Yeah, racist lynching’s exactly like a false rape accusation with no legal repercussions, you got me there…
Well if you’re at a university, maybe you should be kicked out because of it. Its not hard to understand “don’t touch or grab people who don’t want it, especially in their private areas”. What’s with all these people thinking grabbing and touching and stealing kisses are ok? If a grown man did that to your wife and daughter, would you be simply “eh, boys will be boys”? No, the majority of us would want to punch him out. I think getting kicked out of college for that behavior is totally appropriate
First, you apparently can’t read for comprehension. The 2.6 million went to the school district, not Banks. Seriously, READ FOR COMPREHENSION!
link.
Jesus, man, at least pay attention.
Slee
It’s the same kind of thinking, a lynch mob “He musta done it. And he’s guilty of something. I mean just look at him!” mentality. It just thankfully leads to much less harmful results.
And I really don’t want to “get” you, whatever that means. I don’t know you. I just don’t think you’ve thought through the implications of your endorsement of extra legal justice.
The problem is that “true” and “provable in a court of law” aren’t the same thing. There are many, many situations where it is vastly more likely than not that a rape occurred, but not enough evidence to convict. The nature of acquaintance rapes is that there often isn’t really any physical evidence that speaks to consent or intent so they’re extremely difficult to prosecute. In those situations, yes, it is very appropriate to believe the victim and treat the perpetrators as rapists even if there wasn’t enough evidence to actually convict them.
The flip side of the equation is that many people assume that if the justice system couldn’t get a conviction, then of course the accuser was lying. Being falsely branded as a rape-accuser is possibly even worse than being falsely branded as a rapist (certainly people are more willing to believe it, for whatever reasons.) The statistics suggest that rapists getting away with it is orders of magnitude more common than innocents being falsely accused, so I am inclined to err on the side of the victims.
Do you understand the difference between punching up and punching down? Differential power relationships?
I so agree with this. I have no problem making it known that what this guy tried to do was scummy and I have no doubt he’s escalated before and will again. If someone wants counseling or a restraining order for that, I think they should pursue such avenues vigorously. But I’d prefer the terms to not be so watered down that possible predators think they should just go ahead and violently rape someone if they’re just going to be punished the same for only doing what the asshole above did. Isn’t that the same principles behind other crime deterrents?
No. That’s not what it’s about. Punching up and punching down generally is a reference to humor. This isn’t about humor.
In humor, “punching up” is generally okay, whereas “punching down” is not. Here, “punching up”–that is, a woman making a false rape accusation against a man–is not remotely okay.
You’re correct that it’s far more okay than a bunch of white men getting together to torture and murder a black man, and the analogy is beyond ridiculous. But the reason it’s ridiculous is because of the orders of magnitudes of difference between torturing someone to death, and saying nasty lies about them. The difference in power dynamic is not the relevant flaw in the analogy.
As for the idea that either you risk sexual assault, or you use signed contracts before getting busy, that’s idiotic. The excluded middle is that you make advances incrementally, and you continue only when your partner is responding enthusiastically to your advances, possibly by making his or her own advances. You slow down if your partner does not seem enthusiastic, and the instant your partner is either asking you to stop or is not conscious enough to resist, you stop.
This should not be confusing to anyone who’s at least ten years old. But if you’re still having trouble with the idea, this excellent video explains the idea of consent via an analogy to tea.
I don’t think that’s what’s going on. First, the guy was definitely committing sexual assault: she said no, she said let’s go downstairs, and he continued holding on to her after she said these things. How is that not sexual assault?
Second, though, the word “assault” itself is used for everything from someone saying, “I’ll kick your ass” to someone coming after you with a chainsaw. I’ve never heard of anyone saying, “Well, I threatened to kick his ass, so I may as well dismember him with my Black and Decker.” Similarly, I don’t think anyone is going to say, “Since I’ve already kissed her against her will, I may as well rape her.” That doesn’t sound like how people actually think.
I’m not disputing that it was sexual assault and I’m also not explaining myself well. Every time, though, that I think of a better way to express it, I’m still coming not conveying what I mean. I’ll give it a bit and try again.
At least in some states sexual assault requires contact with the breasts, buttocks, or genitals.
So you’re going to tell me in all seriousness, that you got explicit consent for every ass or boob you touched?
That’s the absurd part of this; so you’re making out, and you have one hand on her side. You move it down and go for an ass-grab. If she says no or stops your hand, that’s fine- no harm, no foul. It’s the way the game’s played.
Calling that sexual assault is just absurd. If you just crept up behind someone you don’t know or don’t know well and grabbed a big handful of ass-cheek, that would be different.
That is true. And in the cite I provided there is no question,* the allegation was false*.
I happen to think that, unless one is personally involved*, the best answer is 'We don’t know what happened. She said X. He said Y. We don’t and can’t know which is true given the evidence." Destroying someones life based on an unprovable allegation seems to me to be highly questionable. If you are fine with doing so then I doubt I will ever change your mind.
Some people do assume that. I don’t. However, you are making the same mistake that ‘many people’ make and just reversing it. Instead of “Well, the courts couldn’t prove it so the accuser must have lied” you are falling to “Well, the accusation was made so the alleged rapist must be guilty”. Both of which are illogical knowing that rape does happen and also that false allegations happen.
