I (Ampersand, a.k.a. Barry Deutsch) was born to a queen in 1968. Well, not really, but I was born in Queens, which is even better.
I’m a cartoonist; you can find more about my cartooning on my home page. Of particular note is my current comic book project, Hereville, and my ongoing political comic strip Ampersand, published in the lefty economics magazine Dollars and Sense.
Some favorite movies: Mulan, Fanny and Alexander, Ran, Henry Fool, Duck Soup, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, Cyrano de Bergerac, Bullets Over Broadway, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Sideways, Singing in the Rain, West Side Story, Pulp Fiction, City of Lost Children, Brazil.
Some favorite TV: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Deadwood, The Sopranos, Absolutely Fabulous, WonderFalls, Dead Like Me, Roseanne, Pennies From Heaven, Six Feet Under.
Some favorite musicals: Sweeny Todd, Follies, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins, Company, Merrily We Roll Along (notice a pattern?). Also Falsettos, The Secret Garden, Candide, Parade, Avenue Q.
Some favorite comics: Cerebus (despite itself), From Hell, Zot!, Dicebox, Maus, Dykes To Watch Out For, Stuck Rubber Baby, Love and Rockets, the Weirdo-era R. Crumb, Peanuts, Pogo, Calvin and Hobbes, Krazy Kat, Barnaby, Cages, Understanding Comics, Finder.
Some favorite books: Guns, Germs and Steel, The Riddle Master Trilogy, The Secret History, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Accidental Tourist, Breathing Lessons, Red Mars, Duluth, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, all the Harry Potter books (but especially “Prisoner”), Misery, Doomsday Book.
I live in a big house with a bunch of my friends (including “Alas” posters Kim (basement variety!), Bean, Charles, and Elkins) in Portland, Oregon; the house is painted bright blue with bubble-gum pink trim. Aside from that, I watch too much TV, work for a non-profit historic society (among my other hats, I’m a wedding coordinator), write about feminism, fat equality, and whatever else catches my interests, and beyond that I just hang out a lot.
You can send me email at barry (at) amptoons (dot) com.
Hi there, Barry!
It’s been real. But my statement to Pseudo-Adrienne that date-rape wasn’t common 40 years ago got me banned.
Date rape wasn’t common 40 years ago, but who wants to hear that? It violates the current orthodoxy, which is that date rape has always been common and so forth.
Anyway, it’s been fun being here, and I wish you-all the best!
Not sure it should be bannable but…
I think what the hand-wringers TODAY define as date rape was VERY common 40 yrs ago… go out, get your date a bit drunk and when she is inebriated go for it.
What was normal date procedures even less than the above is today considered date rape.
How many movies from the 60s and before have the woman saying no repeatedly while the man plows on until she finally says yes?
By today’s loony standards that was date rape.
Nowadays you almost have to get forms signed in triplicate, notarized, publicized, circumcised, 312 other -izeds, lost, found, filed, refiled, misfiled, put up for a community vote in Botswana and submitted for joint approval by the Pope and Charles Manson before you can even freaking HOLD HANDS, much less get even a peck on the cheek.
SHEESH!
Heck, glancing at her chest or his crotch or either’s buns without the above written permission today is considered date rape.
So it depends on the standards you use… today’s standards (everything is date rape) or the standards of 40 yrs ago (only criminal rape on a date was date rape and maybe not even then)… otherwise you are talking past eachother.
True?
Neal
Wow, so its loony to think that something isn’t right about intoxicating someone until their judgement and/or fundamental ability to resist is significantly impared so as to proceed towards sexual intercourse?
Then I’m pretty happy being loony.
Too good to be true. Seriously, I was worried the trolls were getting subtle, and then these two—or is it one?—showed up, mouthing the same shit. “Gee, rape just didn’t happen forty years ago! It was great.”
Yeah, depends on your perspective. I once was stationed in Cuba with a bunch of Cubans who’d never seen snow.
You two, however, don’t believe that anyone else has seen it.
Oh, come on! It was great fun…if you were a rapist.
Gee, wonder where Neal’s sympathies lie?
I can’t find an email for PA, Amp. She needs to ban this guy on the other thread, post haste.
True, you are under no legal obligation to restrict your actions.
Be as reckless and irresponsible as you want to be.
Just don’t come crying to me when something bad but preventable happens because of it.
As you say you can be the #1 slut on the planet…
I mean, is there any doubt?
Ginmar –
P-A has chosen not to make her email available. I agree with you that probably she will want Neal banned from her threads, though, so I’ll temporarily put any new posts from Neal into moderation, and P-A can decide for herself when she has time.
whoa, what made Susan and Neal pick this thread?
I think they got banned fom at least one yesterday, but Neal’s ejection had to wait till this morning or something. Susan was pretty much banned from the get go; she wasn’t subtle. Neal just had the advantage of good timing.
My pick of this thread was a mistake. I was trying to email Barry, who’s been very good to me in the past, and it got posted in public. Didn’t mean to do it.
Sexual intercourse before marriage in general, rape or no, was much more rare 40 years ago. You-all in your infinite wisdom may “know” better, but you-all mostly hadn’t been born yet. That’s not to say it didn’t happen, far from it. But something has undergone major change here.
Hence, sex against the will of the woman was accordingly much less common.
I really don’t see why telling the truth about the past is trolling, except maybe there’s an orthodoxy being enforced here. I didn’t say it isn’t common now, or that it isn’t a problem. What I was trying to say is, I think what you-all are trying to say: that general societal disapproval – operative on males – really does work to diminish rape of all kinds. It worked then, it can work again, if we can figure out how to construct it.
Sexual intercourse before marriage in general, rape or no, was much more rare 40 years ago.
Do you have a citation for this? Or is it just your opinion/experience?
Maybe it was more rare, but what does it have to do with rape anyway?
Like sexual abstinence causes less rape? What’s the reasoning here? Social disapproval of sex before marriage equals social disapproval of rape?
