One Effect of Respect
Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, quotes an Inside Higher Ed article and then ads her own interpretation
Overall, UNH has found that the number of unwanted sexual experiences on campus declined significantly from 1988 to 2000, during which time the university established a crisis center and put a number of prevention programs in place. However, there has been little change since 2000 — prompting a need for more creative, broad-based responses, said Victoria Banyard, an associate professor of psychology and a co-author.
I find this interesting, because the reduction in the rape rate that’s been national and somewhat continuous ever since feminists made rape a big issue shows that the primary criticism feminists have—that ours is a “rape culture”, i.e. that rape is a product of a culture that is tolerant or even approving of it—was right, and when you change the culture, you change the rate of rape.
The traditional, conservative explanation for rape is that it’s built into men’s biology, and therefore the only way to slow it or stop it is to put the onus on women to avoid being a temptation or to keep yourself out of harm’s way. Obviously, the facts do not support this contention, because if anything, women are more and more flouting the rules that have always been put on us with the ostensible purpose of stopping rape and the practical effect of limiting women’s freedom of movement. ... Turns out the feminists were right after all—the best way to stop rape is for men to stop raping, not for women to try to get men to stop raping. Men, it turns out, were equal to the task, largely defeating man-hating anti-feminist nay-sayers who portray men as brutes whose dominance can’t be challenged, much less stopped. [emphasis here is mine --fl]
Is it working everywhere? Um, no. Is it working at all? Well *something's changing (after following this link scroll down to official replies) Is it working overall? Well, if rates have held steady for eight years after falling quite a lot, and if the secondary assault on Melissa Bruen at U-Conn could still happen, then... we need to be doing something else that... probably also involves creating expectations for them/us/me/men to rise to rather than allowing anti-feminists to set them as low as possible.
And just one again what's *wrong* with those people who go around saying men are just so "Great Race, the Romans" superior we can't tell the difference between, for instance, "yes" and an alcohol coma?
How could people cheer on her attackers?? How could they?
Without being certain of exactly what you're talking about, I'm going to say that it was probably a spectacle. People always cheer at spectacles. It gives them secondhand thrills of doing something that would be too stupid or dangerous for them to risk doing themselves. And those who aren't caught up in it and don't approve are more likely to just bug out than to interfere and risk getting lynched by those who are and do. The problem is that some people think violence is fun. Assuming you're talking about a sexual assault, well, there's violence involved in that, so...
Actually I think this ties to figleaf's post too. Sex is fun. Some people (men, mostly, but some women too) think violence is fun. Combine both and you get a double thrill. I would think that if you changed the culture to associate violence as something icky that only deranged people willingly do, then it would virtually eliminate sexual assaults, though not rape-by-coercion or she-didn't-say-no-due-to-unconsciousness. Might have the drawback of further demonizing S&M, though.
I was responding about one of the links provided and briefly referenced--sorry to be unclear. A woman at the University of Connecticut (Melissa Bruen) was, in the last week or two, raped and then raped again by an onlooker.
I think abstractly some of the onlookers may think rape is wrong. When witnessing it, though? Apparently further harming someone was more fun to them. It's not as if biology just took over at all. The assailants referred to it as sexual assault. It makes me feel ill to think that someone would further injure another person rather than help them.
[Hi B, according to Bruen's own account (which I read before I posted any of this) she was sexually humiliated and physically assaulted but not raped in the way people generally seem to mean it. In the first instance she was pushed against a wall and "dry humped," and she was able to beat the crap out of that guy. While he was running away at least one individual from a gathering crowd said "you think that was assault?" and pulled down her tube top and grabbed her breasts while the rest of the onlookers cheered. She was able to fight her way out of that crowd too. Anyway, that's how she described it, and if she hadn't described it that way I'd feel a lot less sanguine about analyzing her assailants' states of mind. --fl]