What Role Do Catholics Play in Combatting Rape Culture?

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Alex337 said:
And it doesn’t matter what a person wears either; they will still have this intimidating thrown at them. Last time I was catcalled I was wearing men’s shorts that went to my knee and were quite baggy, rugby socks and joggers, a trench coat and mens t shirt (I’d just finished gym and it was a bit brisk so I had my coat); I wouldn’t call this alluring. But it still happened.
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Yeah, I used to get it all the time when I was taking the bus. I lived up north, I might as well have been wearing a burqua for all the skin that was showing. It was cold and windy, exposed skin HURT. But the impression I got was the fact that I was female and alone was the primary reason I was targeted
Alex337 said:
I’ll be honest; a person being drunk doesn’t sound like “regretted giving consent”.
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There’s also some pretty good evidence that certain men will intentionally press drink on women, or intentionally seek out women who are too drunk to resist. There’s a reason pretty much every woman gets told to never accept a drink that wasn’t poured yourself or by a professional or someone you trust. Even if it’s not alcoholic, because some men will put alcohol in a drink that’s not supposed to be alcoholic for the purpose of taking advantage of a woman.

The thing is “drunk” covers a wide range. It gets everything from a bit tipsy to someone who is passing in and out of consciousness or unaware of what’s going on around them.
Alex337 said:
And I hate to say it but victims of date rape also get told that they are the ones who should have more situational awareness. Because it’s not just dark parks where women get raped. I still remember being warned when I got to college to always go to the bathroom with a friend at the clubs just to avoid that kind of thing.
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Oh yeah - I got it for being told I shouldn’t have been alone in a room with a boyfriend (a man I thought I knew and could trust).
 
Maybe they shouldn’t,if it’s a place that was really known to have them to occur.
If there was a gay rapist about preying in secluded parks ,I’m sure that police would warn men to be cautious/have situational awareness.
Telling women to be cautious isn’t in exclusion with making more important changes such as having harsher sentences for rapist-killer attacks,improving lighting in public areas or changing attitudes in men if that is what is causing this etc.

If telling women to be cautious was the only thing said and done,then of course this would be a problem.
However feminist types etc were quick to have outrage at police for simply telling us all to be cautious without understanding that this is just a minute part of the picture but they blew it up to be the whole picture.

Regarding date rapes,I haven’t heard much of this in the media but there was one instance of the “rich boy” Luke Lazarus (you might remember this).
I think the media was very sympathetic to the victim from what I remember.
I don’t know what made the (ironically female) judge make the judgment that she did (maybe money talks?) but Lazarus may have “won” in the courtroom but I’m pretty sure he didn’t win in the media or court of public opinion and while he may not have a jail sentence his reputation is definitely ruined (thankfully).

I think you were warned at college just because it’s a reality.
While ther are rapists around,no one wants to girl or woman to become their victim.
That doesn’t mean that at the same time we shouldn’t do things asap to change any bad cultures in college/anywhere else that it exists.
And a definitely doesn’t make a woman responsible if she did go into the bathroom by herself and something happened.
 
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It rings a bit of a bell.

The problem with telling women to be cautious and never telling men to be is the double standard it sets. It makes rape somehow the fault of the victim because she should have; not walked alone, not dressed like that, not drunk, not been out late, should have been on the look out for rapists, etc.

But when men are attacked we don’t talk about how they shouldn’t have been out at night, been drinking, should have seen it coming or anything like that. The blame rests squarely on the attacker. People may be cautioned (rarely) after the fact but the victim isn’t said to have failed at these things.
 
As an interesting thing when I first got to college we had a huge meeting where all the women went one way for a lecture that was, essentially, how to know what rape is and avoid it. I’m still impressed the guy running it managed to make it almost light hearted while giving great advice.

Meanwhile the men had another meeting. I found out later that theirs was more about understanding consent. Good topic and I’m glad it was given.

I think we need to learn this stuff, but women shouldn’t be held to blame for failing to stop their own rape. And the language media uses when addressing that needs work. Even in this thread I’ve seen the opinion that women being rape on themselves.

Which is an opinion I find insulting to both women and men. Men are intelligent people with self control. A rapist isn’t made into a rapist by a short skirt. A good man doesn’t lose his senses in a bestial rape frenzy because a woman shows her shoulders.
 
Alex337 said:
…It makes rape somehow the fault of the victim because she should have; not walked alone, not dressed like that, not drunk, not been out late, should have been on the look out for rapists…
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Well if the police had of said all that or had this line of questioning towards Eurydice,then I would definitely understand women being outraged.
However police never said this.All they said was to have situational awareness.The rest was misinterpreted to be those things you mentioned and for a person (or collective group of women) to be outraged over their own misinterpretation,or what they internally believe words are implied to mean,to me is just wrong/poor reasoning.

I see why you feel how you feel,but I’m not sure I see it this way.

Where was the victim of this instance said to be failed at anything?
Did someone make some comment/s in the media like “what was she doing there in the first place” etc that I’m not aware of?
If they did,that to me is victim blaming but police just caring about women/telling us to be cautious isn’t.
Rape is never th fault of anyone but the tapists ever,but telling women to be cautious is just prudent and matter of fact.
 
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I have held firm CONSENT talks with my sons, in age appropriate words, at age 10 and 17. For the little one it was tied to bullying/harassment, not really about sexual things, it amounted to the same teaching.

