Bwog just got a tip that the same flyers with the names of alleged campus rapists are in a bathroom at Senior Cruise v2.0. We’ll update if we hear back about the list at the other senior cruise.
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Bwog Staff on
May 15, 2014 
61 Comments
Bwog just got a tip that the same flyers with the names of alleged campus rapists are in a bathroom at Senior Cruise v2.0. We’ll update if we hear back about the list at the other senior cruise.
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61 Comments
@DP I hope she has pet insurance, because that kitty is going to get smashed…
@Peaches cringe:
fail at singlehandedly trying to delegitimize the severity of sexual assault and making up over 40% of all comments on this thread.
@Peaches Dammit bwog, I was responding to the one dude talking to him/her/sie’s self in the thread… fix this captcha problem, guys.
@Anonymous thanks for proving my point, dumbass. you can’t even use a reply button lol. and what kind of stupid name is peaches. sounds like something I would name my cat.
@Anonymous track^
@Anonymous Harassment and defamation lawsuits are next, followed by rights of the accused.
@cc'15 TRACK
@Anonymous Just want to point out that a majority of these comments claiming that sexual assault on campus isn’t that big a deal are written by one guy–track that shit. He even replies to himself in the third person
@doobieus The fabled “Men’s Rights Activist”; one guy on the internet that talks to himself.
@i'm just going to keep posting this as long as it's relevant http://media.giphy.com/media/BNkHCHnAsZwRi/giphy.gif
next to bronies, mras might be the saddest bunch on the ‘net. maybe.
@Yeah To that sad little person who’s having a conversation with himself about how rape is imaginary and/or exaggerated, that’s fucked up and you should be ashamed of yourself. Posting lists of people who are alleged rapists is wrong; what you’re doing is wrong–not to mention fucked up.
@I feel like I'm taking crazy pills Everyone in the comments is referring to and quoting an article but all I see is a picture of the list.
What’s going on?
@Anon No one is arguing that a man should be allowed to rape if he is drunk. Do you allow for such strawman arguments in those papers you are grading? The argument is clearly more along the lines of… if both parties are drunk, is it even possible to give consent? What if she consents while drunk but regrets it afterwards? Memories of events that occur while under the influence are generally unreliable. There is a big grey area in these sexual assault cases that many here refuse to admit because they would be perceived as “victim blaming.”
@Anonymous thank you. glad someone gets it. guess columbia hires any old idiot nowadays. thanks, affirmative action
@a at this point i either want to be able to read the list or stop hearing about it
preferably the latter
@Anonymous faculty member For the MRAs* wringing their hands (but what if I was DRUNK when I violated her consent!), here’s a cheat sheet:
If I drive under the influence, I’ll still be guilty of a DUI.
If I steal someone’s wallet/car/etc. while under the influence, I’ll still be found guilty of theft.
If I murder someone while under the influence, I’ll still be found guilty of murder.
And if I rape someone while under the influence, I’ll still be a rapist.
*So sorry you have to deal with this, Bowg; they’ll show up in the hundreds now that Columbia has had much-needed media exposure on the issue of sexual assault. (And if you happen to be reading and don’t know what I mean, google “MRA”. Enough said.)
@Anonymous faculty member “Bwog”, even. Sorry, Bwog. Lots of papers to grade!
@anonymous lawyer What the professor said is true. The black letter statement of the law is that intoxication never serves to invalidate mens rea unless the intoxication was non-voluntary (alcoholism is not considered non-voluntary). But, the issue of intoxication is a great deal more complex in the context of rape because intoxication can be used to invalidate consent in certain jurisdictions. Many jurists are concerned that having intoxication invalidate consent without allowing it as an affirmative defense to the mens rea for rape creates a rush to the police (in theory if you could have two drunk parties engage in sex, both could believe that they did not consent to what occurred, then whoever gets to the police first is the victim and the other the rapist). There is no good legal panacea to this issue as conventional criminal law can’t satisfy everyone when it comes to rape (the actus reus and mistake of law defenses may offend pro-prosecution advocates while the definition of rape and the asymmetries with intoxication may offend pro-defense advocates).
I have no horse in this race but simply observing the black letter, which is all you did, provides no answer to the issue of asymmetry and the possible moral hazard it creates.
