ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 13, 1996 TAG: 9601150021
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
WHEN IS it OK to rape someone?
In one survey of 11- to 14-year-olds, it's OK:
With 51 percent of the boys and 41 percent of the girls if the boy has "spent a lot of money" on the girl.
With almost one-third of both boys and girls if a man rapes a woman who has had sexual experience.
With 87 percent of boys and 79 percent of girls if the man and woman are married.
With 65 percent of boys and 47 percent of girls if a boy and girl have been dating for more than six months.
These appalling responses were given in a survey cited by the American Medical Association recently as it launched a campaign both to improve the ability of health-care professionals to recognize and respond to sexual trauma, and to force society to confront what AMA President Lonnie Bristow calls "a silent, violent epidemic" in this country.
The attitudes of children just starting to develop sexually reflect the ambivalent message they're getting - either at home or in the popular culture, or both - that rape is a crime, but only sometimes. If one survey is less than convincing, consider:
Thirty-five percent of male college students surveyed for another study anonymously admitted they would commit rape under certain circumstances, if they thought they could get away with it. One in 12 admitted to acting in a way that met the legal definition of rape. Eight-four percent of these, however. did not call their actions rape.
So is this just a problem of shifting definitions in the age of political correctness?
Not according to the results of a separate study, in which 43 percent of college-aged men admitted to using coercion to have sex, including ignoring a woman's protest and using physical force. Fifteen percent admitted to having committed acquaintance rape, and 11 percent to using physical restraints to force a woman to have sex.
The National Victim Center reports that more than 700,000 women - 61 percent of them under 18 - are raped or sexually assaulted in the United States each year, most of them by people they know.
Rather than a P.C.-driven oversensitivity about sexual aggression, the AMA attributes these horrific numbers to greater acceptance of violence in personal relationships, adversarial stereotypes of man-woman relationships, sex-role stereotyping and continued widespread acceptance of the usual, long-fought and false myths about rape: Victims who truly resist can't be raped; no doesn't mean no; "she asked for it;" and only women can be raped. In fact, the American Adademy of Pediatrics estimates, 5 percent of sexual assault victims are male.
The AMA is urging emergency and primary-care physicians to look for and treat sexual trauma, and to provide preventive education, particularly to adolescents, to help them avoid becoming victims.
Society must re-educate would-be victimizers, too. Widespread acceptance of sexual violence among children reflects disturbing attitudes in the adult world, which children strive mightily to emulate. The mirror that their young eyes hold up to us are reflecting a violent turn in the age-old battle of the sexes - as seen in their own lives, or in a popular culture that parents are not adequately sheltering them from.
Children should know the answer, the only answer, to the question: When is it OK to rape someone?
Never.
LENGTH: Medium: 70 linesby CNB