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Misogyny and Rape Culture on Campus
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I think that there is a strong possibility that a subset of males is responsible for the majority of rapes. But I also think there are a lot of men who genuinely don't view what they did as sexual assault, or if they took the time to internalize past actions, would feel horrible persistent guilt.
I'm not saying "paedophile-ring" like in the sense of evil, calculating groups who know what they're doing is wrong and take pleasure in it by the way; I'm simply referring to the fact that these guys are bouncing it off each other for acceptance, not getting feedback from society in general. Just for clarity's sake.
To try and paint an example, on university campus there are pretty obviously divided groups. The guys who are trying constantly to be hypermasculine, have rooms full of pin-ups, and spend most of the time when out drinking trying to hit on people; pick-up artists etc.; these are the guys I'm thinking of when I say self-reinforcing groups.
On the other hand, other groups - average dudes, nerdy dudes, guys who are just good at sports but not team players, arty dudes, etc., anyone who won't 'score' just to make sure they 'score'; I don't think they self-reinforce the concept of date-rape being okay, and I think they have the patience not to rape a girl because they think they deserve it. Not to say nobody from these groups commit rape, but rather than incidence rate is significantly lower.
That's my opinion; if there's statistical evidence showing it's wrong please do present it.
I already know rape is statistically similar across socio-economic and racial factors by the way, I don't need evidence of that.
I'm curious, what has led you to believe that rapists work in this kind of system?
I think this is the crux of our disagreement, here; the idea is that there doesn't need to be any kind of ring or subculture that self-reinforces. Those ideas are already floating around in our culture to varying degrees in various groups. The sense of entitlement, the idea that "she wants it" or "she's asking for it" or "she deserves it" or whatever other justifications a rapist might use, the confusion of consent and the unwillingness to believe or accept when a woman says no, these are not uncommon, nor are they abnormal. I mean, the thread we had earlier here on PA about men's magazines offering quotes indistinguishable from the things convicted rapists say is a good example - it's because convicted rapists aren't distinct from our culture, even our popular culture. They are a product of the misogyny that still exists in our culture, for whatever reason - their peer group, their family, etc.
You mentioned, in your interpretation of what I saying, the claim that rapists exist because they are permitted or implicitly encouraged by non-rapists. You also said that rapists are obviously part of rape culture. Essentially, I don't think there is a hard line between the culture that produced a rapist and our culture at large. There are many, many rapists. As you say, it's highly unlikely that the large proportion of women who have been assaulted is 1-to-1 with men who commit assaults; I would suggest that the portion of men who have committed assaults have a pattern of repeated sexual assault with multiple victims, because it is simply their mode of sexual behaviour. But the ideas that lead to those patterns aren't particularly abnormal or aberrant - they are common, they are well-disseminated, and they are very familiar.
edit: based on your post above, I would re-emphasize that I believe the group of self-reinforcing, rape-permissive or even rape-encouraging individuals is larger and more widespread than you are depicting. You see frat boys and jocks who drug women and assault them; sure, that's a common one, but every subgroup and subculture has its misogyny that leads to resentment and entitlement. We're all familiar with the kind of nerds, for example, who resent women and think they are entitled to sex because they've been such "nice guys," who express terrible sexism out of frustration and self-loathing; that attitude is no better than the stereotypical drink-spiking frat boy.
If this is how the people responsible for the wellbeing of thousands of teenagers and 20 somethings handle rape and sexual assault, how can one not see that it is possible for guys to think it's "no big deal", etc. Now read this part carefully: I am not saying rape and sexual assault is ok, or understandable in any way. I'm simply saying, if you as a student, see that the UM will protect you after you rape someone, why SOME would think it's not that bad.
Recently the mayor and police chief of Missoula ( the city in which the UofM is in ) had a press conference telling UM students that if they are sexually assualted, raped, etc, DO NOT go to the UM officials, go directly to the city police, so that the case will actually be handled appropriately.
The UofM has had a long history of sexual assault and rape, and IIRC at one point was the worst school in the country as far as female students being raped.
The goal of our founding fathers was freedom. The goal of our current politicians is control.
Well, I don't thing either point has much to do with how our culture frames, defines, or reacts to rape. Both of these examples are local to the perpetrator themselves. People who commit crimes often don't give consideration to the harm they're causing and they internally justify their actions based on their circumstance. Secondly, not having obvious outward signs of anti social behavior isn't going to tell you much about the person.
