I'd like to see police figures for campus rape. I'll bet they're significantly fewer (per population) than for the country as a whole.

That said, if any campuses or other places do have higher-than-average rates, I can think of things anybody can do that are almost certainly much more cost effective than another government program (whether or not the school is the agency in charge).

#1 would be to stock pepper spray at the college bookstore, and encourage women to carry it.

Amy did you read about the recent case of the Pakistani woman that was stoned to death by her family for marrying the man she loved?

The man spoke about how much he loved this woman, and his kids spoke about how much they loved her cooking. He was a widower before this incident.

Well they later interviewed her husband and he admitted he had killed his first wife so he could marry this other woman.

Jesus Christ did my stomach churn.

So what's this about campus rape?

Hey now, wutsa guy gotta do? See the 'looky' link here:

Honor killings in Pakistan are often mistakenly described as the product of Islamic law. Some reports on Tuesday described Ms. Parveen as the victim of a stoning — an image that conjures up images of Taliban-era executions of women accused of adultery — because she had been beaten to death with bricks.

But such killings more frequently stem from tribal traditions or deep-rooted cultural norms.

> #1 would be to stock pepper spray at
> the college bookstore, and encourage
> women to carry it.

I'm not a Gun's & Ammo kinda guy, but the older I get, the more I like the idea of women who pack heat. Pepper is for kitchens, and men know it.

For example, I want to admire the nation of India, but I'm tired of hearing about women being savagely raped there.

I bet if there were a lot of handguns freely available to women in India, the incidence of genuine human suffering would decline, no matter how many [new] stories we'd read about Saturday night muggings and the like (which are apparently somewhat rare at present, no matter how desperate their poverty).

So – is a tribal tradition the source of a religious practice or the result?
What's the difference? Are you really chastising Amy for not calling out every tribe and its practices by name?
I am pretty sure you're not approving of this, regardless.

Religion enables these killings. And it is behind the stoning-to-be of the pregnant Christian woman who was born to a Muslim father, making her an apostate (punishable by death under Islam).

So – is a tribal tradition the source of a religious practice or the result?
What's the difference? Are you really chastising Amy for not calling out every tribe and its practices by name?
I am pretty sure you're not approving of this, regardless.

Posted by: Radwaste at May 30, 2014 5:04 AM

If you are going to do anything with policy it is pretty important to get your cause and effect correct, or your solutions or mitigation so will be just so much pc bullshit.

Not approving of something, is just so much impotent finger waging.

You don't cure Typhoid by reducing the fever, because the fever is a symptom, not the cause of the problem.

The British got rid of Suttee in India, by making it extremely risky, and painful for the practitioners.

You can change culture at the point of a gun, as we did at the end of World War II in Japan (and we did it without eradicating either Shinto or Buddhism)

Religion follows culture, not the other way around.

#1 would be to stock pepper spray at the college bookstore, and encourage women to carry it.

This isn't just for rape prevention. My friend, Sergeant Heather, made me get some shortly after we became friends. In fact, I think it's time to upgrade the one on my keychain. I arm this whenever I'm approaching somebody on the street who makes my inner alarm go of, or when I'm in a parking garage, etc.

Here's a link to one. Forgive the pink/breast cancer "support" bullshit, which I criticize in the book. (You support somebody with breast cancer by showing up or by writing a check to fund research, etc., not by buying, say, yogurt with a pink lid.) It's just that this comes in a package and is testable every few years.

SABRE RED Police Strength Pepper Spray - Compact, Pink Case with Quick Release Key Ring & 25 shots, 5Xs more than the competition for max protection

How do you prevent a fictional event from happening? As numerous commenters have pointed out lately, the commonly-quoted statistics for campus rape and sexual assault are way out of line with stats for the same crimes in America's highest-crime neighborhoods. Either our colleges have a crime wave going that would make Compton blush, or somebody's got some 'splainin to do.

As far as how to prevent rapes in general? The one woman I've ever talked to who was a rape victim and was willing to talk about it, told me that it was committed by a guy she knew socially and had been out with a few times. (And as she tells it, it was an out-and-out rape... he used a weapon to force her to comply.) She said that, asking around later, people who knew him all described him as a sociopath, but she had not sussed that out in her interactions with him prior to the rape. So my recommendation is, and I think this would help with a lot of other social problems too: we need to teach our chiildren, from an early age, to spot Cluster B personalities and avoid them. And we need to do whatever we can to arrange our culture so it minimizes rewarding narcissistic behavior.