@Anon What you’re saying about intoxication is obviously true. If a man is intoxicated and forcibly has sex with a woman without her consent, he has raped her. The intoxication is no excuse for his actions, just as it would be no excuse in the case of murder, a DUI or a theft.
But, the issue is a good deal more complicated than that. What if the woman is somewhat intoxicated, but outwardly lucid and makes claims of not being that drunk when she consents? Is the man then raping her if she enthusiastically consents? Obviously, there is a certain level of intoxication that is apparent to everyone, but there is definitely a grey zone between having one or two drinks and being passed out on the floor and clearly incapable of giving consent. If a woman is in that grey zone, is she still accountable for consenting to that sex, just as she would be if she drove a car or tried to shoplift?
Furthermore, how are men to deal with this grey area? Are they to carry breathalyzers? What if the man is too drunk to consent and the woman has sex with him, even if he enthusiastically consents at the time? Is that also rape?
@The Dark Band DAE remeber cumbandsucks.wordpress.com
@FYI Senior Cruise 2.0 is open to everyone…doesn’t mean that the person making these lists is a senior.
@Skeldor jesus will spec-sucks stop posting this everywhere!?!?!?
@just a normal columbia dude yeah, have you heard about the new leak-tip on the identity of the MASKED RAPE reporter? Specsuks has the scoop once again
http://specsucks.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/exclusive-leek/
ps i am not afiliated with specsuks at ALL!!
@is he really posting it? wow
@Anonymous “There’s no agony a human being can experience worse than rape.”
Really? You can’t think of *anything* worse than rape? Have you ever, by any chance, heard of a thing called “war?” What about plain old “murder?” There are people who’ve witnessed their loved ones be killed and you have the nerve to say that rape is worse than *that*?
This sort of gross exaggeration is just as bad as trivialization. If people want to have a rational discussion about sexual assault, you can’t just jump to “it’s the worst thing in the universe.” All that does is make yourself seem unrealistic and unaware of the hundreds of horrible things that happen every day outside of Princeton. Rape is terrible, but if you paint it as this mystical kryptonite figure, you’ll never be able have a useful conversation about it.
@The Dark Hand have u heard of a thing called the spect? there are people who’ve witnessed their loved ones spend nite after nite at the spect office and die and u have the nerve to say war is worse than rape??
the spect is the worst thing about the univ erse, and u seem so unrealistic and unaware of the hundreds of horrible things that happen every day within the walls of the spect office like male on male fondling. before you ask I AM NOT HOMOPHOBIC.
@ignorance is abound Don’t pretend to know how something feels if you haven’t experienced it. And trying to belittle rape by comparing it to war is disrespectful to the victims who have experienced and belittling the suffering and mental anguish that they do go through by being violently humiliated in the most invasive way a woman can possibly be violated. So before you write an insensitive, have some goddamn respect for victims reading these comments.
@Sympathy for the Survivors Survivors of rape often suffer immense psychological consequences as a result of the assault. This should not be diminished and the moral relativism of comparing it to war are uncalled for. For where does that lead us? Diminishing the indignity experienced by victims of home invasions because it doesn’t compare to war? Comparing apples and oranges is intellectually lazy.
While we’re on the subject of the mental anguish of survivors I think it is wise to point out that one interesting study suggested that rape survivors who physically and verbally resist (even if unsuccessful) are much less likely to experience psychological trauma. For this reason it cannot be stated strongly enough that men and women should be encouraged to resist when at all feasible. I am aware that many victims freeze up at the moment but I think that ex ante incentives to resist and/or martial arts training programs may do more to ease the psychological burden of future victims than a lot of the programs we currently invest in.
@Anonymous I get where you’re coming from. But I’m not so sure that rape — and other forms of sexual violence — can really even be compared to other violent crimes like murder, assault, etc.
The end goal in those cases is to end another person’s life or cause them serious bodily harm. What is the goal of rape? Sexual gratification, yes, but also very much things like degradation, emotional/psychological control or destruction, humiliation, and the violation of personal dignity. Those are not ideas I really associate with a crime like murder. In fact, they’re a lot closer to me to something like torture.
I understand that when we talk about rape here on campus, we are not always talking strictly about violent, forcible rape, but also situations where the victim cannot give consent, or retracts consent, or that sort of thing. But how many times do you hear people saying things like, “Oh, she was drunk, she was fucked up, she was just being a slut” in these sort of conversations? I think these ideas of degradation and humiliation are definitely still at play even in these scenarios that might not seem so violent to us.
