What an ASS. Sometimes I am baffled by how much women hate women.

On that note, Heather is a bullshit name.

Fuck her. Fuck her. Fuck. HER. Even if they were being inflated, I think this is the one place where it's probably not a big deal, cause the higher the number the better prepared a school is to take care of things and help out the students right?

Is she gonna argue the number of people who died in the Holocaust because it's 1,000 less than people say?*

*ok, so that was a bit excessive, but you know what i mean.

It is very rare that I want to physically harm another woman. Right now is one of those times.

So pity sex = rape?

I give up. Really. Fiiiiiiiiiiiiine. College rape accusations are just slutty drunk girls who regret it in the morning. Yep. You happy now, assholes?

It's very nice to think that rape doesn't occur, or that it can be blamed on a victim's behavior. This way, Ms. MacDonald is free to believe that rape cannot happen to her if she does x, y, and z.

uh, yeah, i'll try to focus more on my studies but this pesky PTSD keeps getting in the way!

@Archetype: This woman is a C U Next Tuesday, but in general I love the name Heather. Two of the most selfless, giving, pleasant people I have ever met are named Heather.

wait. COLLEGE is for LEARNING???

Oh bullshit . What if you don't know if someone gave you drugs? Or what if a woman gave you alcohol, but a man took advantage of you? That question is beyond flawed.

Who in the hell thinks that citing from a study in the 1980s would result in sound reasoning?

All the crankiness that disappeared with reading the little fire hero story has come back...tenfold.

Has Heather MacDonald ever been to a library? It is a very sexy place. It won't stop you from wanting to act out your libidinal impulses.

Ok, maybe not. But I have to tell myself that to get through the day sometimes.

I get so annoyed by women being judgy of female victims. Be happy you were not victimized, and come to terms with the fact that this number is probably A LOT lower than the true satistic.

I love that picture. What exactly IS an "Andy Adventure"???

I would never wish rape on anyone, but this girl would be singin' a diferent tune if she had been sexually assaulted. She's totally one of those friends that when you tell her you were raped, she goes, "Are you sure you aren't just regretting having sex with him?"

@ineffable.me: With a number like 25%, in reality, what is the school going to do other then say "1 in four of you are going to get "raped""? Numbers that high change perspective from prevention to acceptance. "It's going to happen, so here is what you can do if/when it does"....

And from my old school, rape numbers included rapes around the town, not related to the uni. Same for crime rates.

Also, this: "Young iconoclasts can take up another discredited idea: College is for learning. Fighting male dominance or catering to the libidinal impulses released in the 1960s are sorry substitutes for the pursuit of knowledge" is fucking ridiculous. I suppose Take Back the Night Rallies are totally ridiculous wastes of opportune study time, whereas frat boys getting drunk and doing all this shit is just part of college.

@TruculentandUnreliable: Seriously, if other WOMEN can't even get on the damn train of rape = bad, what do they want from us?

Uh, didn't we cover in a post last week that you can get raped (or at least jacked off on) while studying in the library? This chick has got a rude awakening coming in the form of an unwanted frat penis, taking her flippancy about rape as an invitation, methinks.

Where is that awful "An Andy Adventure" cartoon from? My blood is ice looking at it...the girl's dead eyes and manic, mindless (drugged) grin...

Ugh.

@TruculentandUnreliable: Boys will be boys!

Fuuuuck.

Once again, blame is being placed on women for being too "drunk and slutty" instead of being placed on men for never failing to take advantage when a girl's guard is momentarily lowered.

So I'm guessing the solution is wear turtlenecks and never have fun? Gotcha. I'm right on that, Heather.

I just read about this on Feministing and I'm SEETHING. Rape and sexual assault have been so NORMALIZED that young women consider it an unavoidable fact of life - they don't even consider forced sex "rape" because these anti-feminists have defined "rape" right out of existance and convinced women it's just their lot in life.

Check out this Toronto study: [www.citynews.ca]

"Girls Accepting Sexual Assault At School As Fact Of Life: Reports"

She is sooooooo right. The epidemic is over, everyone! We got all worked up over nothing! Praises be!!!

She's just mad that noone wants to "r" her.

@stacyinbean: Meek obedience.

@cde: I don't know, I was just using that as a random example. I am just trying to point out that no good can come out of this article and this lady is being a needy crying for attention piece of crap human being.

@BiscuitDoughJones: reminds me of when Camille Paglia said, "if i was raped i would just dust myself off and get on with life." it's like yeah bitch, i dusted myself and got on with life too but tell that to my traumatized amigdala, oh and my bleeding rectum. (sorry for the graphics).

I had a very dear friend who was passed out on a friend's couch, in the middle of a crowded room, and some dude tried to get it on with her. Needless to say, all her friends jumped in and literally beat the shit out of the guy. Of course there's something to be said for being aware of your own safety, but just because you ended up in an unsafe situation doesn't mean you should get raped.

I feel like we're saying the same things over and over again about this subject. Rape is the fault of the rapist, end of story. I mean, when somebody gets murdered, sure we might say "What was s/he doing in that neighborhood at night?" but we never go so far as to blame them for it.

'It's been twenty years or more: Doesn't a new study seem to be in order?'

