i don't know what to say about this duke rape case. i've had so many starts-of-conversations with female friends today, but they always end with confused, sad, angry questions. "i don't even know what to say about it..." one of my friends finally said. we've read the demented email, the newspaper accounts, the police report. we feel beaten and kicked inside, and angry that once again, the woman who came forward is being called a liar and a whore, and the accused perps are being shielded behind the thick, privileged wall of brotherly, good-ol-boy secrecy.
a female duke student was on the talk shows this morning, saying things like, "i know these guys -- they're not THAT kind of guy."
i'm sick of this language that suggests men who rape are some sort of evil aberration. like "we" couldn't possibly know anyone who could do something like "that." like they come from somewhere else, not from our families or our neighborhoods or schools.
one in four women will be raped before she graduates college. every two and half minutes, someone is sexually assaulted.
that means if WE haven't been sexually assaulted, chances are, we know someone who has. that means it's everywhere. and if it's everywhere, that also means these crimes are not committed by some small, roving group of monsters (i.e. "that kind of guy"). if the victims of sexual assault are, as rape crisis centers tell us, our daughters, mothers and sisters, than the perps are our sons, fathers and brothers. if we all know someone who's been the victim of sexual assault, then we also probably know someone who was the perpetrator.
this is what i want to know -- how many men? what percentage of men have committed sexual assault? one in seven? one in 10?
i think it's critical that we know this. because rape will always happen as long there are men who think it's their right, who think it's okay, who can justify its cruelty or ignore its consequences. and those men will always exist as long as we keep saying my son or brother or father couldn't do something "like that," as long as we continue thinking of them as people who have nothing to do with us, people we don't know, people we couldn't possibly be at all responsible for.
i scoured the internet and couldn't find the answer to my question. if you know it, let me know. i don't think it's an answer we necessarily want to be confronted with. it's much easier to demonize men who are rapists than to realize society might be culpable for some of the messages that make then that way. it means being a man who sexually assaults women isn't necessarily an aberration from the norm -- it means it's part of the norm. and that means, as a society, we're doing something terribly, exceptionally wrong.
6 comments:
a woman i work with asks the same questions. when she hears that there are 5,400 domestic violence victims in a given place, she says "that means there are 5,400 batterers out there." it doesn't help with percentages, but definitely provides a different and much needed perspective.
when i was a police officer on a university campus (one that was HUGE on athletics), i took a report from a freshman female who had been date raped by the junior quarterback. i interviewed her, and after we talked about all the hard questions, i did everything i could to make her smile. by the time we walked out, she was less frightened and asked if i would go to the e/r with her. i did. my lieutenant met me there and after i briefed him, which he cut me off from telling him the whole thing, he told me to leave. i told him i'd like to stay. it was the end of my shift, my own time. he told me quite forcefully to leave. i had to obey my superior, so i left (she also had a friend with her, so she wasn't alone). after a few days the report was dropped, the woman left school, and i was told that her family convinced her it was best. i absolutely do not believe it was her family. they protected him, of course. while i did not take the reports, there were other sexual assaults involving young women and athletes on campus, which were always, somehow, the girls' faults. i'm not sure how that happens.
in addition, it took going to my captain and yelling in his office, practically crying, to get the next thing fixed. there was a guy, around Halloween, who was on campus, in a "Freddie" mask, hiding in bushes and leaping out at women supposedly to "advertise the haunted house on campus." one of the women he lept out at had been raped. he, of course, frightened her to death and she was unbelievably upset. the guys at the dept. said it was this guy's right to do that and she "over-reacted." i tried to get them to listen to me, but they wouldn't, including my training officer, so i went to the captain. he was furious and gave them all a tongue lashing in briefing. thank god! he sat on the area rape crisis board, so he "got it." we found the guy, later that night, in the act, and went to the call. he was lucky that other officers arrived first b/c i was about to pull his head off, and had to be physically restrained i was so mad.
i also went to a rape crisis advocate training when i was an officer. the prosecuting atty. told us that the actual penalty for rape is the same as murder (excluding the death penalty, of course), but that because of the way society is, there was no way in hell they would ever get the maximum, even in violent stranger rapes, and thus when we heard of the lower sentences, it was not for lack of trying. they said, of course, date rapes are the hardest to prosecute b/c it's her word against his, and again, society will take his word nine times out of ten. it is disgusting!!!
keep being angry, cailo! we have to be. the women of this country may not be forced to wear veils, but the way we are treated, we might as well be.
jenny
granted, the recidivism rate for sex criminals is high -- so i'm sure the ratio isn't 1-to-1 (one rapist for every one rape victim), but it's it's interesting that the numbers/stats for the male side of the equation aren't widely known or reported in the media.
thanks jenny. those stories are so disgusting and disheartening.
Great post, Cailo. don't know answer to your question: try here:
http://www.nsvrc.org/resources/strategies/statistics.html
or here:
National Sexual Violence Resource Center
Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault (WCASA)
Media Education Foundation
Wisconsin Sexual Assault Prevention Program
RAINN
SAAM National Resources
FP
FP! thanks for all the links. (glad to see you're reading.:-)
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