office conversation

Over the last week....we have had some interesting, intense and often controversial conversations about rape in the office. It started with a conversation between myself and two co-workers about the percentage of women in the US who have been raped. The male co-worker in the conversation was saying that the % was incredibly small...maybe 10% at that. Well...the other two people were women and we felt it was much higher. We felt it could be close to 50%, but definitely not 10%. We also talked about how women don't report it and why...and the male had such a hard time understanding it.

Well...the next day the conversation continued. And this time one of my male coworkers said he found it was a statistic saying that the rape statistic was only 2% and maybe 4% with under-reporting. We got into a pretty heated discussion about it that day....and then the next day a group of women started talking about it again.

A couple of interesting observations came out of this...one, I love where I work. I like that I work at a place where conversations like that can happen. At most places, they enourage you to not talk about anything that might ruffle someone's feathers. In the scope of the week long discussions about rape, how often it happens and how much it is reported...everyone was involved...our director (male), our assistant director(female) and basically the rest of the staff. We even continued the conversation this Saturday when I was in work to teach a class.

And two...there is such a difference in perception when it comes to rape when it comes to men and women. I know that should seem obvious, but it just became clear to me. Women see it happening...basically all over the place while men see it happening hardly ever. I think one main difference...women talk to each other about their experiences with sexual violence and we don't talk to men about it. Women know much more women who have raped then men do because we hear their stories. And...I also think men don't want to think that rape happens because it would men that men would be out there raping women...maybe men they know...men they hang out with in the local room, etc.

Anyways...it was an interesting week discussing things that people usually never talk about inside an office.