I am not sure that being falsely accused of rape, being sent to prison, losing a scholarship and a shot at playing professional football is better than being falsely labeled as a rape accuser. Of course, YMMV. The false rape reports are, as best as I can tell, are between 5 and 10%. It is a hard number to pin down for the same reasons that rapes are hard crimes to prosecute.
Until we have a universal truth machine that knows all and can dispense justice flawlessly, the best answer seems to be to take each case on its own merits and to not assume one way or the other.
Slee
*The situation changes if you know the accuser or the accused and you can make judgements based on your knowledge of the people themselves.
To be clear, you and Yog are talking about something completely irrelevant to the OP. I’d agree that in your scenario, there’s no harm, no foul. But in the OP’s scenario, the woman said no, and the man prevented her from leaving and didn’t let go of her. That’s harm. That’s foul.
Did you miss the part where Banks spent five years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit? I see you did miss the part where he didn’t get any of the money.
But if the accusation is false, the person making it is the victimizer, not a “victim”.
In that case, whose side do you err on?
Sounds like it to me.
NEVER! The key word here is alleged. Once he’s tried and convicted, have at him. Until he’s tried and convicted, shut up.
Suppose you join in with the naming and shaming brigade and it turns out they were wrong? How would you feel about that? Worse yet, how would you feel about it if you had been in his place? Let the courts handle it.
- It is unambiguously, not sexual assault. Sexual assault is not a term that evolved out of common usage but out of statute. In the vast majority of states where sexual assault is defined in statute it is actually what “common law” or “common language” call the act of “rape”, meaning forcible non-consensual sexual intercourse or penetration. I think a lot of people assume that the law typically defines sexual assault as unwanted groping/molestation. But in general it’s actually synonymous with “rape”, usually unwanted touching or groping of sexual/intimate areas is called sexual battery or sexual abuse (I don’t speak for all states, but in general sexual assault is a serious felony involving penetration as a matter of law.)
Even if we were to posit some broad “common language” meaning for sexual assault, I cannot fathom one that would encompass the actions in the quoted accusation that would not also encompass all other unwanted forms of touching, which would mean it’d be a term so broad in scope as to be superfluous to the term “assault.” As it is, the “dictionary” or “common” word assault indicates an act of violence, there was no violence in the act described in the accusation.
The statutory argument is even less interesting, the only crime specified as “sexual assault” in New York is “predatory sexual assault.” However this crime starts with the requirement that a person has committed some other serious sexual offense namely–rape in the first degree, criminal sexual act in the first degree, aggravated sexual abuse in the first degree, or a course of sexual conduct against a child in the first degree; and that they also cause serious bodily harm to the victim or uses threats or a weapon on the victim during the crime. No one can argue that is what happened here.
The very closest you can get would be “Forcible Touching” as for what was alleged to have happened, but in truth the alleged actions wouldn’t have been considered forcible touching either. As outlined in statute:
As described in this section of New York law it requires forcible touching of sexual or intimate areas. As described the allegations simply do not meet the definition of this charge.
Further, the vanilla crimes of assault in New York all require that the perpetrator have intent to cause physical harm. There is nothing in the alleged conduct which would meet that definition.
Perusing the penal code the closest we could get would be “Unlawful Imprisonment” in the second degree which is a Class A Misdemeanor. However I have doubts that it would successfully be prosecuted as such, and given the minor nature of the crime I also doubt anyone would bother prosecuting it. Further as there is scarcely any evidence it would also likely be nigh-impossible to convict as a matter of practicality.
There is simply no way legal or in common usage, the act of temporarily holding someone in a place for a few seconds against their will, without any sexual touching or violence, can be called sexual assault.
- These allegations should be considered worthless. They are not shielded by journalistic protections but by the fact that a person literally just made a blog post. We have no idea who made the blog post, it could have been someone that’s never set foot in the State of New York and never met the man they’re making accusations against. It is someone who has not gone to the police, who has not submitted to an interview with them for the investigators to even cursorily determine the veracity of the story. Basically it’s nothing. It’d be the equivalent of me making a sock puppet account on this forum and posting that I too am a Columbia grad and I too was “held against my will for 2 seconds in a bedroom” by this guy.
As for whether or not people actually accused of rape should be identified, sure. But I also think people who make the accusations should not be protected by the newspapers. These are issues of public record and the media does a disservice by not sharing the full public record when they report on rape trials.
I will say that if the anonymous poster’s story is true (and it’s neatly unverifiable since campus records are protected by privacy regulations) it’s further evidence that schools should not adjudicate issues which are criminal acts, even as a matter of the disciplinary code. Education is too integral a part of society for them to be allowed to conduct kangaroo courts. For acts which are crimes their only role should be to forward the reports to police, and to have policies about how to punish students convicted of crimes. University “courts” are only appropriate for adjudicating issues of things like the academic honor code, dorm room behavior rules and etc, not matters that are crimes.
Thanks to the proven, false claims of rape, many people will chose not to believe the alleged rape victim, or you. You’ve proven that you don’t care what the facts are. Anyone who is willing to lie about their being raped gets your support. You’ve proven that you don’t care about innocent people. Kind of a “fuck everybody” attitude. Isn’t that similar to what actual rapists are thinking? Hmmm.
It’s best to contact the police, file a report, and testify in court, and do society a favor by getting actual rapists off the street.