<p>I think there is a visceral reaction to anything that can, even a little bit, be interpreted as blaming the victim in this situation. The person who wrote the “Emily Yoffe Is Wrong” article essentially ignored what Yoffe’s article actually said–and, in fact, essentially agreed with much of what she did say. I see the same thing in this thread–and it’s why “don’t get so drunk that you are vulnerable” is translated into “don’t go to parties.” I think there’s a sneaking suspicion that those who are giving these warnings are really trying to control or restrict women, and to protect the predators. I don’t think this is true of me, and I don’t think it’s true of Emily Yoffe, but history creates the suspicion. But as Consolation and others have suggested, to attack this problem it is necessary to hold multiple ideas at the same time–enforcement, and risk reduction, and culture change, and education.</p>
<p>If a woman encounters a rapist and is sober and has her wits about her, she could possibly make a decision or take actions that would save or protect herself. She certainly has a better chance of coming out of the encounter unscathed. Of course, if she encounters a rapist, she may not come out of the encounter unscathed, but she can up her odds. Sometimes that’s the best thing one can hope for.</p>
<p>I’d like to know more about the m.o. of these serial rapists. Since they so often get away with it, I have to believe they are targeting the most vulnerable victims–i.e., those who are drunk, and aren’t part of a protective group. What will these rapists do if they don’t find vulnerable victims like this? It’s possible they won’t do anything, and there will be fewer rapes. That would be a good thing. I assume nobody thinks that drunk girls should serve as bait for them, so we can catch and punish them.</p>
<p>Edited to add: On second thought, maybe there should be some sting operations to smoke out some of these perpetrators.</p>
<p>I’m with Hunt across the board.</p>
<p>A harm reduction strategy need not reduce risk to zero to be useful. Of course predators attack sober victims, too. But a person who’s in control of his or her faculties has better odds. I’d like to improve my own odds and those of all young people.</p>
<p>I continue to be interested in questions of consent, guilt, and alcohol. Here’s a thought experiment: A and B, both male, are drinking. They both drink the same amount, and they both become intoxicated. A says, “I have a great idea–let’s climb up the outside of the clock tower.” B says, “I don’t know, that sounds dangerous.” A says, “Come on, don’t be a wimp.” They go to the clock tower–B again demurs, but A eggs him on. They both begin to climb, and halfway up, B loses his grip, falls, and is seriously injured. B sues A for causing his injuries. At the trial, B provides convincing evidence that he is afraid of heights and never would have done such a thing if he hadn’t been drunk and if A hadn’t urged him to do it. Who’s to blame? A, B, both, or neither?</p>
<p>I give this example, because I think we tend to think of sex as something “done to” one person by another, and it certainly is in the case of the predatory serial rapist. But I’m not persuaded that that is the only scenario that happens. Indeed, the fact that there are all sorts of scenarios is probably what enables the serial rapists to hide.</p>
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<p>Exactly.
Mini, you are confusing risk management with cause or criminal culpability.</p>
<p>Think of it this way - There are hackers, criminals and just PITAs who try to infect my computer. I can say it is their fault and do nothing or I can exercise prudent practices such as not go to suspicious looking web sites and install anti malware on my computer.</p>
<p>Can civil damages can be awarded when coercion results in an injury or damage?</p>
<p>The best thing that can be done in risk management is to reduce the number of serial rapists on campus. There really aren’t that many (on each campus). And making it clear to serial rapists who apply to attend that the campus won’t be a “fun place” for them, and they should apply elsewhere. </p>
<p>And once it becomes clear that rape won’t be tolerated on campus, women (and men) will come forward - it will result in culture change. Local law enforcement (to whom crimes should be reported) will be in a better position to identify the perps. Victims will no longer feel doubly victimized.</p>
<p>That’s the “prudent” thing to do.</p>
<p>Imagine what would happen if there were a group of serial rapists in your neighborhood. You might lock your doors, etc., etc. That might (or might not) help you individually. But what would rid your neighborhood of them would be a clear and effective partnership between the community and law enforcement, not classes in the neighborhood telling men they shouldn’t rape, and women that they shouldn’t drink. These efforts just perpetuate the mythology, and ultimately make women - and men - less safe.</p>
<p>There are precautions I would tell my daughter to take that I wouldn’t tell my son to take. Is this fair? No. But the unfairness doesn’t come from me.</p>
<p>Hunt, I think your analogy fails because at any point B could stop. He is influenced by A, but he isn’t controlled by B. </p>
<p>Now, what if B is afraid of heights. He starts climbing. There are landings on the way up. He stops at one to rest and he is so drunk he passes out. A then shakes him and while B is semi-conscious, starts push/ pulling him up the tower. B then falls and is injured. </p>
<p>Yes, B got drunk. Yes, he voluntarily started climbing the tower. But he stopped and A forced him to continue. To me that’s more like the typical rape of a young woman too drunk to consent.</p>
