Time and time again so many women on GC are proving that they aren't as open-minded and pro-female as they'd like to think they are. Maybe this is a fake letter, but like S&S said, how many times as something like this happened?

Say you're a freshman in college and just pledged a sorority. It's little sibs weekend so you bring your sister, who's a senior in high school, up to visit. You guys are having a swap with the XYZs, and she begs you to come. She gets a little drunk, you get a little drunk, and while you're talking to the cute guy from the My Tie exchange you had last month, she is dancing with one of his brothers. You turn around to refill your cup of wop and little sis is nowhere to be found...

because she went upstairs for a "house tour." Fratty takes her into his room and starts kissing her. She thinks that she is the bomb dot com for being kissed by a frat guy. Fratty starts groping her and she's still okay with that. Fratty tries to take off her Sevens, she says no, Fratty takes them off anyway and throws her on the bed.

Stuff like this happens. It sucks, and it's not exclusive to frat guys in the least. I don't care if she said yes to everything except sex. If she said no to sex, she said no to sex, and he should have stopped. Would you guys be so quick to criticize the girl if it was your little sister? Your own daughter?

I have to agree. She makes good points, especially regarding personal responsability.

We had several of our sisters' little biological sisters come up to visit and party. Let me assure you that they were NEVER left by themselves, out of sight of their big sister, or permitted to go home with a guy, no matter how much we trusted the guy in question.

If you can't make the commitment to take care of your sibling - especially if she's inexperienced with going to parties - don't allow her (or him, for that matter) to come visit you.

This is what it's about - be responsible for yourself. We see nothing wrong with saying "don't drive through so and so neighborhood after dark" and "don't eat at Joe's, 10 people have gotten food poisoning there." I see no difference in saying "don't get drunk at a party full of horny men you don't know."

How about saying that horny men you don't know need to keep their isht in their pants and control themselves?

Agreed. But you don't know if they will. So you need to look out for yourself. I'm not by any means saying anyone deserves it or asks for it - I'm saying be prudent and don't put yourself in that situation.

I definitely agree.

Self-responsibility and looking out for yourself is critical in today's world. I think this also ties in with many situations like the unfortunate situation with Sam Spady. Even though we are fortunate enough to have brothers and sisters or even just friends to go out with, we can't entirely rely on them to look out for us every single second. We need to look out for ourselves sometimes too.

first off props to dekeguy's sister.

Secondly, Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, nuff said.

third, if I'm even considering hooking up with a girl i would probably ask her how old she is in casual conversation and probably through the course of the night figure out who/how she ended up there. At least for us the way it works is at a big party we have someone carding college ID's at the door, and kickbacks we usually know people as they come in so if a friend brought someone we would pretty easily figure out all we need to know about them.

Fourth, was she there solo? if not where were her friends? we all know how girls like to take care of each other at parties, which is a great thing and probably prevents more rapes then we know.

Five, still not going to back down that she's crazy/emotionally unstable, because there are just too many people in this world trying to pull a fast one

six, that letter is as fake as an after school special.

seven, i forgot to mention this earlier, but whoever it was who had that line, she said no but how many things had she said yes to already, props to that.

You're crazy and emotionally unstable.

Of course I don't know if that's true or not, but I have as much of a basis for saying it about you as you have for saying it about this girl you've never even met.

(Who cares if it is real or not 33girl is right, these are always made up.)

I don't really think anyone implied that the girl has no responsibility. Women have to be careful, but at the same time. But the attitude that SirHornyToad has is also irresponsible and disgusting. Drunk people cannot consent, and while she should not have put her self in that situation, we don't know what kind of situations lead up to her being in that room. Yes she has responsibility, but so does the guy. Just because woman does something stupid it does justify rape. Nothing does.


btw: fraternity parties are not hard to sneak into, and women can actually lie about their age...rare, but possible.

with this week and next week being deemed "project/presentation" week at my college and the week after that being finals, I may very well be crazy or emotionally unstable at this point in time!

allow me to edit that

"Five, still not going to back down that she may be crazy/emotionally unstable, because there are just too many people in this world trying to pull a fast one"

How come drunk men are allowed to give consent? I am sure there are definitely consenting women that men have had sex with drunk that they never would have had sex with sober . . . is is rape if the men wake up horrified in the morning?

our's are hard to sneak into, one entrance is blocked off and gaurded, another is blocked by a table and someone checking ID's/taking money and another guy stamping people.

And if you had actually taken the time to read any of my arguements you wouldn't call them irresponsible or disgusting. I never said she "wasn't " raped or that if she was raped the guy had any right to do anything. What i am saying is that it is possible that she wasnt and that we don't know the entire story, and therefore it is wrong to demonize the guy and sympathize with the girl when we don't even know for sure what the hell happened.