(For your consideration, the first paragraph is in a response to a statement I made in general with the the thread, not you specifically)
I don't think your criteria merits being considered a "culture". Frat culture and rape are not synonymous. Rape is not overwhelmingly synonymous with any other culture either and I don't think any culture particularly fosters that behavior. You can replace "rape" with any number of words. Theft. Murder. Vandalism. In all cases you can find perpetrators who commit their crime with no emotional response, fully justified to themselves. In their immediate environment you will find people that either don't care about subjects behavior or will actively foster that behavior. These are "theft" cultures. Or "murder" cultures or anything else. There are plenty of people who exist in similar situations who don't reduce themselves to violence just fine and no level of stupid nursery rhymes that involve assault will ever convince someone to commit an act they are disgusted by.
Basically, "rape culture" is a cop out and an easy way to assign blame without taking a look at how society on the macro level operates because it's easy to point at a group of people who's norms you actively dislike and say "this is where/who the problem is" because that protects someone from having to look at their own norms and how they interact with society. It protects them from the realization that they themselves may perpetuate the behavior in some manner.
In the end, the most you can say is that at some point in time, some one said something that some would take more seriously than others, and it was kind of an asshole thing to say. Well, that may be true, but people get away with saying stupid, assholish, things all the time.
I agree. I think it should be equally appalling, but I think our "normalized" reaction to that is part of the same thread that runs through all of our society in it's entirety, which is an enormous emphasis on the individual. I find little difference in "The perpetrator is the perpetrator and it's not my business to reform him/her and instead it's my business to punish him/her if/when he acts against me" and "What was he/she doing in that neighborhood at night?" I'm certainly not victim blaming, but I do think that the complete alienation our popular and political culture places between individuals fosters anti social behavior (or down right nastiness) in both the actors and onlookers.
It's also subjective. Both my ex wife and a girl I'm currently involved in are victims of abuse and neither would be offended by the song quoted in this thread. They would be offended at the notion that their "non reaction" would in any way promote assault.
This I also disagree with, but only because I think the idea of the "ghetto liquor store" getting robbed in the bad neighborhood is such a foregone conclusion that no one even bothers taking a moment to consider it at all.
I think that what you've described here is the closest thing we have to a "problem" outside of the actual violent crime itself.
It reminds me of racists. People, for example, who think that because Barack Obama is black and has a funny name that he obviously is a secret Muslim and no I'm not racist. They're either stupid, in denial, or too cowardly to cop up to their behavior.
EDIT
EWom reminded me of a particular tangent as well. Are those that take the crime lightly or help "cover it up" pro rape or do they place the societal importance of the alleged rapist higher than the possible victim? Football player? Wealthy? Minority exchange student? For various reasons these three people would take precedence. This in itself is not indicative of misogyny as the same leniency/callousness exists outside of sexual boundaries.
I'm not saying they're uncommon; I'm saying they're uncommonly distributed.
Okay, here's a basic conundrum here. If the non-rapists are doing their part in convincing the rapists that rape is okay... why isn't it affecting the non-rapists?
Honestly, I'm not super familiar with them beyond internet trolls. And certainly in the nerd subtype, well, I wouldn't expect them to be getting that much of an opportunity. Sexual distribution is pretty skewed to begin with; a much larger proportion of women have regular sex, iirc, than men.
I think those people are idiots and not particularly pro rape in any sense.
If you want to say we have a culture of stupid, then by all means and we can probably all agree.
This is an odd question. Do social forces affect everybody equally? Is everybody exposed to rape-facilitating ideas in equal intensity? Does everybody have equivalent levels of empathy, impulse control, libido, and/or aggression? Does everybody start with equal innate propensity to rape? Among individuals with considerable propensity to rape, do all of them get equal opportunities to do so?
Diversity of effects does not lead us to prima facie reject the existence of causes.
In any case, the argument is that it is affecting non-rapists, by perpetuating ideas that legitimize, normalize, or otherwise excuse the actions of rapists. There are individuals who would not commit rape, but upon hearing about a rape that was committed, are more likely than others to look for reasons why the rape was deserved or otherwise not all that bad.
<3
This is pretty much a textbook example of rape culture and an excellent explanation of why it is bad.
I think that has to do with her personal politics, though. It can be considered an unintentional consequence but I wouldn't ascribe it to a "culture".
Like Liz Trotta, yes, but it seems like those individuals are either a) few and far between, or b) relatively quiet about it on the public front these days (as opposed to, say, 80+ years ago), at which point you have to consider that, if they're quiet about it, are they having a significant effect?
