<p>Historically, I guess this is how women survive in violent cultures?</p>
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<p>Um, well there are some pretty large financial things which “happen” to a man if their partner gets pregnant, like paying for someone else’s living expenses for 18 years. Bay’s point was that women get to choose to terminate pregnancy after the date of conception, while men do not. </p>
<p>It’s amazing how myopic people are when coming to gender discussions; people claim there is such a patriarchy and then completely ignore that there are plenty of common situations in which there are unequal power balance favoring the woman. Custody rights of children is yet another very common example. There are a small minority of people in both genders who have little or no ethics or empathy, and these people will either break laws or abuse the rules to hurt other people, and this often includes actions which specific to impacting their significant other. Though men typically don’t have to worry about loss-of-life or rape, there are other things they need to be warned about that could potentially ruin their life. In other words, yes, young men need to be warned just about women do, just about different things. </p>
<p>I will also add one thing which I think was implied in someone’s comment (Bay’s?) about statutory rape. The girl may not tell you that they are underage and it may not be apparent, so I think this is what was meant about being wary of a sexually aggressive female who shows up at your frat party. </p>
<p>To add to my point, I still think that analyzing whether fraternities are more prone to sexual assault is a valid question. I don’t know the answer to it. </p>
<p>However, I’m a little alarmed at some of the attitudes I’ve seen on CC which seem to be mainstream. For instance, one post on the other thread said that they were fine with having incarceration be a potential danger for men having casual sex in college. And they pointed out women have to worry about being raped, so I guess the implication is that it makes things more equal if men have to worry about being charged if their partner decides to say it wasn’t consensual afterwards (and assuming there was no evidence). In other words, statistically false allegations are unlikely so we should basically trust that any allegation is true. </p>
<p>A potential danger for women when they have casual sex is that they will be raped. Regardless what they think they are agreeing to, something else may happen. Women live that reality. I am sure there is some degree of potential danger that men who have casual sex will be falsely accused of rape and perhaps falsely imprisoned. How are these unequal risks when deciding to engage in casual sex? My take would be the woman takes on the greater risk since rape is violent. Also, I am assuming the man’s participation in casual sex is always consensual. Maybe it’s not. Of course, a man in prison, may also be raped. So maybe equal risks? </p>
<p>I tend to agree with mamalion that men who don’t want children can use condoms perfectly. And maybe not have sex with women with whom they don’t want to have children. If that is a concern.</p>
<p>Dinner guests just arrived. I’m off till tomorrow. </p>
<p>Thanks Hanna for post 259. I am reevaluating my entire life based on that insight! : )</p>
<p>Actually, collegealum, it’s the way certain posters continue to insist on framing the questions and discussion which even leads to these irrelevant equivalencies. How I feel about rapists and rape on college campus has nothing to do with how I feel about the rare false accusation. But, we continually get faced with these two issues as if they are part of the same thing, and they are not. It’s not either/or. I abhor false accusation, in any crime: rape, murder, theft, insurance fraud. </p>
<p>But, that really does not have to be the main, or even the equivalent, issue when discussing this problem. The main problem when it comes to rape on college campus is rape. Saying this and focusing on this says nothing about anything other than the fact that I believe this is a major problem and has been a major problem for decades.</p>
<p>Any other issue is another issue, to me. And I think I, and many others, find it telling that so much of our time is spent deflecting conversation about potential false accusations when we are still not even close to dealing with actual rapes. </p>
<p>If we discuss cheating on college campus, or mugging, or theft, we do not have to spend over half the thread discussing false accusations, and I don’t think this crime should be any different.</p>
<p>^Right!! We can’t even talk about crimes against women. The focus always shifts to injustices men might suffer if women aren’t silenced or acquire some power. It will be really interesting to revisit this sort of discussion 5 and 10 years out. I keep comparing it to what has happened with gay rights. The silenced group has to find a voice and demand power for any change to occur. imho If I had had daughters, I would have been paying a lot closer attention to this the last few decades. My bad. My bad.</p>
<p>I’m not drawing equivalency in terms of the numbers of false allegations vs actual rapes. It’s not about deflecting; if people propose solutions to the rape problem and their solution is to throw everyone in jail who gets accused of rape (absent any external evidence like a rape kit or other witnesses). Well, there is a problem with that solution. It seems your attitude is that the men as a group get away with rape more than women as a group make a false allegation, so we should just assume every allegation is true. Is this your argument? That’s a serious question.</p>
<p>Frankly, after about 80 pages of that other thread, I am still not sure what you would have changed about how such cases are adjudicated. Everybody on this thread agrees that rape should result in expulsion from the school and criminal prosecution in the legal system. What exactly would you do in the case that two people go out on a date and have sex when the male says it was consensual and the female doesn’t, absent a rape kit or other witnesses? You seem to think considering individual details is unimportant, but whether a law will it’s all about how a rule is executed. When I derive an equation, I look at the boundary points to find out whether the equation makes sense: what happens when x is large and what happens when x goes to zero. I am doing the same here.</p>
