Jay — do you consider women to be the legal equal of men?

Would you be upset if your daughter was told that she couldn’t go to college because they thought it more important that men have a good education, or a company told her that while her resume was impressive, they still would prefer to hire a man because “men are more responsible than women”?
Forget illegal, wouldn’t you be outraged?

Why then should you have a *legal* responsibility to be more responsible to assess if a woman is thinking clearly than it is hers to assess if YOU are? Remember that you just agreed that women are every bit as responsible as men (I hope) in your objection to the “we don’t hire girls” example above.

Camile Pagilla (not I) raises an interesting question. A woman drinks too much and stupidly gets into her own car and attempts to drive home. She instead is involved in an accident and considered to be a criminal for her bad decision. A second woman drinks to much and makes the equally stupid decision to get into someone else’s car and wakes up in some strange guy’s bed the next morning. Why is she a victim? Or why is the other woman a criminal?

Getting hit by a car is an excellent metaphor for rape. And the alcohol issue applies to both.

Should you be careful and drink less to avoid getting hit by a car/raped? Yes of Course!!!

BUT

Should a driver/rapist not be held responsible because they and/or the victim were drunk when they committed the act? No Way!!!

Everyone is responsible for their actions, drunk or sober. If you are worried you might get drunk and rape someone else who is drunk than don’t drink. But if it happens, you are still a rapist.

J:

The experience you relate sounds EXACTLY like a next-morning “WTF did I DO last night?” regret. Regretable? Sure. Rape? No.

Is it nasty that a guy takes advantage of a drunk woman? Sure. But if he’s drunk too, and you – a woman – got the impression that this was consensual, how is he to know? Get written permission?

Good judgment comes from experience. Where does experience come from? Very often, from bad judgment. So what to learn from this? Don’t get blasted, don’t stay with a guy who is equally smashed, have a “wingman” to watch each other, and – most importantly – don’t tease and lead someone on.

Many years ago, at my first college, I ran into a young woman who was utterly blotto… and “in the mood.” I got her back to her room, woke her roommate, helped get her tucked in, and left. Another, more mercenary guy, would probably have gone for the kill. And yet, ironically, this young woman – even after this – didn’t give me the time of day. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess. But I know I did the right thing.

The argument for castrating rapists neglects two important facts.
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First, rape is a crime of violence and not an act of sexual gratification. If a man (or woman) wishes to forcefully penetrate a woman, it can be done with objects other than a penis. A beer bottle and a hair brush are items I am aware of having been used for such purposes, the hairbrush being used by a woman sexually assaulting her own daughter who was something like 3-5 years old at the time.

Second, this shows how rape has become a cudgel in the gender wars. Much as how one once had to be visibly anti-communist in order not to be accused of being communist, men are now required to support increasingly barbaric punishments lest we be considered rapists ourselves. No, my support for the Eighth Amendment and the humanitarian principles behind it, my belief in mercy and in not harming the helpless is actually consistent with opposition to rape as well.
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But take the aforementioned case of the woman and the hair brush. Would we “castrate” her? Would we surgically sterilize her so that she could not have any more children?
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Hatred of men in general both exists and needs to be recognized…

Today I learned that only women can be raped.

Let me state unequivocably that rape is a horrific crime. I know people who have been raped. It’s ugly. I have never raped anyone, nor could I conceive of doing so. It is, ultimately, the responsibility of each and every person to not do so.

But where I see the issue is, is the perception that the world should be this utopia where people can walk anywhere, at any time, in any fashion, and not fall prey to predators. The sad FACT is that – human nature being human nature – there are those who WILL take advantage of others, whether by theft, or rape, or whatever.

And That’s the rub – the refusal to accept that the world is actually a violent place.

When I was at U Mass there was a grisly murder at one of the malls (IIRC over the summer). That fall, despite no suspects or arrests, women were walking around alone late at night, with headphones on, oblivious to the world around them. Would I condone their being attacked? Of course not.

But the world is a dangerous place, on an individual level as well as on a macroscale. To say “If only human nature would change” is to succumb to a fantasy world of unicorns instead of accepting the real.

In the movie “The Matrix” Morpheus urges Neo to “wake up” and see the world for what it is, not what we want it to be. Though it isn’t RIGHT that women (and men – there was an incident when I was at grad school where a man was raped in a parking lot) get assaulted and raped, it is REALITY.

Live in the real. And take precautions.

And to any potential rapist out there… I hope you get caught. For two separate rapes. Because I’d advocate castration.

This article painted me with an easy impression that men is usually responsible for sustaining rape culture. This easy implied answer can be so targeting that, no wonder why, many students joke about it in order to get away with the awkwardness. Has anyone asked how did the awkwardness arise?