Ouch…
Oops didn’t see it was the ‘About’ page! saw the comment from the RSS feed and replied.
Jake, reliable statitstics about sexual behavior of anyone anywhere are notoriously difficult to come by, and then they’re wildly unrealiable. Easy answer: there aren’t any. So all I – or anyone else, including you – has is experience.
I went to Stanford and graduated in 1966. I had a lot of friends of both genders, and I was closest to my female friends. We sort of told each other everything, y’know? And some, but not most of them were sleeping with their boyfriends. Most weren’t, even in relationships of long duration.
There was this feeling that the better thing to do was to wait for marriage. This gave the girls a weapon. If he wanted to and you didn’t for whatever reason (and remember, reliable birth control was relatively new and untested) all you had to do was say No, in most cases. He was “wrong”, you knew he was “wrong,” and he knew he was “wrong.”
Date rape? Sure. Drunken date rape? Sure. But the guys were not … no one thought it was sort of OK, except a lunatic fringe. A guy did that, and word got around, and then he found out that interesting intelligent women wouldn’t go out with him. (Maybe he didn’t care, who knows.) But it wasn’t without its penalties.
I know it’s hard to get it through to anyone that the situation as they see it now was not always the situation, but I’m telling you, because I was there that things have changed a lot, and in this area, not for the better. In particular, date rape seems to go on now without penalty. That wasn’t true when I was in college. A date rapist would have become a sort of pariah. His other creep buddies would have approved, but most men and women would avoid him.
I believe that this diminished the frequency of that behavior.
Unless you-all were around then, I don’t think you’re quite as competent as I am to tell you what was going on.
My point is this: IF we can land the punishment for this behavior where it belongs, on the guys, then we can cut down on the frequency. Some guys are sociopaths, and nothing will stop them. But most aren’t. When this behavior becomes socially unacceptable, the majority will stop doing it.
But I firmly believe that social pressure will work, because I’ve seen it work. You-all think I’m a troll for saying this, for some reason which escapes me. You’re entitled to your opinion. But I’m here to tell you that the law isn’t going to become sufficiently interested in the near future, and that your best hope to stop this thing is to build a social situation which instead of tolerating it, penalizes it.
Susan, drawing your conclusions about life in gneral from your own rarified life is a mistake. You just make assertions and provide no cites. It’s tedious. It’s also a fairy tale.
Susan, I’m sorry to have to say that your opinion/anecdotal data proves nothing except what you experienced. I can give you the experiences of 10 people that I know who are your age and older who will disagree vehemently with you. I think that your experience is an anomaly. You were “not there” in the sense of knowing what was the norm in US culture at the time. You were there in the sense of knowing what the norm was among your peers at Stanford. They are two entirely seperate things. This is why nobody takes your experience as the sum of reality for the time. Your claim that your experience represents the wider USA in the mid-60’s is why nobody here will take you seriously in a discussion about our culture as a whole.
You are just going on about “the good old days before society went on the trash heap”. Your opinion is not a factual basis to argue from.
Actually, Jake, while Susan might be overgeneralizing from her own experience (who doesn’t), she isn’t even slightly “going on about the old days”.
If this weren’t such a serious issue, it would be amusing: you’re dismissing someone who’s reached a conclusion you agree with, on the grounds that her starting assumptions are wrong. Susan thinks that one way to mitigate the problem of date rape is to build a culture wherein both men and women socially ostracize those men who engage in it – putting the blame for the offense on the offender, not the victim, and putting responsibility for preventing the crime on the community, not on individual women. This is pretty much exactly what feminists say ought to be done (among other things).
Robert,
I based my statement on the phrase:
…but I’m telling you, because I was there that things have changed a lot…
I read that as, roughly, “Back in my day…” It’s a tendency that I think we all have. And, I think, it is also the reason that so many people are dismissing what Susan has to say about the state of society 40 years ago. Maybe I’m not reading that correctly, but it seems that a bunch of other people are reading it the same way that I am.
I think that what we are dismissing is the claim that there didn’t used to be date rape (or hardly any at all). Susan would like to see people go back to acting in the manner that they used to in order to cut down on rape. The problem is that people, in general, didn’t act the way that Susan claims they did. So, sure, we all agree that rapists should be ostracized. We just don’t want to make the claim that that is the way it used to be when that is clearly not true. In essence, we are arguing with Susan over whether or not there was a golden time 40 years past when date rapists where ostracized by both men and women, not over whether that should happen now.
But the question is not if people were having less or more or the same total sex per capita in the 1960’s. It’s how would that even have to do with women getting raped?
Jake, you-all, you are no less drawing your generalized conclusions from your own experience than I am. What else, after all, do any of us have? Reliable studies on this topic are sadly lacking, not to say impossible.
I dated a number of men during my teens and very early 20’s, some of them for very long periods of time. All of them pressured me for sex. I said No.
The difference is maybe, No stuck. Without any kind of big fight. Not because I’m such a ferocious character, but because that was the culture at the time, and the guys knew they’d suffer serious adverse social consequences if they ignored me and anyone found out about it. (And I would have seen to it that everyone found out about it.)
Isn’t that what you-all want? That other men, and other women, would treat date-rapists with contempt, and let that be known? Don’t you think this would cut down on that behavior?
I know it would because I’ve seen it in action.
You folks seem anxious to…what? Pressure me to deny my own experience in favor of your experience, at a time you weren’t even born yet? Tell you-all that social pressure is useless so you might as well give up? That men are unbelievably bad always and everywhere so there’s nothing we can do? Name it.
I think that what we are dismissing is the claim that there didn’t used to be date rape (or hardly any at all).
OK. What data do you have to support your position?
God forbid that you-all may not know everything?
I’m sort of baffled by being so much attacked just for explaining how the world looked to me 40 years ago. My experience isn’t valid, according to you. Imagine how you’d feel if someone said that to you. I don’t have feelings, or my feelings and perceptions don’t matter, you can hold me in contempt and call me names….why was that again? Because of my age??? Because I’m telling you something you didn’t know before, and it doesn’t fit into your orthodoxy??
