Carol Logan Patitu’s article focuses on incidents of date rape and how they are increasing, especially on college campuses. As with any issue of this magnitude, there are bound to be differing attitudes toward the rape victims. The author portrays her writing from both sides. One side being sympathetic to the rape victims and the opposing side, giving no sympathy but believing they are crying out for attention. By providing charts and examples along with real life situations, Patitu is able to keep the relationship between the reader and the test subjects relevant. But I will be focusing on the first part, where Patitu talks about the sympathy that is given. In the contradicting piece, I chose Robin Wilson’s article about the national campaign against rape cultures on college campuses. This campaign brought attention to sexual violence, and to victims (typically women) who have long described being ignored. But others think the movement has gone too far, labeling some innocent students as rapists, which is where Wilson revolves her article around. The opening statement of this paper is ‘College men accused of rape say the scales are tipped against them’. It explains how women target men and people tend to take the side of the women over the men, even if the man is innocent. Wilson as tells how she feels the movement against rape has gone too far and people need to step back, because, men in college are losing their chances at a triumphant future. Both articles have a
In the article “On Date Rape”, Camille Paglia argues that the reason why women are falling victims of date rape is because they want freedom but do not act responsibly. She says that freedom comes with responsibility which women should take as they are always at a higher risk of being overpowered by men. The responsibility she refers to is being alert and being on the lookout for signs of possible sexual assault. An analysis of Camille Paglia’s “On Date Rape” shows a fallacious argument resulting from personal attacks, hasty generalization, and false cause.
In his article, “Stopping Campus Rape,” Ross Douthat argues for changes in universities that would allow them to be more suitably trained to deal with these criminal cases. However, while he believes that this could improve the rate of assault, he is pessimistic of its consideration. He feels that because his suggestions are not popular with legislators and university administration, they are unlikely to be implemented. Douthat declares that most assaults happen because the public is afraid to, “upset the underlying legal and status quo,” because the people who have the power to make a change are afraid of possible losses. Despite these issues Douthat continues to argue that if this belief were broken, than sexual assault could improve.
The alarming increase in sexual assault among male and female students is a source of concern. Despite improvements in the general statistics on rape cases, the college setting remains to be the hot bed of sexual assault, especially among the female counterparts (Allen, 2007). A victim, regardless being a male or a female, never feel safe in their life as something precious was taken from them once. Statistics show that 17.6% of women are likely to be victims of rape in their entire lifetime while only 0.3% of males are estimated to be the victims of sexual assault. According to the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS), the most critical ages men and females are likely to be engaged in sexual abuse is when they are children or adolescents (Gonzales, Schofield & Schmitt, 2006).
“Rape is unique. No other violent crime is so fraught with controversy, so enmeshed in dispute and in the politics of gender and sexuality… And within the domain of rape, the most highly charged area of debate concerns the issue of false allegations. For centuries, it has been asserted and assumed that women “cry rape,” that a large proportion of rape allegations are maliciously concocted for purposes of revenge or other motives.”
University of Tennessee Knoxville was recently involved in a lawsuit for enabling athletes to sexually assault women by silencing the victims and failing to provide disciplinary actions or even investigation onto the accused. While this is a recent case, this is not the first time this sort of behavior involving a school has been brought into light. One in four women will be sexually assaulted by the end of their undergraduate career (Posluszny). Sexual assault happens throughout society no matter what the gender or age, seeming to be in increasing epidemic over the last few years. While the idea of sexual assault is largely met with public hostility in theory, actions often contradict this. This contradiction lies heavily in a culture that is unwelcoming to the victims and often leads to the perpetrators being tolerated. The existence of rape culture in western society occurs due to the preservation of violent media, patriarchal standards, and the state of the criminal justice system. This culture cannot be improved until we confront each of these problems to their roots.