Actually, I think it’s really important that we distinguish rape from a crime like murder. I don’t think any of the individuals found guilty of sexual assault on the Columbia campus set out with the intent of ending someone’s life or causing them serious bodily harm. But I’d have an easier time believing that a rapist is interested in power over another person, or bending their victim to their will or degrading them, humiliating them, these sort of things. Does that make sense?
I googled some shit before I wrote this post because I wondered if there was any legal precedent for rape as an act of torture rather than a purely violent crime, and it turns out there is:
http://www.humanrights.is/the-human-rights-project/humanrightscasesandmaterials/comparativeanalysis/tortureorcrual/Rape/
(Although I understand this is talking about it more in the context of crimes committed during war.)
Hope that made sense.
@Just thinking about this I get where you’re coming from. But I’m not so sure that rape — and other forms of sexual violence — can really even be compared to other violent crimes like murder, assault, etc.
The end goal in those cases is to end another person’s life or cause them serious bodily harm. What is the goal of rape? Sexual gratification, yes, but also very much things like degradation, emotional/psychological control or destruction, humiliation, and the violation of personal dignity. Those are not ideas I really associate with a crime like murder. In fact, they’re a lot closer to me to something like torture.
I understand that when we talk about rape here on campus, we are not always talking strictly about violent, forcible rape, but also situations where the victim cannot give consent, or retracts consent, or that sort of thing. But how many times do you hear people saying things like, “Oh, she was drunk, she was fucked up, she was just being a slut” in these sort of conversations? I think these ideas of degradation and humiliation are definitely still at play even in these scenarios that might not seem so violent to us.
Actually, I think it’s really important that we distinguish rape from a crime like murder. I don’t think any of the individuals found guilty of sexual assault on the Columbia campus set out with the intent of ending someone’s life or causing them serious bodily harm. But I’d have an easier time believing that a rapist is interested in power over another person, or bending their victim to their will or degrading them, humiliating them, these sort of things. Does that make sense?
I googled some shit before I wrote this post because I wondered if there was any legal precedent for rape as an act of torture rather than a purely violent crime, and it turns out there is:
http://www.humanrights.is/the-human-rights-project/humanrightscasesandmaterials/comparativeanalysis/tortureorcrual/Rape/
(Although I understand this is talking about it more in the context of crimes committed during war.)
Hope that made sense.
@Anonymous “Consent would not have been possible.”
Given the author’s description of the situation, I agree. However, how was the guy supposed to know? It seems some sort of communication was taking place – he found out that she was a virgin. Was the girl apparently consenting, despite her incapacity? If she was appearing to consent, and he in good faith assessed her as capable of doing so, where is the rape? Are we to call him a rapist simply due to his misjudgement of her capacity?
If the guy is drunk, he may have a tough time telling impaired, apparent-consent from actual consent.
@From Daily Princetonian So you’re asking the right questions. Let’s examine the legal framework in New Jersey
Sexual Assault is defined under NJSA 2C:14
1. First, let’s address the drunkenness question. If a man and woman go to the Street, return drunk, and have sex, does that constitute rape on the part of the man.
Under New Jersey law, no.
NJSA 2C:14(c) states in relevant part:
“An actor is guilty of sexual assault if he commits an act of sexual penetration with another person under any one of the following circumstances:…
(2) The victim is one whom the actor knew or should have known was physically helpless, mentally defective, or mentally incapacitated;”
So the intoxication question hinges upon the definition of “mentally incapacitated”, which is defined in NJSA 2C:14-1
“Mentally Incapacitated” means that condition in which a person is rendered temporarily incapable of understanding or controlling his conduct due to the influence of a narcotic, anesthetic, intoxicant, or other substance administered to that person without his prior knowledge of consent, or due to any other act committed upon that person which rendered that person incapable of appraising or controlling his conduct.”
Mental incapacitation requires that the victim be intoxicated due to no fault of his or her own, such as being deliberately drugged by another party. That clearly doesn’t apply in the case of two drunk students walking home together from Prospect Avenue, as both the man and the woman consented to drinking to intoxication.
So unless someone is drugged without his or her knowledge, unconscious, or “physically helpless,” he or she is capable of consent.