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In those other crimes, you need actual evidence. Unfortunately, in cases of rape when the victim knows the accuser, the fundamental problem is that often there is no evidence.</p>
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<p>That is true. I responded to Bay with something along the lines of “men should not only use condoms but also make sure their partners use something they can ascertain is present, like a diaphragm or IUD” if that is a concern.</p>
<p>Also, men who get women pregnant are not on the hook for the entire “living expenses for 18 years”. Child support assumes both parents pay according to their means with the one actually doing the parenting often but not always the recipient of that support. </p>
<p>Women get the same financial consequence AND the physical and emotional consequences of pregnancy. Heck as we see this week, the legal consequences of doing it badly, too. </p>
<p>collegealum: I greatly respect most of your posts and I understand you are much more intelligent than I am.</p>
<p>This is what I see. When I was in college in the 70s it was impossible for a woman to be raped by a college man or by someone she knew. We did not understand that definition of rape. The definition has changed. When I read all the stories of cover-ups of campus rape, it seems to me the default position is that one has to be sceptical of a woman claiming rape. The default position is that it probably didn’t really happen. Even in the case of the NYTimes weekend front page article, there has been talk about how the rape survivor was drinking, with the implication that made her at fault for her own gang rape.</p>
<p>poetgrl is right. Rape is the real problem. We don’t seem to be able to talk about rape. I am absolutely guilty too and keep getting sidetracked.</p>
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<p>I would really just like, at this point, colleges to stop covering up for rapists on campus, and to stop with the way they have previously been discouraging reporting to the police, and the adjudication processes of the past… People all over crying foul about the current potential “tribunals” need to understand that this process of investigating the victim as if she is responsible for the crime, in terms of rape on campus, has been going on forever, if there was even an investigation at all.</p>
<p>@collegealum You are so far ahead of me on this one when you say I want all allegations assumed to be true. I simply want the cover ups to stop, for one thing, and for colleges to behave responsibly toward the women on their campuses. </p>
<p>For the record: If Collegealum had not posted that post about rape, I would not have posted my last two posts on this particular thread. </p>
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<p>OK, well, I agree with you here and I have no problem believing college admins have ignored obvious rapes and tried to cover them up. In the past, I am sure patriarchal attitudes impacted this heavily. While there may be some of this today as well, I think basic laziness towards student issues, incompetence, and self-interest in terms of maintaining funds to the university explain a lot of the mishandling of the rape cases. The people that make the decisions at universities were promoted to their positions because they were good at concentrating on securing grant funding and ignoring everything else. I think it is better if college rapes are brought to the courts; perhaps, civil suits should also be encouraged in addition to criminal courts; in civil courts, the standard of proof isn’t as high as in the criminal courts. </p>
<p>If you are raped, report it to the police. Sooner is better than later, because much of the direct evidence will only be there for a few days.</p>
<p>He is innocent until proven guilty. That is how our criminal justice system works.</p>
<p>But – even if he gets away with it – you still have essentially wrecked his reputation. (which is fair if he really did commit rape; unfair if he did not).</p>
<p>Probably many such situations could be avoided in the first place with an increase in sobriety. </p>
<p>One reason the issue of false accusations keeps coming up is that in an effort to appear to be doing something proactive about campus rapes, some colleges appear to be simply altering the standard of proof for cases rather than actually addressing the root causes of the problem. Everybody should question that approach. That’s not an either-or, either.</p>
<p>Yesterday, I talked to my son, who graduated from Yale a year ago. I started by asking him, “What are the most rapey fraternities at Yale?” He said, “Well, Deke, of course…” and then went on to list several others, with more or less degrees of what he saw as rapiness. I asked him his definition of “rapey,” and he said that it’s a place where they try to get girls as drunk as possible so they can have sex with them. But he also said that he knows plenty of upstanding, decent guys who are in fraternities and who (in his opinion) wouldn’t rape anybody and wouldn’t tolerate it if they saw it happening. He said the principal activity at fraternities is getting really, really drunk.</p>
<p>It seems to me that at least some fraternities make very convenient environments for serial predators. They are private, have no real adult supervision, they have a lot of small rooms with beds in them, there is a lot of drinking, and a lot of women come there for parties, including many who probably are willing to have sex with attractive athletes in the first place. That’s pretty good protective camouflage for a guy who wants to assert power by having sex with unconsenting women.</p>
<p>For the record, @Hunt, I really don’t feel as if you are one of the posters who is attempting to act as if this is the “only” or even most important issue. I find your posts illuminating, also @Hanna has made some really good legal points on various threads on this issue. For me, I’m like the Lorax, I speak for the trees. B-) </p>
