Rape Trial Coverage Fiasco

And this is why I don't try anything when drunk. It's not worth the risk either way!

As for going for drunk girls whilst sober, I see not difference to having slipped her a roofie.

Sensible.:) It is still rape if you are both drunk.

I want to address the 'false rape' thing again.

This is what you get when you report a rape:

Police interrogation
General suspicion
Every aspect of your behaviour on the night of the alleged incident questioned
Your character in general questioned
A 3 in one hundred chance that the alleged rapist will be punished.

If you want to punish a man for some real or perceived slight, pretty much anything has a better chance of success than making a false rape claim.

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Originally Posted by eldargal

I did actually read them, funnily enough. Maybe you should? Only ONE of them has academic standard citations and footnotes. The studies cited were all from the early nineties and the articles at no point produce their own evidence, they simply poke holes in these few studies. They may well have selected simply because they were flawed studies, but the fact is there are innumerable, more recent studies which show similarly high rates of rape in Britain and the US.

Colleges SAY they take rape seriously and society SAYS it takes rape seriously. The fact is actions speak louder than words, only 3% of rapists ever serve time in prison. As has already been mentioned just because there is a system to report something in place doesn't mean something will be reported. How the victim expects to be treated is important, if they don't think their report will be taken seriously or fear they will be victimised then they tend not to report it. This is exactly what happens with most rapes. The police will treat you like a suspect, the defense lawyers will tear every aspect of your character to shreds and you will have scum on internet forums telling people it was your responsibility to stop the men committing a crime.

So a lot of women just don't bother. They are denied justice because justice is made incredibly hard to get through insitutionalised victimisation of rape victims.

Then there is the fact that our brains are very durable things and a lot of women repress the memories of rape especially when they occur at a young age. The trauma manifests in other ways but until they undergo treatment they ma not realise they have been raped.


This is the thing isn't, look at what people consider 'reckless' behaviour in women:
Going to a social gathering.
Drinking alcohol
Going outside at night
Wearing clothes (seriously, it doesn't matter what. Rape predates the mini-skirt)
Walking around with an escort

So if woman are to avoid rape they have to stay inside, not drink and wear a burka. Is any of this reckless behaviour for men? Not really. Maybe walking through a strange, violent neighbourhood at night but that's it. If a man gets seriously injured when someone punches them in an unrpovoked attack at a party no one says 'well he shouldn't have been at the party should he?'.
Now I know you aren't arguing in favour of this Nab, I'm just making the point again.

Of course this is all nonsense. Rapes are motivated by what a woman wears, they are motivated by a desire for domination. More rapes happen in the victims home than anywhere else, the vast majority of rapes are planned and committed by people known to the victim.


One last point I want to address in those ludicrous articles earl harbinger posted is the argument that the reported rapes aren't all rapes because the surveyor decides what is or isn't rape. There are several reasons for this:
Rape is a legally defined thing, even if the definitions are somewhat contentious.
Most women don't realise what these definitions are.

For example a lot of women think rape isn't rape if the man is your husband boyfriend. It still is. These women have internalised and normalised abuse. These are still rapes, they are still harmful. An analogy can be made with wife beating the mid 20th century. It was considered something that was ok, necessary discipline. It was still abuse and it still hurt women more than just physically, but they thought it was normal.

An awful lot of women think that their boyfriend raping them isn't rape if they have bought them presents. It still is, of course, they are just ****** with the womans head by trying to guilt trip her into sex or making her feel guilty for denying them sex.

A lot of women also think that rape has to have a violent component, that if they are blackmailed into sex or simply held down and not actually beaten or raped at the point of a knife/gun it isn't rape. It still is.

In other words because a lot of women have internalised the idea that when they are in a relationship they have an obligation to perform sex acts with/on their boyfriend they don't perceive being forced into those acts regardless of their feelings as 'rape'. But it is legally rape and the people doing the surveys know it.

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So rapes go unreported because women don't realize they've been raped and because the police/DA discourage taking rape claims to trial? The logic in the first case is absurd and the second case is likelymostly due to the difficulty in turning accusations into convictions. The idea that women are rape victims but just don't realize it because they've been brainwashed by a misogynystic society into accepting it and therefore need to embrace their victimhood so they can be empowered is bunk. If a boyfriend/husband asks their SO for sex and she says no and he asks again and she says yes that's consensual sex. If the woman is sober and gives the man a verbal commitment response of consent you can't call it rape. If a man asks for sex from his SO and she says no, never relents and the man forces himself on her that's rape, that's the definition of nonconsentual sex. Going through the process of asking for sex more than once before getting an affirmative response does not make a man a rapist and using such a definition to categorize millions of women as rape victims is insidious.

Secondly, lack of prosecution of rape allegations has a lot to do with the mechanics of the criminal justice system and its politics. Going with the stipulation that most rapes aren't violent rapes and are instead acquaintance/date rapes there is a lot less physical evidence to support forced sex. Getting dragged into an alley, getting slapped around and your clothes ripped off and raped creates plentyof physical evidence to support a rape allegation. There is much less in an instance of snuggling with somebody after a date and then he won't take no for an answer when he wants sex or having a friendtake you home after drinking at a party and he takes advantage of you. Without eyewitnesses or supporting physical evidence you get a he said/she said case where the strongest evidence for the prosecution is the woman's word. The woman may be 100% true in her testimony but it's hard to get convictions if that's all there is to the case. The accused is still innocent until proven guilty and if the victim's testimony is the crux of the case than the defense attorneys will try to shred her character and make her seem as unreliable as possible because that's their job. Since that makes convictions difficult and since prosecutors build their careers on high conviction rates they won't be in a hurry to go to trial and if they're professionals they'll give the victim an honest assessment of the odds of winning the case.