2. What if one party consents but forgets the next morning?
Again, the law here is pretty clear. The alleged perpetrator must be actually aware, or should have been aware given the circumstances, that he or she did not receive consent. See NJSA 2C:14.(a)7, which states “(7) The victim is one whom the actor knew or should have known was physically helpless, mentally defective or mentally incapacitated.” The perpetrator must know at the time of the act that the complainant was unable to give consent, or else it is not an offense.
The entire concept of “drunk people can’t give consent” was invented by school administrators, not the legal system.
Given the confusion, awkwardness, and miscommunication inherent in early sexual encounters, is this really an area where we want the deans at West College actively meddling in students’ lives, meting out punishment for actions that anywhere else in the state beyond College Walk wouldn’t constitute wrongdoing?
@just wow I think that you’re forgetting the basic definition of rape: sex forced upon an unwilling victim. If you bothered to read this girl’s testimony in the New York Times article, you would know that a) she wan’t drunk, and b) she repeatedly screamed for this man to stop whatever she was doing to her, but instead he pinned her down, hit her, and continued to do so despite her protests. The reason the drunk thing is an issue is because inhibitions and common sense are naturally lowered with the ingestion of alcohol. Which means that yes, he’s probably going to be having a tough time looking for consent and acting responsibly.
Does that mean he shouldn’t be punished and should just be seen as someone caught in an unfortunate situation? ABSOLUTELY NOT!! If you know that when you’re drunk, you can’t make informed decisions and control yourself, they shit, maybe you shouldn’t be getting that drunk. The fact that this man was so irresponsible that he drank to the point where he actually forced sex on a girl who repeatedly told him to stop is completely his fault. Inebriation is no excuse for rape. If a man was drunk on the street and shot someone dead, guess what? He’d go to jail, impaired judgement aside.
This is exactly why girls on the campus feel unsafe. Opinions like this that try to paint the attacker as a poor victim of circumstance. Everything you do in life is a choice, and you need to be held responsible for the poor choices you make. This man drinking and forcing himself on a girl was a really fucking poor decision, and he should have been properly punished for it. Not just slapped on the wrist. Not let go. Punished. Expelled. Arrested. What have you. This girl is not exaggerating anything. The fact that she got no justice is disgusting. And quoting specific sections from New Jersey law to try and prove your point is not the way to make a convincing argument.
@Legit (Ignorant?) Question “If you know that when you’re drunk, you can’t make informed decisions and control yourself, they shit, maybe you shouldn’t be getting that drunk.”
Isn’t this dangerously close to arguments of victim blamers?
@an attempt to answer your (ignorant?) question I mean, let’s look at it this way. Having sex while you’re drunk is always a bad idea, and people should never do it, because the loss of judgement makes consent a very shaky platform to stand on. It’s hard to give and it’s hard to perceive. But let’s assume for a moment that we have a guy and a girl that are drunk. A girl being drunk should never be a reason to say that she deserved to be raped or that she saw violence coming. She was in a vulnerable situation and couldn’t give clear consent. Honestly, no one should be drinking to that degree and trying to have sex. But, her drunkenness should never be used against her. That’s like saying “you were drunk, you couldn’t make an intelligent decision, that’s why you got raped.” No matter what state the victim was in, it doesn’t excuse the fact that someone committed a crime against her. If a loud “YES” isn’t being given to you, don’t have sex with someone. If they’re drunk and can’t respond, that’s as good as a no.
It is used as a victim blaming argument, but it shouldn’t be. Being drunk doesn’t mean you deserve to be attacked.
@Peaches She doesn’t even go here!
@cringe fail at overused comedic trope
@Philip Sidney Love still a boy, and oft a wanton is,
Schooled only by his mother’s tender eye;
What wonder then if he his lesson miss,
When for so soft a rod dear play he try?
And yet my Star, because a sugared kiss
In sport I sucked, while she asleep did lie,
Doth lower, nay chide; nay, threat, for only this.
Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble I.
But no excuse serves, she makes her wrath appear
In beauty’s throne; see now, who dares come near
Those scarlet judges, threatening bloody pain?
O heavenly fool, thy most kiss-worthy face
Anger invests with such a lovely grace
That anger’s self I needs must kiss again.
@From Daily Princetonian The disenfranchisement of half our student population is upon us.
