From the New York Times (via Michele):
A high school principal in Columbus, Ohio, has been fired and three assistant principals suspended without pay because they failed to notify the police last month about accusations that a 16-year-old special-education student had been sexually assaulted in the school auditorium by a group of boys, one of whom videotaped the incident, school officials said yesterday.
The principal and her assistants not only failed to report the incident but also urged the girl’s father to avoid calling the police out of concerns that reporters would become aware of the assault, according to statements given to school investigators.
The police are investigating four teenagers in connection with the incident, a spokeswoman for the Columbus police, Sherry Mercurio, said yesterday, but no charges have been filed. […]
One of the three assistant principals, Richard Watson, said he had found the videotape and then viewed it with other administrators. Their conclusion, they told investigators, was that there had been no coercion.
From what the NBC story says, it appears that the boys may have been caught because they were showing off by playing the video for friends in math class. While the school administration may not have found any signs of coercion, the police investigators found quite a lot. From the Times:
One witness’s statement said a boy pulled the girl onto the auditorium stage, ordered her to be quiet, pushed her to her knees and forced her to perform oral sex on him.
“If you scream, I’ll have all my boys punch you,” the boy told her and then hit her in the face, causing her mouth to bleed, a student told the investigators.
The girl told a special-education teacher minutes after the incident that she had been forced to have oral sex with two boys behind a curtain on the stage while at least two others watched. She said the boys stopped only after someone arrived in the auditorium and scared them off.
The girl, who has a speech defect, “just kept saying she was scared,” the special-education teacher told the investigators.
Maybe there’s less to this story than it seems; maybe the witnesses are lying, for example. But if the witness statements are accurate, then the boys should be arrested and tried as rapists.
MaxedOutMama , aka MOM, has an interesting post regarding this story. She doesn’t think the boys will ever be punished:
I’m outraged too, but not at all surprised. For one thing, multiple boy on one girl blowjob orgies aren’t that rare any more, even in school. There is a fine line between manipulation, intimidation and outright force. Stories such as these aren’t that rare – developmentally disabled girls are often manipulated and abused in this way in school. So are emotionally vulnerable girls. Once you have kids blowing each other in the school johns in junior high, things get pretty much out of control.
I’ll give you my guess. This boys will not be convicted of any criminal charges. There will not be enough evidence; the testimony (said quietly behind closed doors) will be that the word was that this girl was known for giving blowjobs to boys. Those involved will say they thought she was consenting. Those witnessing it will agree. Not one of all the boys involved said anything to school authorities. Not one. They don’t know the difference between right and wrong, consenting and enforced acts. If they haven’t participated themselves they have all heard about such acts before.
(Link to MOM via My Whim is Law).
MOM is already mistaken about what at least one of the witnesses is saying (if the New York Times‘ account is accurate). I’m also more than a little skeptical about how common “multiple boy on one girl blowjob orgies” are – as far as I can tell, adults have always vastly exaggerated how much sex kids are having. But I worry that she’ll be proved right about the odds of any of these boys being convicted of rape.
MOM goes on to suggest that “instinct” may be responsible for this disgusting act: “Instinct in a young, roving band of teenage boys dictates imposing sexually upon a vulnerable girl…” In MOM’s view, young boys have an instinct towards gang-rape, which they need to be guided away from. I don’t think there’s much evidence to support MOM’s view, however. Have any anthropologists found that hunter-gatherer societies have a high incidence of gang rape, or if they don’t, that they spend a lot of time teaching their boys that gang-rape is wrong?
I don’t think boys have a natural instinct for gang-rape. However, I do think boys have a natural instinct to rely their peer group for validation and for their self-identity (that’s something I think MOM and I agree on). In a culture which teaches boys that masculinity is measured by “getting some,” that if they’re not a man they’re nothing, that having sex is not only normal but an entitlement, and that women don’t have much worth, it’s unsurprising that gang rapes happen. It’s even less surprising that the victim is (it seems) disabled, since the disabled are also not seen as being worth much by our society.
I doubt these boys were acting out of a desire for sexual release. I think they were acting out of a desire to show each other that they’re not scared, that they’re brave, that they’re men. From the point of view of the boys, their victim was just an object, which they used for demonstrating their masculinity to each other.
MOM then makes what seems to me to be a surprising, and out-of-place, digression:
Here’s reality. Girls can be imposed upon sexually, but once they learn the sexual game they can often whipsaw adolescent boys with it. Boys often find one-on-one sex really frightening until they’ve proved to themselves that they can do it, but no such inhibitions exist in a group. Adolescent boys are often just as emotionally vulnerable as girls. Girls have an instinct to use their own powers of sexual attraction. Nature made it so. An attractive, intelligent girl can become a superstar by her junior year in high school if she plays her cards well, especially if she is carefully and selectively sexually active. In the process she may cut an old boyfriend into emotional pieces.
No doubt some girls act just as MOM describes. But what does any of this have to do with a “developmentally disabled” girl who is dragged onto an auditorium stage, hit, and told “if you scream, I’ll have all my boys punch you”? The girl in this case wasn’t using her “powers of sexual attraction” to make herself a “superstar”; she was raped by a bunch of assholes using the power of threats and fists. To use a discussion of a girl being gang-raped as a springboard for discussing how girls are victimizers, too, is bizarre and disturbing.
There’s a lot more to MOM’s post, some of which I agree with, some of which I don’t; take a look.
UPDATE: Due to having nearly 500 responses, this thread is now closed. If you want to continue the discussion, please do so on this new thread.
This is such a difficult topic–it’s hard to talk about ways to prevent gang rape without drifting into a pity party for boys who do it. Inarguably, though, one extremely effective way is swift and severe punishment for perps.
Unfortunately, I’m not stunned by the incident itself. Several of my high school friends were gang raped, and that was the early eighties. This has been going on for a long time. This is not a “new” thing, and has nothing to do with media displays of sex and violence, or video games. It has everything to do with a sense of entitlement to women’s bodies, and the knowledge that society as a whole pretty much condones rape of the vulnerable. None of the girls I knew who were raped felt comfortable going to the police or even to their parents, because they knew they would be ostracized, shamed, vilified as whores, and set up for further victimization. Once you’ve been raped, you are considered to be “sexually experienced”, thus it’s open season on you; you are a slut and your word is no good.
I am incensed at the level of bullshit misogyny implicit in “MOM”‘s post. WTF??!!! A girl can be a superstar if she selectively dishes out pussy and shakes her ass for the “right” boys?! And this is “instinct”? BULLSHIT. I still haven’t learned that “instinct”; guess that’s why I’m not a superstar, huh? All that knockin’ the books when I should’ve been knockin’ the boots, hey? ‘Cuz funny, the young women I knew who were all focused on getting the “right guy” and being sexually manipulative, trying to play a “game” where the rules (which they didn’t understand) weren’t written for them and they were already behind the eight ball even if they didn’t know it—-they ended up burned up, used up, angry, and broke as hell by the time they were in their early twenties. This is where some of our best militant feminists come from.
Just some more tired old blaming-the-victim bullshit. Good fucking morning. I haven’t had enough coffee yet for this shit. It’s a damn good thing this girl has a father who is an advocate for her, instead of blaming her for her own rape.
I refuse to believe that girls are routinely gang raped in high school. I just don’t buy it. I do buy that mentally challenged women are at a high risk of being sexually abused, and I do buy that when things like this happen, the authorities might feel more inclined to protect the boys instead of being horrified over what they did, which, even if it was consensual ( big if, since mental capacity has to be examined as well as implicit threats, etc. ) was unbelievably disgusting.
There is a lot of hysteria about kid’s sexuality and oral sex these days. Personally, I heard a lot of wild stories about orgies and group girl on boys oral sex in high school in the eighties and it was all b.s. Notice how the stories are always about someone you don’t know very well, or someone from another school. I learned an important lesson on how willing some boys are to lie through their teeth when four boys who passed my sister in a bedroom on their way to the bathroom at a party all said she went down on them. Not only did they lie, they all agreed to a conspiracy to lie.
The hysteria and exagerations are important because if these administrators really believe, like Rush Limbaugh, that high schoolers are all out getting blow jobs constantly, they might not have been as disturbed as they should have been by the incident. They should have known how unusual it is for a girl to service a group of boys like this and been appropiately alarmed.
I’d like to take the question of adolescent girs, sex, and manipulation outside of this context. I don’t think it’s possible or apropriate to talk about them in the context of this gang rape. I especialy agree that it’s blaming the victim in a really disgusting way. In some other context, the topic warrants a fair discussion, but here, the real focus is rape, and specificaly the gang rape of a child by other children, and the coverup by the school.
What amazes me about the coverup is that the principal and the other administrators seem to have decided that there was no coercion after only viewing the video tape. What training do they have in making such a judgement? for that matter, what right do they have to tell the girl’s parent not to file harged for fear of reporters?
I see a huge lawsuit against the school, and I hope to hell those administrators are never put in charge of a child’s saftey again.
As for the boys, lock ’em up. They’re known sex predators now, and I see no current reason to think they won’t do it again if they have the chance.
And for god’s sakes, have some people teach the kids at the school how to react to situations like this. The teachers are obviously useless.
I agree with Amp that boys do not have an instinct to gang rape. I also agree with La Lubu that girls do not have an instinct to be sexually manipulative. Both of those generalizations are bullshit and I’ve never read anything that backs them up.
This incident is beyond unacceptable and appalling. How come we’re not teaching boys and young men in school that it’s not okay to penetrate a woman or girl against her will, or force/coerce sexual activities, more thoroughly than we do now? Schools seem to be “aloof” when it comes to this. I may have been out of high school for about year, but I can remember the “rape is just sex–forcing a girl to do something sexual in nature against her will is no big deal” attitude that some boys and young men had. Forcing your dick down an unwilling girl’s throat is considered to be cool to some guys, even manly. Certainly not all (not even a 1/4) boys and young men of course have this attitude, but one is more than enough and every bit as dangerous. I strongly believe that this goes back to how our culture treats rape especially the victim (ie: denial of the victim). The principal practically condoned this by trying to cover it up. Unbelievable!
This was a forcible rape (or pick the criminal sexual assault term of your choice). The mentally handicapped victim was more vulnerable, more easily lured to a secluded place, more easily intimidated and less credible. I think she was chosen simply for her vulnerability. I don’t buy that it has something to do with not valuing the mentally handicapped — these boys could not possibly have valued any woman if they were willing to beat one into performing sex acts.
