Please don’t use the term ‘rape’ in this way.

It isn’t just kids of just 15 to date they have a few 11 and 12 year olds or people who were that age when they did something stupid. The experts who were all hollaring in the 80’s about the super sexual pervert have done an about-face on the issue. They realize that these laws hurt people who are barely grown up enough to tie their own shoes.

It is heartbreaking to hear about pre-teen boys with records for snapping some girl’s bra. When all it should have been was suspension and apology and then helping the school helping the girl out. Some laws are just written lazy and then used in the worst manner possible. I say stop raping the law, and making it a dimwit dog.

It is just not cool to treat children like adults. They aren’t their brains haven’t even developed yet. In the rare case that this kid is starting to show signs of heading into trouble then professional help may be needed. But putting children on a list that will stay with them for the rest of their natural born life is ridiculous. Years from now historians will be laughting their ass off at us.

jk! They got pwned, sucks, but it happens.

having read through your comments I agree with you both. That said, i’ve not much to add ;) but i’m sorry to have disappeared in the middle of an interesting conversation.

My spouse also points out that the problem with accepting that someone can not consent even when they explicitly do consent, without any recognizable coercion, plays into the standard idea of women as not really being competent adults, not really being capable of having a binding word.

I think your spouse has an excellent point there; in fact, I’m a little jealous that I didn’t put my finger on it first :)

(Amp tells me that in some studies, men are nearly as likely to report being forced to have sex as women are, but that men almost exclusively report being forced by emotional or social pressure, while women overwhelming report being physically forced)

I find that really interesting, especially given how tired I am of rape being framed as a solely feminist subject. Amp, if you haven’t given up completely on this thread by now [ ;D ], do you happen to have some linkage on that?

I’m not sure that I’m right in my take on that example, and I very much understand why other people, you included, draw the bright line on the far side of that example, but I am also uncomfortable with taking a less absolutist position than I currently do, and I am uncomfortable with saying that what E experienced as rape was not actually rape. On the other hand, accepting that someone can be raped in a situation where the person who had sex with them actually had no way of knowing that the sex was not consensual (because explicit consent was given and never withdrawn, explicitly or implicitly) inevitably leads either to the concept of innocent rapists or it leads to the concept of rape without a rapist, and both of those concepts are dangerous concepts to allow into existence, as they have way too much potential to bleed into the discourse and get applied to cases where the rapist merely failed to understand or acknowledge the lack of consent (a huge category of rapes, but not ones in which there is still definitely a rapist).

My spouse also points out that the problem with accepting that someone can not consent even when they explicitly do consent, without any recognizable coercion, plays into the standard idea of women as not really being competent adults, not really being capable of having a binding word. This is certainly a problem with my position on the outer fringe cases such as S and E, but I’m not sure what the solution is. One solution is to make clear that when we get to the fringe cases of explicitly consented non-consent, we are actually in a territory where there are probably more men who consent non-consensually than there are women (Amp tells me that in some studies, men are nearly as likely to report being forced to have sex as women are, but that men almost exclusively report being forced by emotional or social pressure, while women overwhelming report being physically forced), but that possibly raises other issues.

Well, that ended up very long.

It is a fraught question, and one that I’m puzzling over.

You should see what it’s like when we actually try to discuss that particular pill. Oh, it’s moderation a-plenty, I tell you.

—-Myca

From a thread on Pandagon today:

Chris Clarke Mar 3rd, 2007 at 4:51 pm

Is there any way you could fix the moderating software so that inclusion of the word ‘S0cial1st’ does not cause an automatic hold? I am not using the word for any purpose other than to describe my own beliefs.

Take the first two letters and the last letter away from “socialist” and you’ll see the problem.

Bit of Baader-Meinhoff goin’ on there, I’d say.

I’m not completely convinced that my definition is wrong, but I definitely need to rethink my concepts somewhat - even more so, I need to rethink my framing of my position.

I don’t know if I was clear on this before, but my disagreement was pretty much just with the framing. The concepts behind what you’ve said are ones I completely relate to, and for what it’s worth, I’m aware that I have a tendency to get hung up on semantics (and enjoy the getting hung up; I guess I got the same genes that made my sister a linguist).

Even though it isn’t my fault, I have been meaning to say that I am really sorry about the way you got treated (by Chris) in this thread.

