Activity #8

Its seems amazing how different people with different backgrounds seems to have somewhat of the same opinion on a particular topic. We have somewhat of the same knowledge from different sources in our lives that have told us some of the same information I shared with them from the RAINN website.
I have found that the four people I talked with, as well as myself, have all been educated with some of these rape stats. We know that most rape victims knew their attacker while very few were strangers.

There were also some issues that were evenly distributed between the four viewpoints. For example, 2 of the 4 people believe that education is a tool that education can be used to prevent violence in the future. Also, two people believe that the reason some of the stats are going down are because there are less reports, while another believes that they are generally going down, the fourth person didn't have much of an opinion on those particular stats.
So the stats that the first male I spoke with were focused on the rape/sexual assault reports decreasing since 1993. He thinks that the rates are still the same and have only decreased because fewer victims are reporting. He also had a viewpoint that as a society we have evolved in a way where we don't feel it is necessary to report assault, or that we don't even think its necessarily wrong anymore.
This same person spoke of knowing a couple rape victims. (The only one with a story to share.) He didn't want to give a lot of information, but mentioned that with each case the victim went to her (respective) parents and the parents did not believe her. When things like this happen, I, personally, think that that is one of the reasons why fewer victims report their attack- because fewer people believe them.
He said that he believes two of the causes of violence against women was resistance to male authority and the poor driving stereotype against women. I asked him to explain his stance on the bad driving and he actually had, what i consider to be, a good point. He said that if women drove better, then men, and other good drivers would have less road rage and then in turn be less likely to take out that sort of anger on either the driver in question or someone else.
As far as limiting or eliminating violence against women, he (who was the only one with this opinion) said that women/feminists should stop blaming men for bad things that may happen to women as a whole.

The second male I spoke with had a few different thoughts on the subject. Not only did have have some different opinions, he said less about it. As far as the statistics were concerned he truly believed that they were on a decline since 1993 and that it was not based one whether things were being reported or not. He had no personal stories of violence. As far as the cause of violence against women he believes that it is an outlet and makes the man feel better about himself or the situation that is occurring. As for eliminating violence against women he feels strongly that education on the topic is the best way to go. He also wants to see a worse penalty for someone who is convicted of sexual assault or rape. And lastly, he believes that girls and friends should be more supportive of people that they know how have been sexually assaulted and encourage them to seek help and report the situation.

As you can tell, the males didn't like to elaborate a lot on the topic. That was not the case for the females I talked with. The first female I spoke with when I asked about the statistics on the RAINN website she responded with, "I already knew all of this, except that there was a decline since 1993". She also said that she was very surprised about that statistic. And questioned if this means that reported cases are on decline or are less being reported?
She also had no stories. But she made up for the stories with the beliefs of the causes of violence against women. She believes that violence occurs because the man likes to take out his frustrations on what society sees as the weaker sex/species. Adding to that she said that men who may be at a dead end job or somewhere where they don't like their boss could take it out in a "home-type" setting because they can't take it out on their boss or superior because that would cost them their job and income. The last comment she had on this correlates to the last idea she had about being work-related. That a man could even feel inferior at work and then wants to feel dominant at home or with his female other which could then lead to sexual assault.
When it comes to how we can eliminate violence against women at first she had no idea. Then after pondering it for a while, she believes that therapy for the rapists or assaulter could help and that someone should raise awareness about the topic and help teach women that this is not a normal situation to be in.

The second female and last person I interviewed also had the same thoughts about the statistics where she wasn't surprised at all about them. She also didn't show too much interest in the decline since 1993. When I asked her what she thought the cause of violence against women may be she said it was because we seem like easy targets and seem as though we can't defend ourselves. As far as how we can eliminate violence against women she thinks that women as a whole need to be smarter and not put themselves into situations where something bad could happen. She also shared an agreement with the second male I interviewed when she said that laws should be made stricter against sex offenders and assaulters.

An interesting trend I found within all of my interviews is they all had the same viewpoint about the rapist and victim. With each individual the rapist or assaulter was male and the victim was female. There were no homosexual examples and there were no women assaulting men ideas. Well I suppose that last one may be thrown out since this was about violence against women, but its still surprising that no one brought up that viewpoint and say, "wait but it happens to them too!"
I actually believe and agree with a lot of the things that were said and don't have much else to say on the situation because I think that a few different view points were shared, there were many similarities and some differences.