“Feminism has not prepared them for this,” states Camille Paglia in her essay “Rape: A Bigger Danger than Feminists Know.” The “them” in Paglia’s statement is referring to women, and she is discussing the topic of date rape. Susan Jacoby, on the other hand, writes in her article “Common Decency,” that feminism is not responsible for the rising cases of date rape, but that it is the men who are at fault. Paglia’s argument is insightful and accurate, but Jacoby’s writing is flawed and not well-researched. Paglia includes all rhetorical appeals and persuasive techniques, while Jacoby lacks in some departments of persuasiveness and fills the gap with logical fallacies. Comparing both of these papers will help the reader see why
In the article “Athletic club weekend turns into a nightmare for college freshman” by Carol smith and Lee Van Der Voo, Emily Lorenzen shares her story of being a rape victim. Emily shares her account because she wants to help to prevent rape from happening to anyone else. After interviewing Emily the authors shared a statement expressing that “Emily lorenzen believes that if people hear her story, they will be more comfortable confronting the issue of sexual assault on campus. She wants more conversation, so that men get a clearer definition of rape, face stiffer penalties if they ignore it and administrators learn to reach out to women like her and show compassion. She especially wants bystanders to step up and protect people who are vulnerable.” Rape victims need support to not feel guilty or ashamed, and that is exactly what Emily and her father desire. On this topic, Shipman an influential contributor of the Spokane sexual assault
‘Sexual Violence is more than just a crime against individuals. It threatens our families; it threatens our communities. Ultimately, it threatens the entire country’ (qtd. in Burleigh pg. 2). In the article, “Confronting Campus Rape” written by Nina Burleigh; a writer, journalist, and professor at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, describes what students are doing to force universities to take a stronger stand against campus sexual assault. Moreover Burleigh describes what the government is doing to make a difference on the issue. This includes laws that have created consequences for the assaulter and laws that protect the victim. According to Burleigh, a young woman called Laura Dunn was sexually assaulted on campus. Dunn was a student of UW. On April 4th, 2014, Dunn lost her virginity to two UW athletes. That night, Dunn was attending a party at the university. Dunn was enjoying the party and lost count of her alcohol intake. Dunn remembers being led out by two older teammates, who she knew. Dunn was very intoxicated, enough to stumble on her way back to what she thought would be another campus party, as one of the athletes helped her walk. The athletes led Dunn to one of their apartments where she found herself on a bed with both of them on top of her. Dunn was so intoxicated that she couldn’t help but to drift in and out of conscious leaving her unable to stop the two men. Dunn began to feel sick and was led to the bathroom by one of the athletes, where he penetrated her from behind while she was throwing up. That was a date Dunn would never forget. Dunn like many other women at the UW have been sexually abused by other students. Although Dun’s incident is shocking, it is not uncommon for women to be sexually assaulted on campus. A woman at the university of Wisconsin is more prone to being sexually assaulted than any other woman in the country because of alcohol intoxication; this is a problem that must be resolved.
Date rape is one of the most common types of rape within the United States, especially on college campuses. According to the State of Florida, date rape can be defined as “forced sexual content during a voluntary social engagement.” Camille Paglia wrote “Rape: A Bigger Danger Than Feminist Know,” to focus on the dangers of date rape from a feminist’s standpoint. In response to Paglia’s work, Susan Jacoby wrote “Common Decency,” this text was written as an attempt to break down Paglia’s argument. Although Paglia does present some logical fallacies throughout her text, she displays a more effective argument than Jacoby because of her usage of the rhetorical appeals; logos, ethos, and pathos. In comparison, Jacoby’s text “Common Decency” does not contain logical fallacies but lacks the rhetorical appeals; logos, ethos, pathos, which is causing the ineffectiveness in her argument.
