long, long way in reducing overall violence on college campuses. We can help our daughters to protect themselves by drinking less, but based on press accounts our sons could use some protection as well.
Al i agree with you on your comments. CF of course the guys could say that, it would not change the fact that they indeed raped her. Bystanders might not have helped, but the outcome was rape without question and truly unfortunate. But take Al’s comments, what if she hadn’t drank so much she passed out - would this still have occurred? That does NOT diminish that those guys raped her, but it might have kept the rape from occuring. She and her boyfriend would have headed home crawled into bed and that would have been the end of it. Which is more important do you think to her? Sometimes you do have to take care of yourself.
I agree with this - men and women for the very same reason…
Well, I don’t think it’s either/or or all or nothing. The posters saying girls should drink less are talking about the girls being in shape to take care of themselves but that doesn’t mean men shouldn’t drink less, too. However that idea doesn’t help the girl who is getting plastered tonight. And, it doesn’t mean nothing bad will ever happen to you if you do everything right. But, risk reduction is not victim-blaming either. And, it could have prevented a bunch of these cases. That is just a fact.
I do think that getting rid of frats would reduce the excessive drinking and culture of dehumanizing women. I personally did feel unsafe in college when walking alone on campus in the quad with the frats. Guys would make lewd comments and it could get very uncomfortable.
Marie1234, would you write a post on what men can do to lower sexual assaults on or around campus? Saying you don’t think it is either/or or all or nothing doesn’t really answer the question.
I am not asking what women can do…
Maybe it’s because I am a woman that my focus is on what I personally can or would do myself, today. And, not on the societal issue because that is too theoretical for me and too long term maybe or the man-blaming because by the time you get to blaming it’s too late.
Men should also drink less and be more respectful of women and I’m no fan of frats but they can be avoided and I don’t think they are going anywhere anytime soon so while I don’t disagree with the suggestion of doing away with that culture I doubt that is going to happen and I’m rather practical and not so idealistic. I agree with whoever said that when it comes to the criminal element like the Vanderbilt guy there is nothing you can do but get out of the way. Sadly.
“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.”
It seems reasonable to me that it’s easier to teach people to act in their own interest than in someone else’s interest. Especially when we’re trying to change the behavior of a potential rapist who is, by definition, a selfish jerk. Decent guys don’t commit rape, so there’s not much to teach them about not raping, except maybe peer intervention.
Look at the latest harm reduction strategies for drunk driving. For me, the message “You might kill somebody” is pretty compelling, but it obviously isn’t working for the sort of people who repeatedly drive drunk. “You might end up spending years in jail and paying tens of thousands in fines” is a more effective message to a selfish person.
What about, “You might be expelled from college”? Compelling? I think so. The next time some Stanford athlete considers taking a drunk woman into the bushes, he might think twice. You never know when two grad students on bikes might happen along.
Yes, CF, the punishment needs to be certain, swift, and publicized in order for the deterrent effect to work. The problem is that offenders know that a lot of victims won’t speak up, even in cases that would otherwise be provable, so it’s tough to put this into practice.
[quote]
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.
[quote]
Do other women really seriously feel this way? I am a woman (a woman who was raped) and I have not worried about being raped every day of my life. Not even close! Now that I’m in my 50s I don’t worry about it at all, and honestly, I worried about it very little in my 40s and 30s. Do others really feel this way???
“Worry about” in the sense that we have to take precautions every day. In the same sense that everybody has to take precautions about car crashes, like wearing seatbelts, and bicyclists have to take precautions about theft, like locking up their bikes.
Susanna,
You’re leaving out the backslash in the second bracketed thing.
[ quote]Thing to quote
[/quote]
(but leave out the space after the open bracket) turns into
[ quote]Thing to quote[ quote] This should not be in quotes
I do not worry about it. I arrange my life in such a way as to lessen risk. I take measures to protect myself, as some on this board have repeatedly recommended women do. I do this because the risk exists.
Again, what are we arguing now? There isn’t risk of rape?
Do we want to go back to a debate over the validity of the statistics? How much under reporting exists?
I’m not arguing about anything. I read this comment and I’m wondering whether other women worry about rape. I actually find that I don’t think about it - maybe it’s because I’m 50. I sort of assume that most men don’t want to rape me. (sorry if that sounds sick and no, I’m not hideous looking! I try to keep in shape)
