I guess, Lizard I am curious to why you think it is necessary to compare people’s rapes and say, this rape is worse than that one, this woman is 20% to blame because she did xyz and that woman is totally not to blame. Because the only reasons I can see are:
to shame the victim (in some cases), or
to remove blame from the rapist.
I am not trying to attack you, I am just wondering. I wonder if maybe you think women would be more careful if they thought they might be (partially) to blame.
Sorry, I am not trying to make this a “are victims responsible” thread, those have been done before. Regarding the OP, I think there is no harm in having a “show of hands” as long as people take it with a grain of salt. I know how people’s ideas of consent can differ, that’s one of the reasons why it is so hard to get real statistics on rape. But it can be helpful. In my defense class, our teacher used to basically do the same thing, under confidential circumstances, for each new class. IIRC, she reported about the same stats (1 in 4), but only about half of those were officially reported (date / aquaintance rape was the least likely to get reported).
Coldfire, thanks…can I use that as a sig?? Opal, thanks. It was definitely a “learning experience”. It took some years before I could forgive her. Ah, well…
Having said all that, let me add this: that I am learning a lot from my fiance, whose daughter (17…calls me Daddy…BIG GRIN) was molested at a couple of years of age. The years of therapy and work it took to get my daughter past all that is mind-boggling. I also know that a couple of my fiance’s friends were assaulted during their teen years. So my estimation of the number of rapes and assaults on women keeps going up and up. It makes me both sad and mad. Yes, I agree that the survey is non-scientific, but so what? It’s not meant to be anything but a non-scientific poll and a starting point for discussion.
Coming from a guy, does “You go, girl!” have any validity?
Hey, I’d advocate that every woman be issued her own handgun, if I thought it would help. The imposition of personal responsibility has always been shown to affect behavior. Besides, I just cannot stand it when people make excuses and try to take the easy way out. I have no interest in shaming anybody or removing blame; my own sister was raped, remember?
As for “comparing rapes,” well, I am not doing something at all unique, original, or unusual. District attorneys go through a whole mental process where they examine what they know about a case, then examine the relevant legal statutes to see just what they can nail the accused on. (Background: I used to be a crime reporter.) Victimhood is not a universal condition; there are degrees to every crime. And in a lot of places, a woman who couldn’t remember what even happened would have a hard time getting the police to even take her seriously. There are limited resources for law enforcement, and there are women out there like Toaster mentioned. So cops and prosecutors have to decide: how serious is this? Do we have enough evidence? Is the evidence solid? Is the victim’s story credible? When the victim is on the stand, will the jury believe her?
I’m being realistic here. Juries can be tough to convice, and defense attorneys have a right to question the victim. If she admits she drank so much she passed out, there are PLENTY of people who would think this says something about her character. Right or wrong, that’s how the system works. And that is why looking at the circumstances matters in the real world, and that women should look out for themselves as much as possible. Maybe philosophically we can look at it and say “all rape is equal.” But that would not reflect what I have personally witnessed in court.
(I’ve cut out your first portion because I agree, therefore no need to argue.)
I do see your point of view a bit more clearly…but I can’t fully agree with your last paragraph (shown above).
I’m a big one on personal responsibility, and I can see that you are as well… But, it IS my ideal of personal responsibilty that leads me to say that the active party holds the entire blame for a rape. shrugs
To me, saying ‘The rapist is not entirely repsonsible because…’ is not leveling out the responsibilty to both party as it seems in your scenario (if I’m understanding it correctly.) To me, this is instead EVADING responsibilty for the rapist. The rapist is the one who chooses to take advantage of another human being.
I’m not making a judgement on levels of rape, different types of rapists etc… that’s not my intent here…
This is a very emotional topic, and posts like Toaster help me to view this from the male perspective.
Thanks for the clarification, Lizard. I don’t mean to say I think all rapes are treated equally in the legal system, I know that is not true. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that all women have a responsibility to themselves to take precautions against rape. If that is what you mean, I agree. No one can better protect me than myself. That’s why I try not to make myself vulnerable.
