What is Rape? - Page 39

On August 25 2012 04:35 Crushinator wrote:


We were discussing the validity of bringing sexual history and dress style into a courtroom as a legal argument.

Edit: I would also like to add that I personally feel that we should defend a woman's right, and ability, to dress as she pleases within the obvious limits of the law.

On August 25 2012 04:50 farvacola wrote:

Can you substantiate this claim a bit more? I only ask because in my experience potential rapists tend to hold certain beliefs in regards to women and their status as human beings. Having gone through an undergraduate college education at a major state school, I came into contact with a few men who ended up being convicted of rape, and all of them maintained a particular brand of female objectification very much in line with the ideology of PUA and movements such as that. What I am getting at is that perhaps there is work to be done in terms of our societal ideation of what constitutes an inappropriate consideration of females. I simply do not buy that a potential rapist is undetectable.

On August 25 2012 05:09 Zahir wrote:


I agree. In fact, men and women should both be protected, with the right to wear whatever they please. I would not, however, place this right over the right of a defendant to support his or her defense with evidence. I even posted several sources linking dress to the desire to attract sexual partners for consensual sex purposes. Hard evidence is often hard to come by when attempting to distinguish whether a sex act was consensual or not. Given that fact, it seems reasonable to me that a defendant ought be able to include circumstantial evidence in his or her defense.

"To protect the defendant's right to a fair trial and his right of confrontation, the statute, at a minimum, should allow the defendant to introduce evidence of the complainant's bad reputa- tion for chastity and of prior acts of sexual intercourse with him if such evidence is relevant to the case and critical to his defense or necessary for an adequate cross-examination of a crucial adverse witness."

A snippet from one of the sources I linked 3 pages back. I know theyre dense reads but I'd love it if someone would at least give them a glance over. While the opinions in this thread may be heavily weighted in favor of so called rape shield laws, opinions among legal experts and academia reveal serious concerns about unconstitutionality and erosion of defendants Rights.

On August 25 2012 05:15 MoltkeWarding wrote:


I, for the life of me, have never understood what "objectification" means, either philosophically or phenomenologically.

I do think that you are on the brink of going over an uncomfortable boundary, which would nonetheless be worthy to explore: to what extent is rape an escalation of Eros, when it is liberated from the taming influences of Agape in a post-Christian society?

On August 25 2012 05:18 imallinson wrote:


In this context it is men seeing women as things that exist only for their own sexual gratification.

On August 25 2012 05:26 Zahir wrote:
"Critics of the traditional evidentiary rules, however, point to the change that has occurred in sexual mores since those rules originally were fashioned. They argue that although a woman is more likely to engage in premarital or extramarital sexual activity today, she is not likely to do so indiscriminately; her decision to consent or not to consent to sexual relations on a particular occasion is discrete and unaffected by her past behavior, so that what she has done in the past has no bearing whatsoever on her future conduct." This argu- ment, however, is specious. An item of evidence, to be relevant, need not establish conclusively the desired inference; it need only make that inference more probable or less probable than it would be without the offered item of evidence. Regardless of the prevailing sexual mores"of society, it is still reasonable to conclude that a woman who never has engaged in sexual intercourse will be less likely to consent to intercourse on a particular occasion than a woman who is not a virgin. To state it another way, a woman who previously has engaged in consensual sexual intercourse will be more likely to consent to intercourse than one who has not. There- fore, it must be concluded that the fact of previous consensual sex- ual intercourse does have some probative value on the issue of con- sent."
Probative value depends upon the degree of similarity between the circumstances of the previous acts of sexual intercourse and the circumstances of the case in question. Various factors such as the time the previous acts occurred, the places they occurred, the per- sons involved, and the circumstances leading up to the acts will be of importance. For example, the fact that an unmarried complain- ant engaged in consensual sexual relations in her home with her boyfriend is not highly probative of the issue of consent in a case involving sexual intercourse with a stranger in his automobile. But the fact that an unmarried complainant engaged in consensual sex- ual relations in her home with a man she had met in a singles bar earlier the same evening may be highly probative of the issue of consent in a case involving sexual intercourse with a defendant whom she had met earlier the same evening at a singles bar."

http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2418&context=wmlr

Again, i urge you to look through some of these sources, because they provide a multitude of examples and reasoning, some of which may be more convincing to you.

