Kaiduorkhon
Registered Senior Member
Transforming a Rape Culture.
Rape is difficult to quantify because the crime is notoriously under reported. According to a government finances survey released by the National Victim Center in 1992, a criminal rape happened to seventy eight women in the U.S. every hour of 1990. Perhaps more to the point, almost every woman lives with the terror that a rape could sometime happen to her. There are significant odds that it already has. Research by Sociologist Diana E. H. Russell based on face-to-face interviews with 930 residents of San Francisco - selected at random from a scientific probability sample of households - found that forty four percent had suffered a criminal rape or an attempted rape at least once in their lifetime (reported in her book, 'Sexual Exploitation, Rape, Child Sexual Abuse, and Workplace Harassment'). The National Victim Center study - which did not tabulte rape attempts - found that thirteen percent of U.S. women have been criminally raped at least once in their lifetime. Extrapolating from both studies, there is a rape-survivor population in the U.S. of somewhere between twelve million and forty one million living Americans (National Crime Victim Center, page 2).
Rape is a crisis of national security if anything is. For any political candidate who is concerned with the safety of all the folks who live here, rape would seem to be a problem that desperately needs solving. Living in fear of forced and violent sex is much like living in a state of siege in occupied territory. Yet one candidate after another will declaim about defending this country's interests against foreign aggressors. Why doesn't local, home-grown, day-in-and-day-out sexual violence against women make it even to the bottom of their list of major social policy questions?
Imagine candidates stumping for public office debating how best to stop rape. Imagine them inspiring us with new ideas and new programs to eliminate crimes of sexual violence completely. Imagine them promising bold and innovative leadership to set a national priority to 'denormalize' rape, to refute myths about rape through all the mass media, to educate young people about personal rights and bodily integrity throughout the public school system, to create a national climate of opinion in which ending rape matters - because it gets talked about and cared about, and people take it seriously. Even among groups of men there would emerge a new kind of peer pressure, discouraging rape, rather than encouraging it, labeling coercive sex as one of the most uncool things a guy can do. Imagine a candidate declaring on national television, "As president, I will commit the resources of my administration to making the United States a rape-free zone."
Sounds utterly far-fetched, but why? Why isn't stopping rape an election issue?
There used to be a National Center for Prevention and Control of Rape. There isn't anymore. In 1986, because of the Reagan administration's budget cuts, this federal agency was absorbed into another, the anti-social and violent behavior branch of the National Institute for Mental Health.
There used to be a National Clearing House on Rape. There isn't anymore. In 1986, because of the Reagan administration's budget cuts, it was quietly defunded.
These offices were not closed because the U.S. rape rate - which is the highest of any Western Nation (Arthur F. Schiff, "Rape in Other Countries", Medicine, Science & Law 11, no. 3 - 1971, pp. 139 - 143) - had suddenly plummeted. Far from it. The FBI acknowledges that the rate of criminal rapes in 1990 was twelve percent higher than in 1986, and 24 percent higher than 1981 (FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1990). In one year alone, between 1990 and 1991, that rate rose fifty-nine percent ('Survey of Victims shows Increase in Violent Crime'', New York Times, 20 April 1992, p. B12).
- Exerpted verbatim from pp. 216 - 217, Transforming a Rape Culture, Copyright 1993 Milkweed Editions. Edited by Buchwald, Fletcher & Roth.
Back cover: "This groundbreaking work seeks nothing less than fundamental cultural change: the transformation of basic attitudes about power, gender, race and sexuality. In Transforming a Rape Culture, thirty seven extraordinary writers unite to create a sourcebook of visions for a future without rape, strategies to get us there, and programs for action to end sexual violence."
- Kai
Rape is difficult to quantify because the crime is notoriously under reported. According to a government finances survey released by the National Victim Center in 1992, a criminal rape happened to seventy eight women in the U.S. every hour of 1990. Perhaps more to the point, almost every woman lives with the terror that a rape could sometime happen to her. There are significant odds that it already has. Research by Sociologist Diana E. H. Russell based on face-to-face interviews with 930 residents of San Francisco - selected at random from a scientific probability sample of households - found that forty four percent had suffered a criminal rape or an attempted rape at least once in their lifetime (reported in her book, 'Sexual Exploitation, Rape, Child Sexual Abuse, and Workplace Harassment'). The National Victim Center study - which did not tabulte rape attempts - found that thirteen percent of U.S. women have been criminally raped at least once in their lifetime. Extrapolating from both studies, there is a rape-survivor population in the U.S. of somewhere between twelve million and forty one million living Americans (National Crime Victim Center, page 2).
Rape is a crisis of national security if anything is. For any political candidate who is concerned with the safety of all the folks who live here, rape would seem to be a problem that desperately needs solving. Living in fear of forced and violent sex is much like living in a state of siege in occupied territory. Yet one candidate after another will declaim about defending this country's interests against foreign aggressors. Why doesn't local, home-grown, day-in-and-day-out sexual violence against women make it even to the bottom of their list of major social policy questions?
Imagine candidates stumping for public office debating how best to stop rape. Imagine them inspiring us with new ideas and new programs to eliminate crimes of sexual violence completely. Imagine them promising bold and innovative leadership to set a national priority to 'denormalize' rape, to refute myths about rape through all the mass media, to educate young people about personal rights and bodily integrity throughout the public school system, to create a national climate of opinion in which ending rape matters - because it gets talked about and cared about, and people take it seriously. Even among groups of men there would emerge a new kind of peer pressure, discouraging rape, rather than encouraging it, labeling coercive sex as one of the most uncool things a guy can do. Imagine a candidate declaring on national television, "As president, I will commit the resources of my administration to making the United States a rape-free zone."
Sounds utterly far-fetched, but why? Why isn't stopping rape an election issue?
There used to be a National Center for Prevention and Control of Rape. There isn't anymore. In 1986, because of the Reagan administration's budget cuts, this federal agency was absorbed into another, the anti-social and violent behavior branch of the National Institute for Mental Health.
There used to be a National Clearing House on Rape. There isn't anymore. In 1986, because of the Reagan administration's budget cuts, it was quietly defunded.
These offices were not closed because the U.S. rape rate - which is the highest of any Western Nation (Arthur F. Schiff, "Rape in Other Countries", Medicine, Science & Law 11, no. 3 - 1971, pp. 139 - 143) - had suddenly plummeted. Far from it. The FBI acknowledges that the rate of criminal rapes in 1990 was twelve percent higher than in 1986, and 24 percent higher than 1981 (FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1990). In one year alone, between 1990 and 1991, that rate rose fifty-nine percent ('Survey of Victims shows Increase in Violent Crime'', New York Times, 20 April 1992, p. B12).
- Exerpted verbatim from pp. 216 - 217, Transforming a Rape Culture, Copyright 1993 Milkweed Editions. Edited by Buchwald, Fletcher & Roth.
Back cover: "This groundbreaking work seeks nothing less than fundamental cultural change: the transformation of basic attitudes about power, gender, race and sexuality. In Transforming a Rape Culture, thirty seven extraordinary writers unite to create a sourcebook of visions for a future without rape, strategies to get us there, and programs for action to end sexual violence."
- Kai
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