real world rape

THANK YOU!

I came back to check if it was still valid for me to make a comment about how the last two pages of this discussion was dominated by male points of view. It was previously disappointing to note that the only significant female involvement were declarations of "Oh Cash, I just LURVE your point of view...can I marry you?"


Thank you for bringing some worthy female brain cells back into this discussion which can't seem to get out of this "Male Honour" vibe I am feeling. I feel reprobate is right to take apart some of the opinions expressed here line by line.

In general, I feel that - in term of sexual relations and even beyond it - we shouldn't be getting all anal and flustered over this particular 2-letter one-syllable word: No.

invaderkim has the correct word: Communication. That's the key.

....well....not for preventing rape. I'm not saying that. I'd just rather that we stop going: "When any woman says 'No', regardless of context, then according to Article 3, Paragraph 64 of the Manual of Male Honour, we must immediately pull out in all cases and assume we have prevented 'rape' from occurring, and anyone who disagrees is a sexist potential rapist pig.".

Impossible to say, thats the nature of fraud. And while I am the one who brought it up, they really are two different phenomena. Fraud is a false claim, false accusations of rape are in fact almost always accusations, that is a claim against a specific individual. I also don't see how its meaningless. Youre correlating a crime of violence against a crime of finance, I mentioned insruance fraud mostly for completeness.

no, it's not just when the accused is aquitted, it's when it can be shown that the alleged victim was not actually raped IIRC.
This came up a little while ago and I believe he went into more detail with the figure.

No, because lacking proof, even someone who actually did rape the accuser is going to be aquitted.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here, but this kind of communication is a very complicated issue. My feeling is that a person needs to err on the side of caution when the word "no" is uttered.

You and your boyfriend have agreed upon communication where the word "no" really means "look for additional cues". An actual rape is such an intense violation of a person's humanity that "no" needs to mean NO, until other communication cues have been clearly established. Body language and other non-verbal cues are so easy to misinterpret that you can't rely on them unless you know the person well enough to put them in the right context.

Culturally, we need to discard the notion that a person has a right to fuck another person with or without that person's consent. No one ever deserves to be raped.

Going back to the argument about castration ... I think I'm willing to do that to a dog that won't stop humping my leg, and a cat that I'm going to let wander the neighborhood, but that's about it.

Well, if memory serves Reps figure comes from the FBI.

That is scary -- but I tend to believe this happens rarely if ever. Most legit rapes are never reported. Defense attorneys usually put the rape victim on trial. The whole process is immensely painful.

Not to sound like a jerk, but my feeling would be that this scenerio would be most likely if you had sex with someone who had serious mental problems. Always remember the old rule ... never have sex with anyone who's more insane than you are.

I have thought that would be part of the proper punishment for that crime for many a year. You take guns away from felons right? its just another tool to commit a crime

Felons don't have guns?

The 2% figure is a flat out lie, basically. It has no real source. Its a cannard taken out of context that has, as these things do, taken on a life of its own. Brownmiller popularized it , but it predates even her research and the only thing she has to support it is a study on gender relationships in detectives and victims. There is actually no legitimate study that shows 2%. Its just popularized for obvious reasons.

The 8% figure is the FBI UCR stat but its highly conservative in its methodology. It only counts accusations officially categorized as unfounded in an arena where many jurisdictions have no such classification, and they use the strictest definition. They do not, as speculated, count acquittals, only those isntances where the investigation explicitly determines that no crime has been comitted. This is a very high standard which, like rape statistics, does not remotely capture all false claims.

Independant research puts the figure at ~25%, with supporting reasearch and peer reviewed methodology. Amond small samples (small being municipalities) the figures have been as high as 40+ percent.

Sounds a little like a witch hunt either way. I mean - sure I tend to err on the side of the accusers, just my natural leaning - but that has a root in an accusation that turned out to be true - or at least as true as any of us who were dragged into it could assertain. I know it isn't cut and dried, but at the same time it's too sensitive a situation not to be. One one hand, we put justice in the hands of the victim - and then they get power and abuse it. On the other hand - we leave the power where it is and rapes go on and some unpunished. When the burden of proof is discarded and decisions rely so heavily on character assassination and conjecture... things just aren't getting done, victims aren't getting protected. I supported a rapist once - he told me, and a group of friends, that he didn't do it. We had already made assurances that, if he had, we would help him, but he told us he didn't do it. Two weeks later he got drunk and assaulted a close personal friend in her bathroom. He stood, naked in her bathroom - told her to have sex with him. Then he became violently ill, comitting and urinating all over the room and then passed out in his own filth. My group of friends figured things out late and passed judgement against the women (yes there were more than one) simply on the say so of a man we trusted. He stole so much from all of us that it makes me tend to be absolutist on this subject... therefore - I excuse myself from the discussion - thanks for letting me rant.