Thank you for that, though as you say, none of this was your fault or the fault of any of the other commenters, and an apology really isn’t necessary (from you guys). For really long-windy reasons that I won’t go into, I think it was good for me to see such a clear example of how, no matter how carefully I phrase things or how hard I work to find common ground, it isn’t up to me how someone hears my words and it isn’t my fault if they don’t want to listen to me. So it was useful for me, too :)

The entire dynamic of Chris specifically soliciting your opinion, you explaining that you generally didn’t like to have these conversations online as the subject was too personal, and then when you gave your opinion
Chris immediately and hostilely lays into you, wildly misreading your position and immediately pushing you over (in his own mind) into the side of evil dogmatic feminists was bizarre and painful to watch.

What’s kind of funny to me is that my expectation when writing that comment was that while it would be a calm and civil discussion with Chris, other commenters might jump in and…well, do exactly what Chris did. But instead he did it, and all the other commenters were cool :D

And honestly, once I saw my sentences being split in half and represented as the exact opposite of my meaning, I didn’t really read much of Chris’s last couple of comments (esp. #91, which I think at least showed up last) very closely. Like Amp said, they seemed intended more to insult than to debate, and especially since I had already said it was a sensitive topic, I didn’t really feel like letting him use it to hurt me. So I dodged the hurt, but I still very much appreciate your (and others’) support.

To think, I could have faced prosecution as a child pornographer!

Yeah, I do see how my extremely victim centric definition of rape leads to some really problematic places: bizarre and uncomfortable phrases like accidental rape, ammo for ridiculous arguments, etc. I had some really extensive discussions with Amp and my spouse last night - both strongly disagree with my definition of rape, and both had various convincing reasons why my definition is not okay). I’m not completely convinced that my definition is wrong, but I definitely need to rethink my concepts somewhat - even more so, I need to rethink my framing of my position.

So at least something useful came out of this for me. :)

Even though it isn’t my fault, I have been meaning to say that I am really sorry about the way you got treated (by Chris) in this thread. The entire dynamic of Chris specifically soliciting your opinion, you explaining that you generally didn’t like to have these conversations online as the subject was too personal, and then when you gave your opinion
Chris immediately and hostilely lays into you, wildly misreading your position and immediately pushing you over (in his own mind) into the side of evil dogmatic feminists was bizarre and painful to watch.

Chris’s bizarre reactions to Sailorman’s (and my) comments were impressive, but our comments were at least completely unsolicited. Chris solicited your opinion in the most unctuous manner possible, and then immediately turned around and gave nothing you wrote even the most minimal of sympathetic readings.

Anyway, sorry it happened, but thanks for your input on how I talk about rape.

Okay, my favorite Chris quote from this thread:

Don’t worry, few people have the ability or patience to discuss rape (or any sex crime, for that matter) calmly and concisely. But it’s important to do so as best as possible. Dogma and invective on the subject do no one any good.

Yeah, really…

And how many spellings of - damn it, I even typed it out before realizing I was just asking for flagging - how many spellings of a certain pill for guys are listed in the program ;)

You should see what it’s like when we actually try to discuss that particular pill. Oh, it’s moderation a-plenty, I tell you.

—-Myca

While I disagree (naturally) that I should cave on the definitions I use because other people will react badly to them

I know you weren’t talking to me, but I should have been more aware of that point in my response to you, seeing as I had made a similar point in an earlier comment about extreme views held by “some feminists” not being a disqualification for what I was saying then. I’m not entirely sure how to reconcile our thoughts on this, but I think a term like “pressured rape,” as you suggested, would be on the right track; on the other hand, do you see what I was saying re your earlier comment being used to support certain flawed arguments? :)

I’m just really disappointed that, after my thoughts were explicitly requested, they were not just insulted (although I really appreciate the backup on that, Amp), but also twisted and cherry-picked into something I didn’t recognize as the basis for rebuttal. I’m a little squeamish at realizing that from my way-way-upthread comment, Chris likely thought our common ground was on my not placing blame on that guy, and perhaps failed to note that in both that instance and the case this post was originally about (hey, remember that?), my view was based on my being primarily concerned with consent - not with whether rape laws are unfair to men.

I’m also a little baffled by all the vitriol. I think I stayed relatively calm in this, and unless Chris is writing to us from prison, I really don’t think he’s the more personally invested of us in the topic this became about.