I'm saying that guys should be more responsible and not get themselves involved with little girls and No definently does mean no, there is no debate about that.

I've dealt with my fair share of situations that have dealt with rape, date rape, etc and it really is a topic i disgust and an act that i completely hate when other guys commit it, BUT I would never pass judgment, even on a fictional guy in a dear abby letter before i knew what the hell was going on.

Okay, am I wrong, or did the letter say that this girl knew the guy in question? It sounds to me like they were already friends. If so -- I know that I wouldn't have MY guard up in that case. My little sister doesn't go to frat parties, but if she did and she was invited there by a friend, I would definitely tell her to be careful and watch her stuff and NOT go upstairs with guys she didn't know -- but I wouldn't be all that worried about her going upstairs to a guy's room if they're friends. Who would suspect that your FRIEND is going to rape you? I wouldn't.

Furthermore, if they were friends he probably knew she was 16.

The personal responsibility argument is hardly valid. I mean, yes, you want to take care of yourself -- but if you aren't and you get raped, it's STILL not your fault. We don't hold people who get robbed accountable for the crime because they were walking home alone one evening. We don't hold people accountable for getting hitting by cars just because they chose to cross the street. Why is rape different?



Regardless of whether or not this letter is real, it happens. Do you want me to whip out the examples of sisters and friends I have who've been raped, some of them by fraternity men who decided it was consentual? Because I can do that if Dear Abby isn't enough for you. :rolleyes:

No james it's not, because aparantly all men are pigs who are just horny and want to get thier rocks off, beer goggles be damned, infact the man probably raped those girls too because we all know that men can't be raped but girls can...

*ducks and covers from the feminist onslaught that is going to ensue*


***Disclaimer***

Ok this post was mostly sarcasm, please don't stone me to death

Oh Noes, the feminists!1!1! :eek:

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

S&S
It shouldnt surprise you that they were friends, thing's like that happen, its called Date Rape.

And of course you have instances where things happen, you also have the facts about those instances, I could pull out some myself, i can't tell you how many of my lady friends i've saved. And how bad i felt for the ones I couldnt.

Here's one, I passed out at a friends house drunk, woke up to a gay guy messing with me, which i won't get into detail. I was jacktarded drunk and had to go to therapy afterwards, I was raped, I empathize.

but at the same time i'd like to play devils advocate enough that maybe people wont indiscriminantly judge guys without knowing the facts, and realize that this system is by no means fair, and that men and women both need to be responsible.

Why??!? In my junior high school there were hispanic girls dating guys in their 20s. I'm to believe an 18 year old (probably drunk) who touches a drunk 16 year old is a fool? How is he a fool?

You know what there is plenty of blame to go around and let's do that. Let's not sit there and say this blame is only for one person.

1) Blame the fraternity. Have them shut down for taking on the increased risk of bringing not just a minor into the house but also a high school minor and providing them alcohol on top of a party which may possibly be against the rules. Whether or not it was right doesn't matter and isn't the question. What matters is that the fraternity needs to think and realize what a risk they just took on and how it hurts their brothers.

2) Blame the brother who was with the girl ONLY if it can be proven that it was rape. Otherwise he gets no blame.

3) Blame the girl. You idiot girl. You went to a frat party. You wanted to be a little wild...be a little hooch...drink a little. You deserve blame for risking your own safety.

4) Blame the parents. You morons can't control your children.

There. Everyone got the blame and nobody got off easy. Of course this is all probably false and nobody gets the blame. Easy.

-Rudey

Rudey for president?

I second that

See, I don't know -- I guess I've never had a guy friend who disrespected me enough not to stop when I said no. If it's true that any guy out there is a potential date rapist, why should women be friends with men at all? We're friends with guys because we trust you not to pull shit like this. Obviously sometimes we guess wrong and place our trust where it shouldn't be put. Again, that's not the woman's fault. Bad judgment is not illegal. Raping someone is.


While I definitely feel for those who have had false allegations of rape thrown at them, the facts show that rape is far, far (possibly hundreds of times) more common than false allegations of rape, and that the vast majority of the time the allegations are true. That doesn't mean that we should immediately leap to the conclusion that the girl is always right, but it does mean that, in general, the girl's argument sounds pretty reasonable to me (unless she starts contradicting herself, etc., which hasn't happened in this letter).

I don't think that anybody in here is saying that the girl in the Dear Abby letter was absolutely one hundred percent positively raped. We were just saying that if the facts as presented in the letter were true, then she was raped. It would be up to the court to decide what actually happened.

I'm not stoning you, just pointing out that I earlier mentioned that this can happen to guys. No one has claimed it can't. I didn't mean to exclude men, but in this situation, it was a female raped, thus my use of genders.

It's not rape if they wake up horrified in the morning. It is rape if they feel violated and like they were forced into having sex.

