While discussing rape and sexual assault in the comments of two recent diaries, Are We Doing Young Persons a Disservice by Teaching them No Means No? by glendenb and Don't Be That Girl by myself, I realized that our biggest problem in discussing this difficult topic on DailyKos is that we don't even agree on some of the most basic facts about rape.
So I propose a new series - a weekly conversation about sexual assault.
I would like to take a list of statements about rape from the 1990's and propose one a week and see what we think about that statement today. The list itself comes from a study that attempted to assess the effectiveness of high school Rape-Awareness Programs. The findings are more than twenty years old but still oddly pertinent today.
We'll tackle this two-fold: a simple poll with yes, no, & shades of gray choices and then comments to flesh out our answers to the poll and to converse with one another in the comments.
I do ask a favor - if you are trying to make a point in the comments and can link to a source, please do.
In the following week's diary, I'll tell you what the results where in the 1990's study, compare them to our own and give some facts and figures about that week's statement. And then we'll propose a new statement for that week.
So here we go.
Statement #1: Most Rapists Commit Rape For Sex