What really gets me angry is the administration’s willingness to cover this up, for fear that they would be held accountable. I’ve dealt with school administrators before, and seen the absolute determination to minimize any incident that happens on their watch. The administrators ought to be charged with obstruction of justice, IMO, depending on what the Ohio statute says. Criminal charges are the only way of showing them that the consequences of a cover-up are worse than the consequences of dealing with this like adults.
I live in the discrist in which this incident occurred (Columbus Public Schools), and the cover-up of this incident was not at all surprising to me. Of course it’s revolting and inexcusable. That almost goes without saying. However, the school where this took place has been in the news on an almost-weekly basis (this school, one school of about 18 high schools in the district) for the past several months for violent fights, riots at basketball games, racially-based near-riots at lunch periods, guns in school, and assault in the halls between classes (a girl stabbed another girl in the eye). They have what one might lightly term an “image problem”. It’s not surprsing that they would want to keep this out of the news. Dsicpicable and sickening, but not surprising. From my perspective as a teacher and a resident in the district, I’m more confounded about why this particular school is in such a mess. In light of this cover-up, though, it seems that poor administration might have something to do with it…
FTR, this girl is not “mentally handicapped”. She has a speech impairment.
Interesting that the boys chose oral sex.
Apologies for my rampant misspellings.
When I was 12 I went through a shoplifting phase. When I got caught nabbing a bottle of perfume from Sears I, of course, lied and said it was the first time I had ever done anything like that.
This is what comes to my mind here, because I wonder how these boys raped their first victim, probably off school property maybe videotaped, maybe too spur of the moment to have video preparation ready. When the Glen Ridge boys gang-raped a mentally handicapped girl they regretted not having made porn out of the rape and had concrete plans to gang rape her again, this time with more boys and videotaping it, when they were arrested.
How many times must these boys have gotten away with gang raping other girls to get to the audacious point of making gang rape pornography at school thinking they wouldn’t get caught? For each one of these incidents we hear about there are many more we don’t.
There’s a Canadian feminist musician I like a lot, Andrea Florian, who has a line in her song “Feminist”, Statistics will say that a certain number of women are raped by men and I want to know about the ones who don’t announce it to the government.
My heart goes to this victim and all the silent, and silenced, victims of rape.
Good point Samantha. My friends who were raped were not raped at school, but all of them went to school with their rapists. I agree that these boys probably had done this before. It’s pretty bold to rape on school grounds; they must have felt reasonably assured that they would not get caught—that the school grounds were a safe place for rapists to conduct their business.
The principal and her assistants not only failed to report the incident but also urged the girl’s father to avoid calling the police out of concerns that reporters would become aware of the assault,
Well, that plan worked out well, did it not? At least these administrators seem to be as competent at cover-ups as they are at protecting their students.
I am amused by the idea that girls have access to special status to be gotten through sex. How valuable can such status be if it can only be gotten through the boys? Doesn’t that mean that the boys are always of higher status?
“Doesn’t that mean that the boys are always of higher status?”
Yes. When it comes to quid pro quo sex, usually a guy has the “higher status.”
Or if there’s such a clear and present threat of it being taken by force anyway?
Q Grrl, I assumed she is mentally handicapped because she is “developmentally disabled” (according to NBC) and a special ed student(NYT). I may have been incorrect. We are told that she has a speech impediment (NYT), but it is not clear to me whether that is the sum of her disabilities, or merely one of them. If you’ve got a source with a better explanation, let me know.
while i agree with many here that certain elements of the media are currently in high panic overdrive at the thought of teenage sex & that this creates an ideal condition for the growth of many rumors & legends i also wanted to put out there that just because the media’s freaking doesn’t mean that it (or something similar to it) isn’t happening
while there might not be massive Caligulating orgies going on i have little problem believing there are boys out there raping girls on a regular basis. the basis for my belief is the amount of friends i have who have confided in me that this happened to them & their friends in high school. that & my memory of the boys in my school, and how often they would talk about raping the girls they were interested in (often quite openly & in front of others not part of their group – e.g. in the lockerroom after gym). it deeply disgusted & frightened me then… i remember trying to tell myself they were full of shit, that it was all banter, but the feelings of fear & horror never left – & i hated them, hated them all, deeply & violently.
i know, i know – anecdotes do not a structural analysis make. but after years of listening to painful stories & grieving for the suffering it caused for folks i hold dear i have been left with a sorrowful & bitter cast in my mind towards teenage boys & their sexuality. sorrowful b/c so many of them are so clearly fucked up & desperately ignorant when it comes to understanding sex & intimacy (not to mention how susceptible to peer pressure)… & how clearly this is the result (at least in part) of little if any support in schools for dealing with sex in a straightforward manner. bitter b/c i just want to lock ’em up. actually i want to stomp the shit out them (including the administrators) – make them feel what it’s like to live in fear, what it’s like to be tortured – then lock ’em up.
but how does sending them to rape camp (which is what prison is) going to help? believe me – i am not trying to start a pity party here (see “stomp the shit out of them,” above). but, given that we know that the prison system is a colossal failure, what other possibilities exist for dealing with this situation? for not only stopping these kids from doing it again, but stopping other kids from ever even wanting to do it?
this is one of those subjects that usually leaves me in complete despair when i try to think of ways to positively change it for the better….
Amanda, that’s what radical feminists say about prostitution and pornography, and yes, it does mean boys are always of higher status because they continue to set the terms of girls status.
One of my favorite Dworkin quotes goes something like (sorry I can’t quote it in her own elegant words), “How is it boys who once gave lives to rocks and names to trees in their youthful playing grow up to become men unable to see the humanity in women?”
In that case, I don’t see why there’s any cause to admire the “status” of Best Object.
Does anyone remember the scene in “Sixteen Candles” when the love interest dreamy guy gives his drunk girlfriend to Michael Anthony Hall and says “Enjoy”. Just wondering.
Once, on Oprah she said that people tend to want to protect sex perps from prosecution because they tend to think that the girl had sex, she would have anyway, what’s done is done, now let’s be reasonable and not ruin these boys lives. I remember Glen Ridge and how people actually defended those boys. But even if this is blown out of proportion, that it, if it wasn’t rape ( and whether mentally handicapped persons can be sexual without it being rape is a whole other ball of wax), it was at the very best very unethical sex on the part of the boys. People will defend these boys, watch and see. It’s as if they don’t want to see how mean it is to treat a woman this way, let alone how criminal. They fired the principal, who, interestingly but sadly not significantly, is a woman.
I am shocked by how little time this conversation has spent on the female administrator (the adult in the matter) who attempted to keep the father from calling the police. Would she have behaved differently had this girl not been a special education student? It’s adults like this who tell boys like those they can behave any way they want.
As I grew up, the boys in my family got away with sexual abuse because the women in my family covered things up for them. My brother is now in prison for the rest of his life because he was a serial rapist. If my mother had not told him he was allowed to do that — as a young boy — he may not have behaved that way as a man. Both women and men contribute to that atrocious mindset. We see that in the female administrator who wanted to just brush the incident under the rug.
Hmmm, I shouldn’t admit it, but occassionally I troll a board that is made up primarily of sexist males (it’s a board that I got in the habit of frequenting because it’s initial purpose was as a community board for an Everquest Server – somehow along the lines it became a good ole’ boys club). They generally give me the view of ‘Joe Backwards’ – going to post the article there and see what responses occur and to see if as you say, the defense rallies around the young men instead of the girl.
Jam: but how does sending them to rape camp (which is what prison is) going to help?
Well, it helps in that they’re removed from the presence of non lawbreakers, because if we leave them to run around in freedom, they’ll quite likley rape someone else. I’d like it if there were some method of removing the thoughts or ideas in the heads of those kids that tells them that this is OK, but absent magic, this is the best solution I’ve got from a harm reduction model where the people I’m trying to protect are no longer those boys, By raping that girl, they removed themselves from the category of innocent citizenz. This means they get some, but less rights than the rest of us.
I think we ought to be focusing on making sure that a new generation of these
kids does not crop up. I think it’s possible to do this, but it’ll take some work, political power, and money, none of which other than the willingness to work are something I’ve got.
After we do that, we can work on fixing prisons to remove the chance of recidivism from parolees.
This is triage in a war zone. We have limited resources, and lifeboat ethics are all we’ve got.
On the issue ” young boys have an instinct towards gang-rape”
That seems to be a somewhat flippant and definitely erroneous conclusion. It would be like saying that because humans are prone to aggression, they have an ‘instinct to kill their sibling with rocks’. It takes a truism and then extends it to a specific (and usually ridiculous) conclusion.
Young boys (and young men), in groups, do definitely seem to have a heightened since of aggression, power and bravado that individually they do not have. Lots of studies on that (this article is a place to start)
It fits with my experiences anecdotally too. I was always afraid of groups of boys or young men, not because they were larger, but because they seemed to act more aggressively toward me than any of the boys individually (they’ve got backup to put it bluntly).
But you could as easily say that groups of boys instinctually build buildings as to say instinctually gang rape based on changes in behavior when in groups.
It’s letting these boys off way too easy to say it is ‘instinct’. They could have channeled that group power, aggression, energy, whatever into a basketball game, digging a swimming pool or cutting down weeds or pulling off an elaborate but harmless prank (crop circles?).. but instead (if the evidence and testimony holds), they channeled it to gang rape of a single defenseless girl.
NO excuses. Not in biology, not in instinct.
Ampersand,
I linked to your post. I hadn’t read the NY Times story yet, and it was far more detailed. Not that it clears anything up. If they have a witness testifying to force why haven’t the police charged already? This flabbergasts me.
You wrote:
“But what does any of this have to do with a “developmentally disabled”? girl who is dragged onto an auditorium stage, hit, and told “if you scream, I’ll have all my boys punch “you”??”
In my own defense, you are missing the fact that I wasn’t talking about the specific incident at all by the time I “digressed”. And it is not a digression to me at all – we need to prevent such incidents as well as prosecute them. A girl was assaulted on school property. There were multiple witnesses – and the school administration didn’t feel the need to do anything but confiscate the videotape? I was thinking that whole school must be out of control, so I was very interested to read Grace’s comments.
You are focusing on prosecution (understandably). I am caught and horrified by what the girl experienced. How could that happen in a school? Why did none of the boys realize that what was happening was wrong? They don’t appear to have had any sense of shame or fear of being caught! How could the administrators not call the police? I read about police being called for 8 year olds thwapping teachers with rubber bands, for heaven’s sake!
Sigmund, Carl & Alfred have been conducting an interesting series of discussions on kids, raising kids, sex and schooling. During the course of it a public school teacher wrote about rampant sex in schools and the lack of support for stopping it from the parents and the administration. My contention is that a no-sex-in-school line has to be drawn – otherwise this sort of thing will continue to happen.