On August 25 2012 05:26 Zahir wrote:
"Critics of the traditional evidentiary rules, however, point to the change that has occurred in sexual mores since those rules originally were fashioned. They argue that although a woman is more likely to engage in premarital or extramarital sexual activity today, she is not likely to do so indiscriminately; her decision to consent or not to consent to sexual relations on a particular occasion is discrete and unaffected by her past behavior, so that what she has done in the past has no bearing whatsoever on her future conduct." This argu- ment, however, is specious. An item of evidence, to be relevant, need not establish conclusively the desired inference; it need only make that inference more probable or less probable than it would be without the offered item of evidence. Regardless of the prevailing sexual mores"of society, it is still reasonable to conclude that a woman who never has engaged in sexual intercourse will be less likely to consent to intercourse on a particular occasion than a woman who is not a virgin. To state it another way, a woman who previously has engaged in consensual sexual intercourse will be more likely to consent to intercourse than one who has not. There- fore, it must be concluded that the fact of previous consensual sex- ual intercourse does have some probative value on the issue of con- sent."
Probative value depends upon the degree of similarity between the circumstances of the previous acts of sexual intercourse and the circumstances of the case in question. Various factors such as the time the previous acts occurred, the places they occurred, the per- sons involved, and the circumstances leading up to the acts will be of importance. For example, the fact that an unmarried complain- ant engaged in consensual sexual relations in her home with her boyfriend is not highly probative of the issue of consent in a case involving sexual intercourse with a stranger in his automobile. But the fact that an unmarried complainant engaged in consensual sex- ual relations in her home with a man she had met in a singles bar earlier the same evening may be highly probative of the issue of consent in a case involving sexual intercourse with a defendant whom she had met earlier the same evening at a singles bar."

http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2418&context=wmlr

Again, i urge you to look through some of these sources, because they provide a multitude of examples and reasoning, some of which may be more convincing to you.

On August 25 2012 05:36 MoltkeWarding wrote:


Why must it be men seeing women as things that exist only for their own sexual gratification is the sole definition of objectification? What if man sees a woman as a thing that exists only to be the mother of his children? Or a woman as a thing that exists only to be the companion of his life? Or a woman as a thing that exists only to be the co-participant of his inner soul? I am certain you would agree that those are equally acts of objectification, unless you mean by object only the carnal part of a woman. In which case, society and science have amicably produced the answer in the form of ever-improving paraphernalia.

Now, granting that any opinion of women when given only in relation to himself is "objectification," does it remain so in all circumstances? In other words, do these men think that man is the ultimate cause of women, or do they think that merely in the context of their own relationships with them?

If man were the ultimate cause of women, does he have an opinion as to his own ultimate cause? In other words, when he looks cosmologically rather than selfishly, does he think that he himself has some ultimate purpose for his own existence? I am certain you agree that this would constitute self-objectification.

So my question is:
Resolved, that men commit acts of cognitive "objectification", what does that establish about him ethically?

On August 25 2012 05:39 Crushinator wrote:


I am sorry, but I will decline to look through more of the examples, mostly because I am lazy, and a little because I don't think i will find better examples. The article seems to link the likelihood of consenting to sex, with the likelihood of falsely reporting rape. This is where it goes wrong in my opinion, because I do not know if that connection exists. To be frank, I think this reasoning is fallacious.

Edit: To further clarify. It is true that promiscuous women have consensual sex more often than chaste women, but KNOWING that the sexual act has taken place, is it clear that it is rape for the chaste woman more of the time than for the promiscuous woman? I think not.

