What is Rape? - Page 54

On September 15 2012 20:31 khaydarin9 wrote:


The issue with intoxication is that in a lot of places, you legally can't consent to anything if you're drunk. This is to protect people from being taken advantage of - so, someone can't ply another person with alcohol and make them sign a contract that they otherwise, being sober and rational, would not have signed; or someone can't get another person drunk so that they can have sex with them when they would normally have declined, though just looking at pop culture, the latter is probably astonishingly common.

I also think it's difficult to say which is "worse" (and which of the two happens more frequently): innocent men being falsely accused and successfully convicted of rape, or men guilty of rape going free. Could you say the same about any other violent crime - that it's "worse" that innocent people are being sent to jail than it is having perpetrators pronounced innocent?

On September 15 2012 16:37 Hryul wrote:


Please read this where you can find a translation of the article. The man was set free because in german law either a threat, an imminent danger or helplessness is mandatory for "rape". According to the Court she could have run away because the door was not locked or cry for help.

The problem is that many german newspapers are utter trash and confused "didn't resist enough" (wrong) with "wasn't helpless" (actual reason).

Because so many people who should know better have been getting it so so wrong over the past few weeks, and because like many feminists I’ve just about reached my limit as to how much more victim blaming and ignorance I can tolerate before I completely explode, here’s a handy cut out and keep guide to some of the things that rape categorically isn’t.

...huge numbers of men want to be free to act however they like, including in ways others might experience as rape, and believe that it’s fine. That’s why there’s such a battle over the “definition” of rape. They don’t care whether others are experiencing it as rape. They just want to be able to call it - and think of it as - “not rape”

The people intent upon raping us know that “no means no” as much as we do. The people intent upon raping us do not want to think of this as a rape, do not want to think of themselves as rapists, do not want to allow the possibility of facing consequences for raping us. They will do everything within their power to make that “no” unbelievable or invisible.

Maybe once we’re done discussing the relative merits of one rape over another, we might focus our attention on the ways that dating is just another front in the war of the sexes. We might wonder why there are so many books about how women must change themselves to win the love of Mr. Right, while men are flooded with books about how to pick up as many women as possible. And we might finally draw connections between a culture that encourages men to get their dicks into women’s vaginas by any means necessary and the ongoing delegitimization of date rape.

It’s 2012 and I’m still reading about what the girl or woman was wearing that night. Or how she should hold aspirin between her legs. Or how she shouldn’t say the word “vagina” on the floor of congress. Or how a friend at a bar wants the sob stories to end. What I’m trying to tell you is that violence against girls and women is in every move we make, whether it is big violence or small, explicit or hidden behind the word father. Priest. Lover. Teacher. Coach. Friend. I’m trying to explain how you can be a girl and a woman and travel through male violence like it’s part of what living a life means. Getting into or out of a car. A plane. Going through a door to your own home. A church. School. Pool. It can seem normal. It can seem like just the way things are.

6% of college-aged men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word "rape" isn't used in the description of the act—and that's the conservative estimate. Other sources double that number. A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That's not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?

Rapists do.

They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again. Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.

—False.
“This is a very old and very frequently repeated myth about rape. According to the FBI, less than 2% of rape reports are false, about the same low percentage as with most other crimes. The myth that rape is an easy accusation to make serves to wrongly undermine women’s credibility and the need for women to talk about their experience with rape.

Rape is also not a difficult crime to prove. In the first place, there’s usually no who-done-it since the victim usually always knows the perpetrator. In the second place, because the victim and perpetrator usually know each other well, there a number of investigative techniques available to police which take advantage of that relationship. Too many police continue to tell the public that rape is a difficult crime to prove in order to make excuses for not prosecuting rape.”

It’s not about Julian Assange, not really, not any more. It’s becoming an excuse to wrench the definition of rape back to a time when consent was unimportant, just when some of us had begun to speak up, and it’s happening right now, and what’s worse, what’s so, so much worse, is that it’s happening in the name of truth and justice, in the name of freedom of speech.

If those principles are to mean anything, this vitriol, this rape-redefining in the name of conscience and whistleblowing and Wikileaks and Julian Assange, it has to stop. It has to stop now. Non-consensual sex is rape, real rape, and good guys do it too, all the time, every day. Sorry if that hurts to hear, but you’ve heard it now, and there are things that hurt much more, and for longer, and for lifetimes.

When a person is behaving in a rapeminded way, they don’t care about consent. In order for a person not to be behaving in a rapeminded way, they have a responsibility equal to the social power they possess to care about and bring about a state of consensuality in their sexual relations.