I think that those of you that believe that some of the women on here are not empowering females by their attitudes are not reflecting that false, fake, or misunderstood accusations of rape may be a great deal more common than you are comfortable believing.

Here is an article with pretty good references that illustrates some of that:

http://www.ipt-forensics.com/journal/volume6/j6_2_4.htm

I am excerting some of it and if you go to the site you can see the list of endnotes and sources. There is also more listed about child sexual abuse and recovered memories.

Warning its longer than many people's attention spans.

Believe Her! The Woman Never Lies Myth
Frank S. Zepezauer*

ABSTRACT: Empirical evidence does not support the widespread belief that women are extremely unlikely to make false accusations of male sexual misconduct. Rather the research on accusations of rape, sexual harassment, incest, and child sexual abuse indicates that false accusations have become a serious problem. The motivations involved in making a false report are widely varied and include confusion, outside influence from therapists and others, habitual lying, advantages in custody disputes, financial gain, and the political ideology of radical feminism.


Male sexual misconduct — rape, incest, stalking, sexual harassment, child molestation, pornography trafficking — has, according to some observers, become a problem so big that it demands a big solution, not only the reform of our legal system but of our entire society. Yet the increasingly heated debate over this crisis has focused primarily on how these misbehaviors are defined and how often they occur. The estimated numbers keep mounting. We hear that perhaps 31 million women are suffering from some form of rape, 41 million from harassment, 58 million from child sexual abuse, and all 125 million of them — from toddlers to grandmothers — from a toxic "rape culture" that suffocates the feminine spirit.

Much less discussed is how often an allegation of male sexual misconduct is false. The question seldom enters the debate because, presumably, it had long ago been settled. Pennsylvania State Law Professor Philip Jenkins (1993), in a review of the "feminist jurisprudence" which leads the sex crisis counterattack, reports that in response to the question its proponents have established an "unchallengeable orthodoxy." It is that "women did not lie about such victimization, never lied, not out of personal malice, not from mental instability or derangement" (p.19).

Jenkins is not the first to cite this will to believe. Wendy Kaminer (1993) reported that "it is a primary article of faith among many feminists that women don't lie about rape, ever; they lack the dishonesty gene" (p.67). Eight years earlier, in 1985, John O'Sullivan discovered a widespread defense of the belief that "no woman would fabricate a rape charge" (p.22). Feminists themselves admit as much. Law Professor Susan Estrich stated that "the whole effort at reforming rape laws has been an attack on the premise that women who bring complaints are suspect" (Newsweek, 1985, p.61). Some feminists believe that even defending that premise is a sex crime. Alan Dershowitz (1993) reports that he was accused of sexual harassment for discussing in class the possibility of false rape allegations.

Believing the self-proclaimed victim of sexual misconduct has thus evolved from ideological conviction to legal doctrine and, in some jurisdictions, into law. California now requires that jurors be explicitly told that a rape conviction can be based on the accuser's testimony alone, without corroboration (Associated Press, 1992; Farrell, 1993). Canada is proposing that a man accused of rape must demonstrate that he received the willing consent of a sexual partner.

These new rules rest on the assumption that women do not lie because they have no motive to lie. Consequently, as Jenkins (1993) states, the question of the "victim's credibility" has now become "crucial."

Is that credibility warranted, particularly as feminist jurisprudence would want it established, as nearly automatic? Not if we consult recent history. And if we do, we will find that we do indeed face a sexual misconduct crisis, but not the one radical feminists now insist is ubiquitous in our society.


False Accusations of Rape

Begin with evidence of false accusation of rape, the crime which has become not only the metaphor for all cases of sexual misconduct but for male sexuality itself. Alan Dershowitz (1991), for example, has further harassed his students by telling them that an annual F.B.I. survey of 1600 law enforcement agencies discovered that 8% of rape charges are completely unfounded. That figure, which has held steadily over the past decade, is moreover at least twice as high as for any other felony. Unfounded charges of assault, which like rape is often productive of conflicting testimony, comprise only 1.6% of the total compared to the 8.4% recorded for rape.

Consult also a recent development, DNA testing, which is now becoming routine in rape investigations (Krajik, 1993). Also routine is the discovery that a third of the DNA scans produce non-matches. Consequently, a growing number of men are not only gaining acquittals but are also being released from prison. As with all rape statistics, these figures need careful scrutiny. Police investigators warn, for example, that a mismatch proves innocence only when the DNA could have come from no one but the assailant and its profile or makeup doesn't match the suspect's. Even so, the DNA tests, primarily a prosecutorial weapon, have now been added to the arsenal of defense attorneys, and more evidence of false allegation is appearing.