On August 25 2012 05:39 Crushinator wrote:


I am sorry, but I will decline to look through more of the examples, mostly because I am lazy, and a little because I don't think i will find better examples. The article seems to link the likelihood of consenting to sex, with the likelihood of falsely reporting rape. This is where it goes wrong in my opinion, because I do not know if that connection exists. To be frank, I think this reasoning is fallacious.

Edit: To further clarify. It is true that promiscuous women have consensual sex more often than chaste women, but KNOWING that the sexual act has taken place, is it clear that it is rape for the chaste woman more of the time than for the promiscuous woman? I think not.

On August 25 2012 05:52 imallinson wrote:

That is why I specified "in this context." In a more general sense you could say that objectification is when a person considers another person to have a specific role irregardless of that person's wish to fulfil that role.

I don't think anyone, barring very strict bible literalists, think men are the cause of women. I think it's much more of a superiority thing, where many men think they are more important/better than women so their desires are more important/better than women's desires.

On August 25 2012 03:33 Zoesan wrote:


Then what is?
Those little things might be the best lead you're going to get and the only way to increase the chance of either imprisoning a rapist or accidentally jailing an innocent person.

I don't like it but... really, we haven't got much more.

On August 25 2012 05:59 Notreallyreal wrote:


Absolute garbage, how can anyone take you seriously with this attitude?

"Oh I'm lazy, I won't find anything, my opinion, I think this is fallacious"

On August 25 2012 06:01 Zahir wrote:


That was not my interpretation. The article links consensual sex with the likelihood of further consensual sex under similar circumstances. You don't have to prove a tendency of lying or history of false allegations to prove that the ones the alleged victim has lodged against you is false (although it would help). It may suffice to prove that there is reasonable doubt that what occurred was in fact rape.

As for the guy who wants stats on false rape allegations: my work is never done. :/ I will get back to you.

On August 25 2012 05:36 TheFrankOne wrote:


Dude, I looked at your previous posts and you have posted a lot of things in this thread its hard to go through you posts here, I am curious if you have any information indicating that the false conviction rate is higher for rape than other crimes, hell even if just the conviction rate is higher.

Edit @ Above Post: That was some trippy shit but the point is that viewing people as things to be used, for any purpose including only as a companion or baby factory rather than independent beings with their own thoughts and goals (causes? didn't really get that part about ultimate purposes and whatnot since the point of life is mostly to keep that self-sustaining chemical reaction that is you going for as long as possible) is objectification. Also you missed the part where the post you responded to started with "in this context" which I think refutes your whole response.

On August 25 2012 06:18 Crushinator wrote:


What you would need to show is that, given that the sex has taken place, is the likelihood of it being consensual more or less likely, if a particular part of sexual history is known.

Edit: Meh, I thought about it and I geuss I can think of some reason why promiscuity may be relevant.

Promiscuous women have a 10% probability of having consensual sex with any man they meet. Chaste women have only a 1% probability of the same. They both have a 1% probability of being raped.

Then, if we know sex has taken place for both women, we know that it is 50% chance for the chaste women to have been raped, but the chance for the promiscuous woman is much lower.

This does suppose that the chance of being raped is not different for promiscuous/chaste, and it ignores the possibility of differing false report rate. It also ignores the possbility that chastity/promiscuity is the result of encoutnering less/more men, rather than being more likely to sleep with any given man. Also I am still not convinced that it is good that this may be used in court, but im forced to conclude it has atleast some merit. I think.

On August 25 2012 06:46 Zahir wrote:


I thank you for your consideration. What you should bear in mind is those numbers would never be used or implied on their own, or at least they shouldnt. In the snippet I posted it states that it's important that only consensual sex similar enough to the act in question is relevant and or admissible. A lawyer for the prosecution could easily dismantle an argument purely from promiscuity on the grounds of its irrelevance.

On August 25 2012 06:41 Zahir wrote:


http://www.straightstatistics.org/article/crying-rape-falsely-rare-or-common

That's the best source I could find. Of all the studies surveyed, the lowest rate of false allegations for rape was 2%, median about 10% and high around 50%.

The average false allegation rate for all crimes is about 2%. Take your pick.