It’s the end of August, and that means vacations for everyone! I don’t get an advisor until next week since we’re waiting for all of the professors to get back; when I left work yesterday two out of the three senior members of our development team fled the building early and headed straight for Europe. And over at Human Events Online, it’s the week where the Claire Boothe Luce interns get to write the articles.
College coeds have all heard the statistic: one out of four college-age women will be the victim of a rape or attempted rape. While that statistic, which comes from a 1985 Mary Koss study reported in Ms. Magazine, has largely been discredited, the message behind it remains firmly in place; young women have a great deal to fear in their college environment. Statistics devoid of context, though, offer no insight into the sexual politics of college campuses.
Actually, Marianne, we do have newer 1 in 4 stats. This page here (simply one of the first google results for “campus avoid sexual assault”) uses one from a study published in 2000, which was way more recent than 1985. But I can see why you’d go retro for this statistic – the US Department of Justice, the National Institute of Justice, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (all of whom are listed on the title page of the referenced pdf) lack the glamour of Ms. Magazine. Guess what else is back from the ’80′s? Sweater dresses! Hell yeah, I’m excited too!
But please, don’t let this stop you from offering us some insight on the sexual politics of college campuses.
As a college sophomore, I’ve been subject to the same messages as the rest of my peers.
“GO GREEK!”? “Football Fri 7pm”? “Kareoke Thu @ [Your Club]“? “Looking for Roommate 2bdrm close to campus $500/mo+utl”?
I know, I know, it’s a bit overwhelming. But you don’t have to go to every club event or pledge every sorority. The trick to successfull college time management is knowing when to decline an invitiation. Didn’t they cover this last year in orientation?
Young women, liberated from the narrow confines of modesty and chastity by so-called “sex-positive feminism,” are told that sex is just another extracurricular activity, with no value attached, and their cultural icons glorify a life of careless partying and drunken hook-ups.
Marianne, did you confuse the “Girls Gone Wild Campus Tour” with your campus’ student chapter of NOW? I don’t know about your college (wait, I do now) but on my campus the really hairy-legged strident feminists (all 12 of ‘em) were too busy trying to get a damn women’s studies major established to suggest lives of careless partying and drunken hook-ups to the rest of us. I notice your college also only offers the minor.
But if sex was thier extracurricular activity, I should have majored there. All of my friends spent their evenings playing hockey with brooms. I couldn’t participate because I didn’t have enough health insurance to justify running around an ice rink in my sneakers with other uncordinated people wielding sticks.
I’m sorry, I drift. You were saying something about hedonism and sluts?
In order to avoid the propagation of harmful sexual double standards, sex-positive feminism declares that any disapproval aimed at promiscuous young women is an attempt to drag us back to the dark ages of modesty and chastity. Attempting to defeat the Victorian stereotypes of women as sexless creatures, these feminists have swung the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, consistently standing up for a woman’s right to reject both morality and common sense.
Can’t argue with her there. It is true that sex-positive feminists rushed for years to educate women on exploring their own sexuality and their bodies, and somewhere, somehow, the “keep your legs shut and your sweater dresses modest” message got lost. She’s persuaded me. Well done! I’m on your side, now, Marianne!
Feminism combined with the sexual revolution has created a generation of young men and women who believe that sex without consequence is their birthright. Separating sex from a moral context or value system, though, has not benefited young women.
Well, that fucking pill took our best consequence away, mostly, but we still have a backup. But now those pansy-ass college administrators are trying to take that away from us too!
Sexual misconduct has proliferated on college campuses, as evidenced by the relatively recent popular usage of the term date rape. Anxious to protect young women, colleges have formulated more stringent policies on informed consent, and launched rape awareness and education campaigns.
You know, back in my day, when you could tell the ladies from the whores if you know what I mean, we didn’t need all of these onerous policies, or any awareness at all about rape. A right Christian woman could go her whole life and never be aware of this hazy PC “consent” concept. You consented when you married. Any sexual activity outside that is slutdom. See how simple? Occam’s razor and all.
But now you’ve got these women going around persuading universities to actually pay this so-called date rape some lip service! Pamphlets have been written, men warned against doing natural manly things! This is the slippery slope to chaos. Next thing you know, whole athletic teams will be in danger of possibly being held somewhat accountable for committing sexual assault - even if the women they assaulted are of lower classes or different colors than they are! Madness!
The University of Wisconsin-Madison put out a pamphlet titled What Men Can Do to Prevent Sexual Assault, which instructs men to “manage alcohol and drug use,” as alcohol increases male sexual aggression, and may cause men not to listen to their partner. This pamphlet also makes it clear that regardless of their state of intoxication, men are still responsible for their actions.
The same pamphlet also warns that men are more likely to wrongly interpret certain actions as being sexual advances; these include wearing provocative clothing, dancing suggestively, and going up to a man’s room.
This sort of advice, however, completely ignores a woman’s complicity in her own rape. Tragic really, how girls want to have their cake and eat it too.
The same is true of many young women on college campuses. While pamphlets like the one from the University of Wisconsin are attempting to teach young men how to be more sexually responsible, the lesson lacks efficacy if young women are not given a similar message.
I also can’t argue with her there, for when these same universities give advice to avoid rape to women, the advice is often completely different from what they give a man!
Protecting Against Sexual Assault
Follow these Tips:
* Practice good personal safety habits. Protect yourself from stranger crime and always lock your door when home or away. Don’t admit anyone into your residence hall. Report any suspicious persons or activity to University Police. Call for a walking escort when you are without one, extension 2022.
* Know your sexual intentions and limits. You have a right to say “NO” to any unwanted sexual contact.