Grow up. People who are a generation older than you are are people too. I can get my feelings hurt, just like you can.
And you would know this…how? This is clear to you, who were not there. It isn’t clear to me, and I was. But you’re automatically right…because? Because of your age alone?
Wow.
Robert. And you would prove your proposition how exactly?
ginmar,
And your conclusions differ from mine how again?
Susan: And you would know this…how? This is clear to you, who were not there. It isn’t clear to me, and I was. But you’re automatically right…because? Because of your age alone?
I am roughly contemporaneous with you and in the original thread I strongly disagreed with you. So my experiences were completely different than yours.
I’m willing to believe that you experienced what you experienced and I know what I experienced but I think neither one of us gets to make broad claims about what the world was like for everyone else.
Back to the point.
In the world I lived in, however illusory you-all have decided that world was (how arrogant you all are, to tell me that my own experience is invalid!), on account of how I’m nuts or something, what worked to cut date (and other) rape down was social pressure.
In the world I grew up in, date-rape was regarded by both men and women as despicable. However invalid you-all have decided my experience was, there it is. A man who forced a woman was held in contempt. No interesting woman would bother with him. No respectable man would speak to him. He had only his own creepy friends for company.
I’m not claiming that Andif and I ran in the same circles. Or that everyone my age had this experience. I’m just saying that I had it, and I’m defying the lot of you to tell me different. Where the heck do you-all get off telling me, now, 40 years later, that I don’t know myself what happened to me and my friends back then? You’ve decided that the lot of us were blind deaf and dumb, on your unsupported say-so?? What arrogance!!
My point, however, might be of some use. What kept date rape and other rape down to a low roar was wide negative social pressure on the perpetrators, from men and women both. If you knew that acting that way would put a bullet in the head of your entire social life, you might possibly thing twice.
I can’t imagine what problem you-all have with this proposition. I thought that was what you were all advocating!!! What I’m telling you is that it works.
So shoot me.
man, you guys are something else. Disagree with the Ruling Orthodoxy in any way whatever, even just to report what you’ve seen yourself, and they light you on fire.
Well, not everybody here is like that, Susan. ;)
Susan – no-one’s saying that wasn’t *your* experience but you didn’t present it as *your* experience but as a universal fact.
E.g.
or
… to cite just two examples.
*That’s* what is being questioned.
Nice try at presenting yourself as the poor misunderstood one though.
Right. No one’s telling you what you personally experienced isn’t valid. But you’re no longer talking of your personal experience only when making statements about the incidence of rape in a given society in a given period of time.
>> Sexual intercourse before marriage in general, rape or no, was much more rare 40 years ago. … Hence, sex against the will of the woman was accordingly much less common.
Why that “hence”? Incidence of rape is not the same thing as incidence of sexual intercourse outside marriage.
>> I dated a number of men during my teens and very early 20’s, some of them for very long periods of time. All of them pressured me for sex. I said No.
That’s your experience. Other women wanted to have sex and had sex. Do you think that affected their chances of being raped?
Hey, you guys, I’ve clearly violated some Orthodoxy or other here that I don’t understand.
I can only tell you what the experiences of myself and my close friends were. You don’t like that, because, so far as I can tell, these stories don’t conform to your pre-conceived ideas about reality. Even reality that happened before you were born. You know it all.
Go forward, folks. Don’t in any case be distracted by the facts. Or by the experience of other people. On account of how you know everything off the top.
I’m not a Poor Misunderstood One. I couldn’t care less what you-all think. I know what my life and my experience and the experiences of my friends were, and your opinions couldn’t count less, and can’t change what happened to us.
But ask yourselves. What if I sailed in here and informed you that date-rape is all in your imaginations, that it doesn’t happen at all? You’d be (rightly) furious.
That’s what you’ve done to me. Declared that my experience has no value because it varies from your preconceptions.
Anyone want to try to put themselves in someone else’s place, like mine for example? Or aren’t you capable of that?
I’m outta here. I have nothing to contribute to such a bunch of savants. By golly, you can evaluate everyone else’s experience infallibly as well as your own. No errors, and any attempt at discussion (eg, disagreeing with what you-all Know Already) is trolling.
I know several super-rightwing Roman Catholic blogs where you guys would fit right in. Email me for addresses.
What are you finding difficult to understand? Your experience was not universal. I can’t express it any more simply.
The ‘orthodoxy’ you have ‘violated’ is presenting a coherent, logical and factual argument – it’s not particularly about the subject matter not is it about disputing your personal experience no matter how much you try and pretend that’s what’s being said.
Susan, perhaps you could try addressing each commenter and their responses to you, instead of that “you-all” this and that, cos that does sound a little like asking for a flame.
No one has declared your experience of no value.
What has been declared of no value is your absolute certainty that rape “hardly ever happened” in the US forty years ago.
See the difference?
Susan;
I don’t doubt that there was less rape, but I do think that as someone pointed out previously that it is likely from what we can gather, that rape or molestation was less likely to be identified as rape or molestation. My aunt, whom is a bit younger than you (56) was raped in the early 70’s. Not sure if that was the only incident, but my mother told me about my father going to beat up the guy who did it and warn him that if he came near his sister again he’d be, well, in a world of pain.
One of the things you said strikes me as peculiar though – or at the very least worthy of more introspection than just a generic comment:
Now here is what I find interesting, or perhaps suspect. Can you identify whether or not this notion that no ‘stuck’ more as being a notion of respect for women, or a notion of reverance for the sexist notion of ‘good girls’ and sexual purity that needed to be protected, lest a man’s property be damaged.
Is that something we really want to go back to, trading one evil for another with regards to women’s autonomy? I guess I feel there isn’t really a lesson to be learned, or a bit of wisdom we might be missing if the reason men were accepting no as no meant that they were being protectors of ‘virtue’, rather than respectful of women.