Although useful, the F.B.I. and DNA data on sex crimes result from unstructured number gathering. More informative, therefore, are the results of a focused study of the false allegation question undertaken by a team headed by Charles P McDowell (McDowell & Hibler, 1985) of the U.S. Air Force Special Studies Division. Its significance derives not only from its scholarly credentials but also its time of origin, 1984/85, a period during which rape had emerged as a major issue, but before its definition included almost any form of non-consensual sex.

The McDowell team studied 556 rape allegations. Of that total, 256 could not be conclusively verified as rape. That left 300 authenticated cases of which 220 were judged to be truthful and 80, or 27%, were judged as false. In his report Charles McDowell stated that extra rigor was applied to the investigation of potentially false allegations. To be considered false one or more of the following criteria had to be met: the victim unequivocally admitted to false allegation, indicated deception in a polygraph test, and provided a plausible recantation. Even by these strict standards, slightly more than one out of four rape charges were judged to be false.

The McDowell report has itself generated controversy even though, when rape is a frequent media topic, it is not widely known. Its calculations are no doubt problematic enough to raise serious questions. If, out of 556 rape allegations, 256 could not be conclusively verified as rape, then a large number, 46%, entered a gray area within which more than a few, if not all, of the accusations could have been authentic. If so, the 27% false allegation figure obtained from the remaining 300 cases could be badly skewed. Moreover, the study itself focused on a possibly non-representative population of military personnel.

The McDowell team did in fact address these questions in follow-up studies. They recruited independent reviewers who were given 25 criteria derived from the profiles of the women who openly admitted making a false allegation. If all three reviewers agreed that the rape allegation was false, it was then listed by that description. The result: 60% of the accusations were identified as false. McDowell also took his study outside the military by examining police files from a major midwestern and a southwestern city. He found that the finding of 60% held (Farrell, 1993, pp. 321-329).

McDowell's data have received qualified confirmation from other investigators. A survey of seven Washington, D.C. area jurisdictions in the 1991/2 period, for example, revealed that an average of 24% of rape charges were unfounded (Buckley, 1992). A recently completed study of a small midwestern city was reported by Eugene J. Kanin (1994) of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Purdue University. Kanin concluded that "false rape allegations constitute 41% of the total forcible rape cases reported during this period" (p.81).

Kanin provides significant confirmation of McDowell's findings in several ways. Kanin's subject, for example, covered a nine-year period — 1978-87 — during which rape had become a highly-politicized issue. Members of the police department from which the data was taken were therefore sensitive to the kinds of misperceptions about which parties to the dispute had complained. The city offered a relatively useful model: free of the unrepresentative populations found in resort areas, remote from the extreme crime conditions plaguing large communities, small enough to allow careful investigation of suspicious allegations, but large enough to produce a useful sample of 109 cases. The investigators also separated "unfounded" from "false" rape allegations, a distinction sometimes blurred in other reports. Moreover, among the strict guidelines used to determine an allegation's unreliability was McDowell's requirement that only unambiguous recantations be used.

Equally revealing were addenda following Kanin's basic report. They reported studies in two large Midwestern state universities which covered a three-year period ending in 1988. The finding of the combined studies was that among a total of 64 reported rapes exactly 50% were false. Kanin found these results significant because the women in the main report tended to gather in the lower socioeconomic levels, thus raising questions about correlations of false allegation with income and educational status. After checking figures gathered from university police departments, he therefore reported that "quite unexpectedly then, we find that these university women, when filing a rape complaint, were as likely to file a false as a valid charge." In addition, Kanin cited still another source (Jay, 1991) which supported findings of high frequency false allegations in the universities. On the basis of these studies, Kanin felt it reasonable to conclude that "false rape accusations are not uncommon" (p.90).


Sexual Harassment

Alan Dershowitz's experience with an esoteric definition of sexual harassment also raises questions about false allegations in this newly-defined but widely publicized crime. Skeptical checking has revealed that, as with rape, the percentage of unfounded accusations of sexual harassment may reach astonishingly high levels. That was the claim of Randy Daniels, whose confirmation for New York City's Deputy Mayor was almost derailed by a sexual harassment charge he was able to refute. To see whether his experience was relatively rare, Daniels checked with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He found that in 1991, the EEOC investigated or mediated 2119 cases of sexual harassment and found that 59% were determined to have no cause (Daniels, 1993, p. 1). Since the Hill/Thomas affair they have gone up sharply — up 64% in one year — but so have false allegations, remaining steadily in the plus 50% range.

-SNIP-

Motivations of Accusers

Even so, reasonable doubts about a woman's veracity in all these often sensationalized sexual misconduct cases do not necessarily mean that she has deliberately lied. She may, for example, have suffered from confusion, a problem now proliferating as the definition for sex crimes becomes increasingly complicated and inclusive, leaving all parties struggling with questions about definition and propriety. Or she may have been affected by emotional instability or mental illness, which one study reported was a factor in 75% of false allegation in divorce cases (Wakefield & Underwager, 1990). In some cases a woman or her defenders might exaggerate a misdemeanor into a felony or, as happened in Washington state, translate bad parenting into sexual misconduct.