The entire point of all my ramblings that you find offensive is changing the environment so that such an incident won’t happen again! And in a very sexualized environment, where kids are often giving each other blowjobs in the school johns, I think you are facilitating such incidents and lack of response to them by the school administration – because the presumption will be that it was consensual. Not that I am excusing the administrators, because there is no excuse for their behavior IMO.
Back when I was going to school I knew of cases of girls (especially girls with developmental lags) being raped outside of school, but never in school. Are there no safe places left?
A blog with the name of “Alas” is very suitable to the subject.
You say that you don’t think teenage boys have an instinct to rape or force sex on a girl. I think you don’t know very much about the behavior of teenage boys in a group. I think many teenage boys do instinctively regard women as sexual objects. Recently I read about a very similar incident occurring in French housing projects where Muslim teenage boys were gangbanging the girls. This is one of the default human states if we have been taught no better. Many of us are not born with empathy and compassion – we have to learn it. If our society no longer understands this, then we are in deep, deep trouble. Clearly those boys had not been taught those lessons.
After reading the NY Times article my bet is that this isn’t the first such incident many of these boys were involved in. If they aren’t prosecuted I’d bet it won’t be the last.
And yes, I have known quite a few teenage girls who are very comfortable with their sexuality and do use it to control men and get where they want to go. I knew several in my day, and I have met several recently. Facts are not misogyny, and both sexes are capable of extremely disrespectful sexual behavior. Both sexes. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.
This girl was nothing but a victim, but all the girls who are sexually active in high school are not. If there is rampant sexual activity on school grounds, it’s a sure bet that many of those incidents are consensual, although I can’t see any way that any person could interpret this incident as consensual sex. Somehow, though, that’s the suspicion that seemed to have emerged in the school administration’s collective consciousness, if you can call it that.
Oh, and btw – I was shocked to find a comment on my blog from a woman who said that some people liked to be hit. She thought we shouldn’t presume it was not consensual. I don’t know whether she would still write that if she had read the NY Times article.
I’d like to contribute some anecdotal evidence here confirming some of the previous author’s statements. FYI, I graduated from high school only six years ago.
1) After having been raped, as Lubu said, it was “open season” on me now that I was “sexually experienced.”
2) I learned that I could either shrivel or take hold of my sexual power. This made me “promiscuous” even though the relationships were quid pro quo.
3) Yes, there are high school orgies. I’ve been to a few. I don’t know how often this kind of thing actually occurs, but each involved older people well into their twenties (we were all too young to drive), and I would suspect their presence made all the difference between a rumored orgy and an actual one.
For a long time my sexual behavior or lack thereof defined me among my peers, even though I sought to have it otherwise. Even today, I have a hard time not playing that card in certain situations. Sometimes it is easier to shake the ass and show some cleavage than it is to make legitimate gains. Luckily I’ve nearly outgrown that urge.
And RE: the sexual superstar statement. This is probably going to make me very unpopular, but I believe that girls learn very early that their sexuality is what defines them among their male peers. As all these kids are seeking to develop their identities, they rely on archetypes and stereotypes to confirm and deny their burgeoning subjectivities. Again, I did it. I also wisened up relatively quickly. Where I disagree is that this is an intrinsic trait — but anyone with a strong enough desire to belong will exploit what they can to become a member of the favored crowd, even if that means sacrificing good judgement.
Thank you for sharing that Lauren. My experiences in school were similar to yours, though I was lucky to have gotten out with only one attempted rape.
Still, I was sexually mistreated and sexually abused in more ways than I will relate here, but is was cruel – intentionally cruel. In the worst situation that wasn’t the attempted rape, I believe the boys who set me up did it mainly so they could brag about it to the whole school the next day.
As a pretty, gregarious teenaged girl I thought it was better to the Best Object than the Ignored Object or the Uninvited Object, since not being an object at all wasn’t in the equation. I think about girls like this one, about girls like that one in Orange Co. who had a lit cigarette put to her delicate vagina and the boys saying she consented to it because she was a slut, and I know intrinsically the meaning of the phrase, “There but for the grace of God go I”.
“Clearly those boys had not been taught those lessons.”
Well, clearly that’s what the law is* for, when all the beautiful ideals of education and progress have failed. Stick them in jail for twenty years, or more, you bet they are going to learn a lesson.
*should be
OK, I’m going to make a big honest admission here and say that I have helped organize “play parties” held by adults. If you read my LJ, you could find that out anyhow.
I would never ever invite anyone under the age of consent, anyone who’s underaged, or even 18 and still in high school. and I’ve had underaged kids ask me about that. It just isn’t going to happen. Flat out never, as long as I’m in charge. The legal risks are *huge*, as well as the potential ethical problems. I’d never attend one if I even suspected that the people running it were violating statutory rape laws, or getting close to that.
Monica: I’m not as interested in teacching them anything as I am in getting them away from potential victims.
MOM As someonw who does, in fact, like to be thwapped form time to time (sure is a day for startling admissions), I still assume this was non consensual.
The problem I’m seeing with all of the above (and don’t even think for a minute that I can’t relate or am not in the know) is that these issues are NOT instinct. They are societal gender roles that we as ADULTS are responsible for instilling and perpetuating in our children. I think it’s really irresponsible of some of the prior commentors to perpetuate the instinct myths over the reality that we are teaching our children to be predators and victims.
Jiminy Cricket. And anti-feminists complain that feminists are “anti-male?”
That something like “I don’t think boys have a natural instinct for gang-rape” still needs to be said in our culture is embarassing. Look, we are talking about rational human beings here, not beasts. If they have come up to their late teens with a more-or-less unreflective desire to sexually assault young women then that’s deeply disturbing, but it’s not something that they are compelled by an inborn drive to do. It’s something that they have chosen and have been taught by other men in the culture at large to think is O.K. An appeal to mythical “instincts” to explain why they don’t think or care enough about a young woman’s humanity not to assault her amounts to nothing more than a cheap way to let young men off the hook when it comes to their own humanity.
I think many teenage boys do instinctively regard women as sexual objects.
If it were “instinctive,” it wouldn’t be many teenage boys, it would be all of them. That’s sort of the definition of “instinct.”
It’d certainly make for a good argument in front of a jury.
It’d certainly make for a good argument in front of a jury.
That’s what always gives me pause with these claims that boys or men have an “instinct for rape”. It’s a method of ducking responsibility for moral action. If it is only natural to rape, then how can we be blaming these kids? There’s nothing instinctual about gang-raping, as others have noted above, its cultural. Saying otherwise is cultural code for “the poor boys, they just can’t help themselves”.
A while back, I found myself aimlessly watching an episode of Dr. Phil (blech) on the issue of “those sex-crazed teens!”. The terms in which they discussed the behavior of teenage boys were these exact terms of natural behaviors. The good doctor cautioned a young girl’s mother to be sure and teach her daughter that men are pigs that will do anything to get what they want. When these boys grow up hearing from every direction that it is only “natural” to use the bodies of women for their own sexual purposes, it’s no wonder they wind up becoming rapists.
Maybe if we spent our time talking about how these boys are criminals who chose to commit a wicked, violant crime instead of plain old folks caving in to “instinct”, we could gain some ground here.
in a sense i think the media getting a hold of this story becomes part of the problem. all your concerns about how bad this even is will get washed away. only the idea of the event as a sexual fantasy will remain. the new york times all the way to the enquirer love stories like these because they play to male sexual fantasies and they sell.
the other thing that is more frightening is the deep sexual repressions this whole thing reveals. first of all that so many are viscerally interested in this topic, nationally. we relish the opportunity to revisit the landscape of sexual taboos in our mind. the violent attitudes toward the “perps” and “administrators” expressed here is also an element in this sexual power-play of the national mind. we would be better off pursuing our own healthy experimental (to the extent we’re interested) sexual relationships than indulging our sexual desires cerebrally and mixing them with our ideas of justice and power. that is to say i’d rather not be writing this.
it does nothing for you or me or “our children” to model behavior whereby we wish to act out revenge on sexual deviants. “our children” will then confuse sex, power, and revenge themselves and end up raping someone to get revenge on someone they read about in a news paper.
i hope this makes sense even though it’s a bit convoluted.
There are actually two statements there – yes, many teenage boys regards women as sexual objects – this has much to do with hormones. However, there is nothing instinctively about regarding them solely as sexual objects.
I can regard Angelina Jolie as a object of my desires (and hence a sexual object), and still hold her in high regard for her wonderful work for UNICEF and her good work as an actress.
Regarding the behaviour of boys in groups. Well, being male, and having been in what could be considered a borderline all-male gang, I can say for sure that if anyone had even remotely suggested rape, it would have ended badly for them.
Some groups of boys behave that way, but it is not common!
Pornstorm;
Who in this thread has talked revenge? Are you implying that people noticing this is only out of some lascivious or vicarious sexual thrill instead of genuine horror and frustration that our society has cultivated such mindsets? How have you gone from reading people desiring justice to people desiring revenge? Surely you aren’t suggesting we all just go back to getting ourselves layed in lew of paying attention to crimes such as these that call attention to the very core of many gender/sex based problems that affect SO many people. Or are you?
Josh Jasper, I see prison rape as rapists getting away with it. It’s more of the same problem. Also, it’s a level of torture which isn’t an appropriate part of a sentence in a civilized society–and the justice system isn’t careful about making sure that only guilty people end up in prison.
I don’t know if people realize this, because it’s so deeply blacked out of public consciousness, but rape committed by adolescent males is routinely dismissed as nothing by the courts, and was twenty years ago.
I can’t say, in detail, how I know this, because it isn’t my story. I was involved in it, because it was in my neighborhood, but more than that I cannot tell. If it *were* me, I would be doing the no shame, no silence thing now, but it’s not.
Here is the best I can do – when it came out that a junior high school boy had been molesting young girls in the neighborhood, the cops said, flat out, that there was no point in prosecuting it, because the system took the view that a) boys would be boys, this was part of the normal sexual experimentation, and b) no harm was done, after all, the kids were too young to know what was done to them – but c) harm *would* be done if they were publically revealed as rape victims, which is what any (doomed, futile) efforts at prosecution would do.
The molestor’s family moved, shortly thereafter. The girls *were* psychologically harmed, but how much didn’t fully come out until years later. But I was, and remained, in shock that this was known to law enforcement as a common occurrence and nobody who knew and had power in society had any intention of doing anything about it.
–Another reason I was less surprised to find out that the DA in the archdioceses of Boston and New York had been abetting the coverrups, when they found out about molestation in past decades, until the dam finally broke.