* Communicate your limits verbally. Don?t assume the other person knows your feelings or will get the message from your body language.
* Listen to your gut feelings. If you feel uncomfortable or threatened, leave the situation and go to a safe place.
* Attend social activities with friends. Agree to look out for one another and leave as a group.
* Eliminate or limit your alcohol intake. It interferes with your ability to communicate your limits and identify risky situations.
* No one deserves to be raped. Know that the effects can be overwhelming. Feelings of guilt, fear and confusion are common. There are many resources available to support you and help you explore your options.
Too shocking, I know, not only do they imply that women are largely the victims and men largely the aggressors, but their rape avoidance tips for women include nary a mention of modesty or morality! Or sweater dresses, the last line of defense between a woman, her sexuality, and the eyes of men!
Instead, we have feminists re-defining rape to include any time a woman regrets having one too many and fucking that frat boy, which is by the way what date rape means and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
As a result, women have lost a moral context in which to express their dissatisfaction and feeling of having been victimized. The feminist response is to declare that their experiences are rape under the concept of informed consent, whether their intoxication and subsequent actions were willing or not. Under the new sexual mores, women don’t have a right to be upset about the casual nature of sexual encounters unless they can classify them as rape.
But do not dispair, young co-eds. There is a way out of this terrible mess. All we have to do is re-equate a woman’s chastity with her “value” on the marriage market and re-shame women to discourage them from reporting any rape less dramatic than that by a stranger with a weapon in a dark alley. And even then, she’d best be wearing a sweater dress to provide that extra moral coverage she’ll need for filing the report later. But in the meantime, let’s lay off the guys, allright? They really have so little to do with this.
I love it—anyone who believes in rape is a man-hater, unless of course they are invoking it to scare women out of our freedom.
Why do these people always harp on this concept of reporting something as rape because you regret the sexual encounter? I’ve regretted some of the sex I’ve had. You know how I deal with it: I don’t talk about it. And I don’t make a police record of its occurance. Do these people actually believe that women report rape for sh*ts and giggles?
Do these people actually believe that women report rape for sh*ts and giggles?
Yeah, they really do. It’s hard to wrap your mind around the idea that 25 percent of women have been sexually assualted, and if you’re of a misogynist bent, your instinct is going to be to assume that the women must be lying.
I….I need to go take a shower.
There is also the uncomfortable implication, for some guys, that this “looser” date rape or aquaintence rape definition includes things that maybe they have done in the past and not felt bad about, or stuff that their freinds have done. Someone with that on their conscience might prefer to go back to the old standard.
Someone in Portland did just recant a rape accusation.
Statistics-challenged misogynists will be flogging this case for years.
Statistics-challenged misogynists
But you repeat yourself.
You know what? I just realized that 25 percent is a big fucking number. Like, really fucking big.
It is pretty big. It almost makes you think crazy insane thoughts like “If one out of every four or five women I know has been sexually assaulted, or been an attempted victim of sexual assault, maybe the problem is too big to solve by asking them to stay home and read their bible. Perhaps we should look into this.”
Almost. Not quite.
I’d say something substantive, but I’m too traumatized by the idea that bubble skirts are making a comeback.
You know what? I just realized that 25 percent is a big fucking number. Like, really fucking big.
That’s one of the major reasons I’m a feminist (the others being my mother raised me right; I have some common sense; and the realization that the same people who want to hang gays, lesbians and feminists would string me up next, white legs, ballsack and all). Around high school, I started realizing how many of the women I cared about had been raped, and in college, the numbers just got bigger and bigger.
Why do these people always harp on this concept of reporting something as rape because you regret the sexual encounter? I’ve regretted some of the sex I’ve had. You know how I deal with it: I don’t talk about it. And I don’t make a police record of its occurance. Do these people actually believe that women report rape for sh*ts and giggles?
Not exactly. They do believe that women very frequently regret having sex, particularly casual sex, because they believe women are always being used by men when they have sex. it is inconceivable to them that women might want to have sex because they want to have sex, rather than because they’ve been tricked into it or for male attention/approval. In essence, it’s because they believe women are always debased by sex, and thus frequently report rape to deflect their shame at having been debased by men.
dude, and here I thought “Clare Booth Luce Institute” was sarcasm. golly.
and of course zuzu is absolutely right. BUBBLE SKIRTS?? dear lord. hey, let’s add shoulder pads, Joan Crawford eyebrows, and those godawful little floppy bow-ties while we’re at it; sure, they’ve come back again and again too, but i bet -never all in combination with the bubble skirt.-
sounds like an apt Clare Booth Luce sort of outfit, at that…
anyway, thanks for all that (including the Babeland links); it’s sort of refreshing to have a right-wing attack on “sex-positive feminism” for a change.
There is also the uncomfortable implication, for some guys, that this “looser” date rape or aquaintence rape definition includes things that maybe they have done in the past and not felt bad about, or stuff that their freinds have done. Someone with that on their conscience might prefer to go back to the old standard.
Kyso, amen. There is an impressive old book by a couple of researchers one of whom is actually in my area, and more known for doing work on Child Abuse but it’s called “Licence to Rape” from the 1980s, all about marital rape, and all the perps wanted to have it both ways, to simultaneously insist that they were entitled to “take sex” from “withholding bitches” (esp if their wives were trying to divorce them) and at the same time saying “yes, I guess it was rape – but she could have fought harder, so it wasn’t” – and think about it, the culture says that “girls always say no when they mean yes,” of course boys raised to believe this are going to be like those stud dogs and stallions I wrote about on Pandagon, albeit without the excuses of not knowing any better.