Here I am extremely surprised that nobody has pointed out that, “sexual violence against men, including rape, is under-reported, and much more poorly addressed.”

In a sense, the enemy here is “violence,” or a bad choice. I would argue that no one is born to be evil, nor to do harm to another. Thus, resisting rape culture should not be pictured a war between genders and sexes, but a learning opportunity for everyone.

Speaking of learning and making better choices, I found this at Hampshire College, a group of sexperts that educate peers about Sexual Pleasure and Communication. I guess UMass version of this is “Consent is Sexy.” It is great that UMass has a lot of resources like this. However, our campus is fairly big and with segregated organizations. I think our greatest challenge here is, how to get more students engaged, feel belonged and “run” their own organizations to advocate for causes.

In the end, the names of Rape Trail or what I say does not matter much, if put in comparison to what students are empowered to do. With that said, thanks Billy for a progressive article!

The “1 in 4 college women will be raped” statistic is no more accurate than the infamous 1932 telephone survey that said that Herbert Hoover was going to defeat FDR and win in a landslide.

Now as to the latter, telephones were quite expensive in 1932, few people had one, whom do you think did? (hint: “expensive”) You got it: All the millionares said that they were voting for Hoover and did — everyone else voted for FDR.

The 1:4 survey comes from a similar error — actually thrice compounded.

First, it was a survey in MS magazine — something that at the time was every bit to the left as Rush Limbaugh is to the right — and would you consider a survey of college women who listen to Rush Limbaugh to be reflective of college women at UMass?

It also was a survey that you had to fill out (if you chose to do so) and you then had to find an envelope and a stamp — and then remember to mail it. That’s called “self selection” and throws any survey result into the toilet.

Take two women, one who was raped and one who wasn’t. Which woman do you think is going to have that survey filled out and in the mail immediately?

I really am surprised that a statistic generated this way was as low as 1:4….

i don’t think people are really taking in what ed is saying rather than just attacking the straw man they find there. talking about the reasons why messed up things happen sometimes is not the same as justifying them, nor implying that they are the only reasons.
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maybe if an obsession with guilt wasn’t such a focus everyone could understand the more dangerous dynamics of sexuality and everything would go a bit better for everyone. yeah, i’m a male. if someone mugs me in a dark alley in a shady part of some city, of course in an immediate sense it’s their ‘fault’. but i don’t go walking down dark alleys… that there is so much secrecy, angst, shame, pain and bewilderment surrounding sexuality that the same common sense can’t be said to apply without 100 feminists shouting about victim-blaming and how rape is asexual, is not really helping society to have a productive and enlightening discussion on this incredibly charged topic. the way that people socialize and pursue sex in general is messed up. but the alternative is not so say that young ladies should go naked to frat parties and get insanely drunk. that this is a frequent occurrence on our campus just shows how badly people need to get a grip, grow up and learn some skills for reasonable behavior.
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of course there are monstrous people in the world, but they are few enough to be dealt with easily if we weren’t surrounded by a sea of people who just go with the crowd and do whatever seems cool or normal. this applies to victims and perpetrators both. i am not interested in assigning or measuring blame regarding any particular incident (like this one in which it’s not even really known what actually happened, to me anyway; all i have is the police’s word on it). i am interested in real talk about how life and sexuality can be made better and safer, and not in reinforcing the idea that women are helpless victims of a power dynamic that will never change. because it is already changing even though there is so much further to go, and i think this is something anyone who truly cares about this should take note of.

Thank you Billy for writing this article. Rape culture on this campus is something that needs to be addressed on a daily basis. It is so heavily internalized that we think there is nothing wrong by referring to the path between Sylvan and Orchard Hill as “the rape trail”. The point is, regardless if someone was assaulted there or not, that we are using “rape” as an identifying and acceptable term. Rape is never justified. Furthermore, skirts do NOT justify rape.
Unfortunately, we far too often see via mainstream media that female bodies are meant to be objectified and dehumanized. Next time, instead of thinking that there’s nothing wrong with that, let’s question how we can fix it. Because the statistics are that 1 in 4 women have been survivors. That’s your sister, mother, aunt, dear friend. That’s somebody you personally know. So for now, let’s stop criticizing what women are wearing and think that is where the problem stems from. Let’s teach our brothers, fathers, sons not to rape.

It’s insane that so many young men think it’s ok to hold someone down and forcibly insert themselves into them. Like giant mosquitoes. In many ways women are prey. A lot of men don’t want to understand this.

Mason, I can see how you believe that rape is more an issue of sociopathic people who will justify it no matter what than it is of the culture surrounding them. However, studies have shown that rapists overwhelmingly believe all men rape. If believing that all men rape is how these men justify it to themselves then a culture that accepts frequent, insensitive rape jokes reassures them that is the case.