Rape has always been a problem, specifically in colleges across the US. There is also large amounts of misinformation and ideas surrounding rape. Author Jon Krakauer, who did not know much on the topic of rape before his time spent in Missoula; uncovered proof of the true seriousness of this problem. His nonfiction book set in Missoula Montana, tells the hard story of the awful experiences rape victims are forced to go through in this college town in order for justice. He uses investigative narrative to lay out a story that both informative and sensitive towards the victims. Even though he is only focusing on a few victims placed in one college town it is obvious these issues have a much larger
A stressed college student, Margot, is walking back to her dorm late at night when suddenly she feels a tap on her shoulder. When she turns around, she sees a seemingly kind face of a peer. He offers to walk her to her dorm and asks to come inside. The next day she is still in shock from the night before, she never said no when he came onto her, but she never said yes either. She doesn’t want to cry rape in fear of what people might think. This is the harsh reality for college students all across the United States today. Nobody wants to believe that their child or friend could be guilty of such a harsh, but common crime. The truth is, these crimes happen on a daily basis. Sexual assault has been an issue on college campuses since the early
“Among undergraduate students, 23.1% of females and 5.4% of males experience rape or sexual assault” (RAINN). Rape is a threat virtually anywhere people go, but no place has a higher risk for sexual assault than college campuses. However, many of these occurrences go without penalties against the attacker, and even more are not reported at all. The lack of consequences for the accused indirectly suggests that rape and other forms of sexual assault are allowable and create further problems for the victims of the horrendous actions. Harsher punishments need to be given out for sexual assault on campus, as the current rulings are biased and immoral.
Recently while reading Rolling Stone and looking for an article for this paper, and came across an article called “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA.” In summary, a freshman at the University of Virginia was at a frat party and her date was a member of that certain frat. She chose against drinking which is uncommon in most rape cases that occur on campuses. He later asks her to join him upstairs, and being an innocent naïve girl she decided to follow him. As soon as she entered the dark room and he did not turn on the lights she knew that something was wrong. Soon after she heard many different voices in the room and after seven different frat boys did horrid things to her she understood that this was something that some of these boys were doing this as an initiation into that frat. Of course, her friends who were so-called ‘loyal’ to their college urged her to keep quiet for fear that “she may never be allowed in a frat again” or “put a bad light on the university.” Furthermore, the UVA is under a federal investigation to try to determine if there have been other cases of rape that may have been ‘swept under the rug.’ In this essay I want to investigate the psychology of rape and the rapist, why it happens largely in college campuses and specifically fraternities, and also to understand the “rape culture.”
Within the non-fictitious text of the documentary film The Hunting Ground, viewers witness an exploration of the issues, discourses, and institutional responses –or lack thereof- surrounding on-campus rape in American college and universities. Indeed, a large portion of the filmic text dedicates itself to exploring the overrepresentation of university athletes in perpetuating crimes of rape, sexual violence, and sexual assault against female students. Furthermore, the film seeks to delineate the ways via which university athletes are accorded an equal disproportionate level of leigh way when it comes to institutional responses, and public discourse surrounding crimes of rape and sexual violence. These discourses and institutional non-responses will serve as the starting point for this essay, Indeed, whilst most cases of rape -regardless of the perpetrator’s profession- still largely end in victim-blaming, cases of rape and sexual violence where the perpetrator is a professional and/or a university athlete produce a very nuanced and complex set of discourses. This paper will explore how these discourses, in and of themselves, are generated in a manner that circumscribe experiences of embodied masculinized athletic subjectivity vis-à-vis the rejection, perpetration, and penetration of that which is feminine or feminized.
College-age adults are known to be high risk for sexual violence and most studies show that one in three women have experiences some type of sexual assault whether it was through physical force or harassment. These statics are known by most women on college campuses to ensure that women know and understand that this could happen to them. The issue is more than ensuring that women are aware of how protect themselves and know how to avoid these situations because it shouldn’t even be happening. When women are taught that they should know how to defend themselves we are saying that this type of behavior is normal and inevitable. We should shift from this dynamic and start teaching both men and women that this behavior is completely unacceptable and that sexually assaulting or harassing someone is NOT normal. This paper will mostly focus on incidents of rape and sexual assault on college campuses and what the outcome and reactions of these incidents were.