I could be mixing things up, so don’t take it to the bank, but I distinctly remember forming the impression it was an entitlement issue, which makes sense if they think there are situations where having sex with an unwilling partner isn’t rape – it would be because they feel somehow she owes it to them.

I also recall a really disturbing story told by a male baby boomer, in which he recounted being a teen in the 60s, and all his friends told him no didn’t mean no unless she, like, hit you or something. Naturally, girls are strongly conditioned not to hit people, and most wouldn’t have felt entitled to reinforce a “no” this way, so what this man was explaining is how there was probably a ton of date rape in his day that possibly neither party recognized as what it was.

It’s not so much that the definition of rape has changed as that our definition of women as humans with inalienable rights rather than the property of fathers and husbands has changed. (Rape definitions have changed, I’m just saying I think the central issue is whether society views women as property, humans, or humans who are obliged to sexually service other humans and therefore only have so many rights when it comes to sex.)

The truth is obviously somewhere in between. Perhaps I am just myopically naive because I can’t even visualize myself doing something like this and cannot understand how men would derive pleasure from it; however, I can’t imagine torturing a helpless animal but I acknowledge that some people do it. To a certain extent, although I would find the actual numbers defined by varying definitions interesting, their importance, I believe, would be rather meaningless compared to the aforementioned importance of teaching men to act like human beings.

It’s also extremely disturbing that this is the only work anyone’s ever done in an attempt to determine how many men are rapists. That right there – the fact that the DoJ has stats out the ear about how many people have been raped and what age and gender they are and race and so on, but they don’t have any clue what percentage of men are rapists? I find that bizarre. (Of course, I’d also like to know what percentage of people are murderers, and so on. There’s something wrong with criminology in general, there.)

On the other hand, college could provide a nearly perfect environment that fosters rape, particularly non-violent rape, with the ready availability of large numbers of inebriated women and the fraternity mentality, that is social acceptance of and pressure toward sex with women in this state. This could mean that this segment of the population has higher incidence than the average.

In any event, projecting a statistic taken from a survey of such a narrow segment of the population onto the entire country is bound to be flawed.

Father’s and mother’s say “Watch out. You know boys your age only want one thing! Don’t go out dressing like that, etc.” Thus, women are taught to fear and be submissive. I say submission because, in a sense, they are submitting their freedom in order to “not attract those men.” God forbid a woman wears a tight fitting top; how dare she entice the men.

If boys are taught to respect women, treat them as equals, not as objects, then perhaps this rapist issue could be helped a little. The current process seems the equivalent of letting a robber go free while bombarding the victim with “Don’t be driving around in a BMW! That’s just asking to me robbed. You know all robbers just want your money, etc.”