To me, it's more about knowing it was consensual. Odd I know, but I need a firm yes before it's action stations. Or at least letting her remove the clothing.

And this us why I don't get laid very often!

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Originally Posted by Mr Mystery

To me, it's more about knowing it was consensual. Odd I know, but I need a firm yes before it's action stations. Or at least letting her remove the clothing.

And this us why I don't get laid very often!

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Exactly. In fact I think the most important reform of rape law in the Anglo tradition world was the shift away from the law asking, "Did she resist?" to "Did she say yes?"

If the question the law wants us to ask is "Did she say yes?" (and personally, I think that's as it should be), then it follows inescapably that you cannot have legal sex with an intoxicated person (though we might make an exception for spouses, as Ohio does). Drunk people, legally speaking, are incapable of say yes to anything - they can't sell their houses, they can't make wills, etc. Heck, we don't even trust their judgment enough to drive. Lesson: don't trust what drunk people say, whether it's "I love you guys," "I will totally sell you my entire eldar collection for $5," "I am fine to drive," or "I want you to **** me."

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Originally Posted by Nabterayl

Exactly. In fact I think the most important reform of rape law in the Anglo tradition world was the shift away from the law asking, "Did she resist?" to "Did she say yes?"

If the question the law wants us to ask is "Did she say yes?" (and personally, I think that's as it should be), then it follows inescapably that you cannot have legal sex with an intoxicated person (though we might make an exception for spouses, as Ohio does). Drunk people, legally speaking, are incapable of say yes to anything - they can't sell their houses, they can't make wills, etc. Heck, we don't even trust their judgment enough to drive. Lesson: don't trust what drunk people say, whether it's "I love you guys," "I will totally sell you my entire eldar collection for $5," "I am fine to drive," or "I want you to **** me."

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I disagree. Freely given consent is freely given consent whether you are drunk or not. Your judgement may be impaired and you may regret it the next morning, but having sex with a drunk woman who says 'eff me six ways from sunday' is not rape. If she doesn't clearly express it, then there is a case to answer, but not if she has clearly given consent and not at any stage withdrawn it.

I disagree. A drunk person has lowered inhibitions, and a tendency to do dumb stuff.

Plus it's a really great way to wind up with unplanned pregnancy and a choice of diseases. I get what you're saying, but its not something I would do myself. One could say alcohol's detrimental affect upon stiffies is natures little hint about going for drunken rumpy pumpy!

I agree it might not be the most sensible course of action, I'm just pointing out that saying 'yes' is exactly the same whether you are drunk or sober.

Less likely to me it, and far less likely to remember :)

Adds up to too high a risk for me. And you know, sometimes the answer to yes is no!

If there is a bad part of town (and every good sized city has them) it makes sense to avoid it as much as possible. You have the right to walk down a public sidewalk anytime you want (and I would gladly stand shoulder to shoulder with you on the ramparts to fight against the tyranny of those that would deny you that right) but I would discourage anyone from doing so in an area and at a time that increases the possibility of being waylaid by people with bad intentions. Now, some would argue that by altering my life and avoiding that part of town the bad guys "win." I don't see it that way. To me, the bad guys win when they rob and savagely beat me when I'm walking through the ghetto in the middle of the night for no good reason. I can live a perfectly happy and fulfilling life without every strolling through the projects at 2AM so why would I? I'm only responsible for my own actions, me walking in the ghetto doesn't make me responsible for somebody else's decision to stab or bludgeon me, they decided to commit that crime of their own free will. However, I do bear responsibility for choosing to walk down that street at night, nobody forced me to do it. Taking ownership for your own choices and actions doesn't make you responsible for the actions or choices of others.

True story, a few years back the wife of a childhood friend of mine was driving to the story with their children and while stopped at a red light a distracted driver behind her didn't see that the light was red and rear ended her at speed. My friend's wife did nothing wrong, she was obeying the law, doing right, while going grocery shopping, the accident wasn't her fault. Their son was also in the car, he almost died, spent 6 months in pediatric intensive care and suffered irreparable brain damage. Bad things can and do happen to good people who aren't doing anything wrong. Knowing that is why I think it's a rational and morally justifiable position to encourage people to try to minimize the risks they expose themselves to.

A stranger on the street steps up to a woman and offers her a beverage in a plastic cup. Should the woman accept it and drink it?

A male student at a college party offers a coed that hardly knows him a drink in a red solo cup. Should she drink it?

A girl's friend says that her cousin's friend knows of a big party happening at somebody's house in a nearby town and the cousins is willing to pick them up and bring them along. Should the girl respond with Sounds like fun, YOLO or should she say suggest that they do something else that night?

Saying no in all 3 scenarios doesn't guarantee that life will be all sunshine and rainbows and saying yes doesn't make the girl responsible for the actions of any scumbag that tries to assault her in any way. What's the best course of action? What should I advise my daughter to do when she's 16?

Nobody in this thread is saying that wearing a miniskirt is an invitation to rape. I don't think anybody in society would actually argue that it does. That seems to be a bit of a straw man.