It’s because of some of the examples you give that make rape cases so difficult to prove, often there are no witnesses, and if she can’t remember what happened exactly, it’s almost impossible. That is true, but if that rape occurred, he is still to blame. It is up to her to take responsibility for her actions, for what led up to the rape, and it is up to him to take responsibility for his actions, the rape itself. If she had not gone to the party, or gotten so drunk, or brought a friend, the rape might not have occurred. But it is rare that a woman will knowingly place herself in a dangerous situation. It is easy to see after the rape all the things that could have been done differently, but it’s usually not that easy at the time. But, it is apparent to the rapist that what he is doing is wrong (or at least illegal). I’m not saying that some women don’t do stupid things that increase their chances of rape, but many rapes occur because the woman is led to feel safe.
It is so easy to look at the facts afterward, and say she should have known. Women say it to themselves all the time. It’s usually different in the moment. But saying to someone, “you could reduce your risk if you did this,” or even “that was a stupid situation to put yourself in” is different than actually assigning blame on her for any assault someone else committed.
Women can reduce their risk by doing certain things, but they cannot eliminate it. Only the would-be rapist can stop the rape from occuring altogether. I’m sorry if I misunderstood your view, but I still feel that placing any blame on the victim does no one any good. I’m not trying to prevent a rape because I’m afraid of being blamed, I’m trying to prevent a rape because I’m afraid of being raped.
What if they’re both drunk out of their gourds and nobody says no? Can one still claim rape the next day because of being drunk? Is every case of sex with someone who is drunk (btw, how drunk does someone have to be? Should I buy a breathalyzer?) a case of rape because drunk people can’t consent?
I can only speak from personal experience here, and I am not attempting to say how anyone else should feel or what they should think about their own lives. These events that happened to me relate to the discussion you’re having, Lizard and Velma, so perhaps this might make sense to you both. I’m presenting this for the facts relating to it, as it’s something I healed from long ago.
When I was 2 months short of my 21st birthday I went to a party at a friend’s house. I knew this friend for over a year and had been to many parties with him and at his house. I had slept there before and knew his girlfriend and we had many friends in common. That particular Saturday night, I went to the party at my friend’s house. I was dressed to get the attention of men, I planned on getting drunk, and I didn’t know if I was going to pick someone up for a fuck or not. I spent a good part of the night getting extremely drunk and flirting with every guy around. I played drinking games and put down enough alcohol that I had some difficulty walking. As people started filing out at 3 in the morning, I decided to stay where I was rather than walk home (about a half mile) and leave in the morning. I went to sleep on the couch thinking everything was fine.
I woke up shortly after that, before it was light out, because my friend and his two buddies were taking off my clothes. I told them no, told them to stop, and they didn’t. I hit them, kicked them, bit them, tried to crawl away, and fought as best I could, but I failed. When they were done with me, two of them took me home. I spent hours throwing up and didn’t get out of bed on Sunday. Monday morning I went to the clinic and got the emergency contraception. I never told the doctor I had been raped and never called the police. I should have, and I know that. Instead I chose to heal myself without the scrutiny of police, without the shame of a trial and without my family or my other friends knowing about it. To anyone else it may’ve been the wrong choice, but I did what I could live with, and I feel no regret for that. The friend who was one of the attackers became no longer a friend, but I cut no one else off. They didn’t know he’d do something like that and they couldn’t have stopped him.
Part of my healing process became accepting that I made mistakes that night. I made the mistake of getting too drunk to go home. I made the mistake of sleeping there. I made the mistake of trusting the wrong people. Those were my fault, and I had to accept that they were to heal because I had to know that no matter what mistake I made, no one had the right to attack me. I was stupid, I could’ve been better prepared, I could’ve made better choices, I could’ve avoided that situation, but I didn’t make them do what they did. I came to the understanding with myself that I could have prevented that attack, but that I did not cause it. I took responsibility for not preventing it because until I did I couldn’t cope with what was done to me. I had to be honest with myself about my bad choices because I knew I had made them, and I knew I couldn’t heal from rape while at the same time deluding myself into believing that I could have done nothing differently. I was foolish, and at most I deserved a hangover and a sore back from sleeping on an uncomfortable couch. I didn’t deserve to be raped, it wasn’t my fault that they did what they did, and now I’m OK with that. Sometimes people make stupid decisions. Sometimes bad things happen after those stupid decisions. But this is the part that helped me heal: stupid decisions aren’t necessarily the cause of those bad things.
Anyway, like I said, that’s just my story and how I ended up being a rape survivor. Everyone else has their own way.
Yes, this is exactly what I meant. People are responsible for their choices, but that goes both ways. The rapist is responsible for the rape. Thank you for sharing your story, catsix. I am glad you found healing. This story is all too common.
