thread for contemplating the serious issues raised by the Men's Rights movement

nothing in that article suggests that the "six percent" can identifiably be placed in one social group, and nothing in that research allows for respondents with different self-perceptions or willingness to confess sexually predatory behaviour

The article makes it pretty clear that the guys did not even believe that they were "confessing" sexually predatory behavior, because they didn't see what they did as wrong.

It's possible that there are other guys out there who rape, yet are aware of the wrongfulness of it and feel so ashamed of it that they wouldn't even admit it in an anonymous study, but it's hard to believe that that's a huge contingent.

which leaves the possibility of many other men with an awareness that their behaviour is wrong who might misrepresent themselves in this kind of survey

Again, just hard to believe that's a large number of men.

nobody claimed that shutting down frats would destroy this kind of collegiate rape culture once and for all. but i think it's weird that the most obvious exemplars of this culture on campus are like, official, recongized institutions who on many campuses have the nicest campuses. this, at least at my campus, seemed to give a ring of legitimacy to some really fucked up social environments, and i think this is less than ideal

i wdn't speculate on how sizeable that contingent is, obviously people as a rule like to present themselves in a flattering light

*nicest houses, not campuses

The existence of lad culture is definitely a thing but frat culture strikes me as a very shall-we-say 'organised' and matter-of-fact brand of institutionalised insidiousness - like an accepted and inescapable part of university culture in the US. I don't believe that lad culture is exacerbated by the NUS in the same way.

I don't mean the NUS as such, rather the way that student unions are the centre of student social life through nights such as shagtag or pimps and hoes or golf pros vs tennis hoes and so on. The UniLAD spirit wouldn't exist to nearly the same extent if student social life wasn't its own little world held within the confines of the student union building

yeah survey methodology is filled with examples of inaccurate self-reporting, esp in situations where the answers cast aspersions on the behavior of the person surveyed, i would guess the "oh no way i would never" contingent is unsettlingly large

I'm not familiar w the relationships that Greek orgs usually have with their colleges, but it seems to me that the point on which frats are problematic is the support they get from the university? Permission to have a house, permission to do whatever it is they do, and continue to have the permission of the university to do it. So in the event that a frat house IS the scene of a, or repeated, sexual assaults, it is in some sense with the backing of the school.

Also:

nothing in that article suggests that the "six percent" can identifiably be placed in one social group

it kind of does suggest that, actually, because it describes the culture in which it occurs. Maybe they're not all frats, maybe they're not all guys who wear Abercrombie and Fitch or whatever, they are just mostly group houses of guys who actively plan and encourage this sort of thing together. And this jibes very much with my college experience, where there was a certain "type" of party house associated with seeking anonymous flocks of freshman girls and serving them high-alcohol punch, and there were certain houses where that was very much not the culture - houses were more likely to be co-ed, most of the partiers knew someone in the house or knew someone who knew someone, inviting random freshmen was highly suspect, etc.

And like I said, it could happen anywhere, I just think it's a hell of a lot more likely to happen in a place where it's actively encouraged rather than looked down upon. If you live with the kind of people who see someone wasted and show concern for them getting home ok rather than thinking it's a great situation to take advantage of, your worst potential is a lot less likely to be realized.

my concern would be that by locating rape culture in a specific social setting you're distracting men who don't belong to that culture from examining their own behaviours and beliefs, which is more important

^^^ yes times 1000

but the study identified certain attitudes and types of social environments that are correlated with higher incidence of rape

we didn't "invite" anyone, we'd just put word out that we were having a party, and people would come...to drink our free booze. I'd guess that if other campus organizations had served free booze they'd have been popular too.

yes and those attitudes and social environments can be best described as "college aged men" which is the point you guys seem to be missing

xpost

a friendship group that is made up of both men and women is probably less likely to foster these attitudes than one that is all men. frats and sororities balkanize the sexes to an extent, at least among the kinds of people who would get involved in those sorts of orgs in the first place

like, getting rid of the greek system is just one way that i think some colleges could work toward promoting healthier gender dynamics in their schools, or at least signal that that is something they value.

