Last night I came across this at Real Clear Politics.
This is in regard to the Duke Lacrosse Team alleged rape case in case you are unaware this is a link.
A blog friend of mine, Jason ( Zenformation Professional ) had touched on it briefly as have a number of other blogs, all too numerous to mention but one of the best the best I have seen is at Amptoons and you can follow links for the rest.
The word lacrosse stuck me while scrolling Jason’s blog due to having a few friends who play or have played lacrosse. Coming from Maryland and now living in NY, the two most lacrosse infested states in the country, it caught my eye. Jason, (who by the way works on a college campus), seems far more educated and reasonable on this subject than the author of the article I’m referring to.
It was the attitude of the author of article which provoked a little bit of anger in me and at two in the morning and that is hard to do. I can’t comment on the case too furiously at this time as the jury is still out on exactly what happened and we are all innocent until proven guilty but regardless of the outcome it was the pervasive attitude and tone of this article which mimics the pervasive attitude in this country, an attitude specifically but not solely among males, which perpetrate the myth that “rape culture” is a term women and gender studies departments invented for the lone reason of having a women’s and gender studies department. I can just about see this guy rolling his eyes as he says he finds this quote.
It is important that we not let this go down easily,” he said as hundreds of marchers began gathering on Duke’s east campus. “There’s a culture of rape at Duke, so we’re hoping this will get them to speak up. This rape is a symptom of a larger problem at Duke
Whether or not there is a rape here is immaterial as their is a rape culture on many college campuses and those at Duke know it regardless of the specifics of this case.
.from a Duke student in USA today laughable and he writes the following.
Being a Maryland basketball fan I have no love for the Duke student body, but the idea that there is some kind of culture of rape at Duke University is just absurd. This type of attitude is a by-product of the Women’s Studies, leftist mentality that is so prevalent among student activists and faculty on college campuses. There are so many cross currents here (race, rape, privileged athletes, poor victim, college politics) it will be fascinating to see how this story unfolds as the facts spill out.…..which they will. This has the potential to blow up into a huge story.
Yes ‚a huge story and I can just see this guy drooling and rubbing his hands together in anticipation of all the pontification he will get to do on the subject. If there is a culture of rape at Duke it seems likely that a student attending school there would be more apt to know about it than Mr Maryland Basketball fan. (as if that is anything to be all that proud of this year.)
Yes, despite the fact that incidence of rape has is grown, not declined, dramatically, (many conservative figures show an 88 percent increase in the rate of forcible rape per 100,000 inhabitants over the past twenty years), and despite the fact that scholars and many feminists, and activists argue that the United States of America is the paradigmatic Rape Culture and America’s traditional gender roles which polarize the sexes, offer prescriptions and prescriptions for female and male sexuality and the fact that these ideologies serve to label men sexual subjects and women sexual objects this is seen by this author as an improbable situation one big conspiracy and ruse and an almost joke which he will follow with fascination.
I’ve never been one to promote gender over sensibility and I don’t know what country this gentleman lives in or how long it has been since he has been in college. I’ve been in one for some time now and have friends at colleges throughout the US, and there is strong, subjective and objective, as well as statistical, evidence to suggest that not only does the United States have a culture of rape but that it is extremely prevalent on college campuses throughout this fine country of ours.
To further complicate this issue, in this case our culture is still white supremacist culture based on class.
Does Duke just not scream out at you from this platform?
No?
Better take a closer look. Whichever way this turns out I think we all need to take a closer look at a society where athletes with good lawyers AKA can come out smelling like a rose…a wilted rose maybe but still a rose while the victims come out smelling like little more than yesterdays garbage.
