Robin Warshaw's text The Reality of Acquaintance Rape discusses how acquaintance rape has been increasingly accepted as a real and relative problem in today's society. Multiple different "organizations, counselors, and social researchers agree that acquaintance rape is the most prevalent rape crime today" (Warshaw 327). Many people in today's society think of rape as a strange person jumping out of the bushes at an innocent female. According to the text and other figures, rape actually occurs most often between two people that know each other. The problem is that the majority of the time acquaintance rape occurs it is not reported to police officials due to the fear of skepticism and doubt from the judges and their peers. The victim also usually questions herself if it was her fault and what could she have done to have prevented the situation? Acquaintance rape has become more prevalent on college campuses today than it has been in the past. Many believe this is because families today are ignoring the realities of social pressures on both males and females. Other factors such as coed dorms and unchecked curfews are believed to contribute to increasing cases of acquaintance rape. This should be an increasing concern among college students, parents and college administrators in today's world.
The intended audience for this piece of work is society in general. But more specifically I think it focuses on women and college students because they are most often the target of acquaintance rape. The author is presenting this argument because she hopes to raise awareness of the extent and severity of acquaintance rape in society today. The author does this by discrediting the belief that unwanted sexual advances and intercourses were not rape if they occurred with an acquaintance or while on a date. Before reading this piece of work you most likely believed that "rape is not committed by people you know, against "good" girls, in "safe" places like university campuses" (Warshaw 333).
