[[[[If we want to prevent sexual assault, we need to address attitudes that deny the full humanity of women..]]]]
Rather, we need to tell people that if they want sex, they should marry the person they have in mind. Anything short of this is using the other person.
No-one has a right to another's body unless he/she has given his/her life to that person in total commitment. Anything short of this is necessarily lacking respect for that person.
Anyone who covers the event with 'mutual consent', is kidding themselves.
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[[[We - parents, friends, neighbours,..leaders - need to equip them with the conceptual frameworks ...to have fantastic relationships...]]]]
Eh.......no thanks. We have the results of your conceptual framework. Now let's try the conceptual framework of the one who made us. Here it is: "He that fornicates sins against his own body" 1 Cor 6:18.

Now why does one sin against his own body when he/she fornicates? Simple. When you fornicate, you give of yourself into a union void of assurance. Like spitting into the wind, only worse.
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[[[[To think and act and speak as though we are all worthy of the utmost respect as human beings might also be a way of capturing the imagination of the boys who are trying to "get a bit" and the girls who are "putting out" for them.]]]]
The word "utmost", is an ultimate. You cannot have a partial, temporary, ultimate.
The only form of utmost respect when it comes to sex, is therefore the ultimate form of respect between man and woman: marriage.
If he/she is worth having intercourse with, then he/she is worth marrying. If you don't think he/she is worth marrying, then you necessarily hold him/her in some degree of contempt.
At the very least, you lack love toward him/her.

No-one is denying that sexual intercourse occurs often as a natural result of petting. I am not condemning such people, or such events. We are all human.
What I am condemning, however, is the teaching that promiscuous behaviour is legitimised by "consent".

TurnRightTurnLeft, I'll second CJ's post. Thanks.

I've been wondering what definition of sexual assault is used to arrive at the stated figure. At a guess the lower end could be anywhere from being made to feel uncomfortable sexually through to a physical assault. Is the prevelance of males doubting the figure noted earlier because males generally have different perceptions about what constitutes assault to those generally held by women.

When I read the term sexual assault I assume a physical assault of a sexual nature - how do others perceive this?

From the material referenced in an earlier post http://www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/statistics.html

"Since the age of 15, 32.5% of women have experienced inappropriate comments about their body or sex life, compared to 11.7% of men. 25.1% of women experienced unwanted sexual touching copared to 9.9% of men."

I'm wondering if men have been desensitised to "inappropriate comments about their body or sex life" to a greater degree than women. I'd be very surprised if only 11.7% of men had experienced such comments on the other hand it's easy to believe that we are subject to "unwanted sexual touching" at a much lower rate than women.

Mostly I like the article, there is food for thought in there and as far as I can tell it's not so much about the acts but the attitudes towards one another.

The author may focus on "degrading attitudes towards women" without attention to "degrading attitudes towards men" but that does not invalidate all of the message. She makes the point "We need to reclaim a sense of the preciousness of all people, women and men" which should be at the core of the issue.

R0bert

A 13yr old girl is not a woman.

Everyone and everything is objectified in a world dictated by material consciousness. Men are sexually objectified, in that subtle, veiled, plausibly deniable way in which women excel. Following traits = sexy man... caring, good with kids, tall, handsome, rich, powerful, athletic, can cook, clean, wash up, do laundry, plus the usual old fashioned female cheavenistic characterisations of masuclinity. Reducing men to mere utility value of women. Same crap, different bucket.

Chicken or egg stuff.

Its degrading to women to suggest that they are somehow inferior, in need of special consideration and oversight, lest they do something silly to themselves.

A bill is currently before NSW parliament which expands the definition of rape/sexual assualt. A woman under the influence of drugs (like alchohol) cannot give consent, thus a man who has apparent consensual sex is a rapist. BUT, if the man is also intoxicated, that is no defence, even if the woman is not, and he HAS NOT been raped. A classic example of reducing womens power, saying they cannot act independently and engage us on EQUAL terms. They need special protections of a flagrantly sexist bias. Denied of course.

Biggest pervuyors of female social stigma are FEMALES. Men dont give a rats about sexually active or 'easy' women, in fact WE LOVE 'EM. Its women who denegrate their 'slutty' or 'frigid' cohorts. 'Sluts' devalue the MANipulation power of sex, which women tend to trade on.

