Universities Under Investigation Re: Handling Sexual Assault

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by AGDee

RAINN is also one of the groups who publish the 1 in 5 statistic. If you challenge their credibility on those stats, then why would anything else on their site be reliable?

Right. Most of the info on the RAINN link disputes honorgal's posts.

As for this quote from RAINN "rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime," that is an attempt to put the onus solely on the offenders and to remove aggregate (campus, societal) blame. We don't want offenders hiding behind the curtains while people have boring and pointless debates in which they throw out key words like "media" and "society". I have been in plenty of town hall/community meetings, campus meetings, and been a panelist on many panels where those key words were thrown around a lot but people didn't want to discuss what all of this stuff MEANS.

Speaking of MEANING, the above quote from RAINN does not mean cultural factors are not a strong correlate and have no influence on behavior and public perceptions. As with most factors, it is a correlate and not a cause. None of my posts stated or implied that it is a cause (if it was a cause, every man would be a sexist, misogynist "offender" and every woman would be a weak, submissive "victim").