I’m always a little curious, when I get flagged by the mod-bot, what word or phrase it was that set it off. And how many spellings of - damn it, I even typed it out before realizing I was just asking for flagging - how many spellings of a certain pill for guys are listed in the program ;)

Suffice it to say, I get the point.

No, you really don’t.

Chris, the reason your comment was put into moderation is that the blogging software automatically puts posts into moderation if it thinks they might be spam, according to whatever arcane formula the program uses. That is the only reason your post was put into moderation.

As for the rest, I’m the moderator here. If you’re convinced my moderation is unfair, then there’s an easy solution: go away.

You might notice that there are several people here other than yourself who are not feminists; yet I’m not telling (for example) Brandon and Robert off for being obnoxious. So logically, it cannot be true that I am blanketly telling off non-feminists. What do you suppose it might be that distinguishes your posts from Robert’s and Brandon’s?

No one else on this thread has written a personal attack on other posters to match this:

Perhaps because this discussion has been hijacked by dogma, as discussions of rape on feminist blogs are wont to do. I should have known better than to even wade into it at all. I could spend literally hours, hours, meticulously picking apart, debating, debunking, and refuting various statements made in comments starting at #76 and on to the end of this thread, but really, what would be the point? I’d just raise my blood pressure to an unacceptable level and give myself another pounding headache like I had last night, and I’d get nowhere, because evidence and rational argumentation seem to be less important to some (get that? some) folks here than reflexive dogma.

And that’s far from the only example; you write long, obnoxious screeds like that again and again.

One of the reasons I find your comments here so obnoxious is your constant use of the belittling term “dogma” for virtually all feminists who disagree with you. Wikipedia gets at why the term is insulting:

The term dogmatism carries the implication that people are upholding their beliefs in an unthinking and conformist fashion. Dogmas are thought to be anathema to science and scientific analysis, though some small groups may argue that the scientific method itself is somewhat dogmatic….

Since the Enlightenment, the word “dogma” has typically been used in a negative and derogatory manner…

So when you accuse people here of reciting “feminist dogma,” and of being “True Believers,” you’re accusing them of being unthinking conformists, in a way that has been understood for centuries as being derogatory. And you’ve done it again, and again, and again, in post after post.

(You also do so in an ignorant fashion. When Charles relates an unusual definition of rape that very few feminists advocate, and that many feminists would not agree with, you sneeringly refer to it as a “perfect example… of feminist rape dogma.” But what Charles said, far from being “dogma,” is quite controversial. The fact that Defenestrated immediately disagreed with Charles might have been a clue to you.)

If you want to disagree with Charles, disagree with him. But do so based on logic and argumentation. Just repeating “dogma! dogma! dogma!” over and over isn’t an argument, Chris. And if you can’t resist sneering at the feminists, maybe you shouldn’t be on a feminist blog, especially not one that has moderation policies which specifically forbid such behavior.

If you can discipline yourself into disagreeing with other people here with respect — meaning, among other things, no longer implying in sneering tones that feminists who disagree with you are unthinking drones — then you can stay here, and welcome to you. Otherwise, you’ll have to go away.

And although I know you’re pretending that you are in no way responsible for this (so much easier to claim moderator for bias than to take responsibility for your own words!), the truth is, it’s your choice to make.

I can see how that is your perspective. From my perspective, you are consistently on the side of not labeling people with what I consider accurate labels, so I think of you as being opposed to accurate labeling and in favor of gentle labeling. Of course, I can see why that isn’t your perspective.

Anyway, my comment about you being consistent was pretty snarky, so I took your snarky response as entirely fair, particularly since I was also misreading, since you were objecting to the cross talk that results when we label things very differently, rather than the unfair effect on the individual who has been mislabeled.

While I disagree (naturally) that I should cave on the definitions I use because other people will react badly to them (while I don’t get pissed off at people for failing to be familiar with my definitions, I do think promulgating my definitions is beneficial), I recognize that odd-ball definitions do cause some serious miscommunication and cross-talk, so I can’t disagree with your reasoning.

