As a student at Penn State, I am particularly concerned with the rape college that we, as students and community members, create on college campuses. In 2012, 45 sexual assaults were committed in State College. 20 assaults were reported on Penn States Campus, and only half of those assaults were solved. At Penn State, 80% of students who seek help after an assault personally know their assailant. Penn State is not the only college where sexual violence is a serious issue. In fact, one in four sexual assaults occur on a college campus and one in five college women report being assaulted at some point during their college career, with many of these occurring in date-rape scenarios. Yet, even these statistics cannot even begin to convey the truly horrific results of a sexual assault. Besides the physical trauma and repercussions, sexual assault victims suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, and a variety of sleep and eating disorders. They are also more likely to turn to alcohol and other forms of substance abuse as well as self-harm to numb the pain of their assault. However, even these things only brush the surface of the anguish an assault can bring. So the question I pose to you is, how can we change that? There are a few strait forward reasons that assaults occur more on college campuses. The main one being, of course, that alcohol is incredibly prevalent and alcohol plays a role in 90% of college sexual assaults. Another reason is that the atmosphere of partying and experimentation creates more high risk situations. However, neither of these reasons explain why people commit these atrocious crimes. Of course there is evil in this world, and where there is evil there will be atrocious crimes, but I believe there are compounding reasons rape occurs so frequently on college campuses. One of these is that we create a rape culture. What is rape culture? Simply put, rape culture supports and perpetuates gender roles which subordinate women socially and sexually to men. It creates an underlying current of thought which states women are somehow inherently unequal to men and are here to serve their needs, and therefore male domination of women, in this particular case sexually, is appropriate. We have all seen it. You go out with your friends, and suddenly some guy is cat calling one of the girls with you. You are dancing at a fraternity and a guy sidles up next to you provocatively. Your friend is at a party and a guy tries to get her to go home with him. While all these situations are obviously less serious than an assault, they all showcase how we put up with, allow, or even partake in a culture which clearly believes that women are sexual objects. Now, I am not demonizing men, and I realize that men can also be victims of assault. I believe that this is a male AND female problem. That we have ALL contributed to this culture, and our university system does not make it any better. At some campuses, women must go through intense questioning and actually have mediated conversations with their assailant. A student at the University of Washington was asked why she didnt just hit him, and if she was sure she said no. A lack of privacy and sensitivity make it difficult for women to come forward, and then make it difficult to seek legal action. When did saying No stop being enough? What are healthy gender roles? Is rape culture real? Thoughts......
I find that both young men and women tend to view this behavior as normal as well so it makes it difficult to deal with and change. There is also a matter of victim blaming to take into account, "She chose to be there, she chose to get drunk, she chose to wear provocative clothing, she chose to dance and look sexy." All other sentences for, "She put herself in that position and it's her own fault." Instead of addressing, "He should have stopped when she said NO."
I find, often times, when alcohol is involved, women only claim rape if the guy turns out to be a POS the next day. poor choices in sex partners is not a sex crime. If the guy forced himself on you.... crime. If you passed out, and he had sex with you.....crime. If he drugs you without your knowledge, and has sex with you.....crime. if you pass out DURING (not to be confused with being awake and not remembering).....crime. but, if you simply get drunk, think you meet the man of your dreams, put out, and he doesn't call you back ever.... not a sex crime. if you get drunk and think you're going to bed with Brad Pitt level guy, but wake up with a 2..... not a sex crime. if you cheat on your b/f and then have regrets or get caught, it's not a crime
I believe would should insist on fornicating us into relationships simply so we won't feel any need to lie to potential girl friends.
no kidding, girls get them, too. The only difference between when guys get them, and when women get them is women are allowed to WITHDRAW consent after the fact and claim rape by using the alcohol THEY CHOSE to ingest beyond their tolerances as justification. take away all the 'fake-rapes' that fall into the category I just described and the college rape culture isn't nearly as high. Focus on real rape crimes, and you don't meet with such backlash when it includes all this other crap. Charging a man for date-rape when consent was withdrawn after the fact is like someone having to register as a sex-offender because he took a (*)(*)(*)(*) on the side of the road.
