Transitioning Times

An  opinion piece  was recently published in Time calling for an end to the rape culture hysteria.  There has, of course, been some backlash from the feminist blogosphere.  Essentially, what the opinion piece says is that rapists should be held accountable for raping people.  Yes.  Absolutely.  We agree wholeheartedly...however.  If these rapists are not being held accountable by their schools, or law enforcement, or the criminal justice system at large, can we really attribute that to each of those individual people being incompetent?  What does it mean when every person a victim speaks to asks them weighted questions about their behavior prior to the assault?  What does it say about the messages young men receive when we have to have PSA's about victims needing to be awake to consent?  Doesn't this assume that these young men have received a contradictory message at some point?  That it's okay to take what you want from a p...

Did you know that fraternities are "the largest single provider of undergraduate housing in the United States?"  As such, fraternities have great power to influence the activities and culture on college campuses.  In a recent story on NPR , I learned that fraternities are insured.  Through this insurance, some research has been done about how to decrease their risk.  The number one claim against fraternities is assault and battery and the second is sexual assault of young women. In fact , 55% of gang rapes on college campuses are committed by fraternities. Consider that with these numbers, fraternities cannot be backed by a usual insurance company, they have had to self-insure through the Fraternity Risk Management Fund.  Instead of changing their culture to fit society's, and business's, rules of behavior, they created their own insurance fund, so that they could still exhibit this behavior, but also be protected from the cons...