Rape culture engages in crude stereotyping that relies upon buzzwords, bad statistics, and surface level analysis to reach wildly fantastic conclusions unsupported by scientific evidence. In dangerously hints at further erosions of due process rights for allegedly accused students, who already have severely restricted rights, including a special jury panel and no right to cross-examine their accuser under our system.
College is a confusing time with many new adaptations, including parties with large amounts of alcohol involved. Not all sex that occurs after these parties is rape. In fact, the extremely vast majority are consensual encounters between consenting adults. To introduce the administration’s bumbling bureaucracy, especially in a gender-biased fashion, is certainly not the answer.
I am very deeply sorry for experience of the author of the piece. But her prescriptions for the problem, to correct gender discrimination with even further gender discrimination, would be far worse than the disease.
Let’s begin with the myth of the “rape epidemic.” According to Princeton’s Cleary Act Crime Reports and Student Disciplinary Summaries from the past decade, there have been less than ten charges of sexual assault over the past eight years. Current FBI statistics put the rate of sexual assault at significantly less than 1% nationally, about 25% of which are proven false and 36% are retracted at some point.
The math militates against the author’s claims that this is an “epidemic,” and utterly belies the claim that there is some sort of permissive “rape culture.”
The author writes:
“Within this culture, we view men’s aggressive behavior as an acceptable norm.”
Let’s examine this crude generalization when adapted to other groups :
“Within this culture, we view black male aggressive behavior as an acceptable norm.”
“Within this culture, we view female submission and passivity as an acceptable norm.”
These statement are offensive, as they should be, because they broadly stereotype a group based purely upon physical characteristics that have nothing to do with moral or behavioral character.
This article villainizes men, portrays women as helpless damsels in need of protection, invents a supposed epidemic that is not supported by the mathematics, dangerously miscasts an important issue, and, most importantly, plays into the very same crude gender stereotypes it claims to fight.
Labeling a small number of highly tragic sexual assault incidents to the result of a widespread “culture” is false, facile, and dangerous.
@Anonymous Can we please stop throwing around the term ‘rape culture’? Saying that it’s a culture makes it seem like that rape is almost like an organized and acceptable practice. Do rapes occur on campus? Of course they do. It happens everywhere unfortunately but trying to say there is a culture for raping or rapists on campus is just ridiculous.
@Anonymous The term “rape culture” does not describe the organized practice of rape but rather the conglomeration of countless social factors that contribute to the conscious and subconscious acceptance and even encouragement of rape. And the truth is, until we address this rape culture and how we each contribute to it, nothing, not Emma’s common story, not Columbia’s dismissive response, and not the rapists themselves, is going to change.
Here are a couple really good links on rape culture: “The Lolita Effect” by Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Anna Wagner’s “Social Media’s Effect on Rape Culture” in The Quinnipiac Chronicle
@Anonymous Simply because some scholars have manufactured an intellectual discourse that inherently frames the debate in their favor does not make anyone who disagrees with that framework ignorant.
There is no such thing as a “rape epidemic” or “rape culture.” It is a type of moral panic.[0]
Other examples of recent moral panics include:
The false preschool sexual assault case in New Jersey a few years ago that led to innocent teachers being incarcerated for years.
The gross exaggeration of the use of date rape drugs in the 1990s.
The First and Second Red Scares.
And the Salem Witch Trials. [id].
You are making two extraordinary claims: first, that one in four women are raped, and second, that these crimes are ignored as a matter of course.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and unfortunately for you, and the various departments that have furthered this idea, the evidence simply does not exist.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/moral_panic
The hallmarks of a moral panic are fivefold:
1. Concern about a particular group that is likely to have a negative effect on society.
2. Hostility towards the group in question increases, and they become “folk devils”.
3. Widespread acceptance that the group in question poses a very real threat to society. It is important at this stage that the “moral entrepreneurs” are vocal and the “folk devils” appear weak and disorganised.
4. Disproportionate action is taken to the actual threat posed by the accused group.
5. Moral panics are highly volatile and tend to disappear as quickly as they appeared due to a wane in public interest or news reports changing to another topic.
All five are present in this current debate.
@Anonymous thank you
@Anonymous you’re welcome. this shit boils my blood more than you will ever know.
@Anonymous I can’t give you any statistics but I can speak as a female student here, as objectively as possible. I am very picky about who I have sex with, but my desire to participate has not been very important in maybe 30 percent of the sexual encounters here.
