Rape Trial Coverage Fiasco

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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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No means no, a woman's refusal of sexual advances is unequivocal. That's a bright shining line supported by society and the legal system. If a woman initially says yes but later changes her mind and says no her no trumps the earlier yes. Any man that testified that he forced himself on a woman after she said no would be convicted of rape.

There's a binary set of responses to the query for sex, yes or no. A willful yes, given by a sober woman is an unequivalent yes. You cannot argue that a woman that gives a willful yes because she's "pressured" by her boyfriend really meant no and is a rape victim. Asking for sex is not coercion. Using charm and/or persistence is not the equivalent of force. Sure, a woman could be in an unhealthy emotional abusive relationship with a man who does things like try to guilt trip her into having sex with lines like If you love me you'll have sex with me. That would certainly be despicable and it would be a definite sign that the woman should seriously re evaluate her relationship. However, it would be a pretty high mountain to climb to convince a judge or jury or the public at large that the willful consent of the woman in such a circumstance didn't count as consent.

If a man is sitting on the couch playing Battlefield 3 on Xbox live and his girlfriend asks him to go have sex with her and he says not right now I'm busy and the girl sits next to him and starts fondling his genitals until he says yes does that make the man a rape victim and the woman a rapist? I can honestly say that's happened to me and I didn't feel like a victim it just seemed like she made a very persuasive argument.

If a woman willfully gives consent and both parties believe it to be a valid consent and then have sex I take issue with calling it rape because the woman doesn't realize that it is. That seems to be a pretty extreme position to take. I will concede that if you use a definition of rape so broad that it counts yes's as no's then yes there is a huge chunk of the female populace that are unreported rape victims. It seems that one could take issue with trying to use such a broad definition as the de facto definition of rape and not be a woman hating fiend.

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Originally Posted by Wildeybeast

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.

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If that's your moral philosophy, then that's your moral philosophy and good for you for being consistent. However, it isn't the law's philosophy. A drunk person is generally incompetent at law, so it makes sense for rape law to be consistent with that. If you're intoxicated, for instance, you cannot make me your heir apparemt no matter how much you want to at the time. Neither can you sell me any of your property, or bind yourself by contract, etc. you can't get married, either. Given all that, it makes sense that you cannot legally consent to sex.

But what if the shoes on the other foot, I go out, get quite pissed and a woman asks me to go back to have sex with her. I say yes and in the morning feel like I have been taken advantage of and decide I have indeed been raped. What are the police actually going to do about that then ? Besides laugh their faces off and send meon my way ? Obviously non of this is going to happen in my world ;) but when the sex is reversed it comes across a bit absurd.

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Originally Posted by Wildeybeast

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.

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But it isn't, one occurs when judgement is severely impaired, one does not. Consent solicited from someone whose judgement is impaired (which is not something that just legally applies to women) is not consent. If you have sex with a drunk woman (as opposed to mildly inebriated) you are taking advantage of that and if the woman is inebriated enough it can be classified as drug facilitated rape. Usually she has to be unconscious or nearly unconscious for it to count, contrary to popular opinion it isn't just being inebriated.

It is also worth remembering that while hard to estimate only around 5% of reported sexual assaults use drugs of which alcohol is the most common. Of those most again are cases where the drugs were covertly or openly administered with the goal of lowering the victims capacity to resist. You see some really nasty crap at universities with this in mind, one of my friends was raped after attending a party on campus. She didn't drink, she just ate some fruit salad. The ******* had soaked some of the fruit in vodka.

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Originally Posted by Deadlift

But what if the shoes on the other foot, I go out, get quite pissed and a woman asks me to go back to have sex with her. I say yes and in the morning feel like I have been taken advantage of and decide I have indeed been raped. What are the police actually going to do about that then ? Besides laugh their faces off and send meon my way ? Obviously non of this is going to happen in my world ;) but when the sex is reversed it comes across a bit absurd.

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That is a valid concern, female-male rape (while unusual) isn't as rare as people think and it isn't taken seriously. It IS rape if you drink too much and a woman takes advantage.

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Originally Posted by eldargal

But it isn't, one occurs when judgement is severely impaired, one does not. Consent solicited from someone whose judgement is impaired (which is not something that just legally applies to women) is not consent. If you have sex with a drunk woman (as opposed to mildly inebriated) you are taking advantage of that and if the woman is inebriated enough it can be classified as drug facilitated rape. Usually she has to be unconscious or nearly unconscious for it to count, contrary to popular opinion it isn't just being inebriated.

