Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-98.235.154.24-20130913002452/@comment-173.60.95.163-20131030230733

Alzrius wrote:

173.60.95.163 wrote:

I like this guy. He has made a convincing argument. My thanks, anon!

You also noted something that I'd overlooked before, which was that sexual activity among teenagers, particularly those without sexual education and without protection, is likely to be disproportionally high compared to the general population. That means that the presumed high amount of sexual activity among the students of Beacon, coupled with the also-presumed lack of sexual education (and possible lack of adequate means of protective measures being instituted), poses a not-insignificant drain on their ability to maintain highly combat-effective force.

One silver lining here is that instances of sexual violence (in terms of females being assaulted by males) are likely lower at Beacon than among the general population, thanks to the women all having intensive training in defending themselves. Even considering that the male population has similar combat training, this is likely to considerably lessen the number of sexual assaults - both attempted and successful - against Beacon's female students.

Of course, every silver lining has a cloud; in this case, it's that combat training offers little help against sexual coercion, as opposed to violent sexual assault (with a possible exception). In these cases, women are best able to protect themselves via a strong sense of assertiveness (which is likely to be helped by having highly-developed combat techniques - though this is a generalization, rather than a rule, e.g. Velvet Scarlatina) and a low degree of alcohol consumption - which, in this case, depends on the legal drinking age in Vale, and whether or not Beacon is a dry campus (given the lack of alcohol consumption in episodes so far, either Beacon is such a campus, or the students are all under the legal drinking age).

(I must reiterate here that I am not trying to suggest that women who lack assertiveness, or become intoxicated, are at all to blame for being coerced into an unwanted sexual encounter. Rather, that the above research notes a high degree of correlation between assertiveness/intoxication and instances of sexual coercion.)

Given all of the above, we can make a fairly well-reason set of presumptions regarding the prevalence of sex among the students of Beacon, and the consequences thereof.

To reiterate, there's probably a lot of sex going on. Putting a population of young people who don't know any better - due to a lack of developed skills for judging long-term consequences, and a lack of proper sex education - in close proximity means that there's a not-inconsiderable amount of sex likely happening among the student population.

Unfortunately, this means that unless protection is being distributed (which we haven't seen so far, which means there's no way to know if it is or not), then sexually-transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies are not rare problems. That said, the female student body is probably among the safest demographic of women in regards to being sexually victimized; sexual assaults will be comparatively rare, as will attempts to coerce them into sex (though the latter will be more frequent than the former).

The bottom line is that a lot of (consentual) sex is likely happening among Beacon's students. The major question is if the administration is ignoring it, or trying to make sure it's safe. The fact is, Professor Oobeleck explicitly stated "we only accept the best of the best". An out of control libido/desire for sex will hamper combat operations and overall effectiveness in the field. One thing that causes an operation to fail before it even starts is if an operative is emotionally compromised. If an operative has a broken heart, like if (I'm borrowing a shipping theory here) Pyrrha was (and she was) mad with Jaune for rejecting her help, it could lead to negative consequences, which it did, she was grumpy, and didn't move to help Jaune when he was being dragged off by CRDL. That was another one could be CRDL as a whole, they all have issues with controlling their fear, which while it isn't related to the libido/desire issue at hand, it's an emotional compromise, they ran off, when they could have in theory, put up a defence against the Ursa Major.

In theory, when Oobeleck said "best of the best", this means the best at controlling emotions, studying, fighting and working with others. While an operative can be effective in the field, if their main off-field desire is to get laid and not to lead/work with their team to defeat the enemy, then they compromise the group as a whole. A team is like a hand, with each member being a finger, alone, a finger can't grasp, make a fist, block, or do anything. But when joined by the others, they can do anything. If one of these fingers is broken, hurt or otherwise incapacitated, the others lose collective strength as a whole. With this loss of strength in mind, the operatives themselves will lose something of value. If Ren was emotionally compromise/incapacitated, the team loses his talented skills in combat, if Pyrrha is emotionally comprimised/incapacitated, her semblance powers and offensive/defensive abilities are lost, if Jaune is lost, the team is leaderless, and if Nora is lost the team's main damage dealer is lost. It's like a finger and a hand, each one lost weakens them. In this case, the lack of Ren results in the team losing his aura powers and strength as a whole, and his ingenuinity with the Death Stalker is lost, if Pyrrha is gone then Jaune would have been wounded/killed with the fight of the Ursa Major, if Nora is gone the Death Stalker would have been almost imposible to bring down collectively and if Jaune is gone no one would have had a plan for taking it out.

