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I don’t know–I think at most places they’d hear pretty quickly what the reps are. But I don’t necessarily disagree with you about looking for ways to reduce the isolation of freshman girls. But I’ve gotta ask: when you suggest that their lack of information about this might increase their risk of victimization, aren’t you blaming them? Shouldn’t they be free to go to any party at any frat, etc., etc.?</p>
<p>No, I’m NOT blaming them. They can CHOOSE to go to any party at any frat. However, I think they should have adequate information before making the choice. </p>
<p>It’s sort of like those State Dept warnings about foreign countries. You can still choose to go if you want to do so.</p>
<p>Again, I think language and context play a bigger role than people let on. Telling someone that a group has a bad rep when they mention they are going there is different from asking someone disclosing a rape why they went to such a place or a news story highlighting “the series of mistakes the victim made.” The first is not victim blaming, the latter two are.</p>
<p>See this video: <a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2013/10/18/im-not-saying-she-deserved-to-be-raped-but-and-other-ways-to-never-start-a-sentence/[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2013/10/18/im-not-saying-she-deserved-to-be-raped-but-and-other-ways-to-never-start-a-sentence/</a></p>
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<p>Replace “after sneaking out” with “at XYZ house,” and you’ve got victim blaming 101.</p>
<p>Now to the Lisak interview:</p>
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<p>mom2,</p>
<p>can you link to the other interview and/or study of his you’re citing? I’d be curious to see it since my understanding was that on campuses, the contact leading up to the rape is frequently more than that - that’s part of what allows it to happen. I think most people are more on guard with someone they met that night vs someone they have seen around campus/met multiple times and who appears “normal.” This is part of the selection process I was referencing in my post to hanna.</p>
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Then Yoffe’s article isn’t victim blaming, either, because it’s much more like the first example than the second one. This is what I was trying to gently and somewhat sarcastically suggest–if warning somebody that the XYZ frat is known to be “rapey” isn’t victim blaming, then neither is telling them that getting smashed puts them at risk of victimization. And if you warn the person that the frat has a bad reputation, and they ignore your advice and go there anyway, and suffer harm, how would you evaluate the prudence of their decision?</p>
<p>I wanna Here is the link. I guess it is from CBS interview, but this is where I quoted from:</p>
<p>[David</a> Lisak on Acquaintance Rapists: ?We?re Giving a Free Pass to Sexual Predators? - The Sexist](<a href=“http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2010/04/23/david-lisak-on-acquaintance-rapists-were-giving-a-free-pass-to-sexual-predators/]David”>http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2010/04/23/david-lisak-on-acquaintance-rapists-were-giving-a-free-pass-to-sexual-predators/)</p>
<p>Jonri: Why not freshman dorms? I think there is value for all the new kids on campus living together. Certainly, where I made life-long friends. What is the value of mixed-age dorms (since most would be only freshman-sophs as many upperclassman don’t want to share a room or move off campus at many schools). </p>
<p>Mini: I still have not found anything in the literature that supports the idea that drinking to excess is not a risk factor for being victimized. </p>
<p>I think we all agree that no choice made by a woman is a green light to rape - not the clothes, not going to a bad party, not drinking to excess. No matter what, it is almost impossible to rid our culture of all rapists. Even if Lisak’s finding that 60% of rapists are serial offenders can be extended to non-commuter, 4-year colleges with most students under age 25, that still leaves 40% that do not fit this profile. </p>
<p>I agree that too often the victim is blamed and that language is important. But I still don’t understand how letting young woman know that they have the power to reduce the potential for becoming a victim by not drinking to excess and not going to parties at certain frats is blaming the victim. We tell our younger kids about stranger danger, but would still find an abductor guilty, even if the child approached the abductor first.</p>
<p>mom2and…</p>
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<p>We are going to have to agree to disagree. Either you have major reading comprehension problems or I do. </p>
<p>I’ve already explained why I think muti-year dorms are better. You are free to disagree, but I see no need to repeat the same points. </p>
<p>There’s no point in the two of us debating further.</p>
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Multi-year, single-sex dorms: otherwise, you’re mixing doe-eyed, fresh from high school young women in with men whose thought might be “Fresh meat!”.</p>
<p>Was that cynical? Sorry. I do like the multi-year dorm idea and think that it would be enormously helpful from many perspectives, but am not really as much “into” the idea of multi-year, co-ed dorms.</p>
<p>Hunt,</p>
<p>I don’t know which of us–yours truly or wannabe_ Brown–your "sarcasm " was aimed at. I don’t have any trouble telling young women and young men that drinking to excess makes it more likely you’ll be a crime victim. </p>
<p>But, I think wannabe_ Brown has a valid point. We are focusing too much on telling young women what they need to do to “protect” themselves and too little on catching the culprits and kicking them off campus.</p>
<p>There IS a difference, IMO, between telling young women not to drink to excess and telling them some rapists will attempt to use alcohol as a way to gain control over them. If it’s all about how much a woman drinks, she’s not going to be as careful about watching her drink, drinking out of a beer can rather than a bathtub, etc.</p>
<p>“Mini: I still have not found anything in the literature that supports the idea that drinking to excess is not a risk factor for being victimized.”</p>
<p>I never said drinking to excess is NOT a risk factor. I wouldn’t know - I haven’t seen data on that one way or the other. The only data I’ve seen says drinking is a risk factor. (As is going to parties, joining a sorority, going to college, going to a coed college - I also saw one study on participation in competitive sports.)</p>
<p>(One could say that a woman who had a drink and then was raped was drinking “to excess”, but the problem with that is…)</p>
<p>Hunt, I already spoke about this.</p>
<p>Saying a house has a bad reputation is not the same as “if you go that house, you’re asking for it.” I think yoffe’s article is closer to the latter, not the former. The headline is “College Women: Stop Drinking” not “College Women: Rapists use alcohol as a weapon”</p>
<p>*Mini: I still have not found anything in the literature that supports the idea that drinking to excess is not a risk factor for being victimized. *</p>
<p>Alcohol IS a risk factor as I linked upthread.