It is also worth remembering that while hard to estimate only around 5% of reported sexual assaults use drugs of which alcohol is the most common. Of those most again are cases where the drugs were covertly or openly administered with the goal of lowering the victims capacity to resist. You see some really nasty crap at universities with this in mind, one of my friends was raped after attending a party on campus. She didn't drink, she just ate some fruit salad. The ******* had soaked some of the fruit in vodka.



That is a valid concern, female-male rape (while unusual) isn't as rare as people think and it isn't taken seriously. It IS rape if you drink too much and a woman takes advantage.

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But even less likely to be reported, much less prosecuted. The DA would find it nigh impossible to convince a jury that the man was raped in Dead's scenario.

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Originally Posted by Mr Mystery

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!

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Originally Posted by Deadlift

But what if the shoes on the other foot, I go out, get quite pissed and a woman asks me to go back to have sex with her. I say yes and in the morning feel like I have been taken advantage of and decide I have indeed been raped. What are the police actually going to do about that then ? Besides laugh their faces off and send meon my way ? Obviously non of this is going to happen in my world ;) but when the sex is reversed it comes across a bit absurd.

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Yeah, what EG said. You may or may not be right that the police won't take you seriously, but the solution to that problem is not for the law to say you were not raped. In all fairness, you HAVE been raped, the law should recognize that, and the police should too.

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Originally Posted by ElectricPaladin

I agree that, as a man, the idea that I could have consensual sex with someone and the next morning I could be accused of raping her is pretty terrifying. But, dudes, it doesn't really happen all that often. There have been a handful of high-profile cases, but really? It's not at all common. In most cases where the accused made that his defense, it was either obviously false, and proved so by other evidence, or the dude got off. We have a legal system that favors the accused - quite justly - and that doesn't actually change when its a rape case.

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I would like to point out that there are many more venues in which someone can be judged than just the legal one. I've known of people losing their jobs, being kicked out of schools, losing their standing in society, losing their house, losing their families, etc., etc., etc. based solely on the strength of an accusation, with no legal charges ever filed. In the case I mentioned, the boy was dismissed from Harvard because this girl had sex with him and then cried rape. Eventually he had to leave the state, because the girl's hairy-leg crew kept harassing him. Six years ago the Duke Lacrosse team was suspended from play and their coach was forced to resign because of the false claim of rape by a psychotic woman who was so clearly and obviously lying. Meanwhile the Dean's first response was to come out with a public apology, even before the police had reported any findings whatsoever, effectively stating that, "Yes, the boys at Duke are rapists." And then, there's the case of Tawana Brawley - which is so heinous on so many levels, I just won't go into it.

As I've said, I feel that real rapists (violent rapists) should be gibbeted alive. Haven't made up my mind on what special slice of Hell false rape accusers should enjoy.

P.S. The woman who cried rape against the Duke Lacrosse team? She's being tried for murder now. Apparently she stabbed her boyfriend to death.

Necron, what do you mean by "violent?" A man who drugs a woman for the purpose of reducing her ability to resist and has sex with her is not violent by the usual meaning of the term, but surely that man is a real rapist in your eyes?

It sounds like your policy opinions on this topic have been heavily influenced by your friend's case, for which I can hardly blame you - I think it is both true that rape is under reported and overly tolerated and that an mere accusation of rape can be unfairly, almost irrecoverably, damning. But is your problem with the law here, or society's relation to the concept of rape?

You've advocated a law that is blind to motives and sees only behavior. Virtually all American rape laws fit that description. To generalize, in America it is rape to have sex with a person who is of unsound mind or, being of sound mind, has not manifested consent. There are generally sensible caveats for cases of sex between spouses. Is that not a sensible, enlightened definition of rape? Surely you would not advocate a return to the days when a rape victim had to prove resistance?

Nec - can I call you Nec? - allow me to introduce you to a concept called the "[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic"]availability heuristic[/URL]." It will totally blow your mind. The link, by the way, is to the wikipedia article, in case you are curious or I get something wrong.

Here's the deal: your brain is stupid. Not just your brain - all human brains. The thing is, it may not feel like it, but thinking actually costs calories. Your brain doesn't realize that we live in a world of super-abundant calories, so it constantly cuts corners, finding places where it can "fudge it" and still give you more or less reliable results. Social scientists call these unfortunate calorie-saving methods "heuristics," and the "availability" one is one of the weirdest.