Back in college, I had two friends who were in an ongoing sexual relationship with issues. One night they agreed to spend the night together, but not have sex. The male partner S brought along a condom, and at some point mentioned this fact. The female partner E said, “I thought we agreed not to have sex,” and S said, “Well, I thought you might change your mind.” E said, “Okay,” and they had sex. E experienced this as rape. S certainly had no intent to commit rape, and sought and received active consent (which E felt was coerced, but S was unaware that E felt coerced). S did not behave perfectly, and that rape should never have happened, but it was not in anyway intentional on S’s part that his partner should experience rape. As I said, even without intent, S did something horrible, and that form of rape should be prevented from happening as much as possible, just like forms of rape in which the rapist intends to rape. That is a case that comes close to Sailorman’s opposite world example, and I think helps to show the point of the opposite world example. From E’s experiential perspective, it doesn’t matter that she gave verbal consent, she actively did not want to have sex, and experienced the sex as rape.

This is a perfect example of what I was referring to earlier when I mentioned feminist rape dogma. I think it’s unreasonable and extreme, to put it mildly, to call what happened between your friends a rape, based on the information you provided (now, if you left out important parts of the story, that might be a different matter). According to your account, the only “coercion” your male friend used against your female friend was that he had a condom with him and when she asked him about it, he mentioned it was in case she changed her mind. So what? That is now considered “coercion”? Wow, talk about diluting the definition of a word to the point of meaninglessness. He didn’t use physical force did he? Make threats? Make unreasonable demands? Intimidate her? Get her drunk or high? Badger or hector or beg her repeatedly? NO. They talked and decided to have sex–meaning she consented, even if she had internalized regrets about what she was doing. But she did say yes to sex, and not due to any form of true coercion on her boyfriend’s part. In other words, she changed her mind. What so horrible about that? Why is that so wrong? As feminists, aren’t we supposed to support female agency and choice? If so, why does it often seem that to some feminists, any sexual situation in which a woman at first withholds consent, then later provides it, automatically becomes a form of rape, even minus any clear and perceptible form of coercion? Aren’t women allowed to change their minds? Or is that a right reserved solely for men? And by implicitly denying women the right or ability to change their minds in such situations, and making them into rape victims by definition, aren’t many feminists buying into patriarchal attitudes and stereotypes without even realizing it? You know, that women are weak-willed, can’t think for themselves, morally pure, always in need of protection, etc.

Charles, I note that even though you were asking readers to weigh in on whether or not this incident was actually a rape, you repeatedly referred to it as one yourself. Very telling. The fact that your friend E felt coerced in the situation, claimed that she was raped, and managed to convince her boyfriend S that she was raped by him (?!), suggests to me that she’s been a victim more of feminist rape propaganda than of her boyfriend. The bogeyman here is not S, but rather the strange and misguided attitudes and beliefs that have been drilled into her. The bogeyman, in other words, exists in her own mind. And, this whole story strikes me as a case where E couldn’t accept responsibility for her own thoughts and actions, so she projected her regrets and guilty feelings onto her boyfriend and blamed him for committing a criminal act (”unintentional rape” in this context is an oxymoron).

And, for all those people here who’d jump all over me for suggesting even the possibility of false rape accusations, it strikes me that this example illustrates a situation in which a false accusation could very easily be made. Or an exaggerated accusation. Or a misleading accusation. Or an accusation made based on miscommunication and/or misperception. What if they had argued, bitterly disagreed, had a messy relationship falling out in their discussion after the incident? Perhaps E might have felt the urge to go to the police? Perhaps she’d have sought counseling at a rape crisis center and they’d have encouraged her to go to police? She’d keep running over the incident in her mind and become stronger and stronger in her conviction that she was actually raped, and perhaps her memory and perception of events would become a bit more colorful and selective to reinforce that belief. Finally, she might break down and go to police, firmly convinced in her own mind that she’d been raped and desiring to see her rapist, her estranged ex-boyfriend, punished for it. Once she takes that step, she’s committed–she’s made a serious accusation with major consequences, and told a story to back it up. To borrow gambling terminology, she’s “all in.” Police arrest the boyfriend, and things proceed from there.

I see this as a reasonably plausible scenario in a number of circumstances with many different types of people. But I guess I’m wrong and all of you are right–such a scenario is fantastic, utterly fanciful, and would be totally inconceivable in the real world.