No one has declared your experience of no value.
BS noodles, that’s exactly what nearly everyone has declared. My opinions and my experience are as nothing compared to the (equally anecdotal) experience of you-all. I was banned from a large part of this blog because, and only because, I don’t adhere to the Ruling Orthdoxy.
Kim,
I don’t know why NO stuck. All I know is that it did, more often than not. Not always, but usually. I don’t know why. Would anyone care to talk about why? Maybe the reasons were good ones, maybe not, who can tell. But it did.
Even more interestingly, this fact might be of some interest and use. You wouldn’t want to learn anything, God forbid? To the extend that NO stuck then, how could we make it stick now?
In lieu of reasonable discussion, however, it is good enough here to revile me as person, like this solves a lot of problems? And like What Is Now Is What Has Always Been Except Our Parents Are Fools And Refuse To Tell The Truth?
And you would know this how? And your experience is? And you would know that how?
__________
You-all are assuming, without admitting it, that your idea of what’s going on now is Universal through all times and places. You have no data to support this – how could you? – but you’re all over me because I disagree. Your thought is that I’m nuts or something. Or, better, badly motivated.
Carry on.
Email me for the url’s of those right-wing RC blogs. They’ll love you, they “reason” like this all the time.
Bah, Susan, I wasn’t reviling you at all. I was discussing the topic with you and what you said. While I know you’re feeling a bit picked on right now, I quite like you, I just think you’re being a bit sentimental in your memories, or perhaps not introspecting enough on why your experience was what it was.
What I think might be part of the revulsion though is the notion that a time when sexism was rampant, is being held up as a time of wisdom 0r a time without sexual abuse or assault. Did you by any chance read Cheryl’s post in the MRA thread where she discussed her own story in the late 60’s / early 70’s? Damn near made me cry my eyes out – if you’d like I can see if I can find a link. But these are the sorts of stories that make yours seem a bit rose-tinted.
Because as others have stated, it was not their experience.
Remind who’s being dismissive of people’s experiences?
I’ve scanned both threads and can’t find a single example. Perhaps you could point me in the direction of one?
Susan, perhaps you could try addressing each commenter and their responses to you, instead of that “you-all”? this and that, cos that does sound a little like asking for a flame.
You want me to be more specific, here goes:
Do we know this, that that situation was a result of “evil”? Is everything? Maybe we need to talk.
1. How do you know?
2. Whose was or is? Yours? And you know this how?
On the contrary, I am being told that repeatedly.
A fun critique.
And you would know this how?
And you would know this how? (Ok I know why no one will take me seriously. It’s because I said something that wasn’t one of the Five Acceptible Things To Say. But that my experience is unique? You know this how?)
Get to me for those right-wing urls’s.
Kim,
We’re not talking the late 60’s and early 70’s. That’s a horse of a different colr. I’m talking late 50’s and early 60’s.
colr/color
Well, because as I’ve understood it, at the time the notion of male purity wasn’t exactly a huge issue. Men were encouraged to get with the loose girls if they needed to have sex, but leave the virgins to their purity so there would be some marriageable women. Am I wrong in thinking that virginity was an attractive, if not expected quality in women during that time period, whereas with men it didn’t so much matter?
If that is the case, then it’s a matter of sexism. The notion of female purity being the property of men, so the men were protecting the value of investments, and not simply respecting the bodily autonomy of women. Switching one type of oppression for another isn’t all that appealing to me, with regards to rape.
Others have said the same thing, but… here is what I wrote to you, Susan.
…your opinion/anecdotal data proves nothing except what you experienced
Notice, I didn’t say that your experience proves nothing. I said that it proves nothing but what you experienced. People would have taken you more seriously if you wrote something like:
In my peer group in college, date rape would have caused the rapist to be ostracized and that is because…
In that example you would be saying that such & such action worked for you and your peers & that you think it would be a good idea to promote that in order to reduce rape. Do you see the difference between that and:
Date rape wasn’t common 40 years ago…?
Especially when your supporting data for that is your personal experience?
I also wrote:
You were “not there”? in the sense of knowing what was the norm in US culture at the time. You were there in the sense of knowing what the norm was among your peers at Stanford. They are two entirely seperate things.
How much more clear can I be? Right there in the bolded text I acknowledged your experience.
I absolutely, 100% believe that you are telling the truth when you talk about your experience. Is that clear? I just don’t believe that your experience is enough to be able to say that American culture was nearly identical. Do you see the difference?
The rule that was violated is the one about anecdotal data not being sufficient to support an argument. Anecdotal data can provide an example or a starting point for discussion, but it cannot be what supports an argument. Most of us have done that at one time or another. There is no shame in having it pointed out.
Susan, I’m 35 so my young adulthood was in the 80s/early 90s. I have never been raped & (AFAIK) neither have any of my friends in the close-knit group who were together at school. I don’t remember hearing much talk about it from among my wider acquaintance either. By your logic, that must mean that it wasn’t happening to anybody in that period either.
Look here, here’s the deal.
1. My experience, and the experience of all of my many friends, in the early 1960’s, is our experience. NO ONE, including the lot of you, most of whom weren’t even born then, have standing to tell me that our experience wasn’t our experience, on account of how it doesn’t fit your ideas of Orthodoxy or something. Or for any other reason. Just as we can’t tell you-all that your experience isn’t valid. ( Imagine how the lot of you would react if I did to you what you’re doing to me!!)
2. I got banned from a good deal of this blog for saying the above. On account of how (I guess) only opinions from the Ruling Orthodoxy are acceptable.
3. To the extend that our experience was different, and better (less date rape is better, I think) I’d suppose that you-all might be interested in how we pulled this off. So that you could imitate it, at least. Or maybelearn something, which may God forbid. That might be a more useful reaction than deciding that I’m a Bad Person.