Zenmaster, when anyone brings that up – and I agree with you 100% and also that it is insulting in less ugly things, like “guys can’t multitask/speak/think” bs – my answer is this.
What do we do with sexually-uncontrollable male domestic animals, or with uncontrollably-vicious animals of either gender who attack people? Hint: we *don’t* just tolerate it and never have.
Is this the direction you want to go in? It wouldn’t have to be literal gelding, it ight be possible to do a little less. Chemically-neutering all males until and iff they get married, from puberty on, for the sake of the safety of women *and* yes, other males, from that “majority” [sic] who are “naturally” predators…
Alternately, we could just require all women to be armed in public, concealed carry, trained to use and also in some form of unarmed combat. I’ve found that telling someone who’s being impertinent “I have a knife, you know,” tends to make the smirk and the hands go away very quickly – followed by a skittish look as they try to figure out *where* the knife is, without giving offense by ogling.
Nancy Lebovitz: sure, prison rape is, in fact, a horrible thing. But as I said, I don’t see much of a vaild alternative in the immediate sense. If there was a safe, rape free place for those kids to be sent to, I’d be for sending them there. I don’t want them to suffer, I want them to stop being a threat to people. I don’t accept that it’s neccesary to put them in a painful environment to get that goal met, but I don’t see any alternative.
If you’ve got one that could work imemdiatley, I’m all for it. If you’ve got a plan to fix things in the future, I’m all for that too. But right here and now, that girl, and other girls like her needs to be safe from those boys. they are my immediate primary concern, and I think they should be everyone’s primary concern in a case like this.
After we remove the immediate threat, I’d like to see the schools get serious about rape prevention. I think there are several good, inexpensive ways to do that. A friend of mine helps run a “model mugging” group that teaches people self defense, situational awareness, and prevention techniques. They’re struggling financialy, but they do good, effective work in teaching people how to react to a variety of dangerous situations with a harm reduction model in mind.
If this girl had known those techniques, and if others in the room had been trained in them, this situation naver would have gotten furhter than threat from those boys.
Belatrys: Your point about just saying “I have a knife” is similar to whaat I’m talking about. I don’t know if we could make it mandatory, but seeing an after school rape awareness training class for jr highschool and highschool age students would, IMO, be a start.
I don’t want a “No-sex” area at school. One of my old high school’s had a strict no-pda rule. Hand holding was even forbidden.
The only thing was, is it didn’t do a goddamned thing and became a joke. I think it would have been far more effective to offer self-defense class, but oh no, can’t do that because of the strict no-tolerance policy, so even if someone sexually assaulted you, and you knew how to defend yourself, automatic ISS (I’ve seen it, firsthand).
Sexuality is not something should be suppressed. And girls shouldn’t have to be little sluts. The problem is not with the girls, in my oppinion, it’s about a lack of cohesion in policy.
Has there been talk of a “no sex” policy? I might have mised that in other people’s comments.
Maxed out mama
I hope those boys are punished.
La Luba said:
t has everything to do with a sense of entitlement to women’s bodies, and the knowledge that society as a whole pretty much condones rape of the vulnerable.
I don’t know if I buy the claim that society as a whole pretty much condones rape of the vulnerable. Please explain.
I knew of one incident at my high school where a guy was rumored to have coerced a girl into giving him a blowjob. I don’t know if it was true. But I do know that all the guys I heard talking about it vigorously condemned it. I knew many guys at my school who had chauvinistic attitudes, but I don’t think they were extreme enough to condone rape or coercion. If behavior like that was going on, it must have been at parties (which I never went to).
Amanda said:
I am amused by the idea that girls have access to special status to be gotten through sex. How valuable can such status be if it can only be gotten through the boys? Doesn’t that mean that the boys are always of higher status?
Women can gain special status through their sexuality (not just sex). I don’t understand how this idea would be revolutionary. Even if flaunting sexuality makes a woman “Best Object,” she can still derive a lot of power from that role in some contexts. I think feminists are correct in pointing out that beauty standards are a source of powerlessness for women, but I think they are leaving out the other side of the picture: that beauty can also be a massive source of power for women.
I went to highschool in a very affluent area, and one of the consequences was that the girls would have access to expensive clothes and beauty care. Quite a few of them looked liked models. These girls would get a ton of attention from males. Guys would be fawning after them. With some of the most beautiful girls, guys would sometimes act like groupies, and help the girls with their homework, do favors for them, or provide a listening ear in the event that a girl wanted to complain about her problems to him. Some of these girls obviously had low self-esteem, some did not.
I remember one girl in particular that just about every guy in the school had a crush on. She was talked about as if she was a minor celebrity. Object? Maybe. Powerless? Definitely not. Female beauty can make males feel very powerless, especially during youth, when the females are the most beautiful and the males are the least able to master their emotions. Being faced with someone who you can’t help but want very badly, but who doesn’t really want you back creates feelings of powerlessness and insecurity. Actually, I suspect that chauvinistic attitudes in males are often a reaction to feeling helpless in the face of greater female sexual power. What can a young man do to have the dynamite sexual effect on women that an attractive young woman can have on him through cute clothes and beauty care?
jam said:
i have been left with a sorrowful & bitter cast in my mind towards teenage boys & their sexuality. sorrowful b/c so many of them are so clearly fucked up & desperately ignorant when it comes to understanding sex & intimacy (not to mention how susceptible to peer pressure)… & how clearly this is the result (at least in part) of little if any support in schools for dealing with sex in a straightforward manner.
Yes, and it is worse than that. And it is more than just sexual repression (which pornstorm mentioned), though sexual repression is definitely part of the problem. Young males are expected to play a very difficult role: that of the initiator, which requires confidence, social skills, and assertiveness. Yet men are given no practical training on how to initiate things (let alone in a way that women are actually comfortable with!), but rather expected to figure out how to do it “naturally.” But not all men are confident, socially skilled, or assertive (especially not during youth), so not all men can play their role “naturally.”
Hence, we have an obvious recipe for disaster. During highschool, males have a high desire for sex, but only a limited ability to interact with girls. Because mainstream culture provides no practical help with girls, young males are left to their own devices to figure things out: their peer group, or the internet. It should be no surprise that some of the “solutions” they come up with are extremely unhealthy both to them and to the young women they interact with (though that is simply an explanation, not an excuse).
Another problem is that young females, just like young males, tend to internalize the current construction of masculinity to some extent. In my highschool, the males who were most popular with girls in general were actually the most “patriarchal” and “chauvinistic”! They would tease girls all the time, and often treat them in a patronizing manner. Although there were definitely girls who found this behavior to be condescending (several of the more “artsy”/intellectual girls told me so), the majority of girls seemed to enjoy it. It wasn’t just that the girls would tolerate the patronizing to gain status from attention from the popular guys. It seemed that one of the reasons those guys were popular was because the majority of girls would respond well to their behavior.
I believe that this system of gender roles is based on unhealthy power dynamics (which is part of the reason why I feel that I have common ground with some feminists), yet it is NOT only males who uphold this system.
I suspect that dynamics like this are common in highschool, and to some extent college also. It feeds the myth that girls want “jerks,” or to be mistreated by males. I have encountered many guys who have this perception, and such a belief is not likely to foster healthy relationships and intimacy with women; actually, it is likely to foster misogynistic attitudes.
Josh Jasper said:
Your point about just saying “I have a knife”? is similar to whaat I’m talking about. I don’t know if we could make it mandatory, but seeing an after school rape awareness training class for jr highschool and highschool age students would, IMO, be a start.
Perhaps you are correct, but we must be careful or else the solution could become almost as bad as the disease. I am talking of date rape seminars, such as the one at my school when I was a sophomore. Date rape speaker Katie Koestner told us all about her rape in graphic detail. Total overkill, and there were people younger than me in the audience. I grew up being very ashamed of my sexuality and being male in general, and this seminar definitely contributed to that shame (partly because I was too young to think critically about it). Surely date rape can be addressed in a way that doesn’t have adverse effects on the males who are already in no danger of committing it, and are lacking in a sexual aggressiveness and confidence with women in the first place.
Lauren said:
And RE: the sexual superstar statement. This is probably going to make me very unpopular, but I believe that girls learn very early that their sexuality is what defines them among their male peers. As all these kids are seeking to develop their identities, they rely on archetypes and stereotypes to confirm and deny their burgeoning subjectivities.
Exactly. Now that I am in college (freshman), I see young women using their sexuality to have men do them unreciprocated favors. Some of these women seem to have a mentality of entitlement, where they assume that the guy will do what they ask. This suggests that they are used to having guys ask “how high?” when they say “jump.” They are taking advantage of the chivalrous messages that are foisted on many young men. I don’t think a majority of girls, even of attractive girls, behave this way, but it is definitely going on… and it shows that the current gender roles don’t always advantage males.
Aegis, I would be more than happy to explain how society as a whole condones rape.
1. If a young woman goes to a party, gets drunk (or is “slipped a mickey”) and passes out, and men attending the party take her into a back room and rape her while she is unconscious, it’s pretty much considered her fault. After all—she attended the party, and she had a drink. Anything goes.
2. If a woman is raped after dark in a parking lot, either on her way home from work or while running errands, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all—what was she doing out after dark?
3. If a woman is raped while she is wearing what could be considered to be “sexy” clothing, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all—she’s wearing that clothing to attract male attention, right? Attracting the attention of rapists is something she chose to take a chance on, right?
4. If a woman is raped while out jogging alone, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all—what was she doing out there by herself?
5. If a woman who lives alone is raped in her own home, in the middle of the night, by a rapist who came in her window, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all—why did she have her window open? Even if the window wasn’t open, but closed and locked, it’s still her fault. She should have had a roommate, or a dog.
In my city, a real estate agent was raped in broad daylight, while she was showing a home to a man she thought to be a potential client. This woman was well-known in the community, with an impeccable professional reputation. The rapist had stalked her (unbeknownst to her; this came out during the trial) and had planned his location. Her held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her if she fought back. When he left the house, she immediately slammed the door, locked it, and started screaming to the neighbors to call the police. Lucky for her, they did.
She not only reported the rape, but went to the emergency room and had a rape kit done. She cooperated with the police fully. She did all the things a woman is supposed to do after a rape.
The rapist used a false name when he made the appointment, but the police were able to track him through the rental car he used. When the police interviewed him, they noted that he had no bruises or scratches on him. He told the police it was all a misunderstanding; that the sex was consensual. The woman had lacerations and bleeding in her vagina and rectum. The man told the police that she was really wild and wanted it rough. He acted sheepish about it. The police chose to believe him, and told the real estate agent there wasn’t enough evidence. They believed the man when he said he didn’t have a gun. The police had found out his real name by this time, yet seemed mysteriously unconcerned that he was using an alias. His alias was a man relocating from out of state on business. His real identity was a local construction worker.