<p>It doesn’t mean I’m unaware of potential risks to the potential solutions, it’s just that I think the status quo does not work and the more solutions we try, the closer we will get to something that actually works. Anything at all will work better than what we’ve had.</p>
<p>The important thing is this, the move towards finding a solution to this problem on college campuses is very new…The problem, however, is not.</p>
<p>You know, if I were in a sorority (which golly, yes, I was), and I was aware that a reasonable rape accusation had been made against a fraternity (by reasonable, I simply mean not-frivolous), wild horses couldn’t drag me to that place for a party. If I wanted to socialize with males in that house, we should all go to dinner as a group or whatever. I don’t get why certain kinds of girls would continue to go there. </p>
<p>That has always puzzled me too, Pizzagirl. I can certainly understand naive freshmen in their first few months going there–and as we know, that appears to be when they are most at risk–but the others? I mean, there are other houses to visit. It’s not like you have to stay home if you don’t want to go to the houses with a poor reputation. </p>
<p>I think I have some idea of why they go: those are often the places with lots of social capital within a certain mindset. Jocks, campus celebrities. alpha males. But it is foreign to me to be swayed by such things. Actually, I usually find that whole aura a distinct turn-off, especially since it is usually accompanied by deep-seated sexism. </p>
<p>And before people start flaming, please note that neither of us said that a young woman who voluntarily goes to such a place is asking to be raped.</p>
<p>Yeah. I mean, what “social capital” can a “rapey” fraternity possibly have??? Who could possibly then think - oh wow, those guys are cool?</p>
<p>Frankly, the “cool” guys would be the ones who - upon seeing that a brother was intending to take advantage of an inebriated girl – “rescued” her, ensured that she got home safely and punished or expelled the brother. </p>
<p>But the “bad boy” thing has never had an appeal to me!</p>
<p>No. I know. That’s the huge issue. That’s why it’s known as the “red zone,” when girls first get to school, or even if they are transfers. It’s the first amount of time on campus, and when some of the dark alleyways aren’t identifiable to girls who think they are just “parties.” But, to be honest, even if girls avoid all of the rapey places on a campus, they are still at “some” risk. Well, all women know they are at “some risk” and need to have some street smarts.</p>
<p>The issue for the new girls on campus is that the street smarts they might need are counterintuitive. But, more and more information is getting out there, and more and more boys are engaging in bystander intervention, and the stats are getting better… From what little we can tell.</p>
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<p>The “bad boy thing” is one key reason why even males who were raised with good values and yet, felt a need to fit into an exclusive all-male organization which exudes such social capital would be appealing along with why they’d be unwilling to risk losing their tenuous access by rocking the boat and “snitching on a brother”. </p>
<p>Similarly, the same could be said for women who continue to join such parties. </p>
<p>The “bad boy thing” appeals to a lot of young people in our society. Why do you think pop culture, especially since the '50s has popularized the rebellious young in various mediums?</p>
<p>In terms of not understanding it, I can relate as I find this type of “bad boy” shtick to be extremely outmoded, trite, and dumb. </p>
<p>I think Hanna answered the question of why women frequent the rapey fraternities. It sure makes sense to me.</p>
<h1>259 A gender studies professor would probably call this internalized patriarchy. At any rate, there are women who seek out groups of men who are perceived as sexually dominant and aggressive. It may be that they feel that they share some of that power when they align with those men, or that connecting with them confers a sort of protection.</h1>
<p>Some fraternities are very powerful, networking machines beyond a student’s undergraduate years. Some of these are rapey fraternities. The fiancés ,sweethearts, little sisters, pinned steadies are probably not at risk for sexual assault in those houses. Those women do have access to power in a way they might not otherwise. This sort of fraternity is sometimes also a physical threat to men as well as women. Hazing is obviously an example of violence towards their own members. I think it is possible non-affiliated campus males can also be at risk. </p>
<p>There are definitely non-rapey fraternities, but the fact the rapey ones existed and the fact they were usually entrenched bastions of male power over generations, turned me off on the whole scene. </p>
<h1>274 *You know, if I were in a sorority (which golly, yes, I was), and I was aware that a reasonable rape accusation had been made against a fraternity (by reasonable, I simply mean not-frivolous), wild horses couldn’t drag me to that place for a party. If I wanted to socialize with males in that house, we should all go to dinner as a group or whatever. I don’t get why certain kinds of girls would continue to go there. *</h1>
<p>I made a deliberate decision not to marry a fraternity man even though that would have been the normal thing for me to do given my upbringing. While still in high school, and very early on in college, I dated fraternity men and went to all the parties, but it really got under my skin. I did not really want to associate with men willingly part of a rapey house or part of a system that included rapey houses. I wasn’t comfortable being a women protected from male violence by those who created risk for other women. I never liked the concept of “certain kinds of girls” who were somehow less than the kind of girls my social circle contained. That is one reason sorority life was truly excruciating for me.</p>
<p>I am not trying to pick on you PG. Interpreting the fraternity/sorority experience is just a really interesting subject to me. And I am happy to concede right now that your sorority was a good one and your husband’s fraternity a non-rapey one. : )</p>
<p>ETA: and some of my best friends to this day are sorority women ; )</p>