Otoh my rough-and-ready green-belt-karate mid-teen daughter relished the idea of getting grabbed so she could finally rightuously crush someone’s liver. Her chat was more along the lines of the dangers of pride and ’be aware you’re a target’.
 
I think the main problem was how the media handled it. The police put out warnings, it’s what they do, but the media handled it poorly.

It reminded me of how the media covered the school shooting in the US where the shooter shot a girl who he’d been harassing for some time. The news was sure to cover it as “girl who rejected boy is shot” rather than “boy harasses girl for weeks before shooting”; I’d have accepted “pursued” rather than harassed.
 
A lot of it is a balance case. There is a role for situational awareness. At the same time, well, it often seems that anything short of sitting alone at your house with a big dog and a gun under your pillow means you’re not doing enough. The concern is that living your life as a woman who isn’t chaperoned all the time means you’re not doing enough to keep yourself safe.

I don’t think any woman in the west is unaware that there are bad men out there. Any time a bad thing happens, there will always be something in retrospect that you could have done differently. But at some point that’s no way to live.
 
Yes,that’s the sad truth of the media.“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”
They always want to report things in the “sexiest” (ie:sensationising) way possible to sell papers or inflame emotions so that they can sell more and get more 💵 dollars 💵 caring little how it affects people.
Maybe we should petition for more responsible reporting in the media.
 
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When I went to college (Fightin’ Texas Aggie Class of 08) there was a phone number you could call if you had to walk alone across campus at night (its a pretty huge campus). A member of the Corps of Cadets would escort you so a girl or presumably also a guy didn’t have to walk alone. Building some chivalry into our systems helps.
 
It’s a nice idea, and I definitely support it, but it’s not practical outside of a residential college environment. When I went to grad school most of us lived off campus - and of course working various 2nd and 3rd shift jobs a lot of women worked those jobs.
 
Our uni had a shuttle bus that helped with that a bit but it was far from perfect.
 
Agreed. And most of the worst crimes happened off campus. Even just a block from it.
 
As long as porn is accepted and readily accessible to everyone, this will only feed Rape Culture.

There have been numerous neurological studies on how porn affects the brain. In all cases, the porn addict will always progress to more “hardcore” forms of porn which they may have been turned off from at the early stages of viewing. Fantasy rape, forced sex, humiliation, are or normal tags or categories associated with porn that will only feed aggressive behaviour.

You may have heard of the term Incels? These are angry young men who identify themselves as involuntary celibate. They hold an ideology similar to one taught at a young age by pornography. The idea that they are ENTITLED to a female body and they are to be used for self-pleasure. Porn had played a pivotal role in the development Elliot Rodger’s development from a privileged young man to a misogynist serial killer. Then we have Alek Minassian, the man who posted to Facebook “The Incel Rebellion has already begun!” just before he plowed a van into people in the streets of Toronto. How likely is it for someone to fantasize or commit rape if they are willing to kill out of sexual frustration?

As Catholics we need to stop categorizing porn and downgrading it as simply a sin and start informing one another of it’s true nature. Porn is a drug. It is a readily available drug that costs nothing and it will cripple the upcoming generation, causing addictions, mental illness, violent behaviour and most certainly rape.
 
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A lot of the criticism of many rape prevention ideas is also that, statistically, only about a quarter of rapes are perpetrated by strangers. An about equal number are perpetrated by a current or former partner, while the plurality are perpetrated by another individual known to the victim. Not walking alone at night won’t help keep a woman safe from a man she knows.
 
I also find it disappointing that some Catholics think this way (is it more American mentality?).
Guys see women in short skirts all the time at the clubs and while some might be “sleazy” they don’t rape them.
 
blackforest said:
I was wondering what you think of them, or if you have any of your own to add?
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The way to combat Rape is to aggressively prosecute the offense with actual detectives and prosecuting attorneys and penal servitude for those convicted.

“rape culture” is something that is used to denounce America’s College campuses as hotbeds for sexual assaults. And the “solution” usually given is to give college administrators wide latitude in chucking offenders out of school.

As far as this above is concerned, I disagree. Educators need to educate, there are detectives that are better trained and better positioned to deal with serious crimes. Expelling someone from the university for rape means nothing if the young man isn’t heading to the penitentiary. Expelling them just puts the community at risk
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It may be. I know a male friend of mine was recently speaking with a woman who expressed the opinion that men can’t help themselves. He’s a devout and chaste guy, it was pretty insulting for everyone involved.
 
Alex, my daughter once pointed out to a male friend that he should be insulted when lumped into the “men can’t help themselves” way of thinking. First of all, most men are able to control themselves. Second, it lowers men to nothing more than animals when people say they can’t control themselves and want to give them a “pass.” He said he hadn’t thought of it that way before.

I feel the same way about that on the dreaded “M” threads. People are not animals without brains and mere sexual beings. They can control themselves and are not victims by any means.
 
Part of the problem is there are fundamentally always going to be a LOT of cases that can’t be proved to legal standards. This is most common when consent is the issue, rather than the presence or absence of the sex act.

That puts us in something of a bad spot. Obviously it’s going to screw a woman up pretty badly if her choices are to continue to attend classes with her rapist or to drop out of school. But we also don’t want to relax our “beyond reasonable doubt” standards for the legal system. And sometimes we can prove it probably happened, but not that there’s no doubt it happened.
 
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