why is this a common story?

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I grew up in a very strict home with parents who constantly tried to instill their sense of morality in me. I still snuck out on a regular basis. Being a good parent is often not enough to turn children into responsible teens. Teens will do stupid things no matter how you raise them. You cannot be watching your children every moment of every day, and if you try, it will only cause resentment.

As for putting yourself in stupid situations, it is not something that is always avoidably for a lot of people. I have been mugged more than once. It was dark and I was walking through a bad neighborhood. But I live in a bad neighborhood, and my classes are at night. Should I just not take night classes because it could put me in a dangerous situation? Moving to a new neighborhood is not an affordable option.

Because people are monsters.

"It will ONLY cause resentment"

VERY strong words here, and I don't buy it.

Half the point I've been trying to make is that I understand being a good parent--and by that, I mean a "good parent" by the standard of being a "strict" parent, a lax parent, or anything in between--is no guarantee that the kids will turn out the way we as parents want them. Parenting style is irrelevant EXCEPT when it comes to parental response to misbehavior. I'd like to think I'd be a laid-back parent UNTIL my children give me reason NOT to be. If I can't "turn children into responsible teens," then the least I can do is be responsible FOR them when they are unable to be responsible for themselves.

Freedom for those without freedom must be earned. Freedom that is GIVEN must be handled responsibly if one means to retain it. Just because one possesses freedom doesn't mean that freedom itself is free. The prison system is an excellent example of freedoms that can be taken away.

And there ARE ways of monitoring children at all times. Parents only need to be willing to do what it takes. That kids cannot be that closely monitored is a myth, and I'm afraid way too many parents fall for it.


I agree 100% and am not ignoring this fact. I take my kids to a park every Friday, at least as much as I possibly can, because I think it's important for them to interact with other kids, and not necessarily the same kids they go to school or church with. It does worry me a little that the park is considered a dangerous area and there are a number of questionable characters there. Not going, unfortunately, is not as good an option as going, though. So given those facts, each situation is unique and must be understood reasonably.

Your situation isn't that much different...you are where you are because you HAVE to be there. What I was referring to were alternatives when given those choices. Going to a wild party in which sex, illicit drugs, and alcohol are top of the menu and considered by party-goers and organizers to be virtually compulsory is not the best idea if your idea of fun isn't to be pressured into sexual situations or even forced into them. Setting aside the fact that girls in these situations do NOT ask to get raped, the girls in these kinds of situations do not HAVE to go. Getting raped is not their fault; BEING THERE, however, IS. I can understand how in one's mind people might be less sympathetic than they might be if a man forces his way into someone's locked house and rapes a girl--a situation in which those circumstances are deliberately being avoided.

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/05/florida ... r_assault/

So, in your view, the problem here is rooted in the man's personality or in the society he is a part of? What's the point you're trying to make here? What are you trying to prove? That some humans are despicable? Or that women have it worse than men because women could never resort to such behavior?

That's more of a 'why women don't report rape to the police,' article. This is one of the more egregious cases I've seen, but it's notable more for the fact that the officer in question was fired than for the fact that he harassed a rape victim.

That case is pretty horrible.

But under ordinary circumstances it utterly confounds me in the culture we live in why it is reporting rape is so difficult. Part of the way we were brought up in school was to report anything, and by that I mean ANYTHING that was even remotely improper. I suspect that more than half of sexually active men are probably lucky they aren't in prison because of something that so easily could have been misconstrued as rape.

Why is reporting so difficult? Because, like you, a lot of men react by saying, 'what were you doing out there with that man at that time? What did you think was going to happen? Even to a 14 year old.

Women can say that as well. Why exclude it to men?

Also, if a son hangs out with a shifty woman and ends up being robbed of money and beat up by her boyfriend, there will be people who will say to him what he was doing hanging out with that girl and that he should've avoided the whole drama by staying away from her.

Not as much to do with gender as you might think.

Do you think that a lot of people would say that about a 14 year old boy? If so, they're a**holes.

Very common in my culture.

But no, I don't agree that they're a**holes. People say this stuff out of fear and self-blame rather than to put the son/daughter down.

Here is another situation to ponder:

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/wo ... ith-bride/

Well? Do the Feminists think that Mrs. Huang was raped? Do the non-Feminists think that Mrs. Huang yelled "Rape!" to avoid an adultery accusation?

I don't think that it was rape (at least, assuming that it was dark enough that neither one could see the other); I do think that, if she hadn't said that it was rape, she would have been cast out by her new husband and possibly her family as well. It's too bad that there's such a high value placed on female chastity. Note that the couple demanded "compensation," i.e., financial recompense for the lost value of sleeping with Ms.Huang first.

There was a case in Israel a couple of years ago where a young Jewish woman was ruled, in court, to have been raped by a Palestinian man who pretended to be Jewish to get into her pants. She said that she had been raped when she found out his actual ethnicity. I don't think that qualifies as 'rape' either.

How non-Feminist of you.

You had better hope that no-one from the NOW is monitoring this discussion.

If the guy didn't know it was her and just thought he got really lucky or if he thought maybe she'd rather have him than her husband then I would see it as an unfortunate mistake. If he knew it was her thinking it was her husband that just might be rape. If the same had happened but he got her husband to leave and hid in the bed of the husband and wife to trick her into thinking it was him I'd say it was definitely rape.

If I imagine it happening to me I think I would feel like I was raped if I had sex with someone thinking it was a certain person but it turned out it was a different person that no consent had been given to (assuming the person is someone I'd never want to have sex with). Whether or not it's prosecutable is a whole different matter.

I don't know exactly how bad things are in that country but if she hadn't said it was rape her husband probably would have left her. Some countries are so bad that even if it actually was a forcible rape the woman gets punished.

The lesson to learn here is to turn the light on and check who they are before you get in bed with someone and have sex with them in a dark room.