<p>Your analogy is to the scenario many people, including posters like Sally, think is the most common one: a girl and a guy who are equally drunk, have sex, and the girl regrets it later. </p>
<p>Now, right now, it’s all just allegations, but when a Vandy football player takes a passed out friend to his room–and some reports say it was his girlfriend, has sex with her, and then lets 3 or 4 other guys have sex with her and videotapes it, it’s more like a guy passed out at the landing who is then pushed/pulled up the tower by his buddy. Yes, she’s drunk. But seriously…is there any way she “assumed the risk” of getting raped by 4 football players by getting drunk and going back to her friend’s --maybe her boyfriend’s–room?</p>
<p>Assume the allegations are true. Do you really think these are nice young men who belong on a college campus? Do you think they only did what they did because they had been drinking? Do you think most young men while somewhat inebriated–though not so inebriated that they couldn’t “perform”-- would have done the same thing? I don’t.</p>
<p>mini, it seems to me that you are falling victim to the fallacy that there is only ONE thing to do. Culture change is the ultimate goal. While in the process of getting there, steps need to be taken to safeguard people. I would argue that the culture change on campuses needs to include a movement away from binge drinking, and not just because of sexual assault. As Yoffe suggests, it would be a lot better all round if drinking until you pee your pants and vomit in your hair and pass out was viewed with extreme negativity.</p>
<p>Emeraldkity, I, for one, am primarily thinking about rapes among college students here. Not to dismiss the importance of rapes elsewhere or at other times at all.</p>
<p>I agree with jonri’s remarks about the hypothetical scenarios in the previous post.</p>
<p>I just think–and my daughter, who’s in college now, thinks this, too–that there are people who have drunken sex, and they are both doing it. I also think there are cases where one is a predator and is doing it to the other person. I think it’s going to be difficult to solve the problem if we pretend that these situations are the same–unless we want to simply prohibit underage drinking, or underage sex, or both. From what I hear, college students are drinking a lot, and they’re having sex a lot. Often they’re doing both. It’s not all rape, is it?</p>
<p>Also, I wonder about what exactly we mean by too drunk to consent. If we mean drunk enough so the person will do things he or she wouldn’t do if cold sober, that goes awfully far. Is that what is meant, or do we mean more drunk than that?</p>
<p>Is there not a difference between a serial predator trying to get girls drunk for the purpose of rape and the situation where a girl gets too drunk to actively say yes, and yet also too drunk to actively say no? I understand that the position of some is that most of these situations involve the former, but there also seems to be a lot of situations in which a girl does something she would not have done when sober. Can’t the message be don’t binge drink becuase you may end up doing things you later regret, with someone you have no interest in. Maybe because you were forced, or maybe because they looked better with “beer goggles” than they would have otherwise. It is not just rape that is of concern when drunk, but risky behavior that may have serious consequences.</p>
<p>As a woman, and former college girl, it is completely appropriate to tell girls to avoid binge drinking for many reasons IMHO. Does it impinge a girl’s freedom to make her own decisions? Perhaps, but not in any meaningful way. It does not excuse rapists, but why is it wrong to tell girls to protect themselves? </p>
<p>I walk in my suburban town, sometimes at night. I know that I have the right-of-way at a crosswalk, but I protect myself by not stepping in front of a car (who is legally obligated to stop for me) and by making sure a car stopped at a stop sign sees me before I cross. I would be within my rights to step in the crosswalk and the car would have to stop, but that won’t help me if a car strikes me. Does it impinge on my freedom to walk freely? Are the cars responsible if they hit me? Yes, but that would not make me feel any better if I get hit by a car. Imperfect analogy, of course, but the bottom line is that telling a woman to not binge drink is good for many reasons.</p>
<p>Just before my senior year of college I started dating a man who was also entering his senior year.</p>
<p>After we’d gone out several times and were starting to get a bit more serious, he told me one night that there was a story he HAD to tell me and it was extremely important and that he wanted to make sure I heard it from him and not someone else.</p>
<p>He went on to tell me that several years before I’d met him when he’d first started college he was dating another young woman. They’d gone out several times and were starting to get more serious. One night they were drinking to excess as many young students do on occasion and then they were intimate. He believed it is what she wanted to happen. The next day, she felt very bad about making that decision with clouded judgement and feeling that she was taken advantage of, consulted several friends. I never met her and never heard her side of the story, but according to him, her friends ‘convinced her’ that she had been raped by him. She never reported the incident to the campus or to law enforcement, but it did result in the end of their relationship.</p>
