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.
Alice, explain what you mean by the culture of rape, please. I’m not being a smart-ass, I’m not sure I get it. Are you referring to social signals that rape is ok/good or a culture indifferent to the wellbeing of women, or something else?
The Maryland fan comment was ridiculous in that article.
Doug that is a very good question and I guess I get stuck in some ways in women and gender studies when using that term as it seems even though there has been a lot of media coverage over the years on this particular aspect of our culture it is still not s term most people understand. Briefly because I do have a class…believe it or not. rape culture is one in which 1. rape and other forms of violence against women are common; 2. rape and other forms of violence against women are tolerated (in that prevalence is high while arrest, prosecution, and conviction rates for the crime are low); 3. victim-blaming and racist myths of rape and other forms of violence against women are commonplace; 4. images of rape and other forms of violence against women abound; 5. images of sex and violence are intertwined; and 6. women do not enjoy full legal, economic, and social equality with men. I am sure I will be able to expand on this later.
I posted my comment at BIO.
As you know I am from Maryland and it is all over the news here and Inside Lacrosse is even covering it.
As if beibg a fan of Maryland basketball has anything to do with it at all. It made his whole point seem more absurd and poorly founded.
I was looking around to see if we noted any of this and the only reference I could find to Duke was that we had beaten them on spring break. I did find this: http://www.cornellsun.com/media/storage/paper866/news/2006/03/29/News/Rape-Victims.Speak.Out.Against.Stigma-1763105.shtml?norewrite200603311607&sourcedomain=www.cornellsun.com
which addresses and gives credance to what you said about their being a culture of rape one that the guy who wrote the article dismisses as some sort of academic ploy.
This is a subject that matters a lot to me. No matter how much we try to hide it, rape is prevalent in our society. What makes me sad, no, outraged, is the fact how it is rarely reported.
Mainly because the rape is one of the few crimes where the victim can turn into the accused.
Don’t forget about some women who might have no problem lying to police.
http://www.thrillnetwork.com/stories_view.php/1431/disney_employee_lied_rape_authorities.html
I’m wary of the term “rape culture,” but I’m hardly in any position to refute.
If a school official covers up a rape it should mean their ass though
jacob: exactly your comment at bio was great btw. dane: great and thp article thanks. Cowgirl: sadly yes that is often the case and more so when money is concerned. huh: obvious you missed the point entirely. wombat: wary of something that is a fact? My basic point was how insipid and arrogant and totally useless this guys article was as he was waiting with his tongue out panting for more news as if this was a big joke and " Culture of Rape" is purely a figment of some academians dream.
Hitting us again. From Costa Rican vacation pictures, to dancing like Shakira to this.
I looked at that post at RCP and I agree to some extent that he made no points worth looking at and did give an impression of thinking of the “culture of rape” as a term made up solely by feminists or academics.
The part about being a Maryland basketball fan and how he weaved it in just made him look more like an asshole and made his statement that much more lame.
I have read you long enough to know how this must have gotten to you. Thoughtful you are and not unreasonable.
The culture of rape as you describe has been shown to exist in this country and I am interested in how this turns out but not in the same way as the author of the article seems to be. If it is true, and I have no reason to believe in either direction with my limited knowledge of the situation, a whole can of worms will be open and maybe for the better. I liked your responses at BIO as well.
Good Going. Mix it up.
keep dancing like shakira
I got your point.
Hello,
Just letting you know that I’ve looked over your blog and accepted it for a rental at Tor’s Rants.
And speaking as one who went to college 15 years ago, it’s depressing and astonishing to see how little has changed in this respect. In spite of all the programs and training. Semester after semester, the judicial board of my college would release their reports, and semester after semester the results were that zero allegations of sexual assault had been forwarded to them. This was tragic, since everybody knew somebody who should have made a report.
Peace,
Tor
You know how I feel on the subject of rape…
This post of yours is excellent… I love it when you write like this!!! From the heart and mind of
a great young woman!!!
It does seem in this day and age that rape/violence against not only women, but children is
becoming the norm. WHY? Is our society becoming Neanderthals? Sweeping people and the
horrors of the victim under the rug is becoming a very common occurrence and if people don’t
speak out… then it will continue.
Again, great post!
I am so politically and culturally inept, to some degree that I just don’t know what to say (this is probably part of the greater problem). It sounds tragic and sickening.
People seem lost, metabolized, inducted into mass consumerism at the moment of birth. Feeding on suffering as entertainment; a vast coliseum without walls; boundarieless-modern-arena. When the world becomes a hollow, mechanical automaton, its subjects are reduced to an existence of disjointed and absurd experiences – of course the news, and history in general, ties it all together for us as if the occurrence of phenomena made sense in some seamless fashion. A good trick. Something is lost, or never found (I am not quite sure). I wish I could be outraged by the particulars of this specific instance; the truth is I have trouble separating it out from a larger sense of things being not-quite-right in our country and on the planet. Sorry for being so vague. The only possible solution I can offer (or partial solution) is to completely reel against convention; to strictly and critically examine ourselves; to muster the confidence and strength to move beyond hesitation and be in the world. One by one providing what is lacking. One by one reconstructing our political space and reinvigorating it with a sense of care and cultivation as opposed to its current orientation towards economics and metabolism.
Great post!
I tend to agree with Wombat…I’m wary of the phrase “culture of rape,” but not the concept behind it. I think its been a bit abused over the last few years; there are a lot of, and I hate saying this, lazy people in Higher Ed. who’d rather throw a buzzword around than actually fix anything. What’s going on at Duke happens at way too many U.s – Remember Colorado’s football scandals last year?
But there is a major problem with the enabling environment that surrounds college athletics, and higher education as a whole. Too many university police departments run like rent-a-cop services, sexual assault victims are subtly stigmatized and led to believe that they’re the ones to blame, and universities continue to refuse to clean the bullshit off their university seals long enough to address the problem holistically.
The UM basketball fan’s rather stupid comment seems to play into that stereotypical dumb jock, boys will be boys mindset. I’ve known too many good athletes, coaches trainers, and fans, who’ve spent their careers fighting that stereotype. I once watched a coach literally toss a 240-lb linebacker across a locker room simply for joking about rape – honestly, I think there needs to be more of that. Its a shame some asshole hasn’t learned that ACC hoops is not an appropriate frame of reference for sexual assault.
Lol, chica…sorry about the long comment. Thanks for the shout-out.
What got me was his raising the possibility that the stripper invented the story because she was disgruntled. Yeah, right. Letting the whole world know how deeply you were hurt and humiliated, exposing yourself to the “she was a stripper, she deserved it” school–that’s a great way to get revenge.
joe: mixing it up and um..Trying to dance like shakira…it is good exercise.
huh: then we’re good to go.
tor: awesome about the rental and sad that the more things change the more they remain the same.
shayna: well we can change the words to I love it when you write like this instead of I love it when you dance like this. Thanks and I’m looking forward to the party.
bell: missed ya. It is sickening. A very good point in that there are many things ” not quite right ” in this country and in the world but out vested interest is here. I feel if more people actually took the time to examine themselves, their lives and what they believe in and stand for it would at least be a start. More so if people had a basic respect for themselves leading to a respect for humanity it might help.
Zenpro: men always seem “more wary” of the term “culture of rape” than women. I still think to some degree men just don’t get it. Men need to get it before we can solve this societal and cultural problem.
I agree with the fact that there is a problem surrounding college athletics and athletics in general. It stems from the fact that we hold these people in higher regard than we do the people who actually deserve to be held in high regard. There is so much more though as there always is. Societal issues of this magnitude rarely stem from one root there are usually a ton of roots coming in all directions.
weirsdo: not to mention the fact that now if the DNA comes back negative, which is quite possible if they had their prophylactics on snug, there is a good chance they won’t prosecute the case.
[...] This post is arising out of the Duke gang rape story and cooper’s post on rape culture. It is not a post that is about the Duke case, other than as a starting point for the discussion that I believe needs to extend beyond the privileges of being a white male athlete at an elite university. [...]
[...] This post is arising out of the Duke gang rape story and cooper’s post on rape culture. It is not a post that is about the Duke case, other than as a starting point for the discussion that I believe needs to extend beyond the privileges of being a white male athlete at an elite university. [...]
I don’t like the expression “rape culture” because culture is generally a positive word. To pair it with a universally negative term seems like a contradicition. But rape was a big issue when I went to university 1980-1984, and there were some awful incidents of rape at some of the fraternities. To deny that this is a problem is just plain ignorant.
You see though Indie, at least here the fact is it is a rape culture.
Culture is no more positive than it is negative in the modern day use of the word. It is a word used to define a certain time and place, including behaviors and values of a society. So obviously it is suiting because that is the world we live in.
If it sounds too vulgar or strong… good. Because it is. That is the point.
I am outraged that this society’s first response to a rape is that “they deserved it” or “they brought it upon themselves.” No one “deserves” to be raped…
But I would make an exception for those that commit rape. I hope they drop their soap.
Actially culture can mean ferment–as in yogurt cultures, yeast etc, so I think it’s a more
than appropriate word, and a yeast infection is the least important thing that can happen from
a rape
Stayed up from 3 AM to sunrise writing my response to Philo which was in response to yours which
is a great way of communicating I think
And nobody but nobody can mix it up like you do–was just listening to Ben Harpur yesterday
and thinking how he can do old great songs in totally new ways because his voice is incredibly
beautiful
Cowgirl: I agree. Pia: three cheers for ben I love him and six cheers for you…3 AM? I think you ought to hook – up with Wombat.
I think the discussion over there is becoming mighty fine.
Well written and well put Coop.
I moved to the US from Spain when I was 14. By the time I was 16, practically all the friends I had had been either sexually assaulted or raped or had some story to tell… nothing had ever been done and things were swept under the rug… and I lived in a pretty affluent area and went to a 90210-ish type high school (yes, *shudder*).
Years later when my sister was 12, she was raped and all the police had to say on the matter, after implying that perhaps she had asked for it because she was pretty developed at that age, was that “In the olden days families would take matters into their own hands”…
I think you may have inspired me to edit and repost my thing on rape…
It is very easy for men to say there is no rape culture. Get some tits and ass and then let’s talk amigos!
Mizzy Bohem: Tis still a man’s world. I loved that post of yours.
Every college man should take notice of what’s happening at Duke University because it could easily happen to any one of us!
Earlier this month a 27 year old intoxicated exotic dancer claimed that three members of the lacrosse team raped her in enclosed bathroom; at the time of the initial investigation, three members of the house voluntarily gave DNA samples to police and although the district attorney states the assault could have been committed by someone else, he obtained an order to get DNA samples from 46 of the 47 member team, essentially accusing all of them as rapist.
The party extended throughout the house and yard, and the assault occurred inside an enclosed bathroom by only three men who may or may not have been members on the lacrosse team, so it’s very possible that the 47 members of the team have no knowledge of the assault, yet the DA publicly claims, without any evidence, that the team is “stonewalling” when it’s more than likely that they really don’t have any information, but by just campaigning the theory that the team is bonded together to hide a crime has opened the boys to be publicly condemned.
Irresponsible “groups” have held protests everyday holding the name and pictures of everyone on the lacrosse team, their pictures with hate slogans pasted all over school and surrounding neighborhood. These “groups,” exploiting recent events to promote their agenda on gender issues, race, and socio-economic status, blindly attack anyone while doing nothing to protect the innocent. To these groups, all members of the lacrosse team are guilty, not because they’re members of the team, but because they are a means to publicize their cause.
Rape is a horrible crime against a person, usually a woman, but false accusations of rape is an equally horrible crime against a man (in this case – 46 men). Both can potentially destroy a person and test the endurance of anyone’s character. The problem is while the “accusers” identity is protected, the “accused” identity is fodder for the press. While the “accuser” receives immediate empathy and medical attention, counseling, “activism”, and free legal advice, the “accused” gets to cash in his scholarship in exchange for legal fees.
This could happen here. Imagine yourself on one of UH Manoa’s athletic teams, or working for a grocery store near campus, and one person from your organization committed a crime, then you were subjected to the character assassinations, constant verbal harassment, and the focal point of an unscrupulous district attorney bent on convicting “anyone” in the national media by making provocative statements to bulldoze over anyone who happens to be innocent to get to the persons involved who may or may not be members on the Duke lacrosse team.
The Duke Student Government should be applauded for the way they are handling the Sexual Assault and Other Acts of Violent Misconduct.
Although many members of Duke and Durham want harsher punishment enforced upon all lacrosse players whether innocent or not, whether having knowledge of the incident or not, but why stop there? There could have been other students, both male and female, at that party, and District Attorney Mike Nifong stated that it could have been guys not on the lacrosse team, so why not extend any punishment to the entire campus? Guilt or innocence seem not to be an issue, and many people are taking a loud stand to bulldoze over any innocent person to get to the persons involved, so why are we only limiting this belief to the men’s lacrosse team?
The Student Government is aware that they cannot be as reckless in their behavior as “political activist groups”. The DSG is responsible for making policies that would affect the entire student body for years to come, and it shouldn’t base these policies on one case, especially not in the middle of an investigation where no charges have been filed, and the DSG should definitely not interject itself as judge and prosecutor against and entire group of people just because it may be possible that one or a few are accused.
There is a reason why in this country, a person is considered innocent until proven guilty, and it’s because of people like those recklessly accusing that the entire lacrosse team is guilty because of a single complaint against a few who may not even be on the team. The DSG should be applauded for rising above the chaos and hate-messages by those too eager to condemn and convict without regards to guilt or innocence.
Every college man should take notice of what’s happening at Duke University because it could easily happen to us!
Forty seven members of the lacrosse team know how it feels to be accused and publicly chastised just for being part of a team. The members of the lacrosse team renting the house voluntarily submitted DNA during the initial police investigation, some of the players weren’t even at the party, the party was throughout the entire house and yard, and only three are suspected in the assault occurring inside a bathroom, so it’s very possible that the team is telling the truth that they have no knowledge of the incident, yet the D.A. claims the team is “stonewalling” when it’s more than likely that they really don’t know.
Rape is a horrible crime against a person, usually a woman, but false accusations of rape is an equally horrible crime against a man (in this case – 46 men). Both can potentially destroy a person and test the endurance of anyone’s character. The problem is while the “accusers” identity is protected, the “accused” identity is fodder for the press. While the “accuser” receives immediate empathy and medical attention, counseling, “activism”, and free legal advice, the “accused” gets to cash in his scholarship in exchange for legal fees.
We live in a society that immediately assumes anyone accused of rape as guilty, even if he’s later found innocent. After such an incident, his reputation may never recover. Laws written in states throughout the nation refer to the “accuser” as “the victim” and the “accused” as simply the “accused.” This presumed guilt is carried out in the media where the accused reputation is publicly destroyed.
I believe that all 47 members of the lacrosse team will be found innocent via DNA testing, but during “Sexual Assault Prevention Week” we’re going to be subjected to a lot of “unbalanced” rape education, so I would like to balance the education with some facts, for I believe that even with the DNA testing exonerating the team, some people and groups will continue to target the team without any attempt, if possible, to apologize or restitution.
• According to the FBI, one of every 12 claims of rape filed in the United States are later deemed “unfounded,” meaning the case was closed because the alleged victim recanted or because investigators found no evidence of a crime.
• In Maryland, Howard County Police classified one out of every four rape allegations as unfounded in 1990-91.
• Citing a recent USA Today article, discussing the miracle of DNA and FBI studies of sexual assault suspects, DNA testing exonerated about 30-35 percent of the more than 4,000 sexual assault suspects on whom the FBI had conducted DNA testing over the past three years.
• According to Purdue sociologist Eugene J. Kanin, in over 40 percent of the cases reviewed, the complainants eventually admitted that no rape had occurred (Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1994).
• In 1985, the Air Force conducted a study of 556 rape accusations. Over 25 percent of the accusers admitted, either just before they took a lie detector test or after they had failed it, that no rape occurred.
• In 1996, the Department of Justice reported that of the roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases analyzed with DNA evidence over the previous seven years, 2,000 excluded the primary suspect, and another 2,000 were inconclusive.
• Linda Fairstein, who heads the New York County District Attorney’s Sex Crimes Unit and is the author of Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape, says, “there are about 4,000 reports of rape each year in Manhattan. Of these, about 50 percent simply did not happen.”
• Craig Silverman, a former Colorado prosecutor known for his zealous prosecution of rapists during his 16-year career, says that false rape accusations occur with “scary frequency.” Silverman noted that “any honest veteran sex assault investigator will tell you that rape is one of the most falsely reported crimes.” According to Silverman, a Denver sex-assault unit commander estimates that nearly 50 percent of all reported rape claims are false.
I applaud Duke University for not joining the reckless mob blindly attacking members of the lacrosse team, and for showing concern for the student athletes caught in the middle of this media storm. As for every man on our campus, be very aware that this could have easily happen to you, and while there is widespread empathy for the alleged victim, there is little if any concern for how these reckless accusations and blind attacks harm every the poor guys caught in the middle of a mob and justice.
It’s only going to get worse
Regarding 3/31/06’s “Captains’ Lawyer Speak Out” Finally someone speaks for the innocent men caught up in this media storm. It’s outrageous that some people feel entitled with empowerment to condemn, slander, and harass an entire group of men for the alleged actions of a very few. People are wondering why no one from the lacrosse team is coming forward with information regarding the alleged assault of a drunk stripper. Ignoring the fact that the alleged assault happened inside an enclosed bathroom, and most members of the team were not even present, it’s very possible that no one, except those involved, has any knowledge of the incident.
In today’s climate where male-bashing is widely accepted and women are empowered with the privileges of “victim-hood” to slander and harass, all decent men and women should take notice.
District Attorney Mike Nifong threatens to charge teammates who didn’t commit or observe the alleged assault with aiding and abetting because they don’t possess the information he needs. This suggests that this case isn’t as strong as he publicly campaigns, which means it’s only going to get messier as school officials and lacrosse teammates remain the only ones who continue to behave responsibly in letting the legal process unfold. Meanwhile District Attorney Mike Nifong plays his case before the public media even before any charges are filed, so when these young men are found to be innocent, they would still be thought to be guilty under some myth of “white male entitlement”.
Not meaning to minimize indignities suffered by any alleged victim, the corralling of 46 members of the lacrosse team was equally indignant and a testament to lazy police work. Only three men are suspected, and most members weren’t even present, but despicable people inside and outside of the police department indiscriminately accuse all 47 members as being rapists just for being on a sports team.
Being accused of a sex offense stains a man’s reputation indefinitely and the tactics used by the police and DA to squeeze information out of over forty young men, who most likely possess no knowledge of the incident, has left these men condemned to be slandered and harassed throughout campus because “special interest groups,” exploiting recent events to promote their agenda on gender issues, race, and socio-economic status, blindly attack anyone while doing nothing to protect the innocent. To these groups, all members of the lacrosse team are guilty, not because they’re members of the team, but because they’re mostly white men.
Everyone witnessing the reckless massacre of these young men’s reputations based solely on one accusation at the encouragement of “special interest groups”, who thrive in this environment, should change their perspective. What if you were on a sports team, and just by being a member of the team, you were subjected to the same character assassination, slander, harassment, and humiliation by these “special interest groups” who care nothing of innocence or guilt, and only use the anguish of the victim to promote their political agendas.
[...] I agree with her description. I’d add, though, that the larger forces of hate, racism and suspicion spread attention away from the issue of rape, to the point that major op-eds were written about the case without ever addressing the fact that a rape had been committed. Yes there were undoubtedly issues of race, class, and educational privilege at play in the dynamics of this case, but when we look at the totality of the incident it is the idea that such a crime could occur that is most horrible. To address the problems of rape culture, we must look around us at the cases that occur on an hourly basis where women are raped by their friends and associates. In a previous post that was loosely related to the Duke rape case I discussed the problems with addressing every major rape case through the lense of otherness and fear, as opposed to the actual problem of the presence of a culture of rape where the vast majority of women are raped by men they know. I wrote before: Presenting the problem of rape culture as a problem of men on whole or worse an ill-defined subset of men doesn’t go towards actually providing a safer environment for women. Of course rape is a problem about men, but I think depictions of the solution that involve “taking back the night” create a stigma of otherness towards men that will prevent real change from happening by limiting the efforts by people to actually reach out to their friends to bring change. What’s worse is in cases like the Duke lacrosse gang rape the notion that the threat black women have to worry about is rich white strangers, otherness is cited as a cause rather than a coincidence. Sure there were undoubtedly other power dynamics at play, but the problem this black woman faced is rape culture, not merely elite white athletes. [...]
[...] This case too complex to boil down to addressing only rape culture and leaving it at that, as I’d tried to do before. The issues surrounding rape culture persist and must be addressed to improve the lives of women of all races, classes, and educational levels. Rape culture remains, but justice isn’t going to to be absent from this particular case. If these boys are guilty of rape and are convicted, the case can serve rape victims around America by showing that they can bring their attackers to justice, that the world cares and will listen to them. [...]
[...] This case too complex to boil down to addressing only rape culture and leaving it at that, as I’d tried to do before. The issues surrounding rape culture persist and must be addressed to improve the lives of women of all races, classes, and educational levels. Rape culture remains, but justice isn’t going to to be absent from this particular case. If these boys are guilty of rape and are convicted, the case can serve rape victims around America by showing that they can bring their attackers to justice, that the world cares and will listen to them. [...]
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