[blackwatch06]

This issue is so derisive and hard to discuss, but I thank this sister for standing up and calling attention to it and the brothers of Beta chapter for choosing a woman with this voice to represent them. As she moves along the Black and Gold scholarship competition circuit, hopefully other brothers will hear her story and begin to have conversations about date rape and the things that we can do as men to protect ourselves and to help women heal from their own experiences and help prevent the experiences from happening to others.

I think though that many times what is lost in these discussions on campus date rape is a myriad of contributing factors that far too often go unexamined in these incidents. A few issues are the notion of underage drinking and the culture of casual sex. In the article, the issue of drinking is glanced over as if it is expected of college students. Seeing as though she stated that she was 22, and that she transfered to Howard after a year of counseling and persuing the rapist, chances are that she was underage while she drank at the party. Now before I get bashed for blaming the victim, I want to say that being drunk does not justify rape, I am only stating that there is a culture running wild on college campuses that dismisses irresponsible behavior and only addresses "damage control" after the fact, rather than strategies to prevent things like this from happening.


My wife went to Spelman and she used to talk about how many young ladies there would come home to their dorms drunk after a night of partying and wonder why would a woman get drunk at a party, seeing that it is the oldest trick in the book that guys use to get sex. Yet, these supposedly "modern and sophisticated" Spelman women fell for it all the time. Many times the women would not remember what had happened the night before, and there is even one documented case of a girl filing a date rape charge because she made a poor decision one night to have sex with people she really did not like, and was coerced into filing charges that were later proven to be false. Now I will never understand the complexities of filing a rape charge, but I can say that women need to be sure that they were indeed raped, and not be filing out of shame and embarassment about a poor choice, because the allegation of rape against a man can ruin his life, even if he is acquitted.

I always caution guys to think with the "head that has a brain" when it comes to going out and meeting women, because casual sex is not casual at all. One night of anonymous , casual, "one night stand/ bootycall sex" can change your whole life. The myth of casual sex is slowly eating away at our community's core, the family structure. Sex cannot be casual. Sex is far too powerful to be treated lightly, but we lie to ourselves (especially men) about how powerful it really is. With all of the consequences of having sex, it is not a decision to be made while drunk or hot and bothered. But too often that is when the decision is made, and the results can be charges of rape, disease, pregnancy, and lowered self value and esteem. these things can in turn characterize future relationships and effect whether or not you would enter into an adult monogomous relationship that could lead to marriage and a stable family life. Especially when a rape charge is levied, men face a protracted ordeal of trials and general image destruction, whether you are guilty or innocent. If we treat sex with the care and respect that it deserves, then instances of date rape would decrease and eliminate a great deal of pain and suffering among women and men in our community.

I think men need to have these discussions more among ourselves and enter into a careful dialogue with women about this issue so that people can start talking about it. The shame in all of these cases of rape is that we refuse to have dialogue about it so that we can examine the underlying issues of sex. I think that the arguement that rape is about power is a valid one, but I think date rape is increasingly becomming about sex abuse (not sexual abuse, but sex abuse) in the sense that we misuse and misunderstand the purpose and design of sex in our lives. Fight on sister, I am praying and fighting with you.

Blackwatch!!!!!!