4. I’m sick of the whole thing. I came into this discussion in good will, interested. I didn’t expect to be attacked. I tried to offer what seemed to be to be intersting insights.
Forget it.
What are you finding difficult to understand? Your experience was not universal.
And you would know this how? And your experience is? And you would know that how?
I know this because I know more than 10 people who recall things much, much differently. It’s not exactly a valid study, but I don’t believe that all of them are lying. If only one of them is telling the truth, then your experience was not universal. Nobody’s experience is universal, but you insist that yours was.
Sheesh, you’ve been told exactly what people take issue with in your writing and you get angry at everybody rather than examining whether they might have a point.
No one’s telling you what you personally experienced isn’t valid.
On the contrary, I am being told that repeatedly.
Please give us three quotes as examples & the comment #’s that they come from. I don’t believe that you can. You certainly can’t find one where I did anything of the sort.
The problem is that people, in general, didn’t act the way that Susan claims they did.
And you would know this how?
By speaking with many people who were alive and in the US at that time.
Your claim that your experience represents the wider USA in the mid-60’s is why nobody here will take you seriously in a discussion about our culture as a whole.
And you would know this how?
By knowing people who were living in the US in the mid-60’s who have discussed these things with me, by reading, etc. Unless you’re asking how I know why nobody will take you seriously in a discussion about our culture as a whole. That is an educated guess based on what people have written.
Kim,
Am I wrong in thinking that virginity was an attractive, if not expected quality in women during that time period, whereas with men it didn’t so much matter?
Yes, you’re wrong, but I don’t expect you to believe me. (I don’t expect anyone to believe me no matter what I say.) A man who hadn’t had sex was much prized. It showed good moral character. That’s what we thought. Men who couldn’t assert that character were ashamed, by and large.
Oh, by the way, Jake, we need to talk about Stanford. If you think it is now, in 2005, some bastion of virtue, you are sadly mistaken. I’d say the same about 1960. Very close to the general culture, in both cases.
Especially when your supporting data for that is your personal experience? And your statements are based on what exactly? And why is your personal experience more valid than mine?
The alternative is…what exactly? That nothing has changed in social mores in 50 years? You-all can stick that idea in your ears. It’s just not true, unless either you or I are lying our heads off about what was/is going on. (And it’s more likely that I’m wrong than that you’re wrong…why?)
Jake,
The rule that was violated is the one about anecdotal data not being sufficient to support an argument.
OK. And your data isn’t just as anecdotal as mine…why?
Well, then, let’s turn this around.
How do I know that date rape is common now? Because you folks say so? Out of your experience? That carries about as much weight as my experience carries with you, like none. If my experience isn’t representative, then your experience isn’t representative. I’ve talked to any number of people your age who don’t have this problem, and so, QED, what? You’re making it up?
But we all know, even I know, that you’re not making it up. It’s a real problem. The difference is, I respect you enough to believe you when you say it’s a real problem. You don’t respect me enough to believe my experience, or that of my generation. You don’t respect me at all. You’ve made that clear.
How do you expect me to have a discussion with you when that’s our beginning premise?
I’m really sorry about the thread hijack, Amp.
Okay, here goes:
According to the crime statistics I’ve dug up, the REPORTING of rape was down during the 1930s and the 1950s, but has been fairly level in the rest of the decades, especially in reagards to other violent crime, which has been slowly declining (Including the 1960s).
So, I’m going to float out a weird idea here…during the 1930’s and 1960’s, rape got reported less, or talked about less. During the Depression, it would have been too difficult for the police to proseute, not to mention, who the hell would believe you. And, no offense Susan, but if I was raped, you are not the type of person I would go to. You seem more of the type to ask me how many guys I’ve slept with instead of offering comfort.
So, you and your friends didn’t get raped, or coerced. I’m actually quite happy you didn’t. But, I’m not entirely sure if your experience reflected everyone’s experience, or even the majority of experiences. And even if rape was less prevelant in your day, I still wouldn’t have wanted to grow up in that envirnment. (Which brings us back to the rape as terrorism thought).
Susan,
Assuming everyone was willing to accept your premise (that rape was less common in the late 50s/early 60s), what argument are you trying to support with that bit of information? I’d be far more interested in your experience if you offered some reason for so vehemently wanting it to be accepted as the norm. What were people doing then that you think made rape less prevalent? How can that be adapted to reduce rape rates now?
MG
How do I know that date rape is common now?
Through any of many reputable studies that are referenced frequently. Do you see the difference between multiple reputable studies & your personal experience?
Oh, by the way, Jake, we need to talk about Stanford. If you think it is now, in 2005, some bastion of virtue, you are sadly mistaken. I’d say the same about 1960. Very close to the general culture, in both cases.
Where did you get that? I don’t think that Stanford is “some bastion of virtue.” But I don’t think that Stanford (or UMASS or your local community college) is a credible cross-sampling of US culture. Got it? Stanford (both in 1960 and in 2005) is not a credible reflection of US culture as a whole.
You don’t respect me enough to believe my experience, or that of my generation. You don’t respect me at all. You’ve made that clear.
You keep saying this, yet you have been told over and over by myself & others that we believe your experience. What is causing me to lose respect for you is your repeated complaining that we don’t respect you and the false claim that we don’t believe your experience. Until you can provide some quotes where people say that they don’t believe your experience, can you drop it?
I love the way this thread, About Ampersand has gone. I find it both funny & bizarre.
One more try.
Mary Garden, I have to confess that I don’t know the answer, but that it might be worth the discussion. I do have some ideas here, and most of them do not have much to do with the behavior of women, but rather of the male and female cultures together.
But, I’m a bit wary here, because every time I say anything whatever, even that the sun rises in the east, everyone jumps all over me. I’m feeling kind of fragile.
Can we form a sort of sub-community willing to respect every member? Absent that I’m afraid I’m just going to get beaten up, as has happened so far.