What I mean is, about 1 out of 3 guys will pretty much keep doing things to my body until I tell them to stop. (That is, rather than waiting for a green light, they wait for a red.) Sometimes that doesn’t work until I repeat it, loudly and multiple times, and physically push their hands off my body. It also means that I’ve been assaulted twice here and violently, penetratively raped while screaming once.
This seems obviously gendered to me. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything physical to a guy without 928347 green lights, and I don’t know any other women who would either (I’m sure they’re out there, but as far as I can tell it isn’t very common).
I think the whole way we approach sex is weird and harmful. It shouldn’t be that men believe their job is to convince women to have sex with them––but a lot of them do. That’s fucked up when you think about it. Shouldn’t you always BOTH be independently be excited about having sex with each other? Otherwise, something strange and underhanded is fueling an enormously personal and touchy phenomenon. That’s the kind of thing that fucks you up mentally for life. I mean it.
Maybe I’m wrong and alone in seeing this as a) today’s norm and b) a problem. I don’t know if I’d call it rape culture, I just think it’s a terrible problem. And I don’t think men are so awful that this is some unavoidable male/female dynamic. It’s a terrible residue of past generations that were even more obviously sexist than this one is. We don’t have to treat each other the way we do.
Maybe I’m wrong. But maybe I’m not.
@Anonymous What an unhappy story! You have my sympathy. It is persuasive as evidence in this debate, too. There are lots of good fish in the sea. I hope find one where there is consistent, mutual attraction and affection. If so, stick with him.
@9fd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fL9RmVtMP0
@theres no debating facts 1) The BOGUS “1 in 4 females being rape statistic” has been debunked for years. The study that delusional feminazi’s use for this claim was the one done by Mary Koss in 1985 which she even admits was faulted by her use of extremely wide rape definitions where things like “regretting it later” counted as rape. The best studies we have come from the data collected by the FBI and show that the real prevalence is 52 per 100,000 which is less than .1%.
2) More men are raped in prison alone each year than the total number of women who are raped. Look up the stats. Over 100,000-200,000 male inmates / year. Rape is a crime that affects men much more than it does women. Men are the primary victims.
Source:
Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2011–12: National Inmate Survey, 2011–12
3) Valid research shows about 41% of rape accusations are false. There is no “rape culture” but there is a false-rape-accusation culture. Here are all the studies showing about half of all rape claims (and I would include yours, unless you can offer compelling evidence that you didn’t consent) are BS:
Source: “False Rape Allegations” by Eugene Kanin, Archives of Sexual Behavior Feb 1994 v23 n1 p81 (12)
@Anonymous also, um, tracked
@Anon Seriously, click track on these crazy comments and read how many of them come from the same person. On all these articles about sexual assault and the lists, there are like 3 really angry, defensive, rape apologizing freaks leaving like 30 comments each.
Someone clearly has a vested interest in the issue…..
@Anonymous Columbia has Rape Tourette’s
@Why is it that we can be kicked out of school for academic dishonesty but rapists found “responsible” by the university are allowed to remain on campus? I’m genuinely curious.
@anonymous Good point, there’s a massive punishment/crime inconsistency here. Students who get in trouble for having too many party’s freshman year get their housing revoked. Rapists, not quite.
@but *parties
@Anonymous clearly Barnard
@Anonymous Because Columbia University is not a legitimate judicial authority. Administrative actions, by federal mandate, operate on the standard of preponderance of the evidence is a fancy way of saying “more likely than not”. If columbia expels someone based on “he probably did it” that person is going to turn around with a civil suit for defamation of character or something- and win.
Sexual assault needs to be reported to NYPD. It’s a crime. We wouldn’t expect administrators to adjudicate a robbery; they shouldn’t be playing police with rape cases. Leaving these sorts of cases in the hands of the school denies justice to EVERYONE involved.
@Anonymous I feel like I’m the only person on campus who hasn’t seen the list.
@Forbidden love boat
@John My best friend, Richie (not his real name), is one of the sweetest guys you’ll ever meet. He’s kind, caring, and as insistent upon consent as anyone I know. I would drop everything to help him at a moment’s notice and I’ve never known him to be anything but entirely honest. To my knowledge, Richie has never been accused of sexual assault. Were he to be accused, I would be shocked and I would find it very difficult to believe.