Maybe if she was a lone screwball ranting and raving and nobody paid attention or took her seriously, you would have a point, but she is a paid, Emmy-award winning commentator on a much-watched news channel, talking to an audience of dittoheads who happily defended her heinous statements. Also, rape culture cannot be boiled down to one influential idiot saying stupid shit- I was just using Trotta as an example. Rape culture refers to the idea that there are a lot of idiots running around saying stupid shit about women, sex, and rape, and the stupid shit they are saying is having an actual, negative impact on the livelihoods of women.
Here you're basically saying, "as bad as rape is, I can accept that most rapists won't be convicted".
Here you contribute to the typical rape-discussion script, where someone always raises the issue of false rape accusations. This tells rapists that the automatic question in rape cases is, "is the accuser lying?" And it tells survivors, "your word will be presumed untrustworthy".
And here you try to avoid a critical examination of your society by deflecting attention to some distant land.
By describing your idea of the "typical rapist" you allow rapists who do not fit that mold to point to their non-conforming characteristics as evidence that they are not rapists.
All of the above are attitudes or ideas that make it easier for rapists to get away with rape, and harder for survivors to find the closure they deserve.
Who's also a Republican, who themselves tend to be pretty heinous in most of their rhetoric and ideals.
I understand, but no crime is an isolated event. Again, you can replace rape with any other crime and say the same thing.
Though I disagree that merely saying something insensitive has a negative impact on the livelihoods of women.
Innocent until proven guilty is the basis of our legal system. What Bethryn stated is a simple fact. Not an endorsement. Rape doesn't change the nature of our legal system, benefit of the doubt, rights, etc. Culpability is onerous on both parties by a fault.
How has what Bethryn said changed the means and methods of our court systems and how it prosecutes violent criminals?
Yes the boy is probably a cunt, but being a cunt shouldn't be illegal or punishable if it just involves saying things that people find offensive. They have every right to be offended and to moan at him on facebook if they like but it should go no further than that.
I don't want to accept it, nor am I saying it's okay; I am in no way accepting of the low conviction rate for rape. I'm saying it's real. I'm saying it's an awful catch-22 between protecting the innocent from being convicted for a crime they didn't commit, and meting out justice for rape victims.
False-rape accusations have to be addressed because of the issue of burden of proof. There have been a fair number of attempts/suggestions to push rape convictions up by shifting the burden of proof to the accused rapist.
I did not say at any point that the presumption should be made that rape victims are lying, nor do I see how you would make that assumption about my position unless you are trying to paint me into a stereotype. My point is that the law has to be ready for any given contingency. The law has to written such that we have the best chance possible of convicting those guilty of a crime, and the least chance possible of convicting those innocent; that is why we have burden of proof and proof beyond reasonable doubt and innocent until proven guilty.
Horseshit. I give an example of what I think a really serious rape culture looks like. I have at no point shied from critical examination of my society, and I'm pretty sure I am presently engaged in doing so.
This is more interesting, and I'll have a think about it.
I agree. Very good post. Clear, succinct and persuasive.
I've been kind of on the fence regarding the rape culture issue. Mostly on the grounds that Sheep has brought up; namely being kind of ill at ease with the use of the term culture, but as fbc pointed out... this was on a national news network, one particularly notorious for trying to set a narrative. She was chosen to take part in establishing a particular part of that narrative. She wasn't just some random caller on a late night AM radio station.
He lives on as cheezburger grease in our hearts.
This isn't a 'rape culture' thing at all, it's a side effect of the logical underpinnings of a liberal 'innocent until proven guilty' justice system. Generally that prevents defendants from having to prove a negative to avoid faulty convictions, but in consent cases like rape it means the prosecution must prove that something did not occur(ie, consent), which explains the depressingly low conviction rates for the depressingly small number of rapes brought to trial.
That's not changing unless you plan to alter the fundamental philosophy and accompanying logic of our justice system to 'better to imprison 1,000 innocent men than let one guilty man go free'.
My questions to you, then, is this: why is rape such an enormous problem? Where does it come from, and how does it remain so horrifyingly ubiquitous? If a culture that still has an undercurrent of misogyny and twisted sexual values is not contributing to the persistence of sexual assault, what is contributing?
I don't personally think this guy's comments are a spectacular example of rape culture so much as they are an example of insensitivity, poor taste and a weak grasp of rhyme and meter, though a cavalier attitude about cracking jokes concerning women being unable to refuse consent is probably not a great sign for someone having enlightened attitudes about women.