The most disempowering and perpetuating thing women can do is to forever BLAME men.

Until you account for yourselves and take the 50+% of the responsibility for the shape of society and gender relations, you will merely serve to make things worse... for yourselves.

Its getting to the point where many males are learning not to care anymore. And in a disgustingly pervertyed manner, this case stands as painful evidence of uncaring taken to disdain. Truely sad.

I agree with the author. The statistics she quotes does not surprise me and unlike commentators, I would tend to believe they are true. Not many girls would have the courage to report such crimes, not surprising given the pathetic slap on the wrists those teen aged monsters received for abusing a young lady.

One not only has to look at the media in all its forms and the message it perpetrates but also the so-called fashion, the majority of which is designed by men. This fashion does nothing but sexualises and disrespects women of all ages and in a sense rapes them again, by turning young ladies into ladies who do acts of hoares of the worst kind.

Yes women do need to take control of our own lives and destinations, but by jingo's there's a war of epic proportions to support and encourage young women to stay strong and not be abused, disrespected and assaulted. Women are assaulted by the media, male societal opinion, legal opinion and general degradation of values that taught respect to all including the elderly, women and to each other. No wonder everyone is out for themselves.

Fellow sisters we need to unite behind our young ladies and start taking the charge to reclaim their lives from veneral disease, teenage pregnancy and consequential abject poverty. we have to encourage these girls to start saying if the guys would like to be their boyfriend then the boyfriend has to earn the right for the young lady to be his girlfriend. make it tough for the them to get you, be downright picky - that way the guys just might smarten up the act, and not be such selfish, selfcentred Neanderthals

The publication of FBI profiler Roy Hazlewood and internationally renowned forensic psychologist Park Dietz's work "Detective Magazines, Pornography for the Sexual Sadist?" really impressed the profitable pornography industry with the idea that mixing sex and sadistic violence in pornography magazines was a very dangerous thing to do.

Hazlewood and Dietz were able to prove a link between the bizarre fictional stories presented in this magazine genre which featured sadism and bondage of women, to actual acts performed on abducted young women by serial sexual predators.

Non violent sex became the industry standard where sex was depicted as consensual, friendly and fun. it is interesting that this industry, constantly attacked by women's groups, does actually display social responsibility.

It is the movie making studios which refuse to acknowledge this. What is worse is that on screen sexual violence against women is now more realistic and graphic than anything the Detective magazines ever dreamed up. "Action" movies (read violent movies) suggest to their audience (young men) that sexual violence and sadism is fun.

Many movies today show women being murdered with "over the shoulder" camera angles which present the victim from the killers point of view and can hear him taunt his victim. We see the naked woman screaming for mercy as the knife goes in.

The FBI profilers claim that serial killers are increasing and that there are now 50 "working" serial killers in the USA today.

Is it any wonder why?

"And the end fact of the matter is that there is a degrading sexual attitude toward women"

So said TRTL.

We have had the scriptural view from Liberty.. and rightly so. But there is more.

Perhaps we are the victims of a degraded attitude toward sex generally? It has been reduced to a social/physical convenience.. a fleeting pleasure, a 'toy'....in fact speaking of 'toys' the sex industry is characterized by a proliferation of 'toys' to aid the fleeting experience.

In other words, the connection between sex and marriage, the secure, mutually responsible, mutually upbuilding context where you can have as much as you like... without limit apart from agreement with each other.. has been replaced by the fast and the furious, the one nighter, the 'mutual consent' for a moment of impersonal, pleasure.

I think that reducing humans of either gender to the debased level of a 'pleasure machine' is degrading.

We can be so thick headed, we just don't see it, nor get it...that our sexual capabilities and desires are really quite potentially dangerous. They can propogate our species and enrich our lives ....

OR....

mis-used: they can destroy us.

The tragedy to me, is that there are many out there, such as the 'EROS' foundation..the GREENS.. the DEMOCRATS...who simply seek to capitalize on the promiscuity, and try to gain political capital out of degradation, by re-branding it as 'choice'....simply to either reassure themselves about their own sex drives, or make others feel ok about theirs, and that for political advantage.

If everyone unleashed their sex drives or 'different' views about the subject onto the rest of us... we would truly be in the soup.