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This Is Rape Culture: Whose Credibility Problem?
If it only took telling a few lies over the course of your life to be free from the constant threat of rape, why, I'm sure women would lie through our teeth at every chance. The moon is fuchsia. It's cool to get paid less. No woman has ever been or could ever be one of the 600 women raped every day in this country.
Well, it's just not true. Rape culture doesn't differentiate between poor women, rich women, immigrant women, native women, old women, young women, abled women, disabled women, women on a date, women who don't know their attackers, women who lie, women who don't. Rape culture means that while some women are more statistically likely to be raped, every woman is at risk of sexual assault and "No Means Yes" passes for an acceptable joke in far too many quarters.
This Fourth of July weekend, one very powerful and wealthy man named Dominique Strauss-Kahn was free to leave house arrest because of so-called problems with the victim's "credibility." I do say so-called, because neither lying on an immigration application, nor having an incarcerated boyfriend, makes it less likely a woman will be one of the 600 women raped on any given day.
Over the same weekend, another woman came forward in his home country, France, to press rape charges against the former IMF chief. Far from leading to a questioning of his "credibility" (a second set of charges pretty damning indeed, one would think), it has been largely overlooked in lieu of a flurry of suggestions that his political career is saved and perhaps he should run for president of France after all. This is also what rape culture looks like. It's certainly not what freedom looks like, not for women.
False rape accusations are rare, however no matter how rare they might be, our legal system thrives because of innocent until proven guilty.
If you think rape laws are unfair, move to Sweden where a guy needs a note of approval from the government to have sex.
Support Campus SaVE Act.
Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act (S. 834)
Congress finds the following:
(1) Between 20 and 25 percent of female students will experience some form of sexual assault during their years at an institution of higher education, and nearly 3 percent of all such women become victims of either attempted or completed rape in each 9-month academic year.
(2) Multiple studies indicate that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students are more likely to experience violence and threats of violence, including sexual violence, than their non-LGBT peers.
(3) Between 85 and 90 percent of reported sexual assaults against female students at institutions of higher education are perpetrated by someone known to the victim, and nearly half of such sexual assaults occur on a date.
(4) Less than 5 percent of rapes or attempted rapes of female students at institutions of higher education are reported to campus authorities or law enforcement. In 2009, only 2,578 forcible sex offenses and 68 non-forcible sex offenses that occurred on the campus of a 2-year or 4-year institution of higher education were reported, among 8,476 2-year and 4-year public and private institutions of higher education.
(5) Students are more likely to report a sexual assault when they know how to report a sexual assault and how a school will respond if such a report is made, yet fewer than half of the institutions of higher education in the United States have written policies for filing criminal charges and campus reports related to sexual assault.
(6) Only 1/3 of the institutions of higher education in the United States report their crime statistics correctly, resulting in statistics in which instances of sexual assault have been misclassified and underrepresented. Less than half of all institutions of higher education in the United States offer any sexual assault training, and such training is often provided only for resident advisers and security officers.
(7) Thirty-six percent of institutions of higher education offer safety training that includes teaching students how to prevent and defend against sexual assault.
(8) Less than 20 percent of institutions of higher education educate students about acquaintance rape, and less than half of 4-year public institutions do so.
(9) According to campus administrators, the reporting of sexual assaults would be facilitated if institutions of higher education provided services for victims, written law enforcement response procedures, new student orientation, and campus-wide publicity about past crimes.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:S.834:
A group who means well but have been known to inflate sexual assault statistics for the sake of receiving more government funding.
As far as democracy. Seems as if Dominique Strauss-Kahn has already felt the wrath of a feminist inspired mass media who was so eager to convict him.
I think this case has feminists scrambling. You were so quick to convict him. Now your looking for anything to somehow justify his guilt while thrusting his ALLEDGED accuser in the role of victim
I would not be surprised if your the last person who still thinks the Duke Lacrosse players are guilty.
It seems that NOW hasn't said anything about inappropriate strip searches, etc. Where's the power for the women in these situations? Not worried about body odor of French men and who can drink the most wine! This is a bigger issue than most people know!
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