Monday, September 6, 2010

Bullshit Patrol: One in Four College Women Will Be Raped Before They Graduate, According to Justice Department Study... Really?




It's back-to-school in the United States, so that means it's time to whip up the parents with stories of all the evil things which will happen to their progeny once they've left the nest. On the top of the heap this semester, we have a report by The Huffington Post that CBS news claims that one in four female college students will be raped by graduation day. Here's what CBS says:
A recent study fom the Department of Justice estimated that 25 percent of college women will be victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate within a four-year college period, and that women between the ages of 16 to 24 will experience rape at a rate that's four times higher than the assault rate of all women.
 
There are a couple of problems with this report.

First of all, this is old, not recent news: the study which discovered this was published 10 years ago by Fisher, Cullen and Turner, in 2000. The current publication simply refers to that study: it is not itself a study, but a handbook regarding acquaintance rape. The original study can be found here. The handbook which ABC mistook for a recent study can be found here.

Secondly, the study does not indicate that 25% of all college women will be raped, but rather about half that number (13,75%). Ariana Huffington's krewe apparently has a hard time discerning between "rape" and "attempted rape". 

Furthermore, a methodologically similar study undertaken by the same Justice Department indicates a rape rate 11 TIMES LESS than that indicated by Fisher, et al.

Finally, Fisher et al note that only 46% of the 86 women who they classified as having suffered a rape believed themselves to have been raped. Basically, what these researchers are saying is that the women themselves do not agree with the way the researchers are classifying these incidents. Fisher et al haven't a clear idea of why this disharmony in classification occurs, other than "Well, maybe the women don't understand what rape is or don't want to talk about it" (odd, given that the women had to agree in writing to specifically participate in a survey on sexual violence and rape on campus). Call it anthropological belief in one's informants, but I think we can take it as a given that a person knows when they've been raped, folks. I think we should take their word on it primarily.

Part of the problem here may be a rather fuzzy and imprecise definition of rape which guided the researcher's analysis: "Forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion as well as physical force."  "Psychological coercion" is open to a wide range of subjective interpretations and the researcher's understanding of this might not coincide with that of their informants.

If we were to take Fisher et al's informants on their word, however, and classify as rape what these women say was rape, then we find that, far from 25% of all female college student's being raped by graduation day, as the headline implies, we're looking at (13.75 x .46) 6.32%.

It should be pointed out here that Fisher et al's study is pretty responsible and transparent (though they could have given us better information on how they were classifying rapes in opposition to their informants' classifications by presenting us with a series of case studies). Irresponsible scientific reporting is the problem here, with the media multiplying by 2 to 4 times what the study shows.

6% is, in any case, still a very high number. It's about 4 times the national average and indicates a significant problem. But one wonders, then, why so many people think they need to exagerate this number beyond all reasonable bounds? Most people who have gone through university, male or female, are going to have a "bullshit" reaction when they see that 25%. Ultimately, this sort of exageration ends up making people DISMISS the issue of acquaintence rape.

This problem, of course, is found wherever research runs up against public policy. People believe that there is a problem - rape on campus, say, or trafficking of persons. Researchers go out and find that the problem does indeed exist, but is quite complicated. Politicians and moral entrepeneurs then get on the bandwagon and distort and simplify the findings so that they seem more alarming. Then the old media comes along and distorts the findings some more, because "if it bleeds, it leads". Finally, bloggers and new media close the process by incorrectly citing the media's take on the politicians' understanding of the original findings. At each stage in this process, estimates of victims go up, up, up.

The end result is this: a Department of Justice study found 34 women who claimed to have been raped over a seven month period out of a total of 4,446 women surveyed. Applying their own etic version of "rape", the researchers more than doubled this number to 74. By including attempted rapes, the number was pushed to 123. Then, by presuming that this rate is stable for the entire five year period of a woman's college career, it was reported that 25% of all college women will be raped or suffer an attempted rape during their school years. Desperate for "back-to-school" scare stories, CBS picks this up and  broadcasts it to the four winds as "new research" when, in fact, it's the same old research of ten years ago in a new wrapper. Finally, the Huffington Post reports CBS' coverage and drops the "attempted rape".

Boom: a political meme is born: 25% of American female college grads are rape victims.

26 comments:

  1. It's like Mark Twain said: 'Get your facts first then you can distort them as much as you please'.

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  2. "There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain

    Nowhere is this more true than in the reporting on this study and studies like it. I wish more people would actually take the time to look into the statistics they see, hear, and quote so often.