Hey Susan,
It might help to take an approach that doesn’t negate others’ experience (it didn’t feel good to you, and it doesn’t feel good to anyone else either). I’d be interested in hearing your ideas, if you’re willing to accept that others’s experience was different from and just as valid as yours.
MG
How not to credit my experience:
Kim:
Kim again:
ginmar:
ginmar again:
Kim again:
Neal:
Need we go on?
I actually think this discussion might be of use to all concerned. But there’s no point in any discussion where we don’t commit, off the top, to respect each other and our differing opinions. This discussion so far has been characterized by a notable lack of such respect. In particular, my opinions, being not-Orthodox, have been subjected to every sort of attack, including personal attack.
See ya all at the right-wing Roman Catholic blogs, where y’all will fit right in. They, too, know it all, can’t teach them nothin’. Email me for the url’s.
Mary,
That’s what I’m trying for.
About Ampersand… Boy was I surprised!
Susan…
Looks like every commentor here has believed your personal experience. What has not been believed, is that your personal experience tells everything about the culture in 1960s. And how could any one believe a claim like that? Let’s say I come to a thread rape thread and told that each and everyone of my male friends has been raped by a woman, and none of my female friends has ever been raped (disclaimer: This is hypothetical. I don’t personally know any one who has been raped, or should I say, I don’t know IF anyone I know has been raped). Would you, or anyone, then be obligated to believe that women generally rape men much more often than men rape women?
Also, it seems to me that you are quite assertive and strong-willed woman. Is it possible that no one raped you because it seemed to the would-be rapist that you would be someone to report it, and therefore they probably wouldn’t get away with it? Just wondering… (and of course, I don’t like the discussion about what sort of personality should a woman have to not be raped, or what a woman should do or shoudn’t do to not be raped, since the fault is with the rapist).
And Susan, I do respect your contributions to discussions about rape, altough I may disagree with some of what you have said.
I’d love to discuss this further, in a forum where we all agreed ahead of time to respect one another. That hasn’t been the case here so far, and I’m not at all anxious to be beaten up any more because I don’t conform to the Ruling Orthodoxy, whatever that may be.
I think such a discussion might be an occasion for everyone to learn a lot, including me of course.
However, absent that agreement, I’m going to have to bow out. I have quite a lot of real problems in my life which are taking up my attention. I find that being insulted online because I don’t agree with everyone else on a point of politics is just a bit more than fits on my plate.
Thank you all for your input! You are all great folks!! If someone here starts a thread where mutual respect is a stated condition, I’d appreciate notice. As I say, I think we might all learn a lot.
God bless you all
SUSAN’S QUOTE: 3. To the extend that our experience was different, and better (less date rape is better, I think) I’d suppose that you-all might be interested in how we pulled this off.
———–
I personally am not interested in how you “pulled this off,” because of what you say here:
———
SUSAN’S QUOTE: Date rape? Sure. Drunken date rape? Sure. But the guys were not … no one thought it was sort of OK, except a lunatic fringe. A guy did that, and word got around, and then he found out that interesting intelligent women wouldn’t go out with him. (Maybe he didn’t care, who knows.) But it wasn’t without its penalties.
———
I’m not interested in solving date rape if it involves sluffing the rapists off on my less-intelligent, less-interesting sisters.
(Sorry about the format, all; I haven’t figured it out.)
Krupskaya:
If you want to quote, put then copy-paste the the thing you want to , then end the thing with and voila. Leave an empty lne both before and after the quotes, or the thing will turn bolded, as Amp pointed out to me once. (Then -words I put to make sure the thing didn’t turn into an actual blockquote, I think you understand what I mean.
Susan:
Bye.
Oh, my instructions didn’t work and my comment got messed… Should have seen that one coming. I’ll humbly leave this to moderators.
Susan, if you want poeple to not dismiss, try not to refer to the ‘Ruling Orthodoxy.’ You didn’t have cites, and you had attitude. Sorry, but you don’t get anyh points for either. You just sound like Ronald Reagan with a sex change, talking about how great the Sixties were—-if you were white, male, and rich. Yeah, thanks.
Susan,
I was not around in the 50’s and 60’s. So, in order to try to understand what you are saying with regards to rape not being prevalent or happening that much, I asked my Mom. Sad, I know, but I still ask Mom about things I don’t understand. :) Now, Mom is 78. When she was in her twenties it was the early/mid fifties. I asked her if she remembered hearing about rape during that time. She said “No”. It didn’t happen. I rephrased the question. {And I would like to point out that even at my age it is awkward talking to your Mom about sex::g::} I asked if women ever got forced into having sex {note: I didn’t phrase it that way. I asked if guys ever made girls “do” things.} She said “well ,yeah. But they got married so it didn’t matter.” I asked about the girls who didn’t get married. I asked if they ever said anything. She said that girls that didn’t get married got sent away for while. I asked did that happen if they were raped. She said that it wasn’t talked about. Girls didn’t talk about that happening. If they got pregnant, they got sent away. If they didn’t get pregnant, they pretended nothing happened. I asked her did girls get raped. She just kept saying it wasn’t talked about. She said “good” girls only went out with boys their parents knew. If “something” happened, the parents of both made them get married. I asked her did she think some of those girls had been raped, not just that “something” happened. She thought a while and said yes. But she added that back then, if that happened, you married the guy. So no one knew. She said that things like that {rape} were not talked about then. No police reports were made unless a stranger did it and beat a girl up badly and even then, sometimes, it wasn’t reported because it would be bad for the girl if folks knew. Now this is all anecdotal, I realize that. But maybe the reason “rape” didn’t happen as much in the 50’s and 60’s was simply that women/girls it happened to just didn’t say anything? I should note that Mom never went to college, she lived in a series of small towns. So I am sure that what you experienced or saw was different from what she did.
Well, color me boggled. I guess that there is no way to clearly say, “we believe you experienced what you say you did, but your experience is not evidence enough to draw a conclusion about what society as a whole was like at the time.”
Oy.