Also, while I'm here: Ppen did a great job of putting things in perspective.

You can change culture at the point of a gun, as we did at the end of World War II in Japan (and we did it without eradicating either Shinto or Buddhism)

That's a lot easier to do when you can get the descendant of the goddess to admit that he's just a man, like any other. There's a reason why we didn't execute the Emperor.

Who can get Mohammed to admit he was off his meds when he was busy writing the Quran? it will be easier to get the Roman Curia to eliminate ex cathedra than it will be to erase the notion that the Quran is the literal word of Allah.

Gun point or no. Your best bet is to destroy one of Islam's holy sites, as it is claimed that Allah will not allow that to happen. Heads will explode, but that popping sound is just a paradigm shifting without a clutch.

Also, a relevant linkie by KC Johnson about Duke's rape process.

The one woman I've ever talked to who was a rape victim and was willing to talk about it, told me that it was committed by a guy she knew socially and had been out with a few times.

Excellent point, and that's what makes it so tricky when we talk about prevention. "Stranger-in-the-dark-alley" situations are very rare (and also practically impossible to prevent, unless we enact campus curfews that force everyone to be in their dorm room at sunset). A friend of mine took a guy in her study group (who she'd been hanging with all semester and who had driven her home several times without incident) up on his offer to walk her to her car. He tried to overpower her. I'm not talking verbal come-ons and coercions here (he pushed her against the car and bashed her head). She managed to scream and run. Any "rape prevention" and snake-oil "8-week self defense for ladeez" program will tell to walk home with a male friend whenever possible. But that didn't work.

And having "prevention" workshops where college students are encouraged not to drink or go to parties will, I guarantee, be a waste of money and time.

Amy often has recommended "The Gift of Fear," an AMAZING book on personal safety -- written by someone who has an actual understanding of violence (sexual and otherwise). I'd be all for making it required reading for all college students (I bought copies for a bunch of my friends).

Who can get Mohammed to admit he was off his meds when he was busy writing the Quran? it will be easier to get the Roman Curia to eliminate ex cathedra than it will be to erase the notion that the Quran is the literal word of Allah.

Mohammed did not write the Q'ran. It was compiled from his teachings years after his death. Very little of Mohammed's teachings from God were written down, so most of the Q'ran was compiled through oral tradition.

The real problem is the Hadiths and their literal acceptance in Islam. The Hadiths were composed decades (even centuries) after Mohammed's death.

Since Mohammed was the last prophet, any questions left unanswered by the Q'ran had to be answered by Q'ranic scholars. They looked to Mohammed's example for guidance. This guidance was consolidated into the Hadiths.

If Mohammed advocated doing something, or approved of something done in his presence, or spoke against something, that became part of Islamic teaching - despite that teaching not being sent directly from God.

The thinking was that if God chose Mohammed to be His messenger, it was because he was a righteous person, so following his example would guide people closer to God.

Wikipedia: "The hadith literature does not qualify as primary source material as it was compiled from oral reports that were present in society around the time of their compilation, well after the death of the Prophet Muhammad."

Adding to the problem is that Sunni and Shi'a hadiths differ "because scholars from the two traditions differ as to the reliability of the narrators and transmitters. Narrators who took the side of Abu Bakr and Umar rather than Ali, in the disputes over leadership that followed the death of Muhammad, are seen as unreliable by the Shia; narrations sourced to Ali and the family of Muhammad, and to their supporters, are preferred. Sunni scholars put trust in narrators, such as Aisha, whom Shia reject. Differences in hadith collections have contributed to differences in worship practices and shari'a law and have hardened the dividing line between the two traditions." [Wikipedia]

Several Islamic scholars have decried the hadiths as fabrications, false attributions, and called them sectarian - saying they are not legally binding on Muslims. Most of those scholars have been declared apostates.

Even the Roman Curia has placed conditions in order for papal utterances to be considered an ex cathedra teaching. If the pope says butterscotch pudding is "divine" and urges that it be served at Mass, that doesn't mean it will become a sacrament by next week.

On the other hand, if Mohammed declared something "divine" in passing, it became part of the oral tradition and later part of the hadiths.