Bless you, bless you. I know many women who feel this way, but if I come in and say it myself, it'll be taken as a self-serving statement from someone who says "such ridiculous fucked up things about rape without shame." I have no idea who in this thread has posted about rape "without shame" because I know that I'm ashamed of men who, with deliberate intent, rape, beat and abuse women. I'm pretty sure all the men posting in here feel that way -- if they don't, I'd be worried.

In particular, if the MTV story is true, then it's truly despicable.

But reprobate's clash with Cash is about something quite different. It's about how to read intent and choice in a situation in which intent has already been signalled and then has possibly been withdrawn. Reprobate claims in such circumstances that the situation is ambiguous, and that moral judgement should not automatically be passed. Cash claims it's clear, and that moral condemnation should automatically follow.

I know what the women I know whose opinions I trust and value would have to say, and that's what matters to me. If it makes me someone that some other people would avoid, then that's probably best for both of us.

I think the confusion here is over who is judging intent. If the women are judging there own intent, are comfortable in the situation - then that is one thing, but if the men are judging the intent a second problem is made. The biggest problem is that it is both cut and dried and blurry. But in the "No doesn't mean no" category - communcation is the key. I've been in a number of situation's where no could be misconstrued. We talked about it before hand and I made myself clear - if you say No, ever - it's off. The other person understood and we had much fun, and still do But it's about comunication - certainly. If I was with a woman for whom "No!" was something uttered passionately then I would be forced to try to make allowances or make other liasons, but that would be something we discussed prior to coitus. If any woman I am ever with is unclear on whether or not she was technically raped then I'm not listening, and I think ears are our most important sexual organ.

Added:

I know I said I was done but I had to use my ears - then I felt I had to use my mouth

[Edited on Nov 30, 2003 by marley386]

But this ALWAYS has to happen in hetero-sex. That confused, conflicted, difficult terrain of negotiating intent, even in the ongoing context of both being naked and intimately touching one another! Both men and women have to be assessing their own and each others' intentions. It can't be any other way.

Somewhere on this site is a long post by Sean describing the difficult "first move" situation -- when to touch (and in particular, when to kiss).

His suggestion, which was widely endorsed and applauded, boiled down to "You can't know, you have to guess." Take a chance, plant a kiss, and hope that you read the signals right.

Once you've read the signals right, and you're both naked and fucking, the fact is you have now read a long and cumulative set of signals (all saying "Yes, let's fuck!") -- and now, there's a possible new signal, that is in fact open to a number of interpretations, and somehow you're now supposed to know instinctively which is the right interpretation, even if it goes against all the signals you've been assessing (correctly) up until now?

What you've talked about since, marley, is sensible stuff dealing with how to resolve ambiguity in a relationship context. All of which is sensible, and please don't think I'm disagreeing or disputing.

But that "first time" context is where it's most tricky. And it IS tricky, I think, and ambiguous. Inherently so.

outstanding!
well said,

this is in response to honey way back at the beginning of this string.

I don't think the men who rape do so simply because they can. I think there are deep, deep rooted issues of misogyny going on. You don't do something like that to someone without a lot of hatred and anger. From what I've read these guys spend endless amounts of time building up frustration about their inablility to to connect with women. This becomes anger and hatred towards the opposite sex. They feel powerless over their desires (or women since females become the sit in for a internally located point of causality) and they try and regain power through rape. Think about it, this guy bragged about raping that girl as he left. I don't brag about my consensual sex when I leave a room so what kind of pathetic miscreant does over date rape. These people aren't big strong men, they're twisted little boys seeking vengeance against those they see as being the source of their personal humiliation.


[Edited on Dec 01, 2003 by mathmaddicts]

[Edited on Dec 01, 2003 by Jeff_Fries]