This is a very extreme reaction, coming from somebody who laments extreme reactions.
You can't take me seriously? Or Evil Multifarious? Or Fuzzy? None of us have been wailing or rending our garments.
Who said anything about change? Bethryn's statements are, if not apologetic for, at least accepting of the status quo. This status quo results in 15 of 16 rapists "walking free", according to RAINN. Rapists know this, and are empowered by this knowledge.
Maybe I'm not giving you enough credit. But it seems to me that even if you think the status quo is regrettable, if you're not thinking of ways it might change, you are, to some greater or lesser degree, accepting it.
Burden of proof is an issue in every criminal prosecution. But you don't hear about "false robbery accusations" when someone gets robbed, "false fraud accusations" when someone gets scammed, "false dangerous driving accusations" when someone gets run over, or "false assault accusations" when someone gets beat up.
There are some kinds of crimes where the issue of false accusations do come up. I'm thinking drug crimes and car theft. In those cases, however, the focus is on the police trumping up charges, which is kind of different from rape cases. As far as I'm aware, rape is the only crime where people routinely and seriously consider the possibility that the victim made it all up.
The thing is, you don't have to say something explicitly in order to communicate the idea. I have no doubt that you don't want rape survivors to feel like they are automatically viewed with suspicion, but it's an unfortunate reality that the narrative you've bought into--which I think we can agree is commonplace and part of our general culture, not just specific subcultures--does send the message to survivors that they will not be trusted and should prepare to run a proverbial gauntlet if they choose to accuse.
I've heard this said a lot, and it doesn't become any more convincing with time. You can absolutely retain an innocent-until-proven-guilty approach while changing the way rape is prosecuted. You don't need a presumption of consent in order to honour the principle. Consent is only half the question; the prosecution will always have to prove that some form of sexual contact took place. As long as that requirement stands, shifting the burden of proof where sex is admitted or otherwise proven and consent is at issue to the defendant does not turn the prosecution into a guilty-until-proven-innocent affair. Making consent (or the honest but mistaken belief in consent) an affirmative defence in rape cases is no different from making self-defence a defence in murder cases. And, in my view, doing so puts the focus of inquiries into credibility and the like on the person who most needs the be scrutinized: the accused.
Let's take your examples quickly:
False robbery accusation - the object of robbery was found in possession of the accused; if it was armed robbery, there may also be additional evidence of the robbery itself. There can also be forensics at the scene of the crime. These are all factors that back up testimony. I don't know if any robbers are convicted purely on the solo testimony of the victim and with absolutely no evidence otherwise backing them up.
False fraud accusation - proof of transactions are generally involved, or alternatively proof that the salesman was not conforming to regulations for their goods; again, I don't believe this is purely testimony vs testimony.
False dangerous driving accusations when someone gets run over - well, there's physical evidence that someone was hit by a car. We do know some people run scams of getting hit by a car to get money from people, so there is some possibility of looking into falsehoods here.
False assault - again, we have bruise marks, sometimes witnesses, and here, unlike in the case of sex, people generally don't consent to getting beat up (in the same way that people do consent to having sex).
Whereas rape, we have serious problems in terms of evidence. Evidence of penetration or seminal evidence is evidence of sex, but not of non-consensual sex. Evidence of alcohol could be used if the rape were reported quickly enough, but even that is difficult to convict on alone. Physical bruising that can be tied to the accused is good evidence for rape, but I don't believe it is commonly found in date-rape and acquaintance rape. A lot of the time, we just have the testimony of the victim against the testimony of the accused.
At that point, when that is the only evidence for and against, I believe we have to start looking at which testimony holds the most water, if that's even possible. If we don't, how can we decide for or against?
So unless that is an inaccurate portrayal of rape prosecution (feel free to correct any falsehoods, I'm going by memory on what I read up about this a few years back), rape receives attention to the falsehood of testimony not specifically because we believe rape victims are likely to lie, but more because testimony is often the only thing that can be examined.
This confuses me, because I was under the impression that our putative rapists thought they weren't doing anything wrong. How would they be empowered by the idea that they could "get away with it" if necessary, if they didn't think they were doing anything wrong?
Saying "man, I just got raped in that SC2 1V1" does not make me a rapist, or supportive of rape any more than saying "man, I want to kill my little sister sometimes, she's so annoying!" makes me a murderer or supportive of murdering children.