<p>Being a female, I wasn’t quite sure how to react to a man I was dating telling me he’d been accused of rape. He definitely wasn’t a serial rapist. He wasn’t seeking power. He hadn’t even intentionally been trying to take advantage of a woman who was vulnerable. Alcohol reduced both their inhibitions and caused them both to make decisions that they would not have made, had they been sober. I continued dating him becuase I appreciated his honesty and could see how bad the incident left him feeling. If anything the accusation he’d faced made him very cautious of crossing any lines without making sure he definitely had consent. He felt like what he’d gone through in the past was a misunderstanding and that he’d misinterpreted her wishes and wanted to make certain that didn’t happen again.</p>
<p>Was it rape? Or was it just a young woman who made a poor decision? If she was intoxicated to the point that she could not give consent, then yes it was rape and he was fortunate that she didn’t pursue it legally because one poor decision could have destroyed his future. </p>
<p>I’m confident that situations like that take place on some campus, somewhere in this country every single day. The women are left feeling victimized and feeling like since they ‘consented’ that there is nothing they can do or knowing the devestating impact that it could have on the young men involved nothing they should do or even that they want to do, but they are still left with the scars. The young men involved are not always serial rapists seeking power, but sometimes just young men with abundant hormones that are emboldened by alcohol to make decisions they would not make otherwise. Rape is not always about power - date rape does exist (but it can still just be called rape). Alcohol reduces inhibitions, and sometimes it allows both males and females to do things that they wouldn’t do with a clear mind.</p>
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<p>I don’t think anyone has claimed in this thread that this is the ONLY scenario that happens. Mini’s link says serial rapists commit 9 out of 10 rapes on college campuses. I said they commit the majority. So, if we got rid of the serial offenders, the number of young women who get raped would go way down.</p>
<p>To me, one of the biggest problems is that most people think that almost all rapes on college campuses --at least those that don’t involve a complete stranger jumping out of the bushes or whatever–fall into the type Hunt and jrcsmom describe. They don’t. </p>
<p>If there were 40 rapes on a campus last year, odds are that there are no more than 15 rapists and 12 of them committed more than one rape.</p>
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Are you suggesting that I, or Emily Yoffe, or anybody else would disagree about that? What if only the first guy had sex with her, and they’d had sex many times before, hadn’t had a fight that night, and she was drunk but didn’t say no or resist. Is that rape? Should he be expelled? What if she doesn’t want to press charges, but somebody else thinks he should be prosecuted because she was too drunk to consent?</p>
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That’s kind of the problem, isn’t it? Since time immemorial, young people have liked to do binge drinking or some close equivalent, with accompanying stupid, risky, and subversive behaviors, and older people have wished they wouldn’t and tried to stop them. Legal and moral prohibitions haven’t worked, “just say no” hasn’t worked, “because I said so” hasn’t worked, and generations of gruesome driver’s ed film strips also haven’t worked. So now it’s “reduce your risk of rape.”</p>
<p>No one ever wants to restrict women, only to protect them. That’s what the Taliban says, too.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to be arguing this so strongly. I pointed out above that there remained a strong element of “blame the victim” in the article under discussion, but I wasn’t outraged by that, nor did I think it made the article not worth thinking about. I DON’T want to restrict my daughter, but I would tell her stuff like this if I weren’t sure she knew it already. I am suspicious, however, when rape-prevention looks like the knife-edge of a more comprehensive moral cleansing of young people’s behaviors, because I don’t think that will work.</p>
<p>“mini, it seems to me that you are falling victim to the fallacy that there is only ONE thing to do. Culture change is the ultimate goal.”</p>
<p>No, I am no victim, thank you. I just don’t settle for the “easy” (and unproven) strategy that might cause more damage than it prevents. If we continue telling men they are likely to become rapists (and shouldn’t do so) we “normalize” rape simply as something that all men might do (and they don’t.) There is lots of evidence that women who have a drink are more likely to be subjected to rape, but there is NO evidence that those who binge drink are at greater risk. (and, as you know, I’m no defender of binge drinking, especially since I know there are steps colleges can actually take to reduce it - and choose not to.)</p>
<p>“Date rape” doesn’t exist. It’s either rape or it isn’t. Most women who are raped know the perpetrator in advance. Culture change will happen when people and institutions start recognizing criminal behavior for what it is is, and acting accordingly.</p>
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JHS, I just don’t get how your statement is somehow less blaming the victim than what Emily Yoffe wrote. She’s the Taliban, and you’re not, because your daughter already knows “stuff like this?” I just don’t see it.</p>
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mini, just to make sure I understand your position on this, are you saying that every situation in which a man and a woman have sex, and the woman is too drunk to form consent, the man has raped the woman? I understand that this is the law in some jurisdictions–are you saying that this should be the law?</p>