One of the many, many problems with wishing rape on anyone - even other rapists - is that is places THEIR rapist as someone delivering justice. Rape as justice can only exist if you condone and approve of a rapist. And that’s what jokes about prison rape are about: approving of rapists. And see, that’s the sort of logic our culture already exercises: condoning rape and approving of rapists if the victim acts a certain way. If she’s wearing a short skirt, she deserves to be raped. If he’s a sex worker, it’s not ‘real’ rape. We don’t treat rape as a crime unless the victim fits certain criteria. This isn’t me having empathy for rapists or for pedophiles. This is me scared of the sort of logic that allows us to view rape as justice, rather than a crime.

According to RAINN: Lifetime rate of rape /attempted rape for women by race

•All women: 17.6%
•White women: 17.7%
•Black women: 18.8%
•Asian Pacific Islander women: 6.8%
•American Indian/Alaskan women: 34.1%
•Mixed race women: 24.4%

On September 16 2012 06:09 sunprince wrote:


I did read that already. The point I'm making is that a threat, imminent danger, or helplessness is mandatory because otherwise, it's a he-said, she-said situation where there's no evidence.

The man was found not guilty because there's no proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he raped her. In fact, the evidence that she neither attempted to leave nor called for help suggests that he did not rape her.

On September 18 2012 06:20 KwarK wrote:

I'm highly confused by what you're trying to say here. Are you saying that in situations where there isn't enough evidence a crime simply did not take place rather than being insufficient evidence to prove it? There is a huge difference between "you can't prove you were raped so we can't convict the guy" and "you weren't raped", even though in both cases nobody goes to jail. Saying that a crime needs proof that it happened to be a crime is absurd.

On September 18 2012 06:20 KwarK wrote:
The man was found not guilty not because of lack of evidence (although he probably would have been found not guilty on those grounds anyway) but because under German law you are allowed to ignore a "no, I do not consent to sex" as long as force or the threat of force is not used. That is what people are complaining about, that simply ignoring non consent doesn't qualify as a rape. Nobody is saying that in every case that turns into her word against his we should convict the guy but defining rape as something narrower than nonconsensual sex is ridiculous, if someone had sex with you against your will you were raped, regardless of whether or not you tried to escape and regardless of whether or not you can prove it.

On September 18 2012 09:49 sunprince wrote:


No, I'm saying that it would be a logical failure to assume that a rape occurred simply based on one person's testimony when there is no evidence to corroborate that claim. Just as a good scientific skeptic wouldn't assume that God is real because someone said that they met God, or that a person is a war hero simply because they say so, it is insufficient to determine that a rape took place simply based on the alleged victim's testimony that they did not give consent.

In other words, a crime doesn't need proof that it happened to be a crime, but it needs proof for law enforcement, the courts, the government, and other people to agree that it happened. Just like global warming might be happening regardless of whether it's been proven, but we needed evidence before it's reasonable to believe that it is.



The point here is that if the only evidence available is the alleged victim's claim of verbal non-consent, then there is not enough evidence for any reasonable person to conclude that a rape occurred.

If the alleged victim's testimony is true, then a rape in fact did occur. However, whether or not that testimony is true is the whole crux of the issue.

On September 18 2012 14:14 KwarK wrote:

But that's not the situation in Germany under current laws. Under current laws the alleged victims testimony that she explicitly did not consent to sex can be true and it still not be a rape provided the rape was not violent. Rape has been defined more narrowly than unconsensual sex. It's not about whether or not you can prove it, that's a matter for the courts, it's what the definition of the crime is. Surely you can understand that defining rape as something narrower than sex despite the non consent of the other party is wrong. It doesn't mean giving ground on the quality of evidence needed to convict etc.

On September 18 2012 14:55 sunprince wrote:


Except, how can you ever prove that the alleged victim's testimony was true, or not taken out of context? Any evidence which would corroborate this would itself be sufficient evidence that a rape took place.

This isn't a law that redefines rape, it's a legal restriction on evidence, similar to hearsay laws.

On September 18 2012 17:23 Sandtrout wrote:



Just imagine a situation where everything was filmed by a security camera or something like that. Even if you could clearly hear that she didn't consent, it would still not be considered rape because it wasn't violent.

On September 18 2012 14:55 sunprince wrote:


Except, how can you ever prove that the alleged victim's testimony was true, or not taken out of context? Any evidence which would corroborate this would itself be sufficient evidence that a rape took place.

This isn't a law that redefines rape, it's a legal restriction on evidence, similar to hearsay laws.