Hell to the yeah.

Of all the women I've known who've been assaulted or raped, only one reported it to the police (and the perp was a stranger who stalked her and broke into her home). So I'm all for asking women if they've been in so-and-so situation and classifying it as rape, even if the respondent doesn't agree.

@hortense: It also really vague to just ask "have you ever had sex when you didn't want to?" Um... I do it a lot of time. I do that with my boyfriend. But I'd never say that my boyfriend raped me. I believe it has to be forced not pressured (meaning he convinced you-- like peer pressure).

Stop calling it grey area!

@LoveNoelG: you need to get banned.

Quit yer bitchin and get back to that learnin! But not too much learnin. Don't want you fightin that male dominance.

@hortense: Dear god, I work in a library and it is the un-sexiest place ever. Although I do know people are fucking in the closed study room, for some disgusting reason (I don't even want to STAND in one of them let alone get partially naked).

@marie123: I know! It gives me the creeps! And Andy's face is totally saying, "Oh yeah, I'm the man! She wants me. I can see it in her eyes."

I hope the author never has a friend, sister, daughter, etc. who is raped. This downplaying attitude will certainly come back to haunt her.

Is questioning the actual percentage of women who are raped at college inherently sexist or demeaning to women?

This reminds me of an episode of 90210 that was on SoapNet this weekend. I remember how angry I got when it first aired, and it still makes me angry! They're having a Take Back the Night march, and the girl accuses Steve Sanders of date rape. Because everyone loves Steve, it's deemed impossible to be true. I always thought Steve Sanders was EXACTLY the type of guy that would slip a girl roofies!

@J.D.Regent: Dude, it's from Arrested Development.

Heather McDonald, I liked you better when your name was Katie Roiphe. Oh wait, no I didn't.

This is the same tired argument that women must practice constant vigilance because it's a dangerous world out there and if they don't (going to drunken co-ed parties) well hell, what do they expect? CONSTANT VIGILANCE! (mad- eye moody anyone?)

@SarahMC: I figured that out over the weekend and wanted to STRANGLE someone. One of my best friends has been assaulted over and over and this weekend she was full-out raped and she's always just "dealt" with it. This is not NORMAL! It's punishable by fucking LAW!

@katekate: Ugh. You don't have to tell me. I'm a librarian, too. The dust alone is enough for me to steer clear of all sexy thoughts.

@SarahMC: Are you fucking kidding?!?
I suppose my general idealism prevented me from thinking that even a minority of female students, much less in the numbers this article implies, would EVER accept sexual assault as just a price of going to school. People have got to wake the fuck up!

@keldo: Well, you know she DOES have a friend/daughter/sister, etc. who's been raped. We all do. Just because she doesn't know about it doesn't mean it hasn't happened.

@keldo: I hope she never has a friend or daughter period.

@rsr26: not necessarily, which is why the entire second paragraph of the post exists.

@hortense: Hey, I believe that! Oh, wait. I'm an English major. We all believe libraries are sexy. Even the one here...(ugh)

But our library is filled with dark corners and scary--er--cozy nooks! So what if a girl was murdered there (true story--not an urban legend)? It was the 1960s? So what if people have been raped in the library. If they were, they were obviously studying the wrong thing.

@Scoregasm: What, about the study?

@LoveNoelG: @katekate: OMG SORRY!!!!! i remember that now. i totally missed the reference in my rage!!! maybe i need to get banned.

This makes me hella stabby. It's like an earlier poster said, why do some women hate women (fucking Ann Coulter, I'm looking at you too). Are we never, ever going to be free from the "you were drunk so you deserve it" mentality. This depresses the fuck out of me. Pretty dresses and kittens, please - it IS fuckin' Monday, you know.

@snarkhunting: they weren't studying, they were reading porn magazines disguised in the bible. or something.

@SarahMC: I volunteer as a rape crisis counselor, and the first case I went in on was a 16-year-old who had been raped at school. By the quarterback on the football team, natch.

@ineffable.me: ditto ditto and ditto

If anything the statistics are UNDER inflated, and campuses should be even more vigilant about
1) believing a woman that comes forth
2) offering support medical and psychological
3) prosecuting the effing bastard!

has she even been on a campus in the last ten years??? Or picked up a freakin newspaper?? The amount of flagrant douchebaggery and disregard for their female peers is rampant! rampant! I had a friend who was drugged, rapped in front on an open window for all of the guys frat "brothers" to see. oh yea she surely was so asking for that. Then the same guy went on to later rape another friend of mine when he came back as an alumni! And do you know what the campus said? Oh, not our problem, didn't happen on campus and the police didn't have enough evidence to prosecute (don't even get me started on that) so what happened to the guy? nothing! He's out there rapping more innocent women and all because douchefuck asshats like this woman are downplaying these women's terrible experiences. College is for learning, and part of that is providing a safe learning environment so that students can feel safe on campus. These retarded administrators freak out if someone has a beer but if someone gets rapped then oh, it's a grey area, we can't do anything about it.

Dear Hannah, shut the F****** up and do something productive instead of eroding years of women's rights.

@Hamsterpants: Hating other women is a surefire way to get approval from the menz. "Look at me! I'm not like those OTHER bitches!"

@