Which most likely means that any operative with any sort of issue endangers their team as a whole. Jaune's incident in recent episodes left the team lost, and when he came back they were glad. Similarly, Weiss's belief she is superior to others led to Ruby becoming emotionally frustrated and unhappy, and until Ozpin and Port intervened, things were bad between the two of them. CRDL as a whole are cowards, whcih meant that the spirited defence they might have otherwise brought into play never materialized, forcing Jaune's hand.

Combat training really offers nothing in the way of defusing sexual tension between operatives. The only real way to diffuse the tension is to get the two operatives to have a heart-to-heart talk. It's like Miranda Lawson and Subject Zero/Jack in Mass Effect. Those two are at each others throats the entire trilogy, and Shepard can even suggest they blow it off by kissing each other. Simiarly, Ruby and Weiss have some tension between them, and while no operative in-universe has suggested they hook up and blow it off, Ozpin and Port both insinuated the two of them settle their differences.

Sexual violence against other students is most likely something that would be theoretically probable there. It's a large school, all a student has to do is drag someone off to some relatively isolated alclove and...well. It works both ways, a student who really is desperate and decides to use violence/is a yandere could just drag another person off for said...desires, while by the same token another pair of operatives could find an area in which they could express their love for each other in peace. The fact that everyone has combat training there most likely is the main deterrence against the act in itself. It's not the threat of what you do, it's the threat of what you CAN do. Pyrrha make look really appealing for others, but fact is, she has a powerful set of weapons. It's not about what she does with them that gets the people who could otherewise be tempted to assault her to back off, it's what she COULD do to them. As Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "The hand of the aggressor is stayed by strength, and strength alone." In this case, the sheer physical strength that Pyrrha, Ruby, Nora, Weiss, Yang, Blake and Ren all have prevent them from being victims. Jaune on the other hand is victimized by CRDL because of his lack of any force shown.

My best bet with the assault issue is that because "only the best of the best" are recruited in (bar Jaune), this may insinuate that even if someone wanted to do another operative, it would go down to this: Do you really want to try and forcibly lay with someone who got into the school for most likely killing several other people on their own? While the operatives may be about 17 and in theory, overwhelmed by hormones that give them their desire, attempting to do so becomes a hazardous affair unless the operatives both desire this. Like an example would be Cardin trying to lay with a member of RWBY/JNPR. Fact is, despite his brute force strength, we haven't seen him personally dispatch multiple targets. He may have won a fight against Jaune, but Jaune's incompetence at the time was the reason for the win. Ruby was able to hold her own against several henchmen and Roman all at once, and was only stopped by Crimson, of whom she fought to a draw. Yang wiped out an entire nightclub of operatives singlehandedly, Weiss fought a robot and multiple beowolves and other Grimm on her own, Blake defeated several robots and and Ursa, while Ren singlehandedly defeated a King Tatiju on his own with his bare hands, Pyrrha held off the Death Stalker and crippled it, and Nora personally killed the Death Stalker. Unless the operative themselve wanted to be laid by him (and fact is, everyone in RWBY/JNPR hates him) they'd gladly break his legs and everything else.

It's a school, while some people have indeed got it on at school (and once at a waterpark, if I remember correctly), it's still a school. There is undoubtably (although it will most likely never ever be shown) a class for Sex Education, with the intent of helping the students recieve some help in controlling their...urges, while at the same time showing them that their urges are purely natural, and it's okay to feel the desire to satisfy these urges with someone else, but it's not okay to satisfy said urges with that someone until the time is right (in most circles, it's after marriage,), or at the very least, said person wants to satisfy their own urges with you. They probably teach the people in said classroom various things about it that you can look up on your own, and how to wield their...weapons responsibly. While I have no evidence that such a class exists, if the teachers failed to give such a class, then they are doing it wrong. The calculation is quite simple: Boy+Girl/Boy+Boy/Girl+Girl x Room Shared Together/More or less abandoned area/locked room + Lack of education on Sex/Lovemaking and when its appropriate/not appropriate + Gigantic School with Teenagers= Chaos

Said calculation in mind, the only available counter to the problem is education on Sex/Lovemaking and protection. Better to give the men and women items they might need now rather than later.

As a wrap up, the idea is that if the School doesn't adequately prepare for the undoubtable amount of desires and lust that several operatives may carry, it'll have negative field and off-field consequences. Whether it be a broken hearted student refusing to help the one who broke his/her heart, or another one traumatized by a failed assault by another student, it has consequences.