It turns out that not everyone thought UA student Rob Monteleone’s recent op-ed in the Arizona Daily Wildcat was sensible.
Students Promoting Empowerment and Consent (SPEAC), F.O.R.C.E., The Men’s Project, UA Campus Health Service’s Oasis Program Against Sexual Assault and Relationship Violence and the UA Women’s Resource Center have organized a rally from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. tomorrow on the UA Mall.
From the organizers’ Facebook event page:
Stop victim-blaming. Rapists are responsible for rape.
We invite you to speak up and speak out against sexual assault and victim-blaming on our campus.
Join us in responding to the recent Daily Wildcat article by making posters and sidewalk-chalking messages that support and empower survivors of sexual assault.
Monteleone got some love from feminist blog Jezebel, which highlighted his argument: “If drunk women who have sex are able to claim ‘rape,’ why aren’t drunk men alleviated of responsibility for the poor decisions they make?”
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2014.
I don’t think any women are claiming rape when they get drunk and have consensual sex. They’re claiming rape when they get drunk or pass out and some bastard rapes them. See the difference?
Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to comment on the original story. After reading it, however, it appears the author needs to improve his writing and reasoning skills, at the very least. The arguments he uses and the structure of his writing weaken his points. For example, he cites a statistic that says the National Institute of Justice says one in five women will be sexually assaulted, then he immediately mentions drinking — though the study never made any such conclusions.
Another example of weak support for his argument is in the following paragraph when he says, “College is full of being vulnerable around strangers. When stated like that, it seems like something you’d want to avoid, no?” If the author is so keen to avoid feeling vulnerable around strangers, then perhaps he should not attend a public university with 30,000-plus students from all over the world. And, if he is so keen to avoid feeling vulnerable around strangers, he should probably never do something crazy like join the Peace Corps, or the military, or travel outside his home country, or probably just go anywhere where there are people he doesn’t know who are different from him. But for most people, feeling vulnerable around strangers is part of having new experiences and getting out of their comfort zone. It’s how we grow as people.
Now, I’m not arguing the author’s points (though I’m also not saying I agree with him), but I am saying that if he could learn to write better and present his arguments with better evidence, then perhaps the backlash wouldn’t be so great. I agree that in a strong debate, unpopular opinions should be heard. But when the opinions are unpopular, it is perhaps even MORE important that they are supported with real evidence and not drawn as conclusions with no real evidence.