None of that matters. Richie most certainly is capable of rape. All my other friends are capable of rape. All your friends, fathers, brothers, are capable of rape. I’m capable of rape. I feel like my knowledge of consent is strong and I’m insistent on an emphatic yes rather than “not no,” but from an objective viewpoint no man that is physically capable of rape should be considered incapable of it.
Still, every time a man is accused of rape, some contingent, large or small, will insist that while they are certainly against rape and that it’s a terrible thing, my friend/brother/father/son could never do such a thing. How can they be so sure? I just know – they know the person, and he’s not a rapist. It’s a natural response to not want to believe that this person you’re close to, that you feel like you understand and recognize and trust, could commit such a terrible crime. It’s natural to not want to believe that your own judgment could be so far off. We all want to think that we can get a proper read on people.
We can’t. We as humans are pretty poor judges of character. We’re too swayed by things like stereotypes, appearances and learned prejudices. We grow up making friends based on proximity – I’ve been friends with Richie since our mothers made us play together while they were at a Mary Kay party. We bonded over RBI Baseball. I know the guy as well as I know anyone. But I don’t know that he’s not a rapist.
But every rapist has their defenders. It’s quite common that the defenders of the rapist vastly outnumber the defenders of the survivor, whether they actively discredit and attack the survivor or just choose “not to get involved.” Rape survivors are forced to encounter their rapists over and over, in class, at work, at parties. Rapists are often popular, or “nice,” or “mean well,” and people “don’t want to take sides,” content with ignoring the fact that refusing to disassociate with someone you have been told is a rapist is to very clearly choose a side.
Not only is it completely inaccurate to state that you know someone not to be a rapist, it’s damaging to the survivor of not only the rape in question, but to rape victims everywhere. The idea that anyone can just know that a person is not a rapist is preposterous, but completely ingrained in our collective mindset that no one bats an eye when the claim is made, either on the news or face-to-face with a person that is literally, at that moment, saying that she’s been raped. It reinforces the dangerous idea that rapists are other people, criminals, not our friends and family and neighbors.
Our lack of basic societal understanding of rape is another contributing factor. In theory, we have a view in society that rape is one of those crimes that operates the top tier of heinousness – and rightly so, but we refuse to acknowledge that what makes it so is the violation that is rape, not that it is an inherently physically violent act. But our beliefs about rape are so warped that we twist ourselves in knots to discredit survivors and exclude sexual assaults from the definition of rape using preposterous “no true Scotsman” anti-woman logic.
Rape isn’t rape unless it’s a violent act. Rape isn’t rape unless there’s physical evidence. Rape isn’t rape if the woman is drunk. Rape isn’t rape if the woman is drunk but not “acting drunk.” Rape isn’t rape if the woman has previous or subsequent consensual sexual contact with the person. Rape isn’t rape if the rapist doesn’t use his penis. Rape isn’t rape if the woman doesn’t explicitly say “no.” Rape isn’t rape if no one else saw what was happening. Rape isn’t rape if the woman doesn’t tell anyone right away. Rape isn’t rape if the woman “leads the man on.” And the truly fucked-up thing is that even meeting the standards for a “real” rape is never really enough for a large percentage of the population.
So rapists are allowed to continue on with their lives, spending time with their friends, confident in the knowledge that we live in a culture that’s begging to believe them and they’re surrounded by people that will attest to their incapability to commit such a reprehensible act. Meanwhile, survivors are shunned, ostracized and told that they’re wrong, that what happened to them was “a mistake,” that the person that raped them may have been an asshole, but let’s not overreact and call this something it’s not. The price for a rape survivor to maintain friendships and resume something resembling a normal life is too often to ignore and excuse and rationalize something that should never be ignored, excused or rationalized by anyone, much less the person who has been violated.
I don’t think Richie has ever raped anyone. I like to think he’s not going to rape anyone. I certainly hope he never rapes anyone. But I don’t know he’s not a rapist. I’ll never know he’s not a rapist. And sorry buddy, but I’ll never tell anyone that you can’t be a rapist.
Joshua David can be found on Twitter at @joshuaadavidd
@Anonymous By your estimations, I guess sex is just consensual rape
@Anonymous are you just looking around the internet looking for relevant places to copy-paste your powder room article? also, nice self-promotion bit at the end.