Blog Post 4: Sound Methodologies and group discussion

In Tuesday’s lecture, we talked about methodologies regarding sexual assault. During the class discussion, we mainly discussed the cultural assumptions about relationship as well as the direct and indirect implication within these assumptions. We also discussed about how gender difference has contributed to these assumptions. Lastly, we talked about prevention of sexual assault. I think it’s interesting that man and woman hold different perception towards coercion. As the students explained, man tends to think there is an implied “yes” even when the women refused him. Thus even when she said no to him, he keeps pressing and demanding. And I believe that this character of man is not only culturally constructed, but also born with their nature. I not only noticed this demanding nature of man in American society but also in Asian society. But I don’t think people should blame man for having this nature, I think in the case of rape, people should blame man for having less self-control. I think the reason men are more forceful than woman is man always hold more power than woman. In the history of human civilization, men are always the dominator of society (in both Western and Asian societies), thus I wonder if their demanding traits and aggressiveness are inherited through generations of domination.

I also think it’s interesting that man and woman both hold certain gender advantage in the case of rape. Girls are weaker and gives more indirect responses when it comes to “yes or no,” thus they can always accuse the man for misinterpreting their answers or the message being suggested in their answer. Men, on the other hand, uses the “yes means yes” concept to defend themselves, because she didn’t say no so it must be yes, or because she said yes so it’s not rape, they both agreed to make the same choice. This is why students in class said the “yes means yes” notion puts girls in more dangerous situation when interacting with boys, because boys are likely to misunderstand the meaning “yes” implies. If this is true, then I wonder if we should blame the culture for making boys so “insensitive” and “forceful.” Even when boys have sensed the implied “No” beneath the surface answer “yes,” would they choose to give up their demands and put girls’ needs in priority? Maybe we should be aware that the whole “Yes means yes” culture, a culture that is constructed based off masculine desires, is leaving girls no protection. It is the “Yes means yes” culture that results in the ambiguity in cases of rape, and forces girls to question their decency. I think that men should work on accepting feminine values such as “yes means no,” and stop treating girl’s indirect culture as unrealistic or false information.Indirect culture is real even when boys don't see it

In class, students also talked about why people are so uncomfortable talking about rape or sexual assault. Many people in our class said it is due to the culture, because topic of rape is too personal, and it affects everyone once it’s addressed publically. I think it’s interesting how cultural values have complicated the issue of rape. Even when people are rapes and they know they need to stop this issue, and raising public awareness is important step for regulating the issue, they still don’t dare to talk about it, just because their culture has made them this way (into unlikely to talk about this problem). Again, I think American culture is problematic in some way, because it always views sex as moral issue, thus people would avoid talking about sex. The more they don’t talk about it the more they are ignorant about the issue and the longer it takes for them to figure out what actually happened and how to solve it. I can see how messy the issue of rape can be under people’s assumptions.