<p>is exactly true. If you are not with any good friends, and are drinking heavily at a party, you are risking yourself. Doesn’t mean it is right to rape, just means that you are engaging in dangerous behavior.</p>
<p>When they have PSAs about not walking along the RR tracks, or skating on thin ice, do they blame the victims? Or are they trying to warn others?</p>
<p>IMHO, the biggest danger is to trust someone you don’t know to walk you home. NEVER open your dorm room door to ANYONE you don’t know well, if you are drunk.</p>
<p>I do think it is stupid to try to differentiate between drunk and incapacitated. You can be drunk and if you have been drinking steadily, you can become incapacitated soon after you “just felt a buzz”. Legally drunk = not able to make a contract verbal or otherwise.</p>
<p>Acquaintance rape is shockingly common, perhaps the most common of all sexual assaults on college campuses. While walking home with an acquaintance is likely better than walking home alone, walking home with multiple acquaintances, close friend(s), or a combination of the two is an even better idea. A friend who isn’t willing to leave a party to help a friend out isn’t a friend worth having.</p>
<p>Here we go again. “Many bad choices were made.” Assuming the published accusations are wrong, this is the kind of mealy-mouthed talk that infuriates me. The 14 year old (who was, let me say again, 14) stupidly sneaked out of the house, and stupidly accepted a large drink of alcohol. So those were bad choices.</p>
<p>And what “bad choices” did the alleged rapist make? Allegedly he chose to rape her and then to leave her outside overnight, underdressed, in subfreezing weather.</p>
<p>Why are we equating a young girl making stupid decisions and a young man committing brutal crimes?</p>
<p>“Bad choices were made” is the kind of talk that provides cover for victim-blamers. In Stuebenville, the victim was treated like dirt, while the perpetrators were exalted. In Marysville, the victim’s house was burned down, while the alleged perpetrator was defended. I’m sick of people pretending that victims don’t get blamed.</p>
<p>“A friend who isn’t willing to leave a party to help a friend out isn’t a friend worth having.”</p>
<p>Is it worth having a friend who, for the sake of her own entertainment, requires you to spend your Saturday night cleaning vomit out of her hair? I can’t even imagine enjoying any sort of recreation that required my friend to undergo a root canal, and IMHO being on vomit patrol is way worse than a root canal. There is no novocaine for that smell…</p>
<p>I did it. But I viewed the behavior leading to it as abuse of me and of the friendship. It should not be socially acceptable to impose on your friends this way. Yet, at far too many colleges (and high schools, and even “adult” social circles), it is.</p>
<p>In the Marysville case, the victim-blaming went as far as burning the victim’s house down. I’m at a loss to understand why people say victims don’t get blamed.</p>
<p>I have walked people back and I have taken care of them while they threw up. Yes, the latter was an abuse of friendship, and that was made clear to them the next day. It was dangerous for them and it was unpleasant for you–true friends will change after that first or second similar experience.</p>
<p>My comment though was mostly about the former case.</p>
<p>Jonri and mini: I am not questioning that there are serial predators on college campuses or that this is not a big problem. However, the way that certain statistics are repeated, both in the media and on this board, without providing valid studies, and using that to suggest that binge drinking among women does not add to victimization is not really accurate. </p>
<p>I read the Lisak amd Miller paper. They collected survey information on 1882 men over 4 different studies at a single commuter college. They stated that the ages of the men interviewed ranged from 18 to 71, with a mean age of 26.5 and that 20% were over 30. They found that 122 (6.4%) reported rape or attempted rape, with no distinction between the two. The paper states that of these, 80.8% reported rape of women who were “incapacitated because of drugs or alcohol”. The repeat rapists, who as Jonri notes, had a median number of 3 against either the same victim or multiple victims, also had a mean of 13.75 of other acts of violence each. There is no information on how the rapists correlated with age. Also, the authors do not suggest that serial predators are responsible for the majority of campus assaults. The study does not actually note (that I could see) whether the rapes these men reported took place during the school year and on campus (or related to the college) or at times they were not even attending college. </p>
<p>In a study called “The Sexual Victimization of College Women” from 2000, the study found that about 2.8% of college women were sexually victimized (rape or attempted rape) each academic year and translated that to over 5% per year (since college is in session for only about 7 months) and then to 20% over the course of a college career, including times when students are not on campus (breaks and summers). The study states that summer is a time when much victimization occurs. I wonder how many of these assaults take place off-campus, such as on spring break trips or at summer jobs. </p>
<p>The study states that “frequently drinking enough to get drunk” was one factor that consistently increase the likelihood of sexual victimization. Another factor was having previously been the victim of sexual assault. </p>
<p>It is also unfortunate to note that many of the women did not identify what happened to them as sexual assault. </p>
<p>These numbers, when projected over the entire population of college-aged women presents a national problem that needs a lot of effort. However, it does not seem as if 20% of college women are victims of sexual violence while at school during a four-year academic career. Also, both studies strongly suggest that drinking heavily makes women much more vulnerable to becoming a victim. Again, a reason to suggest to college-aged women that drinking to excess makes them more vulnerable. The message is the same to the boys: don’t drink to excess, along with never take advantage of a girl, especially if she has been drinking.</p>
<p>Young women need to be comfortable and embrace their sexuality. A healthy self-respect means they plan for it, they enjoy it, and do not waste the experience by being drunk at the time. Making good choices -without inhibitions fueled by alcohol. Being smart and being safe.</p>
<p>I’ve strongly resisted posting on here but I do think one point is important to make since I think a lot of people are speaking from the right place albeit doing it poorly.</p>
<p>Taking a lesson learned in a science writing course that I had: sentence structure and word order can drastically alter the psychological effect of a statement even if conceptually there is no difference.</p>
<p>Where am I going with this? I think many are failing to see that the following two statements have drastically different connotations/effects on readers:</p>
<p>“Rapists frequently use alcohol as a weapon.”