Guinastasia: Someone obviously can’t commit a rape if he is unconscious, but what I was thinking about were the laws that state that a woman who is drunk (but conscious) and has ‘diminished capacity’ to consent to sex, where the man who is drunk is not held to the same diminished capacity standard.
For example I have heard the argument that no matter how drunk a man is, he has to recognize when a woman is too drunk to be able to consent to sex. So if both of them are so drunk they can barely walk, and they have sex, it’s a case where she was too drunk to know what she was doing. If they’re both piss-drunk, which of these applies:
She had diminished capacity and he did not, therefore it was rape (she’s the victim).
-She and he both had diminished capacity and it was not rape.
She and he both had diminished capacity, and it was rape (she’s the victim).
She and he both had diminished capacity, and it was rape (he’s the victim).
She and he both had diminished capacity, and it was rape (they are both the victims).
He had diminished capacity and she did not, therefore it was rape (he’s the victim).
Neither one had diminished capcity, and no rape occurred.
Sympathy is appreciated, though this is nothing anyone should feel sorry about. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, it’s just that this is a past event that doesn’t hurt anymore. Please don’t feel sorry.
Might it not set back your stated cause of proving that the existing rape statistics biased and poor to introduce more poor and biased data and claim it has meaning?
The mind boggles.
As for the never-ending sidebar: Non-consensual sex also means situations where consent cannot be granted. You must obtain consent, not mere lack of non-consent.
Thanks, Coldfire…even though I jumped the gun! catsix, I’m glad that you have such a strong sense of self. I’d love to meet you and introduce you to my fiance. She’s another strong woman like you; one reason I fell in love with her.
Who knows…you’d probably hate each other.
In your scenarios, I would personally argue that they both had diminished capacities and she was the victim. As an example, say she was drunk and should not have been out walking…but was. If she was hit by a drunk driver, regardless of her condition, it’s the drunk drivers fault.
Lots of people do polls on the SDMB. I don’t recall anyone giving Qadcop the Mercotan a hard time regarding statistical significance on his poll about Doper sexuality. Why do you think that is?
OpalCat’s poll does little harm and little good. If the number of those raped is high, this may be due to selection bias. If it is low, it does not disprove many women are raped.
I’d disagree with that, but only slightly. For one, if they are both drunk and have sex with each other, it’s more like two drunk drivers who are both half way over the yellow line and they hit each other - both are at fault for the car accident.
If I go out and get drunk and go home with a drunk guy, that’s a choice (stupid maybe) that I made. If I have sex with him because neither of us has the good sense to not have sex, then I’m no more a victim than he is.
I just don’t understand how if two people are equally drunk, both conscious, and both active participants in the sex that it’s possible to label one a victim and not the other.
So… anyone participating in General Questions and then Great Debates who dares to question the nature and validity of a claim that 25% of all women will be raped at some point during their lifetime is “an asshole”.
Possibly the 25% statistic is correct, although it sounds like an extraordinarily high number of women being raped. Another possibility is that this statistic is not an accurate representation of the number of rapes and is being exaggerated or mis-represented in some fashion, as many statistics are, by people with political or social agendas. There are many people on this board who have personal stories about unreported sexual assualts, false claims of rape and everything in between.
To characterize anyone who might take issue with, or question the 25% figure, as “an asshole” does not relfect well on either your good judgement or sense of fair play in discussing complex, emotionally weighted issues like this.
catsix, good point; and a better analogy than mine.
I just had a thought: FWIW, I wonder if a lot of the reactions people have to situations such as this come from a viewpoint of the male as the instigator of sex and the woman as the mere recipient of sex.
For instance:
WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE AHEAD
Consider a scenario where a man and a woman were both drunk and they went home to her place. They both pass out on the sofa. He wakes up later to find her on top of him, riding him hard. Before he can do anything, he ejaculates into her.
Rape by her, according to everything I know. But most guys I know would not consider it to be rape, but rather an exciting session. Something to brag about to their friends and co-workers. Why is that??
And don’t tell me that can’t be done. My Sweetie loves to wake me up with a blowjob, (and frankly, so do I!!!) It may be a little harder (heh) than with a willing and awake partner, but a man is perfectly capable of an erection while passed out. Just as a woman is physically capable of accepting a penis even though she is passed out.