So are you suggesting that if a woman makes the choice to be drunk, she is accepting all possible sexual advances and therefore, when she felt this advances were unwelcome, was not actually raped but "fake raped"? Perhaps I am misunderstanding you....
I completely agree. Its as if whenever a women is in a "man's" place (bars, clubs, fraternities) it is her fault for her assault because it is her fault for being somewhere she does not belong.
I'm saying, if she says yes on Friday night, then she can't change her mind and say no on Saturday. If she got drunk by her own hand, and makes a poor choice in sexual partners.... that's not date-rape.... it's simply a regrettable choice. Why are beer goggles acceptable for guys, yet, it's date-rape when it happens to a girl? - - - Updated - - - if she says yes, it's not assault. if she tends to say yes to the wrong guys while drunk.... don't get drunk.
I completely agree that if a woman says yes then it is not assault... saying yes gives consent and therefore is a consensual sexual encounter. But here I AM talking about assault. And if a woman is assaulted (where she says no) the amount of alcohol she has consumed is not permission. Using the "she was drunk" excuse should never be acceptable and sadly it seems to be (take the steubenville, ohio case).
Is it a good thing college chics don't band together and troll for nice guys in order to get them to clamor for relationships?
I hear ya, what got everyone worked up is when I suggested you take out all the "yes at night, no the next morning" type of "assaults, (the ones that shouldn't be included in stats) and I wonder what the actual rate of sexual assault is on college campuses. I'm not in denial that sexual assualts happen, I just question what they include in their statistics
I personally chose to use the pronoun she in this case as women are more majorly affected by rape than men. I was, however, in no way disregarding the fact that there is a percentage of men who are raped every year as well. I was merely making the choice of which pronoun to use rather than using the annoying he/she.
Fair enough, I think the "statistics" are flawed though because men are much less likely to report a rape simply because they don't want to look weak and frankly, who would believe them?
Agreed. It is very sad when victims of rape are afraid to come forward for any reason, my mother certainly didn't come forward about her sexual assault for a long time, partly because she actually believed it was her own fault. She didn't even start talking about it until she was much older. It is even worse with children who are raped/molested and feel they have absolutely no one to turn to. =(
Very true on the last part of your post. Very sorry to hear about your mother, hopefully she has/had healed from a extremely tough experience. Sometimes people are sickening.
under current accepted definitions of date-rape.... I was date-raped back in November. Look up my thread about it and you will see what the reaction to a man claiming that he was dateraped. I was told it wasn't the same, I was called names like sexist, misogynist. etc. so it seems that a lot of people only think women can get raped. #1 - hypocritical thing of daterape. How come a woman waking her b/f up with a blowjob considered a good thing by everyone, yet a guy waking up his g/f with sex is considered rape? I'll answer that facetious question.... because of agenda. The only time a girl will complain about her b/f waking her up with sex is after they break up, and she thinks back to when he did that to her and she then, all of a sudden, calls that rape in order to get revenge on a b/f who was discovered to have cheated or something.
There is a time when I would have disagreed with this.... LOL! I think rape is probably the lowest form of crime a person can commit... even beyond murder at times because the victim is left to deal with it for the rest of thier lives and so are the family members of the victim... With that being said, I too wonder just how many of the college rape cases are actually rape and not "oops I didn't mean to do that"....
In my opinion, chics who may feel they are aren't getting enough or maybe not be meeting their quota often enough even if they don't work in sales, should band together to convince us guys that the, clamoring for a relationship time, she be a coming; while insisting it is merely something modern girl friends should always be good for in modern times.
Say what???? I'm not sure if I'm reading this incorrectly because of the punctuation, or if maybe you typed it on a phone and the auto correct made it this way, but I have absolutely no idea what your talking about. Not trying to be rude, Just want to make sure I understand what your saying.
Would chics have more of a problem or less of a problem, if it were socially acceptable for modern women in modern times, to fornicate us into relationships simply for the sake of honesty as a moral and form of respect toward fellow human beings; after all, we are no longer in the Iron Age.
Im sorry, I still don't follow how this has to do with rape... Or what your meaning for that matter. Maybe I'm braindead today which is very likely giving its Thursday and I'm looking forward to the weekend already... but I just don't follow... Sorry.