Not long after, another woman was raped. Her body was found dumped in a cornfield. She was shot. The DNA on the dead woman’s body matched the DNA sample taken from the real estate agent. Finally, the police decided to bring charges against the rapist.
In between these rapes, the real estate agent found it hard to do her job. Because of the trauma of the rape? The stress and fear of it happening again? Sure. But also because she was losing business. This rape had gotten a lot of media attention, and although her name was not revealed in the press, this is a small town (only around 120,000), so folks figured out who it was. The real estate agency she worked for was named in the press, and she was one of the full-time agents—not hard to narrow down. She lost business because this rapist was believed by the police. He was released. So, instead of sympathizing with this poor woman, the public thought of her as that nasty slut who brings strange men into your house to sleep with them, on your bed, while you’re trying to sell your house! Yuck! This traumatized her more than the rape itself—the idea that she could go from a pillar of the community to cheap slut in one rape.
Wanna real kick in the ass? Women are even more likely to blame a woman for her own rape than men are. It’s a form of denial. Women want to believe that this is something that isn’t going to happen to them; that in fact can’t happen to them. Rape is something that happens to “loose” women, or “not careful enough” women, or “weak” women, or…..whatever. Don’t believe me? Talk to some criminal lawyers, especially the prosecution. Rape is a difficult crime to prosecute. Not because the evidence is any weaker than any other crime, but because of the psychological baggage the jury brings with them. Female jurors tend to be especially hard to convince, because they want to believe that had the shoes been on their feet, that they would have escaped, or successfully fought back, and wouldn’t have been raped.
La Luba, thank you for your extensive explanation. I am still a bit skeptical: your arguments would have made sense if they were intended to describe the world 20-30 years ago, but I don’t know to what extent they apply to the world today.
. If a young woman goes to a party, gets drunk (or is “slipped a mickey”?) and passes out, and men attending the party take her into a back room and rape her while she is unconscious, it’s pretty much considered her fault. After all…she attended the party, and she had a drink. Anything goes.
Who, exactly, considers it her fault? The men raping her, or people in general? I think that is an important distinction. At my university, it has been made pretty clear that the kind of situation you describe is date rape. There is a fraternity on campus who is rumored to be an unsafe environment for females to go. I have seen quite a few upper classmen (males) warning freshman females to avoid that frat. If our culture condones rape, then why does that frat have such a bad reputation, especially among males? I do believe that some males may hold the attitudes you describe, but those males seem to be a vast minority. Hence, I really don’t believe that our culture condones the rape of women while drunk.
2. If a woman is raped after dark in a parking lot, either on her way home from work or while running errands, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all…what was she doing out after dark?
I’m sorry, but I don’t buy this at all. I don’t believe that there is any significant amount of people, even chauvinistic men, who think that woman shouldn’t be out after dark nowadays (or that they are inviting rape if they are). This argument seems like an anachronism that would have applied decades ago, but doesn’t today. Same with your example #4 about a woman out jogging alone.
3. If a woman is raped while she is wearing what could be considered to be “sexy”? clothing, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all…she’s wearing that clothing to attract male attention, right? Attracting the attention of rapists is something she chose to take a chance on, right?
Ok, I find this more believable than #2 and #4, but it still strikes me as anachronistic. Again, I will grant that there are people today who who hold this belief, but I am not convinced that they are anything more than a minority. Can you provide any evidence to show that such beliefs are widespread, or culturally condoned?
5. If a woman who lives alone is raped in her own home, in the middle of the night, by a rapist who came in her window, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all…why did she have her window open? Even if the window wasn’t open, but closed and locked, it’s still her fault. She should have had a roommate, or a dog.
I don’t buy this either. Honestly, it sounds like you are drifting into the realm of hyperbole here.
In my city, a real estate agent was raped in broad daylight, while she was showing a home to a man she thought to be a potential client.
Ok, this story does cause me concern. Now I’m wondering (a) when it was, and (b) how typical it is. I would need a lot more evidence to believe that cases like this are typical, or that society as a whole condones rape.
Rape is something that happens to “loose”? women, or “not careful enough”? women, or “weak”? women, or…..whatever. Don’t believe me?
I believe you on this point.
Aegis, you might want to check out the info on the recent Haidl and OC cases that Sheelzebub posted on under this category.
Thanks for the link… those stories were shocking.
Still, they don’t seem to demonstrate that our culture condones rape. Actually, they might demonstrate that attacks on the victim’s moral virtue don’t fly any more. The defense lawyer was chastised for his despicable tactics, and the boys were found guilty.
I’m not sure condone would be the right word, but it’s naive to think that rape and sexual assault get even close to the amount of investigative energy and time that they should. Given time, I’m sure you’ll start to come across more stories and anecdotes that back this up, Aegis, but right now your perspective is still pretty fresh. While I’m not pointing a finger and stating that you’re naive, but just the same, from reading your posts I don’t think you’ve yet had it sink in just how prevalent (despite I’m sure your awareness of the statistics) rape and sexual assault are, and how very trivial certain types (the more common types) are written off as insignificant in our culture. As for attacking the victim’s moral virtue, while this might be starting to become frowned upon in the courtroom, it’s definitely not as quick to catch up in the many, many, many cases that do not get reported. Hell, look at the Kobe Bryant case as a perfect example of even the courtroom still taking part in such scandelous antics. It’s victimization after being victimized and it’s one of the primary reasons women don’t step forward more frequently upon being raped or sexually assaulted.
Kim said:
Actually, it does sound like you are pointing a finger and stating that I am naive. I don’t particularly mind this: I know that I am younger than probably everyone on this blog, so it wouldn’t surpise me if there is many areas where I am naive. Yet even if I am naive, I am not sure that I am wrong.
By the way, can you cite some evidence that rape and sexual assault don’t get the amount of investigative energy and time that they should (and is this different from any other crime)?
On the other hand, I can see how some trivial types of sexual assault might not get reported. The other day, I overheard a girl describe an experience with a guy she had been “hooking up” with that sounded like borderline date rape. The guy had shut the door, turned off the lights, thrown her on the bed, and jumped on top of her in the space of about two seconds without any positive response from her. He had also insisted repeatedly on her giving him a blowjob.
[blockquote]Hell, look at the Kobe Bryant case as a perfect example of even the courtroom still taking part in such scandelous antics. It’s victimization after being victimized and it’s one of the primary reasons women don’t step forward more frequently upon being raped or sexually assaulted.[/blockquote]
Wait, as I recall, there was evidence that Kobe Bryant’s accuser had sex with another man very shortly after she was supposedly raped, then tried to explain this as having put on dirty underwear. If she was so traumatized by the rape, why have sex with another man before being examined, then lie about it? From what I have read about the case, my suspicion is that her accusations are false. False accusations create skepticism towards women who have actually been raped. Are you suggesting that the courts behavior was scandalous regardless of whether Farber was probably lying or not (such as by leaking her name)?
You misunderstand me Aegis, I wasn’t calling any sexual assault trivial, I was saying investigations often treat them as trivial; oddly enough, just like you did when discussing what a friend of yours spoke about. As for evidence, well, if I have time sure, but in the meantime, please feel free to google, as I’m sure you’ll find plenty of evidence and statistics on how under-reported rape and sexual assaults are.
And on to Kobe Bryant – I watched a special on Dateline the other evening and the thing that kept striking me was the fact that the girl was afraid of going forward because she feared her prior sexual activity coupled with Kobe’s celebrity status would make people not believe her. By the way, as far as I’ve heard, the sex act that occurred earlier that day was with a friend of hers, and another sample was from Kobe Bryant.
Pardon, the sex act was afterwards, yes. My mistake. This is the situation as it stands now, and unlike you I’m not nearly as convinced that a sexual assault didn’t occur:
*sigh*
Okay, I actually did a google just so you’d have some facts at your fingertips – you’re responsible for the rest of your search beyond this:
and…
Aegis, you are probably right that society as a whole doesn’t condole rape, and that the “blame the victim” mentality is becoming less and less prominent among younger generations, however the people in charge of enforcing the laws and procecuting alleged rapists are still belonging to those older generations.
There is no dispute that the US have horrorfying rape statistics, and that’s only the reported cases. It is commonly acknowledged that for every rape case reported, there is probably at least one not being reported.
In other words, there are real problems that needs to be addressed. How they should be addressed is not clear, but saying that there is no problem (or alternatively that it’s nature/instincts) is not the solution.
Thank you for locating those numbers for us Kim – as I said they are horrorfying.
One thing that confuses me is the use of “forcible rape” – isn’t rape forcible per definition? Anyone know?
Aegis said:
I misunderstood you, but not in the way you think. For some reason, I thought that by “trivial” you meant “minor” (and that’s what I used it to mean), rather than “insignificant” or “unimportant.” I was actually agreeing with your claim that minor types of sexual assault are often ignored. I think what happened to my friend is very serious, yet I know that she won’t do anything about it. As far as I know, she is still seeing the guy.
Thanks for the links, I will get to them tomorrow.
Kristjan:
Perhaps it is using “forcible rape” to distinguish from statuatory rape?
Aegis :
I can see a lot of reasons for this. 1) to regain control of her body – having been forced to have sex, being able to consent and control a sexual experience with another person could make her feel better 2) to remind herself of how a positive experience of sex feels 3) to make herself clean – after feeling dirtied by the rape, an act of consenual sex could make her purified 4) to prove to herself that she is still wanted, that men won’t be revolted by the rape.
Yes, pretty silly to do for the point of view of collecting evidence, but very understandable from a tramatised woman point of veiw. She could have lied about it because she thought people wouldn’t believe she could have ben raped and then still been able to have sex afterwards, and hence not believe she was raped.
I agree with the statement by La Lupa that society condones rape (not as often in words, but in the actions/lack of actions it takes). A few links from British Goverment reports (I can’t comment on the American side really, since I’m in the UK, but our nice shiny government has done lots of reports on rapes and is slowly trying to inprove laws and police/jury attitudes to rape)
On how rape is treated from reporting to the police to trial with explainations about why cases get dropped and why such low conviction rates.
And A Gap or a Chasm which is more contrated on the victims of rape, and why they drop their cases/don’t want to go to court.
