A Closer Look at Date Rape

In the article “On Date Rape”, Camille Paglia argues that the reason why women are falling victims of date rape is because they want freedom but do not act responsibly. She says that freedom comes with responsibility which women should take as they are always at a higher risk of being overpowered by men. The responsibility she refers to is being alert and being on the lookout for signs of possible sexual assault. An analysis of Camille Paglia’s “On Date Rape” shows a fallacious argument resulting from personal attacks, hasty generalization, and false cause.

Persuasive Techniques:- She has used many these techniques in her thesis as imagery, facts, personal anecdote, expert testimony etc. With the help of these techniques she is succeeded to impress her audience. With the help of them she successfully tells the main ideas of her essay. The goal of these techniques is to persuade the audience to believe or do something.

The goal of persuasive essays are to utilize certain rhetorical strategies and techniques in order to make the audience adopt their specific viewpoint over different ones. Some examples of these strategies include anecdotes, statistics, analogies, metaphors, similes, allusion, and repetition. The proper use of these techniques will make an essay easier to follow for the audience, thus making the argument more effective. Writers should also include the Aristotelian triangle of appeals, which are logos, pathos, and ethos, and use them effectively in order to persuade the audience to agree with the argument being made. Two persuasive essays that can be compared are “Terror’s Purse Strings”, by Dana Thomas, and “Sweatshop Oppression”, by Rajeev Ravisankar. These essays both address similar topics, but there are differences in how the authors approach their arguments.

1.Based on Serono’s ideas rape culture is something that cannot be solved with “single-tact solutions”. The “men-as-predator/sexual aggressor assumption” (Serano 422) allows women to believe that the man is always a predator, and therefore leads to men being aggressive leading to the cycle of rape culture. Overall to change rape culture we must change this assumption that currently dominates out thinking.

She is effectively directing us to pay heed to these instances as they are becoming more and more trending. Solnit’s discourse advocates that the world take steps to educate those that would commit violent acts such as abuse and rape. Her argument appeal to our sense of what is right and good, but let’s not forget that even if they discount her appeals to the aspect of violence of her information expose as in where she directs us to the specific details that women of all generations and locations are subjects to violence.

In current days, date rape is an obvious risk for modern women. The criminal cases with regard to date rape and robbery are not unusual. In this context, many sociologists, researchers, and even police are warning young females to pay attention to personal safety when going for a party or having a date at night. However, in spite of these good-willed and well-intentioned warnings, there are also some comments and opinions putting forward advices on protecting personal safety for young girls based on the false ground, making their ideas lack of reason and reliability. The editorial, On Date Rape, written by Camille Paglia, is one of these opinions with obvious fallacies and weaknesses in reasoning. There are three most clear fallacies in this article.

On the article On Date Rape, Paglia discussed what contemporary women should think about rape risk. She believes that even though women already won the freedoms, they still need to be aware about rape risks constantly, and keep themselves be safe. Because she thinks today males still are dominant on sex. This is a thought-provoking article. However, even though the author is an authoritative professor, there are still some fallacies and weakness in this article.

I found this play difficult to read. The overall tone of the piece was tinged with sadness. As I read, I would have to occasionally put it down to keep from crying. I’m not exactly sure why this piece affected me so emotionally, but I feel that an emotional response to artwork is pretty significant. As I felt like crying, I was surprised by the section which talks about whiteness and a prescriptive notion that people shouldn’t be emotional.

The author when expressing an opinion will keep it towards the end of a paragraph as a transition into the next point. When explaining how men did not comment on the issues of the evening, she transitions by explaining that for them it was “…business as usual,” (Gilbert). When expressing her concern for the lack of commentary from the men, Gilbert continuously expresses how “..they will be doing all this by themselves.” Her attitude towards the subject is clear, it is alarming how not much regard towards the problem of sexual assault. Her piece is organised to illustrate the antithesis of men’s lack of awareness to the controversies and how women were continuously shedding light on

As reported by, feminist criminologists, their perspective of rape and sexual assault differ between liberal and radical feminists. Liberal feminists’ viewpoint in regards of rape as a gender-neutral assault on a persons’ autonomy and mainly focusing on the harm that rape can do to an individual. In contrast, radical feminists describe rape as a subject to be recognised and understood as a major pillar of patriarchy; a social system in which men claim the positions of dominance and control of the central norms and values that are linked with masculinity (Johnson, 2005: p. 4-15). The radical feminists believe that rape is a patriarchal structure within male power, thus displaying the harms that rape can do to an individual and as a group of women. Furthermore, the radical feminists approach view rape as male have the control and authority over the use of women’s bodies, which involves the sexual and reproductive. Hence, this is the core element of patriarchy, Radical feminist believe that rape is one of many forms that connects men’s sexual exploitation and violence, as well as, reinforcing women’s oppression (Whisnant, 2013).

Feminist scholarship has argued that rape ideology encourages and justifies sexual coercion, trivializes sexual violence and demeans and devalues women who have experienced sexual assault. The foundation of this argument is based on women's experiences in patriarchal societies. Due to the fact that

Sexual assault and rape has always been a social and public issue in the United States. A majority of the time, women become the victims, while men become the perpetrators. National surveys in the United States show that one in six women has experienced an attempted or completed rape. Consent appears to be a critical factor in determining whether assault or rape has taken place. Women have a higher chance of being raped by who they are acquainted with rather than strangers.

“He said he loved me”, “I woke up without any clothes on, I couldn’t remember”, “I thought we were friends”. These are just some of the phrases that a lot of rape victims have reiterated. Women that have long been taken advantage of for men’s sexual pleasure, it is the same in every country, not just in the Philippines. Women have been fighting all throughout their history to gain equality, to rise from oppression, to release themselves from male domination, that fight is still ongoing. There is a quotation from the bible taken from genesis II lines 21-23; “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh thereof. And the rib which the Lord

Most people would agree that as you grow up you learn by seeing, feeling ,touching , smelling, and hearing . Albert Bandura supports this by a theory he created called the Social Learning Theory (McLeod, 2011). Social Learning Theory is a theory that explains that behavior is learned by your social environment, interactions and observations of others. With this theory I would say it supports opinion in which I would say that rape is not something somebody just decides one day to do. I believe that rape is learned throughout time. There are many social and even media factors that sometimes may come off with the intention that rape is acceptable. In some media factors they may even perceive that being forcibly raped is pleasurable. Movies tend to do it often and sometimes movies don 't realize that what people see on television can sometimes influence people to see these acts as a norm. For instance the fact that a college kid is in a frat and he 's in a party there is a good percentage that he would reenact what television had stereotype frats boys to do. Television would label the frat boys as potential rapist and the human mind would consider that when you take on that role as a frat boy. One of the biggest media factors all the way from television to the internet that for so many years that perceive rape as acceptable is pornography.

On Date Rape is an article written by Camille Paglia, which argues the young women of today pay not much care about their safety while they’re enjoying the freedom they deserve. According to the writer of this article, who also is a humanities professor and a cultural critic, a woman should pay more attention to their safety while they pursuit the freedom as a man does. Because a woman is likely becoming a victim in a rape case. In this article, the author also implies that even the law should protect women from the rape, still, women themselves should build up a self-protection awareness to keep them away from the rape crime. However, even this article points out a main argument about self-protection awareness is necessary for a woman, but more or less of its points didn’t support the main argument of this article. In additional, the focus of my article is about to analysis the article of Camille Paglia, On Date Rape. Besides, I’ll point out some misconceptions about her article.