On September 18 2012 18:02 sunprince wrote:
The idea that women aren't adult agents who are capable of acting in some way when being raped is an incredibly infantilizing, misogynistic notion. I for one believe that women are capable of clearly expressing nonconsent, at least when they're sober adults with mental/emotional capacities to match. Why does everyone insist on denigrating women as incompetent children?

On September 15 2012 07:30 sunprince wrote:


It sounds like what happened is that she said that she told him "no". However, there's no evidence to corroborate this, and in fact, the evidence contradicts this. Not to mention the fact that there can be relevant context that the article didn't discuss, such as a girl saying "no" yet changing her mind afterward, or saying "no" in a non-literal (such as playful or sarcastic) manner.

What's going on is that the outraged people are just taking her at her word and forgetting all about little concepts like innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.



"Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

On September 20 2012 23:33 KwarK wrote:

A lot of adult humans react in shock to personal violation. I don't believe it is in the least bit misogynistic to accept the possibility of a woman being paralysed by the realisation that she is in the same room as someone who is ignoring her clearly expressed non consent. We tend to live in this fantasy world where it's safe and we're in control of our own lives and ignore the fact that at any time someone could just choose to run us down with a car or stab us for no reason because we typically don't have to deal with that kind of shit. Think about that moment of realisation that you've lost control of your body, that the social rules about conduct and not imposing and abusing each other are simply not being followed and that the other person does not respect them and could do literally anything to you. Do you not think that shock, especially on a 15 year old in this German case, could cause the lack of a physical fight? Do you not think that physically confronting the rapist or screaming might seem an absolutely terrifying prospect, he's already showed that he's willing to do break the rules and doesn't care about you.

Your idea of rape is a fantasy and insisting that the victim needs to meet your requirements of resistance for it to qualify as a rape, even though someone is forcing sex upon them against their will, is absolutely despicable. You're not stopping at "you can't prove you were raped", you're going with "you weren't raped, even though he forced sex upon you, because you didn't do enough to stop it". It's disgusting.

On September 21 2012 04:24 Reason wrote:


What is that? Is that supposed to be profound in some way? The fact is the law system even in the most civilized countries is a complete joke.

On September 20 2012 23:33 KwarK wrote:

A lot of adult humans react in shock to personal violation. I don't believe it is in the least bit misogynistic to accept the possibility of a woman being paralysed by the realisation that she is in the same room as someone who is ignoring her clearly expressed non consent. We tend to live in this fantasy world where it's safe and we're in control of our own lives and ignore the fact that at any time someone could just choose to run us down with a car or stab us for no reason because we typically don't have to deal with that kind of shit. Think about that moment of realisation that you've lost control of your body, that the social rules about conduct and not imposing and abusing each other are simply not being followed and that the other person does not respect them and could do literally anything to you. Do you not think that shock, especially on a 15 year old in this German case, could cause the lack of a physical fight? Do you not think that physically confronting the rapist or screaming might seem an absolutely terrifying prospect, he's already showed that he's willing to do break the rules and doesn't care about you.

On September 20 2012 23:33 KwarK wrote:
Your idea of rape is a fantasy and insisting that the victim needs to meet your requirements of resistance for it to qualify as a rape, even though someone is forcing sex upon them against their will, is absolutely despicable. You're not stopping at "you can't prove you were raped", you're going with "you weren't raped, even though he forced sex upon you, because you didn't do enough to stop it".

On September 20 2012 23:33 KwarK wrote:
It's disgusting.

On September 21 2012 09:37 sunprince wrote:


If the victim reacted in shock due to personal violation, then one could instead show evidence that there was a reason they were shocked (which typically boils down to something threatening). For example, if a mugger stops you in an alleyway and you freeze up, you could simply demonstrate that they were presenting an explicit or implied threat. The problem here is that there wasn't any evidence of an actual threat, so the question is why did she freeze up? Without any evidence of force or of an actual threat, there's more than enough reasonable doubt to find the defendant not guilty. How exactly did the defendant show that "he's willing to break the rules and doesn't care about you" in this case?



No, I'm not. There's a difference between what the court accepts and what actually happened. To use a comparison, hearsay laws prohibits the use of hearsay as evidence that an event occurred. For example, if a witness says "Susan told me Tom was in town," that's not legitimate evidence that Tom was in town. Does that mean Tom wasn't in town? Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, but for the legal purposes of a court of law, we assume that Tom wasn't in town until there is evidence that he was. Similarly, we don't necessarily know if any particular alleged victim was actually raped or not, but for the purposes of the law and criminal procedure (and also epistemology), the assumption is that they were not until there is evidence that they were.



Could we keep the discusssion centered on logical arguments rather than emotional ones?