“Victims can minimize their risk of being raped by not drinking.”</p>
<p>In the first sentence, rapists is the first word and the subject of the verb. Our mind has been linguistically trained to hone in on both these things. Together, we interpret the sentence as being about rapists and the tactics they use. The latter sentence has victims as the first word and the subject of the verb. This makes it a sentence about victims. It shifts the discussion of rape and who causes/is responsible for rapes away from the rapists and makes it about what victims should and shouldn’t be doing to avoid it. This is the subtle type of victim blaming that still permeates society because we’re having a discussion about rape without even mentioning the rapists or what they’re doing and instead we’re focusing on victim behavior. Of course, in some places, even overt victim blaming still exists (stubenville, maryville, etc.)</p>
<p>Just because some people do blame victims that does not mean that young women should not be taught how to lessen the chances that they will be victims of sexual assault. </p>
<p>I live in an urban area. I always lock my door and set my alarm when I leave the house to go to work. I do that to lower the chances that I will become a victim of a crime. If my house is broken into on a day that I forget to do those things that does not make it my fault that the crime was committed. </p>
<p>I see a parallel with drinking to excess and sexual assault. We teach our kids to lock their homes to lessen the chances of being a victim of a property crime. Why wouldn’t we teach our kids ways to lessen their chances of being a victim of a sexual crime?</p>
<p>I agree. I want my daughters to be aware of the fact that rapists frequently use alcohol and other intoxicants the way car jackers use a weapon.</p>
<p>But, I still believe the best protection is to get the criminal sex offenders off campus and into prison where they belong. ASAP</p>
Im sorry I wasnt following the thread closely. Where exactly is the sentence, “Victims can minimize their risk of being raped by not drinking,” in Yoffes article. I cant seem to find it.</p>
<p>“Another factor was having previously been the victim of sexual assault.”</p>
<p>This is interesting, isn’t it. Women don’t walk around with labels on their foreheads, identifying themselves as survivors of sexual assault. So what causes the higher rate of assault for these women? Are predators sniffing them out somehow? Are they more likely to take risky actions?</p>
<p>sorry for the confusion, I was not quoting anyone in particular with my sentences, but Yoffe’s title is exactly what I’m talking about:</p>
<p>“College Women: Stop Getting Drunk”</p>
<p>not, “College Women: Rapists are using alcohol as a weapon.”</p>
<p>Or let’s look at the second half of the first sentence of the article:</p>
<p>“we read about a young woman, sometimes only a girl, who goes to a party and ends up being raped.”</p>
<p>How come that’s what we read about? Why aren’t we reading about the young man who goes to a party, sees a drunk girl, and rapes her. Why is the victim the focus? Why are we so focused on what the victim did leading up to the assault? This is rape culture. We focus on the victim’s choices, behavior, dress, and not on the perpetrator. Why don’t we hear about his mindset, his choices? Why don’t we focus on his mistakes? On some level, it’s practical - the perp often doesn’t disclose that info - but my point is - intentional or not - this kind of language leads to a focus on victim behavior and therefore instills the idea that the victim is the major driver of the story and thus responsible.</p>
<p>Hanna,
I imagine that, much like pedophiles, serial rapists are good at reading people and figuring out who the best targets are.</p>
<p>I think you are misreading the study. Your post says it does NOT say things I think it does say. Perhaps the following Q and A with the author will clarify his findings:</p>
<p>If you do accept that there are serial rapists on campus and that they are responsible for many rapes, I think that’s progress. I think most of us, myself included, have a hard time accepting that concept. I think most of us, myself included, start with the presumption that most acquaintance rapes on campus are in the gray zone, i.e., resulting from miscommunication, usually when one or both parties have had too much to drink. </p>
<p>College disciplinary proceedings may actually work fairly well in those scenarios–especially since reality is that it is extremely unlikely a DA would ever prosecute. But there is doubt that they work well for the serial rapist. See [College</a> Serial Rapists Evade Antiquated Campus Responses - Bloomberg](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?) </p>
<p>How Occidental dealt with the rapes discussed in the Bloomberg article is the subject of many articles, which you can find by googling. At one point, the college president verbally attacked the 2 faculty members who helped the students write a complaint against the college. </p>
<p>I don’t feel any personal responsibility to verify or authenticate statements regarding the percentage of female college students who are raped. I just think that we as a society need to figure out a better way of dealing with campus rape and that to do that we have to realize that a lot of rapes are committed by serial rapists who act with intent.</p>
<p>I too think I<strong>wannabe</strong>Brown’s analysis is excellent and that post 175 has it exactly right.</p>