It's the same fantastic leap of logic that brought us "letting grown adults play games with guns trains them to be murderers!".
If we still lived in a 1950's culture where it was tacitly accepted to give your wife a backhand if she got lippy with you then yes, I would say talking about rape would foster a rape friendly environment. But we don't, people know rape is wrong, that's exactly why they make jokes about it. You tell people they're not allowed to make jokes about something that's a pretty surefire way of getting them to make jokes about it.
He lives on as cheezburger grease in our hearts.
The numbers in your link and your explanation of those numbers do not correlate. Rapists don't "get away" with the crime because of some random third parties attitude. They "get away" with it because of how our political system works. Regardless, RAINN commits the mistake of assuming guilt before innocence. This artificially skews the numbers.
Who doesn't?
People file false accusations all the time.
Subjective.
And, as far as threads like these go, rape tends to be the only crime where people are absolutely certain that the alleged perpetrator is 100% guilty.
Having sex isn't a crime.
The two are categorically different, and can't meaningfully be compared.
I forgot that you don't live in America, where sex is a crime is gaining some seriously disturbing support.
This guy seriously put fucking quotation marks around something I didn't even say. Die in a fire. Oh sorry, am I promoting murder culture?
I understand that hearing people laugh about rape could make a rape victim feel bad. As a victim of sexual abuse I would like it if more people took time to understand how many people around them are permanently damaged by things like this. That having been said, from where I'm standing, you do more harm creating an environment where people aren't allowed to joke about something than creating an environment where people can joke about everything they want to. Making rape jokes the most serious and unforgivable thing in the world wont stop a single rape. Not one. Sorry, it's just not that easy. It also wont make people more understanding. But it will make people more fearful. It will make them more judgmental.
Personally, I don't usually laugh at things that don't involve pain and suffering in some way. It's just not funny to me without pain. If you see me in public laughing at a rape joke please don't think I'm not feeling that pain when I'm laughing.
If the president had any real power, he'd be able to live wherever the fuck he wanted.
Haha, bullshit. I mean, maybe for white people, but this is a very wrong statement.
Are we talking public perception, or the way one is treated in the criminal justice system?
Because whilst I wouldn't compare it in severity, that'd be offensive to survivors, robbery victims and etc are frequently made to feel like they're on trial, and left feeling guilty or dismissed.
It's a common enough problem to have training specifically to counter this approach.
Maybe the alleged victim told the accused what to do?
Could the defendant claim that the victim was playing chicken? Was trying to commit suicide?
The legal system certainly could consider "do you want to take this outside" and variations on that theme to be consent, at least to a certain amount of physical injury. I don't think it does, but that's a quirk of jurisprudence more than anything.
I think the biggest issue I have with what you've written is your apparent assumption that rape is uniquely he-said, she-said. In my experience, criminal law always has at least two competing "theories of the case", and very often the winning theory is the one with the more compelling testimony (i.e. not just any kind of evidence) behind it.
Many rapists are aware of the fact that if their victims' stories are believed, they could be convicted of rape. They may not agree with the narrative that the survivor might present, and therefore not think they they did anything wrong, while still recognizing that the chilling effects rape survivors feel benefit them.
Here's the problem I have. I won't argue with you that the vast majority of Americans, if asked, would categorically say "Yes, I believe rape is wrong." That's not a gotcha question. But to consequently mitigate rape's presence in discourse as a problem assumes that "rape" has a stable definition that everyone totally agrees with. A guy who says "Rape is wrong" perhaps imagines some grizzled old man brutalizing some innocent woman, not a college kid taking advantage of a girl who had one too many.
To get extreme, if I go up to a half passed out drunk friend and ask to borrow their keys, and they manage to muster out a "Sure." I am not committing grand theft auto for borrowing their car. But if the same thing happened with sex, I would definitely be commiting date rape. Why is that?
I am not saying it shouldn't be. But what makes "sex" somehow special where we treat it so different? Why is someones decision to drink too much held accountable when they make mistakes in life, but when it comes to sex we consider them a victim?
So for just under 60% we don't know whether the report is true or false, as it was never cleared. It is unverifiable. However, rape advocacy groups will tend to take these figures as examples of minimum number of rapes that occured in a year, despite the unverifiability of the statistic (there is the equally unverifiable 'unreported rapes' statistics provided by many rape advocacy groups).
This isn't an assertion that false reporting is or isn't there, or a judgment of how prevalent it might be; only that, in general, there is an assumption made by some parties that all of these reports are true.