Rape jokes also play into rape culture because a major aspect of rape culture is the denial that rape is a serious or frequent problems, and I think most rape jokes require this denial (i.e. it’s harder to make a rape joke and thinks it’s really funny or acceptable if you understand the extreme likelihood that someone listening has been a victim of rape).

That being said, I do think there are subversive rape jokes that don’t rely on the idea that rape is funny or nonexistent enough to be funny, but obviously that’s not the sort of rape joke or casual use of the word rape that the author of this piece is talking about.

Of course, this comment defending the existence, pervasiveness, and damage of rape culture may be unnecessary now that you’ve seen Ed Cutting spouting a bunch of victim blaming bullshit crap about how women are to blame for rape for drinking and wearing miniskirts. Hey Ed, maybe the solution to rape should actually be that rapists stay away from drunk, scantily clad women rather than that women limit their own freedom in order to avoid being blamed for their rapes by people like you.

As to the “Daughter Drop-Off” the Amherst Police Log is published in the Amherst Bulletin newspaper and I remember seeing this in there — the house was on Sunset and the cops made them take the sign down.

And Mason, I ask but one question:

Do you leave your car parked, unlocked and with the keys inside it? Do you leave your laptop and IPhone and perhaps a stack of $100 bills inside said unlocked car — perhaps parked down in Lot 11 by the Football Stadium?

Stealing is illegal, so why is this an unwise thing to do?

Let me tell you a story about someone whom I considered to be a very lucky young lady. She woke up — or more accurately, regained consciousness — late one Sunday afternoon and found that her underwear was on backwards. Or something, I never really did quite figure out what but it was clear to her that she hadn’t put it on herself.

She feared the worst. She had absolutely no memory of the prior night. I was the RD and I feared the worst as well.

Well, it seems that two of my female RAs had found her, face-down in a snowbank, in the drizzle, and didn’t want to leave her there. So they somehow got her up three flights of stairs, into her dorm room, and into dry clothing — and then went where they were going for the evening.

And I said two things to her. First, that she ought to thank the two RAs because they weren’t on duty and in addition to everything else, they likely prevented her from catching pneumonia.

And second, what if someone of less noble intent had found her? Someone like, say, a rapist?

And that is my point. I have seen way too many bad things happen — and I have no problem telling women that it is not so good an idea to go to parties wearing micro-mini skirts with no underwear on underneath. I have no problem telling women that it is a really bad idea to do this and then to drink so much that you pass out unconscious on the floor.

I won’t even get into glitter parties.

Why is ed cutting so angry, all he does is leave comments on this site which the aim and only effect is to cut down and offend the opinions of others. In no way does how a woman dress encourage a violent and brutual crime, there is no reason to have such a small attiude towards rape.

Exactly how many women have been raped on the so-called “rape trail” in the past 20 years? My understanding is that it is a number somewhere between none and NONE.

Yes, it is a dark and scary path at night — one moreso before cell phones, and after walking it just once at night, *I* decided that *I* wasn’t going to walk it at night anymore. But to the best of my knowledge, I don’t believe anyone was ever raped out there.

And notwithstanding how crude the “daughter drop off” sign was, the APD actually violated those schmucks civil rights by forcing them to take it down. And we are talking about adult women here, aren’t we? Not about children….

Facts matter — and the college women who are raped almost inevitably know the rapist. Much of it is the so-called “date rape” and if we didn’t have women drunk out of their minds and — yes, I will say it, doing things like wearing mini-skirts with no underwear which kinda gives a bit of a mixed message to guys — if we didn’t have half-naked and totally intoxicated women putting themselves into harm’s way, we very likely wouldn’t have so many rapes occurring.

I once had a young lady, an attractive young lady, tell me that she had the right to go into a (now torn down) frat house stark naked and not be raped. My response was that I had the right to stand in front of the same frat house and call the brothers every insult known to man and not be assaulted, either. But, I added, we would both be damn fools if we actually did it.

Might I suggest that it isn’t a “rape culture” as much as a “slut culture” that is the problem — and if the young ladies started respecting their bodies and not drinking themselves half blind and wandering around half naked, a lot of this stuff wouldn’t happen anymore.

And whatever happened to knowing someone’s last name before you slept with him/her/it? Dare we say that the “hook up” culture is part of the problem????

Just to be clear, UMASS Amherst does not support a rape culture and any of the jokes that may happen (right or wrong) did not influence this past incident. After all, the students as far as I know were not even from UMASS or even the town of Amherst whatsoever… The fact this poor girl got raped is definitely a big deal and should never have happened, but lets not go blaming UMASS Amherst Students or the school in ANY way for it truly had nothing to do with our school.

Really well said! good article