In addition, there has been a tendency to emphasize what a victim felt rather than what happened. Thus, a woman can truthfully say she felt raped, abused or harassed by behavior which is actually non-criminal. Moreover, the woman's feelings are often influenced by outside parties with whom she has confided — friends, family members, social workers, therapists, clergymen, rape counselors, lawyers, political activists — any of whom can interpret her emotion as a sign of felonious abuse.

With regard to recovered memory, evidence published by the FMS Foundation suggests that the woman may be as much victimized by therapy or by recovery movement" enthusiasm as by a perpetrator hidden in her subconscious. Ericka Ingram, the primary accuser in the Washington State case, had come under the influence of both secular and religious counselors. Their intrusive encouragement helped to loosen a flood of wild charges she leveled against her father and mother as well as two of her father's colleagues. These realizations have led to an increasing number of lawsuits now being filed by former patients against incompetent or overzealous therapists. By the same token, among the divorcing wives who file sexual molestation charges against their husbands are some who have been coached by self-serving lawyers. Columnist Barbara Amiel (1989) stated that "a lawyer is coming close to negligence if he does not advise a client that in child custody cases and property disputes, the mere mention of a child abuse allegation is a significant asset" (p.25).

In The Morning After, Katie Roiphe (1993) reported still another cause of false allegations: political passions generated by activities such as the "Take Back the Night" marches. She tells about "Mindy" who so wanted to be a "part of this blanket warmth, this woman-centered nonhierarchical empowered notion" that she was "willing to lie" (pp. 40-41). A similar story was told by a Stanford University professor whose daughter was, he claimed, behind a conspiracy to murder him. He testified that he had had a good relationship with her until she attended an anti-rape rally. "She appeared to have gotten swept up ... and was experiencing great emotional distress" (Wykes, 1993).

These mitigating circumstances have often softened the judgment of authorities who confront women guilty of misrepresentation. In the Washington D.C. area, for example, police send women who lied about rape not to the court room but to a counseling center. The Princeton woman who accused a fellow student suffered no more than an obligation to write a public apology. Because of these sometimes compelling reasons for a departure from the truth, many officials hesitate to call a woman a liar.

But it appears, some women with little or no evidence do not hesitate to call a man a rapist. It also appears that more than a few of them have in fact knowingly and willfully lied. Regardless of the influences working on Ericka Ingram, for example, there came a point when the evidence openly confounded her story, leaving her with the choice either to persist or recant. Because she not only persisted but further embellished her story, Richard Ofshe called her an "habitual liar" (Wright, 1993, p.69). Whether Anita Hill lied about Clarence Thomas still cannot be determined, but David Brock demonstrated that in several other matters she had indeed lied. And as Charles P. McDowell and other rape allegation researchers have discovered, at least one out of four women in their study population have openly admitted to having lied.

Such disclosures should encourage skepticism toward the now widely held belief that, in accusations of sexual misconduct, women never lie. The same skepticism should be activated when we hear its supporting explanation: that filing such a charge is so painful that only a truthful woman would proceed. That belief, although equally strong, is equally suspect. The research that revealed how many sexual misconduct allegations are false has also revealed how often these unfounded accusations are strongly motivated.

The clearest example of compelling motive can be found in the Sexual Allegation in Divorce (S.A.I.D.) syndrome. In such cases questionable allegations multiply because the accuser has far more to gain than to lose. Simply charging a divorcing spouse with child molestation — or wife battering or spousal rape — can turn a hot but evenly balanced custody battle into a rout. In many cases, the accused husband must vacate what had been the "family" home and submit to prolonged alienation from his children. He also finds himself ensnared by both the criminal justice and the social service bureaucracies whose conflicting rules of evidence can deny him the presumption of innocence. In a process that only a Kafka can describe, he must then devote his resources to defending himself rather than pursuing the original divorce litigation.

Even then he may find himself in jail or in court ordered therapy while his accuser has won de facto custody not only of the children but of the house. Should he eventually win vindication, a process which can literally take years, he may enjoy at best a hollow victory which leaves him financially and emotionally drained, nursing a permanently injured reputation and functioning as an "absent" father with a sparse schedule of controlled visits. It is no wonder, then, that to express the reality commentators have sometimes used dramatic language, such as "the ultimate weapon" or the "atom bomb."