From it you get accounts like
“Well actually, I didn’t report, I thought I was to blame. It’s quite simple. I’d gone out and stayed out longer than expected, I’d had enough to drink to know that I needed a little help to get home. I needed somebody to get me a taxi, put me in it, and then I could have got home. So I was tipsy, but not drunk. And this gentleman said he would look after me, and I asked him could I trust him? And he said yes. He brought me home, on the tram, which I’d never been on before … We got to my house, and … at the door, I stretched my arm and said, “I’ll get you a taxi.”? I didn’t invite him in.
But the next thing, as I’m phoning for the taxi, I realised he was sat on the settee. Then I was raped, and then he went. I felt a stupid old woman, because I’m fifty-odd … But I felt as though I could trust him”
Okay, how many twisted is that? The woman is raped, and she thinks it is her fault. Society condones rape when it reinforces their veiws that rape is the victims fault, and hence not a punishable crime.
Or even better are the ones from the police themselves
” I think I’d have more belief in the victim, that was saying it was by a stranger, that …it was a proper rape, rather than perhaps someone who said “It’s my ex-boyfriend, he came round”?, ’cause then you start to think things like “Oh, she’s just getting back at him now.”? (St Mary’s, Police Officer DC, F2, July 2002)”
“Well, honestly, it’s because most of them are not telling the truth … I think what happens to a lot of adults is they may have consensual sex with somebody, they get found out by their husband, partner, whoever, they then say “Oh but I didn’t consent”? as a way of getting themselves out of that trouble … I mean I have dealt with hundreds and hundreds of rapes in the last few years, and I can honestly probably count on both hands the ones that I believe are truly genuine.
(Comparison 1, Police Officer DC, M2, June 2002)”
Unless you are underage, or are violently attecked by someone you have never met, then pretty much forget about your rapist getting taken to court, let alone convicted. And if you do report, you will be consider a liar, a slut and fair game for other rapists….
“The data on multiple attendees at St Mary’s suggest that there is a group of women who are subjected to repeat sexual victimisation by different assailants. Currently, this vulnerability appears to function as a cue to practitioners to dismiss their allegations rather swiftly. Indeed, it could be argued that the entire attrition process results in thousands of people each year entering a group that, should they have the misfortune to be assaulted in the future, will mean their complaint will be treated with even greater scepticism.”
(All the quotes are from the second link)
One last point, from personal experinece rather than from research. I’m not convinced it’s just the older generations. I am an undergraduate at Oxford University. Theorectically I should be surrounded by the brightest and highest educated men of my generation. And i have heard time and time agsin “you can’t rape a woman because she enjoys it really”, “most woman who report rapes are just doing it because they changed their minds after as don’t want people to think they are sluts” (said to re-assure me when I was getting upset over the low conviction rates vs. increasing rape stats) and “It’s the girl’s fault for [dressing/acting that way/getting drunk and going home with them]- they know men can’t control their reactions”. I hate to think what less educated men think.
Aegis, I’m not talking about attitudes of 20-30 years ago. I’m talking about attitudes that are fully realized and fully verbalized right here where I live. Here is a link to a case in my city from a couple of years ago. I chose this example because it illustrates the problem in my area and provides hard statistics as to its extent. Pay attention, and you will see that for 210 complaints of rape, the States Attorney chose to file charges in only 27 of those cases. In this woman’s case, when she pressed the States Attorney as to why he wasn’t going to file charges, his response was, “You have to consider the little old Baptist lady in the corner of the jury box and what she’s going to think about this.”
Another local case I immediately thought of when reading through this thread was that of a fourteen year old girl who was raped by a hockey player from the local junior team. It’s common practice for “host families” to provide room and board for the young men who play hockey for the team, who often come from other areas of the country. Host families volunteer to house these players, in much the same way host families provide for international students.
Anyway, this girl was raped in her own bedroom, in her own house, by this player. He was much larger than she (he stood over half-a-foot taller and outweighed her by some 80-100 pounds), and he held her down and covered her mouth while her raped her. Her parents were not home.
This was another case that was dismissed by the States Attorney. The player was dismissed from the team, amidst a huge public outcry in support of the player and against this girl. This girl was excoriated in local talk radio shows as a slut. Not only was she not believed to have been raped, but instead was painted as a predatory, scheming seducer who forced herself on the young man. She was said to have been jealous of the media attention this young man received as a hockey player, and wanted to latch on to his fame. What was the girl’s reputation prior to her rape? A semi-popular, friendly, well-liked good student. Sorta quiet, fairly active but rather bookish. And a virgin, not that it should matter. That all changed with one rape. Sure, her name wasn’t mentioned in the media either, but there’s only so many players on the hockey team, so it was easy for the public to figure it out.
You should have been here to hear some of those conversations, Aegis. At my jobsite, there were only two people who believed the girl. Me, and a man whose teenage daughter had been recently raped by a neighborhood boy, after school. Another case that was not pursued by the States Attorney.
You might say we’ve got a States Attorney problem around here, and you’d be right. But it’s a problem that extends far beyond that here. The consciousness raising that you seem to think occurred throughout the U.S. hasn’t reached my area. Yet I’m a woman, and I still live here. This isn’t really Podunk, or Bumfuck, although those of us frustrated with backwards attitudes will call it that, at times. This is a city of 120,000 people. The State Capital. With a major university in town. Hell, you think it’s hard to be believed as a rape survivor here, you oughta head out to the real sticks, where your rapist may be related to the local police chief.
I’ve lived my entire life in the midwest, in various cities. In all of them, this attitude was prevalent. Not in the liberal/lefty circles I run around in, but in the community at large. I try not to think about it too much. But when cases like these are brought to my attention, either through the media or hearing about it firsthand from another woman, it makes me feel like I am under siege. Feminists here have not been able to change the attitudes; conservativism and conservative religion are too strong here. What we have been able to do, is create a phenomenal Rape Crisis Center, staffed by die-hard volunteers ready to answer the phone at a moment’s notice and help rape victims both manuever the system and survive its aftermath.
Being female and living here, I know in my bones that I am not likely to receive much help from the authorities (that my taxes pay for!) in the event of a rape. I am not likely to even be believed. I’m even less likely to be believed by the community at large. The statistics prove it.
I don’t believe that there is any significant amount of people, even chauvinistic men, who think that woman shouldn’t be out after dark nowadays (or that they are inviting rape if they are).
To be accurate, it’s not “why was she out after dark?” but “Why was she out alone after dark, she should have known that wasn’t safe?” (Especially if it’s in an unsafe area.) The idea being that she was really stupid and should have expected something like this to happen.
Yes, Aegis, there was a guilty verdict in the OC case, but the fact that the defense chose to go with the “she was a slut so she deserved it” line — even when they raped “unconsious Doe with a pool cue, aluminum can, Snapple bottle, and lit cigarette, as well as doing it the old fashioned way. Oh, and videotaping the whole thing” — is telling, even if the strategy was roundly vilified and ultimately unsuccessful. Yes, it’s hard to defend clients who videotape actions like that, but there was a special tone of maliciousness in their case, and I can only assume they though the “she’s had sex before, so it’s okay to rape her when she’s unconscious” idea would set with some people. (If I recall, they also threw in some “We wouldn’t want to ruin these boys’ lives, now would we?”)
“Verdicts,” rather, and sorry about the pronoun trouble; also, apparently alcohol had passed her lips on occassion, so that made it okay too, because what would she expect anyway?
What would she expect is synonymous with ‘she got what she deserved’. There’s a vengeful tone to the judgements passed on rape victims in cases like this: ‘look what happened to her. she asked for it and she got it!’
It’s important to note a few things about the OC case, too: it took two trials. The chief defendant was the son of a sheriff. Gee, I’m sure that guy is really serious about rape. There have been more videotape cases since then, including this one. IN all of them the victim was underage, so it should be a slam dunk, but it hasn’t proved to be so.
The usual distinction is between “forcible rape,” where overt violence or threats of violence were used to coerce sex and “statutory rape,” where meaningful consent could not be given because of the age of the victim.
Aegis:
Well, there’s lots of data collected on rape-myth acceptance over the past three decades. For example, here are some results published in 1995. Among high school students in the Midwest:
Among American eighth graders:
That’s a lot of people, and a lot of young men specifically, who buy into the idea that forced sex is OK under certain conditions. They learn these things from somewhere, and there’s plenty of research on where they get the idea from, too. The answer tends to be: from male peers, from older men, from popular culture, and from pornography. (It’s worth noting that radical feminists and pro-feminist men identified these realities and wrote a lot of books and articles about them a good 10-20 years before professionalized social science caught on. The best work on what is sometimes called “rape culture” remains the work done by authors such as Susan Brownmiller, Andrea Dworkin, Robin Morgan, Timothy Beneke, and others.)
Expected by whom?
I hear that during high school, females have a high desire for sex, too, but may have only a limited ability to get what they want from young men. Yet the rate of young women raping young men in high school is very low.
Generally speaking, people desire lots of things. A lot of males, for example, desire political power, but only a limited ability to interact with voters and lobby officials. Yet the rate of men forming gangs to enact violent coups d’etat is pretty low. What do you suppose makes the difference?
>>I don’t believe that there is any significant amount [sic] of people, even chauvinistic men, who think that women shouldn’t be out after dark nowadays (or that they are inviting rape if they are).>>
Huh. That’s funny, because that doesn’t jibe with my experience at all. My family never wanted me or my sister walking around our home neighborhood alone after dark, even though we live in one of the safest, most over-policed suburbs in the country. My aunt was aghast that my parents didn’t outright prohibit me from doing so, even as an adult. When I was in college, it was considered horribly reckless to go jogging alone after dark, even in my relatively safe, suburban college town. In the city I live in now, it’s certainly not considered safe to walk around alone at night; women pair up, preferably with men, or take taxis. Perhaps a woman who goes out alone at night isn’t seen by most people to be _inviting_ rape–that is, actively _courting_ it–but she’s definitely failing to perform due diligence in preventing rape. And if you do get assaulted, or attacked, or threatened, the response is, “Geez, what did you expect?” That was exactly what the cop who came to pick me up said, after some asshole followed me partway home.
Is this uncommon? I assumed that all women have heard don’t accept drinks from anyone but the bartender, don’t leave your drink unattended, tell your friends who you’re going home with, call them to check in, meet up in a well-lit public place, never accept help offered from a stranger, don’t get into his car, don’t wait anywhere alone, don’t go anywhere alone, have someone walk you to your car, don’t be afraid of getting real loud real fast, go for the groin and the eyes and so on.
