Blog Post 9: Stats and Facts group discussion

In today’s class, we talked about facts about false accusation, and underreported cases, as well as the reasons why so many cases of rape are underreported. Underreporting and false estimation can cause inaccurate statistics and facts. People can’t be sure how many rapes actually have happened locally or nationally. Thus people cannot know the scale of rapes; therefore they cannot investigate all the underreported cases. Again, the instructor mentioned how people can change the Kairos in order to solve the issue of rape. Students suggested that it’s important to change men and women’s attitude. Men, as the dominator of the society, tend to care about their own benefits, thus they can careless about women’s needs. Women tend to be dependent on men; they never take charge of the society, thus they tend to become weak and obedient. Both men and women should change their gender roles in order to alter the rape culture.

As I said in class, not only men, but also women need to change their cultural norms. Even though women are not responsible for rape, they are responsible for not being in charge. For instance, very few women work in American government; this is because women are less ambitious and confident as men, either they don’t think they can handle jobs in government, or not willing to. They tend to choose jobs that are suitable for women, such as teaching and nursing. Another girl in class said this feminine culture has led women being subordinate to men. Men have become the dominator in engineering, business, and federal government. And this partly is because women believe they shouldn’t interfere with these career fields. What if women want to be in charge, would they still give ambiguous or indecisive answer to men so that men get the chance to take advantage of them? I think the cultural construction is rooted deeply into people’s mind; women believe they should do what a woman should do and not cross that idea of being a woman. It is the culture which tells all the women to wear dress, put on makeup and look pretty; but none of these cultural norms for women are useful for self-protection. Women are helpless because they think they are less powerful than men, they are both spiritually and physically weak thus there is no way they can escape from a man. But to me, if society taught women how to protect themselves, they might have changes to escape from rape. It is the social structure and the society that suppressed women into obedient and dependent beings who don’t know how to say ‘No.’

I read the article Elizabeth posted. It was about the aftermath of rape and PTSD. The article shows that most of the victims feel dirty, humiliated, shocked, numb and emotional after knowing the sexual assault. Victims’ physical bodies also suffer soreness, dysfunctional eating and sleeping and genital problems. If victims are physically beaten they will have more pain and bruises. In my opinion, the fact that some victims are brutally beaten up can show how vulnerable women are in the situation of rape. A woman maybe can flee from one man, but if there are two or three men, she may not escape. So it is also important to be with more female friends when in a bar or at night, because if you’re alone guys will think it’s easy to get you, but when you’re with friends you may be safe at the time. I actually don’t get why men would still force themselves on women when they see how painful these female victims have become. Men should at least have some pity for the victims, and understand the seriousness of sexual assault. It is serious when a woman is raped and beaten up and has nowhere to seek for help. If society is going to change the power dynamic between men and women, it should start by develop the sympathy in men and teach men don’t just put their sexual desire at first and think about women’s feelings.