The impressive results that are so often easily achieved with false allegations in custody disputes suggest the kind of temptations women may feel in other situations. Among those found to have lied about rape or sexual harassment, for example, a number of motivations have been identified. The McDowell report listed those they uncovered in declining order of appearance. "Spite or revenge" and "to compensate for feelings of guilt or shame" accounted for 40% of such allegations (Farrell, 1993, p. 325). A small percentage were attributed to "mental/emotional disorder or attempted extortion." In all cases, then, the falsely alleging woman had any of several strong motives to lie. But, as with the S.A.I.D. syndrome, the most common motive was anger, an emotion which prompts more than a few embattled women to reach for "the ultimate weapon.

Although money gained through extortion ranked low among the motives for false rape allegations, it appears to rank higher when sexual harassment claims prove to be unfounded. A casual survey of some of the suits that have been filed suggests why. In the eighties, successful claims often brought damages in the $50,000 to $100,000 range. After the explosion ignited by the Hill/Thomas case, not only the number of claims but damage awards have skyrocketed. A clothing store cashier successfully sued her employer for $500,000. Employees of Stroh's Brewery claimed that the company's commercials, which showed the "Swedish Bikini Team," constituted harassment and sued for damages ranging between $350,000 and $550,000. In the famous locker room harassment case, Lisa Olson was reported to have received a settlement ranging between $250,00 and $700,000. Damage claims — and awards — in the millions are becoming more common.

In some cases which were later proved to be false, the financial stakes were particularly high. One lawyer was charged with coaching six of his clients to "embellish or lie" about some of the incidents on which they based a sexual harassment case. They had asked for $487,000 (Gonzales, 1993). Eleven women from the Miss Black America Pageant, after claiming that Mike Tyson had touched them on their rears, filed a $607 million lawsuit against him. Several of the contestants later admitted they had lied in the hope of getting publicity and cashing in on the award money which would have given them around $20 million each (Farrell, 1993, p.328).

But where extortion does appear, the motivation may be political as well as monetary not only in particular cases but in the growth of the entire sexual misconduct crisis. Whether it is rape or sexual harassment or divorce-related child molestation or recovered incest memory, many of the investigators eventually mention the influence of ideological feminism. Katie Roiphe, for example, found feminist politics at work in the phony rape story invented by Mindy, the imaginative Princeton co-ed. Norman Podhoretz, who wrote about "Rape in Feminist Eyes," attributes the current over-publicized obsession with rape to "the influence of man-hating elements within the (women's) movement (which) has grown so powerful as to have swept all before it" (1992, p.29). As far back as 1985 John Sullivan attributed the overheated denial of false accusation to attempts to defend the "feminist theory of rape." And Philip Jenkins (1993), who reported the trend toward automatically-assumed female credibility, stated that it was part of a larger campaign to establish "feminist jurisprudence."

Whatever their motivations in particular cases, there is little doubt that ideological feminists have achieved significant political gains from publicizing the sexual misconduct crisis. Lisa Olson's feelings of harassment may for example have been genuine, but as the focus for a prolonged media event that established for female reporters an access to locker rooms it was as unpopular with the general public as it was with male athletes. The real Anita Hill may or may not have been lying, but the Hill/Thomas affair propelled sexual harassment into a hot issue that rapidly generated a subindustry of scholars, consultants, and bureaucrats, prompted a "Year of the Woman" campaign that helped several women into congress, and revived a flagging women's movement.

The same spectacular results may follow from the Tailhook Scandal, which, like Hill/Thomas, is raising serious questions about motive and credibility. Whether Paula Coughlin's testimony will become as clouded as Anita Hill's, her whistle-blowing has already scuttled the careers of a still growing number of naval officers, not to mention the Secretary of the Navy himself, intensified in-service anti-sexual harassment campaigns, reinforced an already strong feminist presence in the armed forces, and helped soften the military's granitic opposition to women in combat. These incidents also helped to power a "Violence Against Women" bill through congress which will channel still more millions of government money into women's programs, not to mention winning congressional validation of feminist jurisprudence. That's a lot of political gain achieved by the words of a few women who suffered little more than an affront to their sensibilities.


Conclusions

This growing gap — between the anguish suffered by the victims of traditionally-defined sex crimes and what is suffered by victims of ideologically-defined crimes — suggests that the crisis we face is not the result of a sexual misconduct epidemic but of the crisis mentality itself, an ever more hysterical vision of a "rape culture." It has a foundation in reality. In what has become a ritual disclaimer, those who have exposed the surprising number of false allegations of sexual misconduct have also admitted the appalling number of genuine accusations. And those who have attacked the incompetence, self-interest, and zealotry that has denied the extent of false allegation have also recognized the courage and energy that has exposed the problem of honest allegation begging vainly for belief. They have therefore applauded the effort to seek for this long ignored injustice both social and legal remediation.