As long as you don’t mind being treated as a paranoid bitch because you failed to trust that “nice guy” who’s a friend of your roommate, or you’ve dated twice, or who is in your English class. Admonitions about strangers are fine, but expecting people to be suspicious of friendly acquaintances, or people who others have vouched for, may be expecting a little much.
don’t wait anywhere alone, don’t go anywhere alone
And make sure you wear your burqa!
I’m not saying the double standard is fair, or even that admonitions like this are workable, or even that they’re sane (“Don’t have long hair,” etc.), just that I was under the impression that they were ubiquitous. For women, anyway–I’m not surprised that Aegis hasn’t been inundated with them.
I am amused that anyone even dare suggest that rape isn’t blown off and therefore tacitly condoned, especially acquaintance rape. When I was assaulted, people told me over and over again that they really wished I hadn’t called the police and made a fuss, but instead that they wished that I had pretended it didn’t happen. And I would have followed this suggestion, rather than go through the stress of filing charges, if I didn’t fear having to run across my assailant in future social situations. Filing charges was the only way to convince people that indeed it was was a bad idea to have him around me again.
Kim asked, “Who in this thread has talked revenge? How have you gone from reading people desiring justice to people desiring revenge?”
there is a sense in which justice is the masquerade of revenge. justice is revenge taken from an individual’s vigilante’s hands and, supposedly, put in the relatively objective & impartial hands of society. i’m not saying revenge is necessarily bad, only that the impulse to change the past will be rebuffed.
Kim asked, “Are you implying that people noticing this is only out of some lascivious or vicarious sexual thrill instead of genuine horror and frustration that our society has cultivated such mindsets?”
yes. not everyone. not always consciously. the thrill is a complex of pain, impotence, revenge, and sex. though the conscious mind may be able to separate these things, in our feelings these things get mixed together.
Kim asked, “Surely you aren’t suggesting we all just go back to getting ourselves layed in lew of paying attention to crimes such as these that call attention to the very core of many gender/sex based problems that affect SO many people?”
no, i’m not suggesting that. i thoroughly believe in the right of the father and of the community to redress the wrongs, however impossible it may be to undo the rape itself. i’m saying the NATIONAL OUTRAGE will lead to what appears to be a rational dialogue. but as the rational structure blows away like so many playing cards, a fresh mixture of revenge, power, and sex hand in hand is left in the newspapers and on television.
what i’d like to see is sex, love, beauty, experimentation & trust, all hand in hand. and calling for the heads and the rape of the administrators and the boys (respectively) does not achieve that. there is no doubt we all love watching a public hanging to know that order has been restored. there is no doubt, because seeing such a spectacle satisfies some dark desire. and rape satisfies another dark desire.
I find myself nodding along to a lot of these comments. To throw in my 2 cents, here’s my experience:
I’m 20 years old and going to the University of North Dakota (That’s Grand Forks, ND people, not exactly a pinnacle of crime). My mom tried to make me promise I wouldn’t walk alone after night, and to always call the campus cops (not that I trust them). My dad backed up her paranoia by telling me that even though I’m trained in self-defense, I’ll always be overpowered by a guy (way to encourage me there, dad).
I like walking alone at night in the summer here. It’s cool, it’s the only time I’m really awake, and it’s peaceful when everyone’s barricaded in their homes. Every time I’ve walked at night by myself, the cops have come and hassled me (Are you okay? Where do you live? Where’s your id?), and then rolled there eyes after I complied and drove off. I can almost see them thinking “She is so going to get raped”. I really don’t expect them to be over-much helpful.
I eat lunch with a bunch of chauvnistic guys (not really much of a feminist presence here) and when we’ve talked about this, they say the equivalent of “Yeah, it would be your fault if you ever got raped.” Even though in the next breathe they’re all “And we would take a cheese grater to his nuts” which is kinda sweet in a really fucked-up fashion.
Idea that women are supposed to be paranoid or it’s there fault? Oh yeah, it’s definately out there. I just refuse to let that dictate my life. And, if I were ever raped, I would report it in two seconds flat and taking the public metaphorical lynching. Because it is NOT my fault, and I am making that statement as hard as I can by doing so.
and when we’ve talked about this, they say the equivalent of “Yeah, it would be your fault if you ever got raped.”?
Maybe you should explain to them that you’re most likely to be raped by an acquaintance, and since they’re inclined to blame women for rape, you no longer feel safe eating lunch with them. :P
piny, I know you didn’t agree with all those statements, just noting how ludicrous and limiting they are. Things like “don’t go anywhere alone,” for example. I know that as a young woman, I recognized how ridiculous this stuff was–and as a result, I tuned out any useful advice about avoiding sexual assault I might have gotten, because it was all just part of the “evil rapists are behind every bush and you must be paranoid at all times” stream-of-paranoia stuff.
(Granted, I was a young woman in the days before date-rape drugs were common, but y’know.)
When I was a student at UC Berkeley in the 90s, and living in the dorms, the campus police would give seminars on “safety,” which I found incredibly paranoid at the time, and in retrospect, seemed more about indoctrinating young women in believing themselves weak, threatened, and dependent on male authority figures. It was all about sticking to well-lit areas, staying in large groups, etc. The campus was ridiculously heavily policed, and there was always a demand for yet more lights, yet more police.
At one of these indoctrination sessions, one woman talked about her problem with a roommate. They had a class together that got out relatively late, 7 PM, and her roommate would stick around a few minutes extra to talk to the professor after class. This meant they’d miss the shuttle bus to the dorm that arrived just when their class ended — so they’d have to wait outside the lecture hall, in a brightly lit area with dozens of people around, for FIFTEEN MINUTES before the next shuttle arrived.
The cops suggested going back inside the building to wait.
Shortly after this, the university launched an “escort service,” in which students were issued military uniforms, canisters of pepper spray, and walkie-talkies; and when the escort service was called through an 800 number, they were dispatched to escort students back to their dorms after dark. The escorts were nearly all men, but there were a few women; all the escortees I ever saw were women.
At the time, I was thinking mostly that it was perverse, if one was worried about being attacked by strangers, to call for an armed stranger for protection. Now, I’m inclined to see it as an unbelievably blatant assertion of male dominance and female helplessness and dependency, that did nothing to address the real dangers young women would have to contend with.
I guess I was also noting how much of a division there was. I grew up with them, and continue to note them every day. Now, of course, I really am much safer from street harassment of that type, but I still feel like the target demographic for all those Cosmo articles about listening to your fear. I guess there are men who didn’t notice them at all.
Also–I had a stalker. He was a relatively minor problem, but for a few weeks, I was followed around my community college and partway home by this extremely creepy guy. I had my professors and (male) classmates walk me to the bus a few times, and after he followed me a little further than usual one evening, I called the police.
This kind of thing is normal; it’s expected that it’ll happen at some point–some guy harassing you at work, some guy bothering you at a party, some guys harassing you on the street, some guy following you after dark–and you had better learn to be ever-vigilant. You don’t take certain risks, like leaving your drink at the bar while you go to the bathroom.
Brian–and pornstorm–I get that these measures, both security and deterrence, arguably don’t address the underlying problems of violence and power disparities in our society, but I don’t give a fuck.
I would have given my right arm for an escort service like the one you described, Brian. The stalker would have left me alone a lot sooner, and he would have had a lot less power; as it was, after sunset, there was no one around for miles to appeal to. And I see nothing shameful about appealing for help to deter an attacker. That’s what police officers and their deputies are for.
And gee, it sucks that prison’s so harsh, and it sucks that the public tends to be unfeeling towards criminals (if not so much towards rapists), but if they don’t want to get locked up, they should stop shoving pool cues into teenage girls’ vaginas. Outrage over rape, including the visceral fury that women feel about the ever-present threat of rape, is not the same thing as the violent misogyny that causes rape. It’s just not. They can’t be equated. I can’t believe I even have to say so.
Piny: there seems to be a serious preference in pornstorm’s writing for the saftey of the rapists over the saftey of the people who’re rapes. He or she is condemning our outrage with some strawman about how we really want the perpetrators to be raped, while most people here have gone out of thier way to mention that the saftey of the girl is the foremost concern, and that the prison system sucks, but this is the real world, and our primary concern is the girl, and others in the school system.
Reguardless, I effing HATE armchair psychoanalysis of people’s ‘subconscious’ motives. Especialy when it’s coupled with some half baked idea about a utopian future with no real world suggestion on how to fix things.
Thank you Rad Geek, I had forgotten that aspect of US law. In Denmark underage sex is dealth with in other paragraphs, and it wouldn’t be called rape, unless there was force involved. People don’t get off light, especially not if they are in a position of authority compared to the underage person, but it means that if a couple has sex before one of them have turned 15 (the age of concensus), none of them are charged with rape.
Kristjan –
In the US, it’s called “the age of consent.” And as I understand it, it’s not statutory rape here if two people who are both under the age of consent have sex; it’s only statuatory rape when one of them is at or above the age of consent.
I favor putting rapists in prison, because what the hell else are we going to do with them? Realistically, no matter how bad prisons get, that’s where I want rapists to go. Better prison than high school.
Nonetheless, I do think that prison rape is a real concern. It’s not just a matter of rapists getting raped (which is brutal and wrong, but at least has a sort of ironic justice); it’s also a matter of potheads and embezzlers and other non-violent criminals, stuck inside prison with the rapists, getting raped.
What’s frustrating to me about prison rape is that it’s a much easier thing to solve than rape outside of prison. All we’d have to do is agree as a society that stopping prison rape is so important that it’s worth spending more money on building better-designed prisons (eliminating rape-associated features like barricks housing and blind corners) and hiring independent monitors to make sure guards do their jobs. Compared to the huge changes in society that would be required to really reduce rape outside of prison, massively reducing prison rape would be straightforward.
But we won’t do it, because it would require spending precious tax dollars, and too many Americans would rather see some poor pothead or shoplifter raped than pay higher taxes.
In Denmark underage sex is dealth with in other paragraphs, and it wouldn’t be called rape
In the US it varies from state to state. In many states there are degrees of ‘criminal sexual conduct,’ where the age of the victim is a factor.
Amp, it depends on the state you’re standing in. Some have “Romeo and Juliet” clauses, some don’t. Some exempt same-age partners, some don’t.
Agreed, Amp. I should have said, “In the context of this particular discussion, I don’t give a fuck.”
When I was in middle school , there was a boy who can only be described as an oversexed pervert. We girls were all afraid of him. He’d always say disgusting things to us and there was this air of menace whenever he was around. My friend Carrie was grabbed by him and her mother complained. Nothing was done. He was a pathetic person, learning disabled, and very vulnerable in a way so I’m sure the authorities felt sorry for him. I even felt sorry for him. Long story short- as an adult he was convicted for 1rst degree criminal sexual conduct. No one who knew him was surprised.