I assure you that our parties did not balkanize the sexes. women and men doing keg stands and funneling, ~~~~~~~together~~~~~~

like call it bro culture or whatever you want, but bro culture of that sort isnt just frat boys high fiving its like theater peeps at cast parties and the cross country team end of the season party and like a million other things as well, maintaining otherwise is just creating a distance between your inclusive "good" kinds of post adolescent men and those rapey scum outside of your social identification

the shadiest dude we all knew about in school was a "cool" guy in the film school who was talented and smart and the opposite of bro culture, at least in terms of its cliched signifiers. he was discovered later to be a date rapist, maybe serially.

i get all of that, i really do, but i also think that there are ways to fight these attitudes if men and women are forced to encounter each other in normal, un-sexually charged situations, and see each other as fellow students and humans. i don't see that happening in frats. they are more impervious to reform.

i also knew a guy who was like that, omar. i know that bad people come in all sorts of cultural boxes. what i am saying is something else, i think, and doesn't foreclose upon that reality.

The only party I ever attended in college that had an Everclear-based punch option was thrown by the women's choir.

It seems like if most campus rapes are happening in peer groups that encourage it, that's pretty useful information that we might want to somehow employ in preventing campus rapes. I don't really see how recognizing that is dangerous -- I'm not letting off the hook the "artsy" type who is also a rapist, nor suggesting that college me never had to check his own behavior just because he didn't live with a bunch of "bros." Everyone should learn where the lines are, everyone should be discouraged from these behaviors.

Dan, I think the atmosphere at my gigantic state U was probably a little different from *your school.*

And yet, there is still a pervasive rape problem on the campus of my school. It's almost as if there's a deeper problem here that can't just be blamed on the existence of fraternities...

tbf frats smell bad

my tiny liberal arts college didnt allow frats at all and guess what

almost as bad as a rotten...................................................................................................................................................................... red herring xp

same here, JJJ. no frats allowed. but what i found out about campus rape blew my mind.

in fact with a little googling, it appears that my former institution had the highest number of sex offenses reported in the state based on the most recent Clery Act statistics available with 3.41 reports per 1000 students. for comparison the U of MN had .25 per 1000, and has a ton of frats.

man i want an emoji for "nodding my head emphatically in a 'right on DJP' kind of way" because dude has been on point forever in threads like these

before people go all in with the "well maybe that institution encourages reporting more than others" sure fine, but considering this whole discussion got spawned by statistics based on self-identification of sexual assualt we're pretty deep in the woods here already fact-wise

this was good:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/02/the-dark-power-of-fraternities/357580/

Sorry to belabor this point, but the statistics are NOT based on "self-identification of sexual assault" -- they're based on the descriptions of certain behavior by guys who mostly do NOT see what they do as sexual assault. Besides that, I really don't think frats are the point either, so we have no argument about that. The problem is, however, a "culture" that seems to especially thrive in groups.

so you think it's likely that there are more people dumb enough to not recognize what sexual assualt is than there are people smart enough to conceal their own misconduct? i dont buy it for a second

which makes the biggest issue wrt this article the very legit potential that the 6% it arrives at is woefully flawed and way under the real number

Sorry to belabor this point, but the statistics are NOT based on "self-identification of sexual assault" -- they're based on the descriptions of certain behavior by guys who mostly do NOT see what they do as sexual assault. Besides that, I really don't think frats are the point either, so we have no argument about that. The problem is, however, a "culture" that seems to especially thrive in groups.

ban groups

i was gonna say

like, if the general takeaway from the article is "wow that number is lower than expected and really focused on a very specific kind of perpetrator" that is more damage than good to society as a whole, and campus safety in general

No, I think the takeaway is "this is a common scenario and set of attitudes that often leads to rapes, so educate men about that scenario and those attitudes before they fall into them"

the other takeaway is that there's a common set of attitudes and a scenario that these people do not feel to be sexual assault

That wasn't really in response to jjj's point, but to an extent, yes -- this people are too dumb to know what they're doing is sexual assault, and they are associated with social frameworks that are sophisticated at sweeping such things under the rug, making them think it's ok.

so, little of column A, a lot of column B

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/09/false_rape_accusations_why_must_be_pretend_they_never_happen.html

wake me in 400 posts' time

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