Campus Rape, Again

Anna

Above the fold, Sunday New York Times, another story about campus rape.  Again, the paper takes the tack every news organization takes on this subject: We are the muckrakers; we will tell the world about this simple, monstrous wrong which is being swept under the fraternity house rug by college administrations either too clueless to pursue rape charges or motivated by more venal things, like the desire to protect star athletes who are worth millions to the college.

And again, the story involves an 18 year old  coed who has A/ Gone to a party  B/ At a fraternity or some other place which is all about sex  C/ Drinks enough so that when she tries to tell her story, she has to admit there are significant parts of the evening she cannot recall.  Similar stories have come out of the Ivy League, the US Naval Academy--all across the college spectrum.

This particular story includes a comment from "Anna," the accuser, which may be relevant:  She finds herself at a college which is very "preppy" where she finds herself in competition for boys with girls who are "blonde and wear $500 sunglasses."  Does this suggest she may have behaved in a way to encourage male libidinous advances because she thought herself to be less attractive than her competition, or was this simply her way of trying to describe her situation?

When a woman is not at a college, and goes to a bar and meets a man who says, "Your place or mine?"  or "Would you like to come home with me, to look at my etchings?"  She knows she is being "propositioned."  That means, she knows she is not leaving the bar, getting into a car or a cab or walking home with a man to admire his furniture. She has accepted the idea of having sex with him. Or at the very least, she is agreeing to put herself into the position where she will be alone with this man, you wants to have sex with her.  This does not mean she cannot back out, once she gets there, but surely she bears some responsibility for what may occur next.

In Anna's case, she describes having danced by "grinding" her pubic bones into the pubic bones of the boy who she says raped her. She says she left the main dance floor to go up to a more "private" party in the bedrooms upstairs. 

She does not recall being bent over the pool table while the football player penetrated he from behind--an act witnessed by a friend, and apparently videotaped by others. She had drunk too much. 

But she does recall being traumatized.

Every case, the Phantom realizes is different, but there are some common factors here:  1. A woman who drinks so much she has impaired judgment and memory  2. A visit to a place where sex is known to occur at a time when sex is likely to happen.

Of course, if a man goes to a brothel, he ought not complain about women asking him for money, once he has sex.  If a woman goes to a fraternity party, and gets invited to a boy's bedroom, can she complain if he attempts to have sex with her?

Of course, nothing quite holds a candle to the infamous Brown University case where a fraternity brother returned to his room during a fraternity party to find a drunk, naked coed in his bed, he had never met before. He had sex with her, he admitted. They exchanged phone numbers the next morning, she admitted. Then she accused him of rape and the university committee hearing the case expelled the fraternity brother in his junior year.  

Tell me: What is the Phantom missing here?  Somewhere between "she had it coming; what did she expect" and "she was defenseless against this brutal assault" lies some area of sanity.  

That is not an area we inhabit now.