Susan, I’m really sorry you felt attacked. And some of the posts here were definitely rude and attacking.
On the other hand, to me, some posters tried their very best to disagree with you politely and respectfully, and you didn’t seem willing to acknowledge that.
There really weren’t many studies of unreported rape prevalence before the mid-1980s, that I know of. However, the sociologist Eugene Kanin did a study of forced sex in the mid-1960s. As I recall (and I’m going from memory), he interviewed women in sororities, and found that around 15-20% had been forced to have sex at some point in their lives. (This is pretty similar to what more recent studies of rape prevalence have found).
Of course, it’s impossible to say if what these women experienced was representative or not. Perhaps your experience was more typical than theirs. Nonetheless, it is non-anecdotal evidence that indicates that, at least among some groups, rape wasn’t as rare as we’d wish it to be, even in the mid-1960s.
Susan, you seem to have forgot about data, statistics, crime rates, social science research, even government reports. All of that is going to be approximation, and affected by the fact that occurrence of rape and reporting of rape are two different things. But even approximate figures are a starting point for discussing a commonly accepted reality. People are not talking about rape just because it may have happened to them or a friend!
Since Roiphe was mentioned – here’s an article that you might find interesting to read:
Kathy Pollitt wrote this review for the 10/4/93 New Yorker about Katie Roiphe’s “The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism on Campus”
On the mutual respect thing. Emphasis on mutual, right? You say everyone else here is not listening to you and not willing to learn from your views, just because they’re not validating your equation between personal experience in a privileged college with the total sum of experience of Americans in the fifties and sixties. You’re dismissing people of your own age disagreeing with your generalisations and you’re picturing talking down to a bunch of “you-all” rebellious adolescents brainwashed by some “ruling orthodoxy” who you compare to right wing catholics. You shouldn’t be surprised if it comes off as flaming.
Also you sound contradictory about your expressing your views – if you believe your experience is enlightening, why not elaborate on the reasons you think are at the root of what you perceive as lower incidence of rape in the past? Nevermind for a second if there was less or more sex, and less or more rape. What is the point you want to make about the relation between sexual abstinence or promiscuity outside marriage, and rape?
(It is so bizarre to have this discussion in an “About” page indeed!)
OK, you guys, no one said there was no rape in the early 1960’s (or any other time). I’m just saying that the date-rape problem didn’t weigh heavily on most people’s minds.
But I’ve been thinking, and I’m realizing that I’m coming out of a very different context than you are.
Let’s talk about college. When I went to college there were no mixed-gender dorms. (Horrors!) The women’s dorms had lockout times and sign-out policies. (This wasn’t peculiar to Stanford. It was quite common.) It took more cleverness than I had at least, and I tried, to sneak a man into my dorm. There were Dragon Ladies – elderly, fierce watch-dog types – at the door, and let me tell you nothing got by these people. Women were required to live on campus under these ladies’ eyes for all four years.
Well, then, how about the men’s dorms? They were strictly patrolled as well, though maybe not quite as strictly, but that didn’t work either.
There were no sororities.
So, what does this add up to? It adds up to a situation where even having consensual sex was quite a project, and one which in the nature of the situation required the cooperation, if not the total management, of the woman involved. I could tell stories….we were not, needless to say, unsuccessful….
And then there was The Ratio, a very peculiar situation. When I went to Stanford there were two male undergraduates for each woman. Campus-wide, counting the graduate schools, it was 4 to 1. Scarcity drives up the price. If some guy was rumored to be forcing girls, or was otherwise piggish of behavior….well, there were lots of guys.
I’m well aware, from talking to my children, that these constraints no longer exist. I’m not for a nanosecond questioning your experiences – in fact, I have every reason to believe you.
The real question here is, how to combine the freedom of movement which women now rightly enjoy with the social restraints which largely prevented date-rape 40 years ago. Are men so unteachable that we can only restrain them by force, which was largely done when I was a kid? (SUCH a bad opinion of men!)
Or is there some way to have the best of both worlds?
I don’t put my experience forth as normative, certainly not for all times and places. But I’m telling you that things haven’t always been as bad on this front as they are now, and maybe we can learn something from those times when it wasn’t to improve our own times.
OK? I don’t quite understand the hostility I’ve received on this one. But I meant well.
bean,
There’s no point in discussing the prevalence of things that you admit that we cannot tell how prevalent they were then (or, are now, for that matter). You’re assuming that because no one talked about it, that means there was a lot of it. I’m assuming that because no one talked about it, there wasn’t as much. No one knows or can know.
I know that I personally, and my girlfriends, felt safe. Maybe we were wrong to feel safe, but we did. I heard about some date rape when I was an undergraduate. The perpetrators had a hard time getting dates after that. (Surprise!) But I’m sure that’s equally true now.
Maybe we need to “out” these guys, that’s one suggestion. Even if the law won’t act, maybe it ought to be next to impossible for these creeps to induce any woman to have anything to do with them thereafter.
We – you – don’t have to put up with this. With feeling endangered. There’s got to be a way to make everyone feel safe.
Date rape, the 60s, changing cultural mores, anecdotal evidence/burden of proof, civility, blah, blah: Don’t we have about a dozen threads discussing each of these topics? Could we get back on topic here, please?
For example, consider the transitive property of Amp’s preferences: How can Amp think so highly of Sondheim AND of the movie West Side Story, when Sondheim thought so little of that movie?
Admittedly, Secret Garden is an impressive (and non-Sondheimian) selection. But what about Spamalot? Or Wicked?
If you must discuss all those other topics, you can look for them [music swells] … on another thread [evil cackle]!
Well this thread has left me with three thoughts:
1) I’m all for Neal’s logic about how it’s lunacy to be held accountable for getting someone inebriated and taking advantage of them. With this in mind, I’d love to get Neal wasted and “convince” him to sign over all of his assets to me, since it’s apparently no big deal to do the same WRT sex.