But having even one drink puts you at risk, perhaps because the environment is different from where everyone abstains.</p>
<p>wanna_be: surely you are aware that the headlines are written by a different person? I would concentrate on the content of the article.</p>
<p>As to why we tend to concentrate on what the victims can do here: all we can advise is that they take steps to reduce their risk, and REPORT it promptly if they are assaulted. The latter is vitally important if the predators are to be stopped and punished. We aren’t addressing the predators, because what can you say? It’s not nice to rape someone? You could be jailed if you rape someone? They already know both of those things. Sure, we can work to make it more likely that they will be convicted and jailed. But that’s about it. </p>
<p>Now, possibly one could figure out some way to appeal to other guys and to women to step in and intervene more frequently if they see certain things happening. It would be possible to make some improvements there. But I would venture to guess that most of these guys rape the girl in a room with the door closed. Walking in on people having sex or making out to make sure everything is copacetic is not going to be socially acceptable any time soon. (Except among the rapists, who apparently like to film each other in the act. :rolleyes:)</p>
<p>Oh…one other thing worth mentioning…</p>
<p>Being alone with a man or a group of men who have been drinking also increases risk…even if the woman has not been drinking.</p>
<p>Focusing too much on the message that women should not drink to excess–an excellent message for men as well as women–doesn’t make that as apparent.</p>
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<p>What if you saw a guy carrying a girl who is obviously passed out into his room and then shutting the door? Wrong to stop it? </p>
<p>What if you see the guy do this and then 3 or 4 other guys go into the room? (This is what is alleged to have happened at Vanderbilt.)</p>
<p>What if a guy “volunteers” to walk a young woman who is drunk out of her mind back to her room…with nobody else coming along? Allow it? (That’s close to what happened in the Yale case cited earlier in this thread. It’s probable that she was drugged.)</p>
<p>What about the four “alleged” rapes in the Ladies Room at a Penn frat party about 8? years ago. Rapists just pushed in after young women who went into it alone. Music allegedly kept high to cover sounds.</p>
<p>What if a rapist brags about the rape? That happens more often than you’d think. Why not report it? It’s evidence. That almost never happens.</p>
<p>Oh, should clarify…the UPenn frat rapes didn’t all occur at one party. IIRC they extended over 3 or 4 weekends.</p>
<p>If I were a young woman I believe I would be very careful about how I behaved depending where I was going. I wouldn’t advise necessarily not going to a kegger at a frat party, however, I would realize that the situation would be a perfect storm of potential criminal behavior. Drunk young men who are united by a fraternal bond in a place where they live and there are a lot of private places to take someone. Add to that a lot of drunk young woman and you have the perfect place for a serial rapist or an accidental rapist (ie. girl goes up to his room and wakes up the next day not knowing where she is or what happened and frankly neither does the guy). If I were a young woman I would be very careful in that environment, going with female friends who I could trust and all of us watching what we were drinking. If suggesting to a young woman that she modify her behavior in such an environment is blaming the victim then I guess would be guilty. Conversely I think universities should make it very difficult for fraternities and sororities for that matter to have those types of parties.</p>
<p>It’s scary out there. There’s a “ClemsonPassouts” acct on twitter w/ photos students take of their friends and submit. Most common caption is “Couldn’t hang.” I’m sure there are many other schools participating in this sort of thing. It’s terrible.</p>
<p>Most women who were raped were not passed out, and likely had not drunk to excess. They just found themselves in the wrong situation - with a serial rapist masquerading as a college student who had more than likely planned his crime in advance.</p>
<p>I knew a rapist in college back in the dark ages. Just one (that I knew of). He knew exactly what he was doing. He was never drunk. Never out of control. He bragged about his crimes. We were too ignorant, too passive, and too ashamed to know what to do. We didn’t know how to think about it. Today he is a high ranking…</p>
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[quote]
you have the perfect place for a serial rapist or an accidental rapist[.quote]</p>
<p>What on earth is an “accidental rapist”??</p>
<p>I’m with mini…and if you have read this board for a while, you’ll know that’s often not the case.</p>
<p>“Accidental rapist” is a term used by some to cover the “he said”/ “she said” scenario in which both parties have been drinking, the female doesn’t affirmatively say no, and the male honestly assumes she has consented–or is correct in assuming that, but the female later claims that she, though not passed out, was too inebriated to consent.</p>
<p>In other words, he didn’t intend to rape her…it just happened.</p>
<p>People disagree as to whether this is a frequent occurrence --or ever really happens. It is this scenario that scares the living daylights out of parents of sons.</p>
<p>What some of us on this board are trying to make clear is that some very large percentage of college campus rapes do NOT fall into this category. They are committed by young men who INTEND to rape someone…and who have often raped other women as well.</p>