Friday, March 31, 2006
Once again Duke shows how classy they are..
As I'm sure you have heard, Duke's lacrosse team has been accused of gang raping a "exotic dancer" last weekend. While those of us who weren't there don't know what really happened, I think this thing is incredibly ridiculous. First the girl should have been smart enough to know that this was not a good situation to get yourself into: group of horny college guys who were probably drinking watching you dance. Did you really think that nothing would happened? Girls need to have some common sense about the places and the situation they get themselves into. Second, the news has been ridiculous about it...if the boys are innocent, they have basically been proven guilty by the media who refuses to give up the story (I mean really, they say the same thing over and over again at 6 am, 12 pm, 5 pm, and 6pm) . Personally I'll just be glad when it's all over with.
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2 comments:
that doesn't mean she deserved to be raped
Shannon,
You have now confirmed further evidence that women are must tougher on the judgment of other women. I watched a case in Texas in which a jury let a man (21 years old) off on in a sexual assault charge. Brief facts - Girl (18) works at Outback. Goes over to co-workers apartment after work. Drinks with three guys whom she knows from work only for the past two weeks. She drinks a bottle of vodka in roughly 1 1/2 hours. She remembers vaguely being passed out on the couch with one, maybe two of the guys having sex with her at some point during the night. Amazingly the eight men on the jury wanted to convict, while the four women believe it was bad judgment on behalf of the girl, essentially as you said, she should have known better. Being shocked at this outcome I asked Christine and Carol and they both independently came to the same conclusion; the girl should have never have been with three guys she hardly knew, and much less drink with them. After some thought I speculated a few reasons why men tend to hold other men at fault while women hold women to a higher standard. First, men have no concept of what I will call "the social etiquette of sexual advances." Most men have never been hit on in any manner that overt connotates sex. Secondly most men don't understand the concept of a dangerous situation in terms of sexual exploitation. Sure men know that going into a "biker joint" might get you beat-up, but the idea of rape is foreign. Men see themselves as the sexual instigators and advancers. Women are seen as resisters and most men will give women the benefit of the doubt that the women either resisted or she was too innocent to know what she was doing (by getting into the situation in the first place). This is the "daughter complex." Men envision their daughter in the case at hand. The idealist and altruistic mind of a father imputes the innocence into the female (complaint/victim) of the case. While the father sees the men or boys charged with rape as testosterone laden stereotypical males whose whole goal is to score by the nights end.
My take on the case as a male was to believe that the guys should not have taken advantage of her and should have treated more as another guy. Think how the case would differ if, say instead, that the girl was a boy. He went over to the house with some guys he just met from work. They all got drunk. He passed out on the couch and vaguely remembers someone having sex with him. If men and women really have equal treatment under the law, then why are women held to a higher standard. Simply put, it's life experience. Women know what sexual danger feels like, most men don't. Women know when to take precautions, while men wouldn't.
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