2) If you say “orthodoxy” over and over again, it sounds kinda funny. It also sounds like a new painkiller or acne medication. (So Susan, if you have the urge to type that word in again, please don’t. It will only cause me to keep laughing, and everyone here will ask me to share whatever drugs I’m on. And then I’ll have to say that I’ve taken some orthodoxy.)
3) I am appalled–*appalled*– that Amp left out “Merrily We Roll Along” by Sondheim.
nobody.really:
Sondheim didn’t think much of the movie? I didn’t know that. But as I’m sure you’d agree, just because I admire an artist’s work doesn’t obligate me to agree with his tastes. I thought some of the changes made between the musical and the movie of West Side Story were a significant improvement; particularly the new order of the songs, and the new lyrics for “America.”
Haven’t heard Spamalot yet, other than the bit that was on the Tony Awards show, which was cute but didn’t blow my socks off. I adore Wicked, but I’m not sure my affair with it will last, unlike my affair with all shows Sondheim.
Sheelzebub, you’re right – that is appalling. Correction made.
So, what does this add up to? It adds up to a situation where even having consensual sex was quite a project, and one which in the nature of the situation required the cooperation, if not the total management, of the woman involved. I could tell stories….we were not, needless to say, unsuccessful….
This is so so so so SO not my experience. I am a little bit younger than you are, Susan. I was born in 1952. I had sex (everything except for intercourse, which was the common practice in those days) for the first time with a boy in 1965, when I was 13. I had almost-sex with boyfriends before that. I vividly remember a Life magazine article, feature article, I believe, about 10- and 11-year-old girls having sex with boys, because they were near my age and so the article caught my attention
Hell YEAH we were having sex back then and hell YEAH there was plenty of date rape back then. Usually it was the “everything but” kind of sex, but it was sure enough sex. And a lot of that “everything but” sex was *rape*, only we didn’t understand it to be rape because we thought that just as you accuse women and girls of up there, we had “cooperated” or even “managed” the situation — say, by letting the boy kiss us or just being alone with him where there were no adults around (I guess that’s “management”), “making out” with him, and the consensus of the time was that if a girl got herself in those kinds of situations, what could she expect? Of *course* she was going to end up raped, except it wasn’t called rape, it was called what happens to girls when they “tease” boys.
And no WAY were boys disparaged or dissed in any way for rape because they never copped to having raped and we didn’t *know* we’d been raped. To the contrary, they were heroes with their peers because they’d scored. And oftentimes, they were heroes because they lied about having scored. That happened a *lot* and often it happened because some asshat *had* exploited a girl or even raped her and moved quickly to make her out to be a slut in a sort of pre-emptive strike against any accusation that he may have raped her. Of *course* no boy was respected if he had raped a girl, but not because rape was so bad, because having raped was evidence that the boy was so *desperate* and un-macho and un-studly or whatever that he had to rape just to get some. ::::rage::::
Not only were we being date raped, we were being incested and molested by family members and friends of the family as well. And like mousehounde and bean and others have said, *you didn’t talk about that*. It was *probably your fault*. If you got pregnant, just as mousehounde’s mom (grama?) said, you got sent away. Several of my friends were sent away in junior high to give birth in “homes for unwed mothers” and give them up for adoption.
Argh, what you have written there is as far from my experience as can be imagined and I really do not get that. I am white, grew up the daughter of an attorney in the suburbs, and went on to the University of Washington in 1969. Things were no different when I was coming up than they were when you were coming up.
And thank you, Kim, for those good words. And yes to what ginmar said as to these references to the “ruling orthodoxy.” That phrase together with the idea that sex didn’t happen without girls “managing” or at least “cooperating” gets me wondering what you’re trying to prove here, Susan. Not to mention I, and plenty of my friends, had sex we didn’t and did want, both, in the presence of our parents! In cars! Downstairs! You name it. Tell you what, if some boy had his hands down your pants in the back seat of the station wagon while dad was driving, you definitely were not going to be speaking up about it! Not only because you’d be toast but because he might end up shot. And boys knew this. And girls got date raped.
Heart
Heart
But…But…No Lerner and Lowe? What is wrong with you people? What kind of ruling orthodoxy is this?
Also, I grew up on Rodgers and Hammerstein. You guys are barbarians.
Wow. Um… I was just gonna say hi to Amp and ask him a question about his profile. Is that okay? How’s about if I don’t touch the rape topic with a ten-foot pole. I’ve had this discussion waaay too many times.
So, Amp:
Please list for me any redeaming qualities of The Sopranos. I’ve only seen the equivalent of about one episode but it just struck me as generally unpleasant.
Susan writes:
“Let’s talk about college. When I went to college there were no mixed-gender dorms. (Horrors!) The women’s dorms had lockout times and sign-out policies. (This wasn’t peculiar to Stanford. It was quite common.) It took more cleverness than I had at least, and I tried, to sneak a man into my dorm. There were Dragon Ladies – elderly, fierce watch-dog types – at the door, and let me tell you nothing got by these people. Women were required to live on campus under these ladies’ eyes for all four years.”
The irony here Susan is that in another thread I said I wanted to live in your gated community and you thought I was funny. The reality is that you were living in a priviledged and protected (gated) community.
Well this thread is quite old but guess I’ll comment anyhow.
40 years ago would have been 1966 or 1965 (since this thread is from 2005).
To comment #10, Susan: weren’t the 60’s the time of hippies, flower power and free love?
I don’t think sex before marriage 40 years ago was nearly as rare as your perception seems to tell you.
Or even 50 years ago. Lots of “preemie” 8 month babies were born back then! :)
Great to see you on the web.
Any chance I can ask for Cast of Thousands to return?
Oh, and Susan–sororities DID exist in the 1960s–my grandmother was in college in the late 1930s/early 1940s, she was in a sorority. My aunt (her daughter) went to the same college in the 1960s and pledged to the same sorority. So whether they were part of YOUR experience or not, they DID exist.