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  3. Hmmm... This is interesting. Not the process of upgrading number of victims to sound more alarming (as if 5% or 6% isn't horrible on itself). I meant on the old question "what is rape exactly?"

    Indeed, is it possible to be raped but don't realize it was a rape? (Does this question even make sense?) It goes with another question: is it possible to have sex, but realize it was rape later? Still doesn't make sense.

    On the other hand, narrow definition of rape as an violent assault from the dark with a weapon threat can't explain all the rapes and it doesn't mean you weren't raped if it didn't happen this way.

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  4. But I believe nobody has a right to take female (or male for that matter) control on her sexuality. So if she says it wasn't a rape, it wasn't.

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  5. Looking at other studies bandied about by folks on the Huffington Post, it seems that 70% of these rapes cvan be described in the following way: get the girl so drunk she can't resist (or give consent) and then have sex with her. They are not, by and large, rapes involving physical violence.

    This is based on studies of men who claim to do this, by the way. About 4% of college men in one study copped to doing or trying to do this sort of thing, on the average 6 times during their lives.

    I can easily see how this causes problems for analysts, especially analysts who come armed to the study with dogmas regarding rape.

    Let's say the following happens (and I'm sure we've all seen this happen): it's Friday and Ana Maria wants to parTAY! She tells all her friends about her big plans for the weekend, which include "snogging some cute guy" as part of the deal. Ana Maria goes to the Tappa Kegga Bud fraternity for their mixer and dives into the wapatooli barrel. By 11:00PM, she's drunk as a skunk and snogging some member of the frat - perhaps more than one. By midnight, she's up in someone's room, where she passes out. Her snog-mate then shags her.

    The next day, Ana Maria's hungover and embarassed about what happened. She WAS indeed looking for sex, but not THAT way. She doesn't even remember the guy's name and all her friends and his friends saw her snogging him like mad. Of course she doesn't go to the police: she has no legal case whatsoever and would be laughed out of court if she claimed rape.

    In fact, she doubts it was rape. I mean, she wanted to get laid, just not like THAT.

    So the survey calls her up six months later and asks if she's ever been forced to have sex she didn't want. Ana Maria says "Oh yes". Then they ask her if she considers this to be rape and she says "no".

    Ana Maria is very aware of the complexities and ambiguities of her situation. She was forced to have sex but it's not exactly like she didn't want to have sex. Unless she can find an eye witness that's willing to testify that she was out like a light and gave no consent, she has no legal leg to stand on in court. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to Ana Maria like it WAS rape. Certainly not what she'd qualify as rape.

    The social scientific researcher, instead of describing this situation and letting the data speak for itself, actively CREATES the classification "rape" and attributes it where thei informant wouldn't. The social scientist is, in effect, claiming that they know more about Ana Maria's life, motivations and expectations than she does herself and that Ana Maria should be agood little girl, shut up, and accept the role of "rape victim" that the social scientist has constructed for her.

    Needless to say, this is piss-poor social science that is more motivated by a legal ideology than it is by a need or a desire to find out what's really going on out there.

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  6. Also, note that the rhetoric of the anti-rape movement doesn't apply in this case: "Yes means yes and no means no" means nothing when the person in question is too drunk to say either.

    This doesn't excuse this sort of behavior, but it does indicate that the movement needs to focus on getting the point across that a helpless person can't give informed consent for sex.

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  7. Wait a second, you think that if someone has sex with someone who is passed out, that isn't rape?

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  8. I'm talking about what this woman thinks of her situation and why that might come into conflict with the researchers' analysis: they are presuming that their etic analysis of the situation is superior to the woman's emic analysis of it.

    I question that presumption.

    I am also talking about what the law is to make of this situation in PRACTICAL and not abstract terms.

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  9. But wait, Thad. "Wanting to have sex" doesn't mean much here. What if she wants to have sex with one guy, but other one has sex with her... The fact she "wanted to have sex" means nothing if it wasn't with the person she wanted. So "I wanted, but not THAT way" is a legit claim.

    Also, if she was too drunk to give consent that wasn't sex between consenting adults. But yes, the problem is, what if she doesn't see that as a rape?

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  10. Mira, that's not my point. The point is: look at it from her subjective point of view. Yes, "I wanted, but not THAT way" is a legit claim, but what if, like I said, she remembers snogging this guy and can't remember if she gave consent or not? What if he was as drunk as she was and can't remember either?