But he was schizophrenic.

My dad is schizophrenic and he has gotten people to believe his delusions, which always amazes me.

"And having "prevention" workshops where college students are encouraged not to drink or go to parties will, I guarantee, be a waste of money and time."

Rape prevention workshops have never been about actually preventing rape.

They are about keeping psychology, sociology, and women's studies majors employed at colleges and universities, where they provide no value to the institution, but look very good on diversity spread sheets.

"That's a lot easier to do when you can get the descendant of the goddess to admit that he's just a man, like any other. There's a reason why we didn't execute the Emperor."

This is a very simplistic, and not particularly accurate version of what the United States was able to do in post war Japan, and how they did it.

The truth is, that in order to not end up with a country ungovernable, and in full rebellion, we spared the Emperor, and he gave his backing to the MacArthur military government.
If you understand enough about Japan and the war in the Pacific, to appreciate it, this is one of the best books on the reconstruction and occupation of Post War Japan.

http://www.amazon.com/Embracing-Defeat-Japan-Wake-World-ebook/dp/B007X02T0E/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2PLN9ER0NO1DE&coliid=INRZ4M0YHOOUU

Rape prevention workshops have never been about actually preventing rape.

Agreed on the useless factor (although luckily nobody was getting paid to conduct them at my school -- it was a student volunteer group that got permission to take up two hours of freshman orientation). They did emphasize that both men and women should converse about consent before getting busy -- and nobody can say that's not good advice.

But then it devolved into "You don't NEEED to hook up at parties! Stay in your dorm and play boardgames! Don't touch that yucky alcohol!" Yeah, OK, that's going to happen. At college.

The only other "prevention" program offered by my school was the self-defense based RAD program (which is offered by campus police at a lot of schools). It consists of teaching women to flail and punch at male volunteers wearing an eff-ton of padding and then feel all "empowered" about being able to fend off an attacker.

> Religion enables these killings.

You have more faith in unseen forces than any beliver.

"... it was a student volunteer group that got permission to take up two hours of freshman orientation.... But then it devolved into 'You don't NEEED to hook up at parties! Stay in your dorm and play boardgames! Don't touch that yucky alcohol!'" - sofar

Maybe the presentation should have been only one hour long.

@"I bet if there were a lot of handguns freely available to women in India, the incidence of genuine human suffering would decline"

^ This.

Besides, you're watering your argument. (At last.) Anything which doesn't interfere with "these killings" also "enables" them.

The weather enables them. The new fashions in Paris enable them. Candy Crush enables them, and so does Morton Salt.

I'll just never understand why you can't take the totality of lives as context for anything.

I think what's going on is maybe you feel guilty for being such a rich & happy American... It's easier to pretend the problem is neatly contained in the word religion (of which your understanding is binary and naive).

(Sorry, don't usually post silly 'this' comments, I think that was more about that I actually sometimes agree with Crid.)

> Are you really chastising amy for not
> calling out every tribe and its practices
> by name?

No... Why would you think I was?

That wasn't a rhetorical question. I want you to cite the text that made you ask.



I'm chastising Amy for being destructively simplistic, and for choosing her positions (as if) to make herself look good.

I hate when people do that. When otherwise sophisticated people do it so shamelessly, with such childlike transparency, it's doubly offensive.

But then it devolved into 'You don't NEEED to hook up at parties! Stay in your dorm and play boardgames! Don't touch that yucky alcohol!'" - sofar

Well, there are collective subventions to higher education up the wazoo, the time students spend in the ambo of higher education is padded by distribution requirements, the modal type of institution is the residential college or university where we collect late adolescents in one cesspool with limited supervision, most students have brief extracurricular work schedules (if any at all), and the surrounding culture is hopelessly decadent.

--

If we had any sense, youngsters would live with their families or in modest group quarters with friends, work full time, and complete their schooling on the side between the ages of 18 and 23 with a mix of special enrollments to test waters and part time study composed strictly of courses in a given subject area.

Of course, the number of people employed in higher education would have to decline by a third, a large mass of residential colleges would have to close (esp. private colleges with no particular niche or cachet), the census of the arts-and-sciences faculty would have to decline by half, and the faculty at all those research institutions would have to lose two-thirds of their doctoral candidates. Higher education is the most successful of our organized appetites.

...By which you mean to say that it's unchecked cancer.