But that effort, carried too far and exploited too often, has generated another gap: between our awareness of the now highly visible victims of sexual misconduct and the almost invisible victims of false allegation. The lesser known victims have their own stories to tell, enough to reveal another long ignored injustice that demands remediation. False allegations of sexual misconduct have deprived a rapidly growing number of men and women of their reputations, their fortunes, their children, their livelihood, and their freedom; have wasted the time and money of countless tax-supported agencies; have destroyed not only individuals but entire families and communities; and have left some so desperate that they have taken their lives.

For that reason, in the current revision of our sexual misconduct code, we must retain as a guiding premise the realization that women can lie because we know that, for several reasons, more than a few women have lied, more often than researchers into false allegation had expected, far more often than "rape culture" ideologues have admitted ... too often, in any event, to be ignored by our jurisprudence, feminist or otherwise.

Oh boy, this again.

1. I agree with Heather (I think it was you, and Shelia) that the Dear Abby letters that are printed aren't necessarily "real" but a conglomeration of multiple letters that get edited into one letter. This letter is too pat, too clean, too edited and smacks of anti-Greek sentiment. Would the same letter be as effective it if the party were held in a dorm or off-campus apartment?

2. Let's suppose the letter is true, or at least based on some truth. We still don't know exactly what happened that night. As per the specifics in the letter, I am inclined to call it rape, but would like to know more details.

3. It doesn't matter if the victim is male or female, non-consentual sex is rape. And being drunk often legally negates the ability to give consent. Wearing certain clothing, drinking and making out are not automatic invitations to go further. BOTH genders need to realize this.

4. James, even though there may be more instances of false rape accusations than otherwise thought, personally, I feel there are many many many more instances of true rape that are never reported.

edited for clarification

Thats a pretty general statement ISUkappa.

But honestly, I don't want to debate this issue too much because I know its more of an emotional/politcal issue to most people than a logical one. Something that gets in the way of good dialogue.

I just included this because it seems that some of our members had a common but erroneous belief that the amount of "true" claims of rape out weighed the "false" by a magnitude of hundreds to one. Something I also used to believe.

The numbers don't bare that out. As many as one quarter to one half of rape claims are false . . and thats being on the conservative side.

yea S&S, the problem is men not respecting thier ladies.

Anyone could be potentially harmfull to anyone else. The key is to look out for yourself and try and pick good friends who respect you and so forth.

I totally agree.

OMG, the thread exploded.



Wow. I thought all hispanic parents were nazi control freaks over their daughters like mine were.

Yep, that girl was me. (hiding head in shame) My group of girlfriends and I spent just about every saturday night of our junior and senior years of high school at the Pitt fraternity houses when we were supposed to be at one another's houses.

Looking back, not a wise thing to do, right? But the bright side is that if either of my daughters ever try to pull that crap on me, I'll (hopefully) be one step ahead of them

I still think some of you are fighting over a situation that never happened. Get real! How many moms, when their teenaged daughter returns home and says she's been raped, will say, "Hmm. Guess I'll write Dear Abby and get her take on whether she was raped"?

Nope! A real live, concerned mother will immediately call the police or some university administrator and take the girl to a rape crisis center. She won't send a letter to a newspaper and wait weeks to see if Dear Abby thinks it was rape.

The letter author was someone with an agenda--to make Greeks look bad. What do you want to bet that that letter will be followed by others (possibly written by the same person) that say, "Oh, yes! I was raped at a FRAT house in college! Fraternities promote a date rape culture!"

Are you kidding? That type of age difference is actually common and accepted in many Hispanic circles. I knew an 8th grader in high school that was dating a 23 yr old.......he wasn't allowed to be her partner for her Quinceniera...

I think the article James posted goes along with the concept that children never lie about sexual abuse. That's been proven to be false. If they're led enough by an adult and rewarded for saying abuse has happened, they will. If you come home from a party and your mom's freaking out, it's far easier to tell her you were raped and get yourself off the hook. If you make her believe you've already been "punished" she won't punish you. If you do something stupid and wish you hadn't, and someone says "OMG, it sounds like you were raped" it takes the responsibility off you.

And it referenced The Morning After - please, please, please, if you haven't read this book and also Who Stole Feminism, do so yesterday.

Exactly what I thought when I read how people were responding to this.

date rape/high schoolers
 

We frowned upon dating high school girls. New pledges may yet
have a high school sweetie. If she visited, without parents, we
respected her. Whatever she and her pledge honey did they did
discreetly, but there certainly were no facilities in the house.
We had functions with sororities to introduce our new guys to them...'course they were 60-80 female chapters, not the 250 ones
found today...often paired with 60 man chapters. I do not know how to explain this imbalance. It is a new problem you-all have
to deal with...but allowing women upstairs, to encourage booze down a teenager. I simply do not understand. Crude.
Giving drinks to under college age kids was verboten, not to speak of the cost...and we were all on limited budgets.
But since the pill many things have changed, granted, and I don't
intend to lecture. I cannot recall ever hearing about date rape in
days of yore.
Whatever happened to manners, decency, propriety?
Are there no longer any standards of behaviour?