    What the authors in that survey are saying is that she was raped, independent of what she thinks about the issue, independent of any other facts.

    But she might very well say "Well, here is a situation in which I had sex when I didn't want to, but it's very hard to tell what happened. The guy I had sex with isn't who I would want to have sex with, but he seems to have been as drunk as I was and god knows what really happened. Do I really want to screw up his life, claiming he raped me, when I don't know what happened and he doesn't seem to be a bastard?"

    My problem here is the presumption that women are always too weak, silly, brainwashed, stigmatized, vulnerable, or whatever when they claim a situation like this is not rape. If they feel that they don't know what happened, how the hell is a person who wasn't even there, who hasn't even met the woman or the guy in question, able to judge?

    This is what bothers me in the "campus rape" debate: we are constantly enjoined to respect women's subjective feelings on this issue and support them. But, apparently, that isn't the case when they aren't claiming rape. Then we are fully authorized to wave away their subjective experiences and feelings, lable them "victims" and TELL them what they experienced.

    Look, I have had sex and not recalled what happened the next day. The person I had sex with was as drunk as me. It wasn't sex I normally would have had and this person was pretty aggressive about it. The next day, I could barely remember what happened.

    I would qualify that situation as one in which I was coerced to have sex. I would also say that I'd feel like a complete scumbag to say that said person "raped" me, given that no violence was involved and they were as drunk as I was and neither of us, apparently, were in control of the situation. I CERTAINLY don't think that person - who is still my friend - should go through life stigamtized as a rapist.

    Now the odd thing is that I can tell this story - as a man - and have everyone shrug their shoulders and nod their heads. If I were a woman, however, I'd have a legion of well-meaning people trying to convince me that my analysis of the situation is the result of denial or post-traumatic stress disorder. My subjective feelings about the matter wouldn't be taken seriously.

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  11. from findlaw:
    Rape

    The crime of rape (or "first-degree sexual assault" in some states) generally refers to non-consensual sexual intercourse that is committed by physical force, threat of injury, or other duress. A lack of consent can include the victim's inability to say "no" to intercourse, due to the effects of drugs or alcohol. Rape can occur when the offender and victim have a pre-existing relationship (sometimes called "date rape"), or even when the offender is the victim's spouse.

    As a domestic violence survivor, a sexual assault survivor, and a sex worker, I find this whole post really disturbing. I mention those parts of my identity because I want it to be clear that these are not theoretic issues for me, they are my experience.
    First off, it seems like you're twisting feminist arguments that women, along with everyone else, should be able to define their own experience. Sure, except that there's context. We live in a patriarchal society where the common sexual assault statistic is 1 in 3 for women, and 1 in 10 for men. And it is VASTLY UNDERREPORTED, so statistics are almost meaningless. If I and the majority of my friends have been sexually assaulted (a term I use instead of rape, because it includes non-consensual sexual acts which are likely to result in trauma, which as the long-lasting effect of assault is the most important thing needing to be treated on an individual level), if NONE of us have reported our sexual assaults, what does that say about the statistics?
    In regards to the case in which someone is sexually assaulted and realizes it later, yes, that happens ALL THE TIME. It is extremely confusing to be assaulted by a family member, friend, or partner (which is most often the case), and living in a culture which denies that sexual assault is a pattern, and that sex exists for the satisfaction of men primarily, it can take years to realize that you've experienced rape or sexual assault, especially if it occurred in childhood.

    In general, I think that researchers labeling the experiences of their subjects differently than those subjects would is disempowering. But, if someone is being interviewed and says "well, my boyfriend did hold me down and have sex with me when I wasn't really in the mood, and I said I didn't want to, but I'm his girlfriend so it's not a big deal, it's not rape," that's what I call denial. Denial is what keeps rape culture alive, because even if it does acknowledge that rape occurs, it labels it an individual experience instead of a societal pattern.

    I should say also that the reason that this bothers me so much is that I was linked to your blog through though Laura Agustin's blog. I respect her highly and ally myself with other sex workers against the anti-trafficking craze. This makes me wonder if the vocal critics of mainstream anti-trafficking rhetoric are lacking in a feminist analysis of sexual assault.

    "
    Look, I have had sex and not recalled what happened the next day. The person I had sex with was as drunk as me. It wasn't sex I normally would have had and this person was pretty aggressive about it. The next day, I could barely remember what happened."

    Sex that happens under coercion can be counted as sexual assault.

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  12. No doubt.

    I think there's a basic misunderstanding going on here.

    Let me make myself perfectly clear: I agree that if someone wants to charge rape after having had sexual relations under conditions where they were too impaired to say no, they certainly should be able to do so.

    What I DON'T agree with is the idea that the State or researchers trump subjective experience and personal decisions on this point.

    Just like we should pay attention and respect someone when they want to chjarge rape in a situation like this, we should also pay attention and respect their decision when they DON'T.

    This study, to my mind, gives power and authority to the researchers to determine what rape is and overrides individual's emic understandings with no investigation of these. It ASSUMES that the individuals are ignorantr, sick, stigmatized, cowed or whater and does not ask them why they woluldn't consider suchh a situation to be rape.

    As I've described with my situation above, there are indeed perfectly good subjective reasons why an individual would not want to qualify a situation as rape, even though they may well recognize that they've had sex against their will.

    I realize that this is a radical position for many people - especially Americans, who increasingly seem to see the law as a fetish object which determines right and worng absolutely (see, frex, the Tea Party's views on illegal immigration), but there it is.

    One should not be bullied, coerced, or forced into declaring rape and one's views on ones's subjective experiences with sex CERTAINLY should not be subject to external review by some self-appointed scientific and/or legal committee.

    Now that THAT is cleared up, let me make it very odd that you would think that this is a specificly feminine issue, Troublet, give the fact that men report rape in the U.S. at a rate of 1/5th to 1/3rd that of women - and we know male on male rape is VASTLY under-reported.

    Furthermore, I too, set my comments in the context of a personal expoerience. I, too, have survived all sorts of violence and at least one experience of what could be considered rape under a strictly legalist interpretation of the phenomenon.

    I am not a big fan of psychological terms like denial which seek to disempower people in labeling their own subjective experiences. Though I`m sure denial does indeed exist, I`ve also seen it used as an excuse to do some incredibly evil things to people.

    I know people who would qualify what happened to me as sexual assault and I know people who WOULDN`T. I, personally, am not willing to say that someone else has a superior view of my subjective experience.

    And yes, I agree that sexual violence is an omnipresent part of society and that stats regarding it are often off. What I DON`T agree with is the view that one`s subjective experience qualifies one to claim that stats are always infinitely worse than what`s portrayed.

    I think that there are some studies out there with pretty good methodology on sexual violence (at least in the States) and many of these studies upport each other`s findings. I`ve recently been doing a lot of reading of these studies and when one sees the same numbers coming up again and again in different research, one tends to believe that things are a bit more clear than you would have us believe Troubvlet.

    Based on what I`ve read, it seems that about 15% of women are raped during their lifetimes and about half of this happens before age 18. 25% of women are subject to attempted rape in their lifetimes. This is the CDC`s take, the DoJ`s take, and the take of a couple of U.S. States that do this sort of research. These numbers aren`t based on crime reports, btw, but surveys of statistically significant chunks of the population.

    thanks for your opinion and excuse me for not being clear enough for you? yes OF COURSE people have the right to charge rape under the circumstances described above.

    They also have the right NOT TO without being labeled, essentially, mentally illl.

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  13. For folks who foud the above tl;dr...

    "Sex that happens under coercion can be counted as sexual assault."

    Yes, but peoples' views on what constitutes coercion differ and these views shouldn't be overrun with authoritarian presumptions of "denial", absent other evidence.

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  14. What you're missing is that someone might not label their experience as sexual assault because:
    -the perpetrator is a friend, family member, or partner, who the survivor feels loyal to despite being betrayed by them OR the survivor will be subject to further abuse if they talk about the assault OR they have been threatened by their perpetrator, assured that it is a "mistake" that'll never happen again, etc etc etc
    -when the survivor reported their assault to someone, their confidant denied that it happened, eg "you're making a big deal out of nothing," "that's normal"

    What researchers are saying when they qualify certain experiences as sexual assault, whether the survivor of a particular instance labels it that or not, is that they are something that people should not expect to experience. If you go to a party and get sloshed, even if you were initially looking to get laid, you don't "deserve" to wake up having been fucked by someone without remembered whether you said yes or not. That should not be normal. Go ahead and label that opinion "authoritarian," I'm an anarchist, but I still have morals. One of them is that sex should be for mutual enjoyment, and though I'm not going to go into people's bedrooms raving about how they need to learn how to eat pussy the right way, I will sure as hell advocate for the right of EVERYONE to enjoy sexual activity, with full consent.

    The flipside of the "drunk girl/guy/person at a party" scenario which is so rarely addressed is, who is this person doing the fucking? Why do they think it's ok to get off at someone else's expense? And why are so many so quick to jump to their defense?

    Also, I may not have made it clear, but I do see sexual assault as something perpetrated mainly by men, though not solely, against people of all genders. Maybe the example I used made it seem like I'm towing the "men=rapist women=victims" line, but that's not so.

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  15. I find it telling that you so broadly use the label "authoritarian," yet delete my comments because you disagree with me.
    -troublet

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  16. Troublet, your comments have not been deleted. AFAIK, you've made one post here (prior to your complaint about post removal) and that post is displayed above. I have not seen any other post by you other than your complaint immediately above.

    If you did indeed post something and it's not here, I invite you to post it again: you apparently made some error - or, more likely, Blogspot did - and it didn't show up.

    Yesterday, when I was typing my response to you, I noticed that Blogspot wasn't registering my posts correctly. Just so you know: you need to select your profile before you hit the "post comments" button. If the system doesn't ask you to type in a keyword after that, then something has gone wrong and you should post again. Yesterday, I had to try and post 4 times before blogspot finally registered my comment.

    Post away! If you do repeat posts, I can always edit them out at your request. It's better to make sure and risk a repeat post than to trust blogspot on this point, I have found.

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  17. Well, this is definitely strange.

    New comments - including mine - are not showing up.

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  18. Troublet, I assure you that your post hasn`t been deleted, at least not by me!

    I haven`t even read it yet!

    For some reason, my last two posts were deleted as well. It seems to be some error at blogspot. Anonymous posts seem to be getting through, but other stuff won`t.

    I encourage you to post again, as anonymous, and see if it goes through this time.

    Thanks,
    Thad

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  19. I'll try as anonymous.

    Now the odd thing is that I can tell this story - as a man - and have everyone shrug their shoulders and nod their heads.

    Double standards?

    If you felt you were hurt or that somebody took advantage of you, etc. I see no problem claiming rape. Now, I don't think you'd ever prove in court that you didn't have a good time, and that there was something wrong about what happened to you. (Wait, the person we're talking about is female, right? If it's male, it's a different situation and it would be easier to claim rape).

    That is, if you WANT to do that and if you THINK you were raped. Since you don't, it wasn't a rape.

    I do think it's the same for females. But the problem is, they often mistake the embarrassment of acting like a slut for emotional pain of being raped. No kidding here. And no, it's not the same thing.

    But then again, if society condemns you for acting like this, and if public rapes you, so to speak, it can bring a huge emotional pain. So you begin thinking you were, in fact, raped.

    Thad, you seem to often underestimate the power of female guilt and what the label "slut" can do for female emotions, mind and self esteem.

    PS-This thing is proved with false rape accusations. Lynchings were one of the most extreme situations, but the pattern is the same. I don't even think these women lied about being raped: I do think many of them actually believed that's what happened.

    Mira

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  20. So rape, apparently, is indeed a subjective thing, as many feminists point out.

    This is why I'm against the notion that research scientists should be accorded the power to claim that something is "really" rape when the person who it happened to wouldn't.

    You can't claim that rape is simultaneously an objective AND subjective phenomenon, and that seems to be what certain people want to do.

    As for undersestimating guilt, quite the contrary. And it's one of the reasons why I am leary of people who suddenly "discover" that the bad sex they had was "really" rape.

    -Thaddeus

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  21. As for undersestimating guilt, quite the contrary. And it's one of the reasons why I am leary of people who suddenly "discover" that the bad sex they had was "really" rape.

    Explain, please.

    Mira

    PS-Is safe to post comments with name/url now?

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  22. Mira, I just got back from the U.S. and a more sexually repressed, confused and fucked up people you'll be hard-pressed to find on this planet.

    This is ESPECIALLY true with regards to their attitude towards sex and youth. Now, there's a huge variance up there, given it's a country of 250 million odd people, but I feel quite safe in saying that the hegemonic view of sexuality and youth is this:

    "One shall not have sex until one is over 18. Preferentially, one shall not have sex until one is married. Sex itself is such a dangerous and potentially corrupting force that it may not be shown on network T.V., nor may nudity. In fact, even accidental nudity (such as Janet Jackson's flashing the superbowl) is potentially so traumatic that it must be discussed on the floors of Congress if it occurs to a celebrity in public."

    By and large, the Americans are not a tightly wound people when it comes to contemplating the effects of sex on their kids, y'all.

    And the main weapon used to ensure that Junior and Princess remain virgins until marriage is guilt.

    Now, I tend to follow Judith Butler with regards to gender and the States' views on this are traditional: active means one is dominant and a winner, passive means one is dominated and a loser. Women are understood to be naturally and inherently sexually passive and thus if sex happens to them outside the bounds of marriage when they are young, this must mean that they are either depraved and degraded or that they are poor victims who have been taken advantage of. If it happens to men it's either a joke and an indication of repressed homosexuality (if the partner is male) or a joke and an indication of utter pathetic worthlessness (if the partner is female).

    (This, by the way, is the reason I won't even mention the sex of my partner in the example above: if coerced sex is TRULY rape, then what possible difference could their gender make - unless, of course, we support a dual sexual morality? And anyone who supports a dual sexual morality has absolutely no cause to demand that I turn in my Feminist Secret Decoder Ring. But I digress...)

    In any case, ANYONE having "passive" sex while drunk in the U.S. has ample social reason to be immensely guilty about it and seek a way to move responsability for the act off of their shoulders and on to someone else's.

    Of course, if you drinks until you pass out and then someone has sex with you, that's one thing. But what if you just drinks until you are shit-faced and then enthusiastically say "OK, let's fuck"?

    Are you responsible for your acts?

    My personal experiences and the experiences of close friends of both genders indicate that, more times than not, the person in question - especially if they are young and American and getting involved in sex considered to be "passive" - is expressing a pretty deeply held desire that they are not consciously willing to express while sober. Booze, in these cases very often becomes an excuse and a crutch.

    ...tbc

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  23. continued...


    But not in all cases.

    So this is a problem in the whole "acquaintence rape" thing: how to account for someone who enthusiastically gives their consent and gives every indication of deeply enjoying the act and who then claims - the next day, week, or year - that they really didn't want to do that?

    No ammount of dogma is going to convince me that this doesn't happen as I've seen it happen on several occasions. And no, this isn't what happens all the time - perhaps not even most of the time. Certainly, there are cases in which someone gives drunken consent and has no idea at all what they are doing. However, a guilt-induced next day (week, month, year) transformation in the evaluation of the sex happens OFTEN ENOUGH that it simply can't be waved away as a myth or a male-supremacist defense of date rape.

    It does indeed happen and I have seen it happen on several occasions. No one is thus going to tell me that it doesn't occur. That is a lie.

    Two late teens bombed out of their minds and fucking probably describes a fair majority of the sex that goes on in college. When sobriety - and guilt - sets in the next day, it is quite easy to avoid responsability for one's acts by claiming one was completely out of one's mind and taken advantage of.

    Because social approval holds to sexual "activity" and not "passivity" in the States, people who are traditionally understood to be passive can avoid social oppobrium by claiming they were coerced. And because the only traditionally passive group recognized in American sexual relations is female, this means that any woman who wishes to avoid the "slut" categorization" only has to assume the mantle of "victim" and she's home free.

    Salienting once again: this isn't claiming that any woman who drinks desereevs to be raped. Far from it. What I am saying is this: young American men and women often drink to have an excuse to engage in behavior that society says is shameful. When women do this and have sex, given the gender system of dual morality and the oppobrium attached to sexual passivity, they needs must either assume the label of "slut" (and generally shrug it off) or claim that forces beyond their control made them do what they want. Their consent, given under the influence of alchohol, can be transformed into non-consent and guilt provides a powerful incentive to do so.

    In this case, and given that rape is a subjective experience, their reactions and claims are functionally indistiguishable from the reactions and claims of someone who has truly been coerced into sex.

    (By the way, it is worth pointing out that I can't think of ANY other field in American social mores or jurisprudence where "I was drunk and thus couldn't control my actions" is acceptable as a defence for one's behavior.)

    Thaddeus

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  24. Another important thing is to understand the reasons behind this moral panic. WHY would anybody want people to believe that 1/4 of all female college grads are rape victims?

    Mira

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  25. Please post to the next topic. For some reason, my responses here are not showing up, even when I post as Anonymous.

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  26. Here's an excellent article on the stats behind date rape...

    http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9502/sommers.html

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