I have a shameful vice of listening to Dr Laura, whom I heard ask a father of a 13 year old who was groped by a neighbor if she was dressed like a skank like most girls are these days. Yes, many of us are more enlightened these days, but those ugly assumptions about rape and are still there, lurking around on a.m. radio.
By the way, there is no doubt in my mind that Kobe raped that poor young woman. All of the “info” about her having sex shortly after was never proven or even presented at a trial, only whispered to the press is shameful tactic of intimidation. Read the police report at the Smokinggun.com and come to your own conclusions.
Elena, in my view, Kobe admitted that he raped that woman in his post- dismissal “apology.” His defense was a deliberate set-up motivated by a potential civil claim. If that were true, then the encounter itself would have proceeded as unambiguously consensual. By admitting that he understood how she could have seen it as otherwise, he was admitting that a reasonable person in her position could have been physically intimidated. No room left for his original story, where she pursued him and then lied. It is clear, instead, that he used force or the threat of force, but he still doesn’t really see what’s wrong with that.
As for her other sexual encounters, whether it is true or not, I don’t care. She wouldn’t be the first woman to try to bury a rape with consensual sex. I’m not going to criticize a woman who has just been raped for any sexual choice she makes in the aftermath. It may make the physical evidence tougher to sort out, but I don’t attach any normative significance to it (and I wish everyone saw it the way I do …).
Also, La Lubu, you’re absolutely right about conventional wisdom among criminal defense attorneys (I used to do criminal defense). Women as jurors judge women as rape complainants much more harshly. If I remember my anthro courses correctly, this is the phenomenon Malinowski pointed out — people are superstitious about those things that are both important and beyond their control. Baseball and hitting streaks, sailors and storms, farmers and rain. I think you’re exactly right that many women in the jury box have to tell themselves that they could’ve done something different, in order to shield themselves from a much more frightening reality.
I think the oral-sex-media-obsession comes in waves . It was the cover story in this month’s Philadelphia Magazine. It’s all about the news cycle.
http://www.phillymag.com/ArticleDisplay.php?id=534
Piny, I have no problem with a woman asking for someone to walk with her. I have a big problem with an organization that hands out uniforms, weapons, and the badge of authority to men who want to dominate women, and I have a big problem with the idea that women *must* accept that “protection.”
I like that phrase “bury a rape”, Thomas. I think that’s exactly how it feels.
Amanda, I’m sad to say I’ve known women who have been raped or molested, and many more who have been the target of attempted rape. As you know, some women try to bury it with good sexual experiences, some become temporarily celibate. Some curl up into themselves, some want all the support they can get. Some put on weight, others stop eating. The impression I’m left with is that it’s an awful, traumatic and life-changing experience that I can’t fully understand and I hope I never do. Hell if I’m going to tell a woman who’s been through it how she should feel or should act. When I did sexual assault awareness classes in college, we used to tell women not to judge how they got through the rape, because if they survived, whatever they did worked. I think the same is true for any woman who survives the aftermath.
piny says, “Brian”“and pornstorm”“I get that these measures, both security and deterrence, arguably don’t address the underlying problems of violence and power disparities in our society, but I don’t give a fuck.”
it’s understandable to feel that way, but don’t forget it’s the feeling of vengance you’re expressing.
piny says, “And I see nothing shameful about appealing for help to deter an attacker. That’s what police officers and their deputies are for.”
no there’s nothing shameful at all about that. it is terrifying though when one of those deputies becomes the attacker.
piny remarks, “Outrage over rape, including the visceral fury that women feel about the ever-present threat of rape, is not the same thing as the violent misogyny that causes rape. It’s just not. They can’t be equated. I can’t believe I even have to say so.”
piny, didn’t mean to equate them. i’m saying fury, fear, and violence are all dark human impulses and each one can beget the other two.
Josh Jasper remarks, “there seems to be a serious preference in pornstorm’s writing for the saftey of the rapists over the saftey of the people who’re raped.”
i mean to express a preference for rationality, spiritual healing, and a positive mental attitude, for all involved and most especially for the victim of the crime.
Josh Jasper notes, “but this is the real world, and our primary concern is the girl, and others in the school system.”
your use of the words “our concern” reveal my issue. do you know the girl? do you live in that school district? if not, what good is your “concern”? what do you achieve within your own spirit by expressing this “concern”? do you scare away potential rapists? do you build a bigger police force? do you teach others rape is “bad” with your concern? chances are the potential rapist already knows what he’s thinking of doing is “bad”. do you think you become a watchful eye there to be sure justice is done? do you think you become an honest person who, like many others, is satisfied to see a criminal hang from a noose?
Josh Jasper says, “Regardless, I effing HATE armchair psychoanalysis of people’s ‘subconscious’ motives. Especialy when it’s coupled with some half baked idea about a utopian future with no real world suggestion on how to fix things.”
i’m glad you’re concerned with the real world, too. some practical people believe it’s a good idea to have in mind where you’re aiming when you set about solving a problem. i prefer to present a positive vision.
Not to divert the topic, but in some cases, “burying” a rape may not be a bad idea, mental health-wise. If a woman has healthy, supportive relationships with a sexual partner who is cognizant of the experience, then I think it can be constructive to have sex that makes you feel comforted, wanted, not used. Burying can be a good thing or a bad thing.
No, it fucking well is not a desire for vengeance. Christ. Well and truly written like someone who doesn’t have any personal stake in this whatsoever. I’d be happy–overjoyed–to see these young men rehabilitated. I would have been perfectly happy to see my stalker get counselling and medication. I don’t want to see anyone, even rapists, get raped. And I do not support the death penalty, corporal punishment of any kind, prison rape, or violent and inhuman prison conditions.
The desire to see violent misogynists locked up where they can’t hurt women–especially if you happen to be a woman–is a desire for safety. Security. It’s a desire to be able to do reckless things like actually taste a drink someone buys for you, or take a night class at your deserted campus, or go jogging after dark. It’s the desire to know that at least the man who raped you, or your friend, or your neighbor, or your daughter, or your daughter’s classmates, or the women in the next town over is going to be put where he can’t hurt any woman anymore.
And is there a retributive impulse at play for most people, particularly the victims? Of course there fucking well is. Is there fury involved? Of course there fucking well is. But don’t you dare act as though a desire for the protection of the law is the same as a desire for vengeance, especially given the utterly irrational, utterly emotional, entirely vindictive inability of so many juries to convict so many assailants.
Aegis, the first trial of the OC rape ended with a hung jury–only one juror wanted to convict, the rest bought the “she’s a skank and deserved it” bullshit. The second case got some convictions, but they did buy some of the defense’s story that she was a skank. And the defense had no problems with releasing her private medical information to the press, spreading rumors about her, and posting leaflets about her. I have yet to see such tactics in a robbery case.
Also, there was a similar case in Chicago where a girl was raped on video, and the rapists were not convicted. About ten years ago, a mentally retarded girl was raped by her high schools popular jocks, and she was pilloried. You read the comments on any thread about a rape case, and you find the tired old “women lie all the time,” “she was a whore,” “she wanted money,” “she wanted media attention,” “she’s not a real rape victim because he didn’t beat her to a pulp.”
Sheelzebub, I’m not disagreeing with your point – I totally agree – but I just want to interject that there is one area of villification of the victim similar to rape. In some homicides, either a “plan b” defense proposing an alternate killer, of a self-defense story, require a scorched-earth attack on the dead person. Remember the plan b defense in O.J.?
I recall an early ’90s killing of a chinese businessman in Chinatown in NYC. The body was found full of bullets, some fires by a man standing over him while he lay on the ground. Money was found by his body in a neat fan. It looked like a gang hit. The defense argued the the deceased was a gangster and a real bad dude, with a full-court press to drag him through the mud. I have no special knowledge about the truth of that account. The defense argued that the deceased had intended to kill the defendant, who shot him in self-defense, and then, with his heart hammering in his chest, continued shooting on autopilot even as the body lay still (reloading a revolver twice, IIRC). And the fan of bills? A neat stock, brought as a bribe or appeasement, that the victim dropped in haste, which fanned neatly by conincidence. The defense attorney dropped a stack of bills into a perfect fan in the courtroom to demonstrate that it could happen.
Acquitted.
Now, did the jury acquit because they believed the self-defense story? Or because, if the dead guy was a bad guy, who cares who killed him? We’ll never know.
I’m not, of course, arguing that this is the same thing, just saying the categorical statement that the victim isn’t attacked in non-rape cases isn’t entirely accurate.
In some homicides, either a “plan b”? defense proposing an alternate killer, of a self-defense story, require a scorched-earth attack on the dead person.
As one famous defense attorney has said, you can get away with it if you convince the jury that the dead guy needed killin’ and your client was the man for the job.
Richard, isn’t it interesting how eagerly the grown-ups swallow (sorry) all those stories about What Our Kids Are Doing? You almost never read an account from a teen who is actually engaging in all this sex. It’s always “I know this girl who…” or “I heard about this party where…”
On prison rape – there’s a big assumption here that sexual predators in prison are going to be the victims, not the perpetrators. To a lot of sexual predators, going to jail must be like being told “Have some victims. We’ll even lock the doors so they can’t run away from you. Oh, and the police don’t give a shit what you do to them.”
I’ve been thinking along these lines for a long time now. From the time I was in junior high school, back in the mid-70s ferchrissakes, I’ve been hearing moral panic after moral panic about teenagers and their sexual behaviour. And every time, it’s like adults have just discovered that 14 year olds are doing it. And every time, the numbers of teens who are sexually active has reached epidemic proportions.
Now this has happened, to my recollection, about every 4 or 5 years since about 1975. So, if teen sex was at “epidemic” levels in ’75, and has had these truly dramatic increases every 5 or so since, I’m figuring we must be at about, what?, at least 180% of all teenagers having non-stop rampant sex?
It’s ridiculous, and just like the equally predictable moral panics that roll around every few years about teen drug use.
Back 30 years ago, a number of teenagers were fucking and getting high. A number of teenagers are fucking and getting high now. Wow, big news.
Mythago, that sounds like Spence. Was it Spence?
Did anyone else really, really hate the movie Kids from a few years back?
Brian—Oh. My. God. I saw that movie and despised it passionately. The director has done worse since then, though. I know it seems difficult to believe but yes. I felt like I had to take a year-long shower after that flick.
Aegis said:
Nice clothes, a nice car, and being good at sports seemed to work in my day.
Also, you assume that those same high school girls with all that “sexual power” didn’t also get raped.