LOL valkyrie

BEST.P4T.EVER!

(and reminds me of a certain moderator)

Please.

You have one study guessing that that's the case -- a study that never defines the definition of "rape" but seems, from what is written, to have a narrower view of it than is written in the law. (This study also seemed to be promoting an agenda to me, but maybe I'm just reading too much into it. However, when you quote Katie Roiphe multiple times, it's obviously not trying to be an objective work.) There are many others that have concluded a much smaller number -- as Nikki said above, 2-8% are the most-quoted figures -- ranging up to a small study that showed 41% as false. How do we know which is most valid?

Basically what it comes down to is that the statistics are almost always used to serve an agenda. Sexual assault counselors will almost always quote the 2 percent figure. Anti-feminist groups and "men's rights" groups will give you the 41 percent. In some cases, these studies were engineered to pander to a specific end of the spectrum -- in some studies, rape is defined as any coerced sex; in others, it is only obviously forced sex when the woman is saying "NO" the entire time. Some studies take alcohol or drugs into account, others don't.

AND THEN (sigh, this is going to get long) there is the fact that, with rape, you have a crime that is not easily compared to most other crimes because the victim is made to feel much more guilty than she otherwise would -- which I'm sure can throw off statistics like changing stories and issues with the polygraph test. (I can't say that with scientific accuracy, so point me to a study that proves/disproves this theory if you know of one -- but it feels like common sense to me.) Are you more likely to change details of your story if you know you're going to get blamed by some people for not wearing the right clothes/drinking alcohol/being alone with the guy? Of course you are. This is a much different experience than reporting a robbery, for example. In those cases nobody is going to blame you for wearing a short skirt/drinking three beers/etc.

Furthermore, ignoring the vast amount of unreported rapes means the numbers are a lot harder to judge. Or how about the rapes that ARE reported but without an accusation against any one particular person? Many studies would say that these vastly outnumber the cases where women hurl an accusation at somebody. So even if your figure is correct and 25% of rapes where a woman accuses someone are false accusations, this still probably leaves the number of total rapes that are lied about a much smaller number. If the #1 reason for lying about rape is revenge/spite, then we have to assume that rape allegations where no one person is accused, and those that are unreported, are more likely to be true than the figure where an accusation is made.

Lastly, this is what the court system is for. If a woman can't prove that a man raped her, he's not going to get convicted (unless something is very wrong with the system, which is entirely plausible but an entirely new debate). So if he didn't rape her, he shouldn't have much to worry about, right?

Here is an article that I think takes the middle ground and sums things up pretty nicely:

http://www.statenews.com/op_article.phtml?pk=25893


As I've said many times on this board, you can make statistics say anything you want -- and the statistics in regards to rape, in particular, have always been highly susceptible to skewing and appropriation for propaganda on both ends -- so I tend to take them with a grain of salt. While I don't know for certain the exact percentage of women who lie about rape, I do know for certain that at least five of my female friends have been to hell and back because of what they suffered through (none of them reported it, by the way). The isht they went through is more real to me than any statistic.

I think that many, many men fail to grasp the ubiquitousness of rape simply because they aren't ever told by their female friends who have been raped. I know at least five of my friends (and probably more who haven't told me about it) have been raped -- but none of them have ever felt comfortable mentioning this to their guy friends. So the guys go on believing that few if any of their female friends have ever been raped, and think that the statistics about how so many girls get raped must be overblown and that lots of girls probably lie about it. Most women growing up today know enough of their friends who have been raped that they know better.

At any rate, the misogyny in this thread -- some if it perpetuated by women -- is making me pretty ill.

And carnation, regardless of whether or not the incident in the letter actually happened as reported -- it does happen in fraternity houses (and, of course, non-Greek houses and dorms) across the country. I think those of you who think this was written by somebody with an anti-Greek agenda are both paranoid and delusional. The fact of the matter is that fraternity men are not always angels, some of them are rapists, and that, in fact, some reports have shown that they are more likely to be rapists than the general male college population. Is it fair to paint all fraternity men as rapists? No. But is it fair to paint all fraternity men as Boy Scouts? Again, no.

Since you all don't know what's going on and want to automatically jump to conclusions, I will do it too.

The guy was drunk. The girl was drunk. They had sex. He doesn't remember it either. At the very least it's not rape, but I think she raped him because he was unable to consent under the influence of alcohol.

OK done. This girl raped him. Nobody is coming out saying it like this but it needs to be said.

-Rudey

Re: date rape/high schoolers
 

:rolleyes: :eek: :eek: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :eek: :eek: :eek: