Posted by Scott on July 14th, 2011 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
A recent article by MSNBC’s Joan Raymond informs us of results from a recent study about the long-lasting effects of sexual abuse.
For 23 years, the study followed 80 girls who were victims of sexual abuse as children. Compared to the control group, they had distorted levels of cortisol–the stress hormone, levels which Dr. Frank Putnam describes as resembling those of Vietnam Vets. These victims were more likely to be sexually active at younger ages, have lower educational status, and have more mental health problems.
I do not post this as some sort of surprising results or shocking revelation. I think it is intuitive. But I think is wise to take note of the science that confirms what common sense has already told us. In this case, it is that unfortunately the awful effects of abuse last for decades, and probably as many victims themselves have said for a lifetime.
Incidentally, the facts about the cortisol levels makes me wonder if maybe in the future routine testing of cortisol levels may become a way to identify at-risk children and teens.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on April 18th, 2008 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
I have been thinking lately that high ages of consent hinder efforts to stop sexual victimization, such as rape and sexual assault.
If one person has sex with someone else who’s age is under the age of consent determined by the statutes in that jurisdiction, then the sex is considered statutorily unconsensual and is thus considered rape. For example, in some jurisdictions, if a 15-year-old boy willingly has sex with a 16-year-old girl, the 16-year-old girl could be charged with rape.
I think we trivialize rape when we treat consensual sex as rape because of the age of one person–at least when we are talking about teenagers. More importantly, I think we risk taking the focus away from forcible rape.
I realize that an older person can manipulate a young person by taking advantage of the young person’s lack of mental development and respect for the authority of older people. However, at least when talking about people over 12 years old, the line between persuasion and coercion is blurry and depends much more on the specific circumstances and specific mind-states of the participants in any given instance.
When talking about two or more people who are each either teenagers or older, I do not think we can tell whether or not the sex was truly consensual or not just by the ages of the two people.
When we assume sex between two people, who are both over 12 years old, is not consensual because of the age of one of the participants, I think we risk wasting resources fighting consensual sex in the name of stopping rape at the expense of actually stopping rape.
If it is alleged that one person actually raped another person who is over 12, then let’s investigate it, and put the accused person on trial if there is probable cause that the accused person actually coerced the victim to have sex. Let’s not just assume the sex was coercive because of the alleged victim’s age.
As for people 12 and under, I am not concerned much about them not having the legal ability to consent. So I would recommend at least lowering the age of consent to 13 years old.
If one person uses the appearance of authority, manipulation or overwhelming persuasion to trick or coerce another person into having sex, then I say charge that first person with rape regardless of the ages of the people involved. I simply do not think that sex between a teenager and an older person is always unconsensual. And I worry that we may waste our resources fighting consensual sex that we falsely assumed is unconsensual when we could put those resources to fighting sex that really is unconsensual.
What do you think?
For similar reasons, I would also propose lowering the age of consent for other actions as well, such as smoking and drinking. But I suppose I’ll wait to talk about until another day.
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Posted by Scott on April 8th, 2008 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
I found a nice post on a blog from a University of Wisconsin student. In the blog post, Alex Wagner points out that everyone can help end sexual violence regardless of their race, gender, or religion.
I agree! We must refuse to remain complacent or just passively indignant about the prevalence of sexual assault and rape. We must get active. We must all organize and work together to prevent sexual violence and help victims. This can include all sorts of activism, such as donating time or money to victim’s services or prevention programs, raising awareness, or attending a local workshop or conference about sexual violence.
If you have any other suggestions of how people of all types can help end sexual violence, please post them here as a comment.
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Posted by Scott on April 1st, 2008 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. I see raising awareness about sexual violence as the first step to preventing it on a systemic level. In other words, I believe our society could drastically reduce and nearly eliminate the presence of sexual violence if we truly decided to do it and put our resources into it. And I believe people will most often choose to work together to fix a major social problem like sexual violence when they are most aware of the problem.
Anyway, let me do a small part to help raise awareness by posting some quick statistics about sexual violence:
According to the latest U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey, 272,350 sexual victimizations occur each year in the United States. That includes rape, attempted rape and sexual assault. But the survey’s figures do not include victimizations of people 12 years old and under.
Globally, at least one in three women and girls is beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime, according to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Approximately one million children enter the sex trade each year, according to UNICEF.
If you know any other useful statistics or facts about sexual violence, please post them as a comment.
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Posted by Scott on March 3rd, 2008 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
I have no doubt that our society could eliminate most rapes and sexual crimes if we would invest more resources and effort into it. When we finally do decide to invest more in the reduction of rape rates, we must find the root causes of rape.
For one, when we find the root causes of rape, we can try to stop these root causes. Also, we can probably find what type of people have the most likelihood of committing rape, so we can try to give them help or at least catch them before they commit the horrible deeds.
We cannot just wait until people commit an act of rape. By doing that we would only prevent rapists from committing future sexual crimes, but we could not undo the ones they already committed.
We must find a way to stop rapists from becoming rapists, or at least catch them and put them in treatment before they commit the horrible deed.
Of course, in addition to collective prevention, we need to help potential victims learn to protect themselves individually.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on February 27th, 2008 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
I just finished reading a great book, Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre-Feminist, Anarchist, Genius
. I love Voltairine de Cleyre’s writing.
Among other topics, her essays have me considering feminism and the treatment of women in society. In this blog, I often point out how much rapes and sexual victimization occur. I assume that the continued systemic subjugation of women in society helps contribute to the occurrence of rape and sexual victimization against women.
Most psychologists say that a perverted desire for power motivates rapists and sexual assailants, not an extreme desire for sex. That makes sense, considering the assailants could “get off” in other ways with much less danger. Many different factors can cause the types of perversions that lead to a person becoming so perversely and violently power-hungry. Nonetheless, the fact that their perversion develops into a desire to violently subjugate women sexually seems like a manifestation of society’s subjugation of women. Society may not tell men to rape women specifically, but it does instruct men to subjugate women, and that subjugation manifests as rape sometimes.
I believe that less rapes and sexual victimizations would occur if society did not treat women as inferiors. I believe that less rapes would occur if our culture respected women more and treated men and women fairly.
More importantly, if society empowered women as it empowers men, then I believe we would not overlook the problem of rape and sexual victimization. Like most governments, the United States government loves to spend money and loves to wage “wars”–both metaphorical like the war on drugs and real like the war in Iraq. But the same governments and politicians will not do what we need to do in order to end rape. Despite the extreme horridness of the act, the people in our society have not made it a priority to end rape. Perhaps that happens because society sees rape as a women’s problem, sees women as inferior, and thus sees rape as an inferior problem not worth solving.
In addition to its relationship to rape, the societal subjugation of women acts as a form of victimization in itself. It not only causes other problems, but it is a problem in itself. If we want a fair and free society, then we cannot tolerate the subjugation of women.
I doubt that men alone could give women freedom. Masters generally cannot give freedom to slaves because that act still implies that the masters have claim over the slaves. In other words, men cannot really give women freedom because that means that men still control society. Women must demand freedom and take it for themselves. To that end, I believe that we must all work-together, making a consistent effort to end the social traditions that subjugate women.
In response to the claim that women cannot rough it like men, Voltairine de Cleyre wrote, “Train any animal, or any plant, as you train your girls, and it won’t be able to rough it either.” She made note of how the social subjugation of women starts with how people generally raise children. From earliest childhood, we instill gender roles into kids, teaching boys to dominate and women to submit.
Of course, gender roles also place restrictions on men and boys as the gender roles do with women and girls. Instead of letting each child develop naturally, we force each child to accept a certain role based on the child’s gender.
If many girls naturally develop femininity, then good for them. If not, then good for them just the same. If many boys naturally develop masculinity, then good for them. If not, then good for them just the same. We do not need to force gender roles onto children.
I do not doubt that women and men tend to have some physiological and psychological differences stemming from genetics. But I bet that most of the common gender roles would not exist if not for social conditioning. In other words, nurture more than nature causes gender roles.
Worse yet, our society treats naturally feminine traits as inferior to naturally masculine traits. That unfairly subjugates women. For example, even if men and women naturally tend to think differently, we cannot refer to either way of thinking as superior.
Also, in one of her essays, Voltairine de Cleyre made another point which I had not considered much beforehand. She pointed out that society treats the female body as obscene. Namely, we force women to wear clothes. Also, traditionalists in society will harshly criticize women who show off their bodies and who dress liberally. Voltairine de Cleyre said that society treats women worse than animals by forcing them to wear clothes, pointing out that we would charge a person with animal cruelty if the person covered up a horse or a dog with such restricting clothes.
Of course, the forced clothing only makes up part of the sexual subjugation of women. Our culture has a horrible double standard when it comes to sexuality and gender. Our society does not allow women to express themselves sexually like men can, but instead the women must follow a strict standard of so-called purity and wholesomeness. When women exercise the freedom of men in regards to sexuality, they get insulted, called sluts, and treated like trash. The people in society subjugate women by making women repress their own sexuality and by insulting women when they do not repress it.
Ironically, society also treats women like sex objects. While on the one hand we tell women to remain pure and wholesome, on the other hand we make them feel as though they mainly only have value insomuch as they provide sexual gratification to men. Society constantly pushes women to lose weight, dress up, wear high heels, get implants, and so and so forth. Magazines and commercials make women feel physically insecure and convince them to focus on their looks. We not only make them repress their own sexuality, but we also make women the object of men’s sexuality.
I love the way women look, but they have much more in them for us to value than their looks. More importantly, a woman can have value in the same way any human can have value that matters far more than physical attractiveness. We must not hold a person to a different set of values because of the person’s gender.
The subjugation of women will not go away if we ignore it. We must actively find ways to counter and undo the ways that society instills gender roles. We must eliminate double standards based on gender. And we must start respecting women’s freedom just as we must respect men’s freedom. We must respect all people’s freedom and not berate people who do not conform to gender roles.
What do you think? Please post comments with your opinions about gender roles and our society’s treatment of women. Thanks!
7 Comments »
Posted by Scott on January 9th, 2008 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
Louisiana sentenced the 43-year-old Patrick Kennedy to death for the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to review the case and decide whether a state can execute someone convicted of raping a child.
The United States constitution bans “cruel and unusual punishment.” In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled that the constitution barred execution for the rape of a 16-year-old girl, referring to such an execution as “grossly disproportionate and excessive punishment” for that crime. However, Louisiana’s court apparently views child rape as a much more heinous crime than the rape of a 16-year-old.
I think we all view child rape as an especially horrible form of rape. I see it as more heinous than even most murders.
Federal Law provides for the death penalty for many homicide-related crimes, as well as espionage, treason, and trafficking large quantities of drugs. If the government will execute people for murder, treason, drug trafficking and espionage, then it must allow for the execution of people for child rape to remain consistent.
However, I question the use of the death penalty at all.
I support the defensive use of homicide to protect innocent people. However, I do not want to cause excess harm to violent criminals. If we have already arrested and detained them, then we can just lock them in prison rather than execute them.
I mainly fear the use of the death penalty because of the inability to rectify its misuse. Jails and prisons contain many falsely convicted criminals. For example, DNA regularly exonerates many convicted criminals, including murderers and rapists. We can release these falsely convicted people from prison, but we cannot revive executed people. In my opinion, any slight benefit gained from executing violent criminals, instead of just imprisoning them, does not make up for the execution of falsely convicted people.
Also, I have heard that the death penalty usually ends up financially costing more because of all the expensive judicial appeals involved.
I want to note that I have no interest in punishing anyone. I see vengeance as a fool’s goal. I want offensively violent behavior outlawed to protect innocent people not to punish guilty people. I want murders, rapists, and other violent criminals stopped and incarcerated to protect innocent people not to punish the criminals.
What do you think?
6 Comments »
Posted by Scott on November 16th, 2007 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
I recently posted about an anti-rape female condom, which is basically a latex tube with shafts of sharp, inward-facing plastic barbs. Women can wear it in their vagina like a tampon, and it would hook onto the penis of any attackers. Ideally, the pain would give the victim a chance to escape and would help police catch the rapist who would have to go to a hospital to get the anti-rape condom removed.
One of this blog’s readers posted a YouTube video with her thoughts about the anti-rape female condom. Check it out.
Many people seem to worry that women could purposely misuse the device to hurt and frame innocent men with rape. While that could happen and would probably happen, I don’t think it gives us a reason to ban the device. If a woman wants to hurt a man, she can do it with or without the device. If she wants to hurt him while having consensual sex, as to frame him with rape, she could also do that with or without the condom.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on November 9th, 2007 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
I just read an interesting article about an invention that supposedly protects women against rape by hooking onto a man’s penis. Woman can wear the anti-rape female condom in their vagina (like a tampon), and it has sharp inward-facing plastic barbs that become attached to the penis of any rapists.
The anti-rape condom has some advantages. For one, it would cause the rapist pain which would give the victim a chance to escape. Additionally, knowing that some women have these anti-rape condoms would probably deter many would-be rapists. Also, since the condoms can only be removed surgically, hospitals can work with police to catch rapists.
Some critics call the device cruel, and claim that it simply acts as a form of brutal revenge. Additionally, they point out that a malicious woman could use the device to hurt an innocent man.
The way I see it, if a woman wants to hurt an innocent man that badly, she can do it with or without this device. For that reason, the risk of misuse does not give a reason to keep the device from over-the-counter availability.
However, the device does seem very brutal to me. I cringe just thinking about it. Despite its brutality, I think I might want to see the device or something similar put into use. I prefer rapists to get brutally hurt than for their victims to get raped.
What do you think?
8 Comments »
Posted by Scott on October 25th, 2007 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
A press release about rape in America from Dennis Mahoney had the following to say:
With the systematic use of rape as a tool of war in places like the Congo, it is easy to forget that hundreds of thousands of women are raped each year here in the United States. One of the reasons this epidemic remains hidden is because well over eighty percent of the attackers are known to their victims, with sixty percent falling into the category of an intimate (boyfriend, husband, etc.). The subject is so uncomfortable to people that no one wants to talk about it. But silence is not the answer.
October is Crime Prevention Month when government agencies, civic groups, schools, businesses, and youth organizations in an effort to create safer, more caring communities reach out to educate the public. There is an abundance of information available from women’s support organizations that could help to educate women. Unfortunately due to a lack of funds that would enable these support groups to disseminate the information on a wide scale, most women who receive it are already victims.
Theresa Murphy and Dennis Mahoney are working to change this with their book, A Different Ending: Lessons In Violence Evasion by presenting this information given generously from numerous women’s support organizations, in an effort to help prevent the violence.
One of the most misunderstood areas of crime is sexual violence. Sexual violence remains the most dramatically under reported crime. It’s estimated that two-thirds of attacks go unreported in large part due to the inaccurate stigma that the victim was some how responsible for the attack.
I agree with everything he says in the press release, except his first statistic that hundreds of thousands of women get raped in the United States each year. From my previous research, I believe the number is around 100,000 per year. Perhaps, his number comes from an estimation of unreported rapes.
For more information about rape prevention from Theresa Murphy and Dennis Mahoney, you can get a free copy of The Seven Steps of Self-Protection at www.LessonsInViolenceEvasion.com.
What do you think?
2 Comments »
Posted by Scott on August 28th, 2007 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
While listening to an old Tupac song today, I realized how it related to this blog. Today I will post the music video of Keep Ya Head Up by Tupac. Below the video you will find some lyrics. In the song he addresses the mistreatment of women, especially in the ghettos of the United States.
The first verse relates most to the purpose of this blog. Some of the lyrics follow:
I give a holler to my sisters on welfare
Tupac cares, and don’t nobody else care
And uhh, I know they like to beat ya down a lot
When you come around the block brothas clown a lot
But please don’t cry, dry your eyes, never let up
Forgive but don’t forget, girl keep your head up
And when he tells you you ain’t nuttin don’t believe him
And if he can’t learn to love you you should leave him
Cause sista you don’t need him
And I ain’t tryin to gas ya up, I just call em how I see em
You know it makes me unhappy (what’s that)
When brothas make babies, and leave a young mother to be a pappy
And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it’s time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don’t we’ll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies
And since a man can’t make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one
So will the real men get up
I know you’re fed up ladies, but keep your head up
Tupac also has a verse in a song referred to as Keep Ya Head Up II. In this song he tries to put himself in the shows of a female rape victim. The lyrics:
Now here’s a story bout a woman with dreams
So picture perfect at thirteen, an ebony queen
Beneath the surface it was more than just a crooked smile
Nobody knew about her secret so it took a while
I could see a tear fall slow down her black cheek
Sheddin quiet tears in the back seat; so when she asked me,
“What would you do if it was you?”
Couldn’t answer such a horrible pain to live through
I tried to trade places in the tragedy
I couldn’t picture three crazed ni**az grabbin me
For just a moment I was trapped in the pain, Lord come and take me
Four ni**az violated, they chased and they raped me
Even though it wasn’t me, I could feel the grief
Thinkin with your brains blown that would make the pain go
No! You got to find a way to survive
cause they win when your soul dies
What do you think?
Considered by many as the greatest rapper ever, Tupac Shakur was an American artist renowned for his music, movie roles, poetry, and social activism. The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes him as the best selling hip=hop artist, with over seventy-five million albums sold. He was murdered in 1996 at the age of 25.
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Posted by Scott on July 20th, 2007 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
According to national statistics, one in four women will be sexually assaulted by the time they turn 18. In 2005, there were 191,670 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assaults according to the 2005 National Crime Victimization Survey.
Why?!
I truly believe that society has the resources to put an end to rape and sexual victimization. At the very least, we can drastically reduce it. Why don’t we?
Why does the country waste so much of its resources on other needless endeavors, such as the “war on drugs” and the occupation of Iraq?
3 Comments »