Basically, the availability heuristic means that your brain assumes that the frequency with which you see something happen is roughly equivalent to the frequency with which it happens. And this, were humans not morons, would make sense. The trouble is that our brains are also really bad at distinguishing language from reality, which means that every time you hear about something or see it represented - ie. in the news on TV - your brain logs it as an occurrence. And since humans just love to babble about unlikely sh*t whenever it happens...

The availability heuristic is why people are more afraid to fly than they are to drive. It's why people are more afraid of sharks than bees. And, it's why we are convinced that things like false rape accusations happen all the time.

So, yes, things like the Duke University case are travesties of justice. However, they are extremely rare. We just think they happen a lot because we hear about them a lot, and our brains are stupid.

On to the thorny issue of rape...

I think that there are two problems:

Firstly, our law and our culture haven't caught up with some of the realities. For example: a lot of people use getting a little lubricated (ie. tipsy) as a way to work up the nerve to have sex. Is this a great idea? Probably not, but it's also common. We either need to develop laws about rape and consent that work with this cultural reality, or we need to develop a different cultural reality. Until we do one or the other, we're going to have a Frankensein's Monster of rules and excuses and accusations and apologies and sometimes even unnecessary court cases.

However, I want to stress that this logistical abomination is far, far superior to "drunk girl is fair game." That's even worse. I'd rather a few guys get dragged before a grand jury here and there and end up not being indicted because the judge realizes "he was drunk, she was drunk, everyone was drunk and nobody meant any harm - next case!" than people who maliciously prey on drunk girls get off free. Remember, rape accusations are rare, false accusations are rarer, and rape convictions are rarest. We're not going to see a lot of innocent guys go to jail because they drunkenly hit on an equally drunken girl and had drunken sex that she regretted in the morning. Remember the availability heuristic - this doesn't really happen that often.

Secondly - and this is by far more more controversial and I fully expect that people will disagree, I only hope they understand my good intentions here - I think that what we call "rape" is a lot of smaller ideas glued together. There's "violent rape" - sexual contact that is achieved through violence or the threat of violence - which is totally unambiguous. There's coercive rape, which is a lot messier. Is it coercive rape if she tells him that she'll tell everyone at school that he's gay if he doesn't have sex with her? I mean, he doesn't have to, but if this story takes place in the right community and she has the right kind of social power, the consequences if he doesn't... I dunno. Like I said, it's messy. If raping someone is "abrogating their agency and insulting their dignity by using them for sex against their will," what about situations in which the person could still, technically, chose not to have sex, but some differential in power made that choice unduly costly?

Then there's the concept of violation. I maintain that it's possible for Person A to feel violated even if Person B did nothing actually wrong. As Nabterayl mentioned, although the state prosecutes rape cases, you haven't got much of a case if the victim refuses to make an accusation or follow through with cooperation. Therefore, you've got a rape case if Person A feels violated enough to blow the whistle, but does that by itself mean that Person B did something wrong?

Of course not. And that's why we have a system of law, legal standards, investigation, and a criminal justice system that significantly favors the defendant. Because we're still figuring this out, and probably will be for a long time.

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Originally Posted by Nabterayl

Necron, what do you mean by "violent?" A man who drugs a woman for the purpose of reducing her ability to resist and has sex with her is not violent by the usual meaning of the term.

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We could go around in circles on terms. I think everyone gets what I mean. However, to be clear, in this case I'm referring to the sub-definition "to caused by force." Implicit to that is the notion of non-consent. Now, poisoning is a crime. It could be considered a violent act - it is a violation of a person's body. Rendering someone unconscious so that you could have unsolicited sex with them is still forcing yourself upon them - in this case the force happens to be chemical and not kinetic.

I will admit there are grey areas when it comes to rape versus consensual sex. I would not consider statutory rape in the same category of violent rape, assuming that the underage partner was, in fact, willing. Obviously there are many, many caveats to that, which I don't want to enumerate. I would not consider it rape if someone simply talked a generally unwilling partner into sex, assuming there were no threats of harm (physical or otherwise) involved. I would not consider it rape if a partner change their mind in the middle of the act, and the other partner chose not to stop. I would consider it rape, however, if the declining partner tried to extricate themselves from the union, and the other partner restrained the decliner (i.e. used force) in order to maintain the union.

And then you get into the more interesting flavors of sex that involve safety words, whips, ropes, restraints, ball gags, collars, the Boy Scout Handbook and a number of other things that ol' Necron wouldn't know anything about (wink, wink) - all of which involve force, and so are violent, but which do not count as rape due to consent.


By the way - distinguishing whether or not getting a woman drunk and then banging her is rape based on a marriage certificate? Backward and gross. Does Ohio still consider women to be chattel?