However, these are all cases of wrongful convictions in stranger rapes, where the rape happened, but the wrong man was ID’d as the rapist

Common sense and logic would indicate that there are plenty of wrongfully convicted and imprisoned people for false accusations too. The cases you pointed out are merely much easier to prove as miscarriages of justice, thanks to DNA testing that excludes the imprisoned man as the perp. In stranger rape cases, for the most part, a compromised witness ID or DNA mismatch will likely do the trick. In a false accusation situation, we’re almost always talking about he said/she said acquaintance or date or spousal rape cases in which the defendant A) admits to sex but claims it was consensual (so DNA matching is irrelevant); or B) denies sex or sexual contact with the accuser, and there is no conclusive evidence to indicate that sex actually occurred, and no DNA to test. And in these cases, obviously eyewitness IDs aren’t an issue like they are in stranger rape cases. So overturning a wrongful conviction in a false accusation case is a very difficult proposition, short of the accuser recanting or some other exculpatory evidence unexpectedly coming out of left field. Even though I’m quite confident that there are a decent number of men in prison due to false accusations, I’d expect that the vast majority of convicted rapists who are released from prison after having their convictions overturned will be from stranger rape cases.

defenestrated,

By your reasoning, we can take the number of prisoners falsely convicted of murder to mean that the murder victims weren’t really dead

That’s a non sequitir and a false analogy.

it strikes me as very dangerous to start claiming that a woman is just as likely to lie about rape as a man is to rape

I never said that. Find one comment I made above where I said anything even close to that. I won’t hold my breath. Your putting words in my mouth, attributing arguments to me that I never made, and imputing dubious motives to me that I don’t have. Stop it, please. What I said was that there are many more false rape allegations made than feminists will admit, constituting a significant percentage of all total rape allegations (again, since many rapes go unreported, I’m not talking about total rapes, but total rape allegations–big difference), but that I also don’t know the specific proportion of allegations that are false, and no one else does either. That’s a far cry from claiming that I said the number of false allegations is equal to the number of rapes. My previous statements were clear. I think you know better.

Also, defenestrated, from your post #97:

I just can’t shake the impression that you’re valuing the right to be selfish and oblivious over the right to not get raped.

Cheap shot. ‘Nuff said.

Finally, Ampersand, I’m very sorry that you find me obnoxious. I certainly haven’t tried to be obnoxious, nor did I set out to offend anyone. As I said earlier, I have strong disagreements with some folks on this thread over some fundamental issues, and yes I can argue forcefully, and yes I occasionally use sarcasm (am I the only one here? don’t think so), and yes the debate got a bit heated in spots, but it was never my intention to be a prick about it, and I stated earlier that I harbor no personal animosity against anyone here. My arguments were all directed at points people made, not at them personally. I think you’re all good people with good intentions, I just feel that there are some blinders on and some misguided arguments and theories here. Apparently, some contributors feel the same about me and that’s fair. We’re reasonable people and we disagree. I’ve read other comments by other contributors to this thread that could be subjectively viewed as irritating or offensive by some too, but I guess I’m being singled out. At least it feels that way. It strikes me as a curious coincidence that I’ve elicited a scolding and have been put in moderation, and I’m the contributor to this thread with the minority viewpoint that is the most critical. Suffice it to say, I get the point. This will be my last post on this thread.

I understand your position, and I can see using a different word. However, while I think that S and E’s case is an extreme case, I think that there is not actually a natural bright line in between E’s experience and the experience of someone who does not use much force (verbal or physical) in resisting a rape. E ended up mixing refusal of consent (arranging not to have sex, reminding S of that arrangement) and failing to resist beyond some point (saying well okay, and not resisting further). We can agree that her refusals of consent were particularly weak, and that her failure to resist read as active consent, but the dynamic was one which is common in rapes that we would both agree are rape.

I think that a composite word (although I don’t know what, maybe “pressured rape”) might be a good intermediate step.

As to the problem of people who want a restrictive definition of rape, and who will claim that calling S and E’s interaction rape means that feminists are in favor of locking men away for no real reason, I have to point out that much the same was done in response to the invention of the term date rape (and marital rape, for that matter).

Now, the other problem is that under my purely victim-centric definition of rape I end up having a category of rapes that are, from a perpetrator centric view, accidental rapes, a term which gives offense. But I actually think that unintentional rape is a larger problem than most people think it is (maybe unintentional rape is a less offense term than accidental?), that many men who commit rape do not intend to commit rape, and do not conceive of themselves as committing rape. 5% of men self identify as having used physical force to restrain an unwilling sexual partner, but I doubt that many of them would self identify as rapists. Even more have probably coerced sex from an unwilling partner without using physical force, and even more didn’t understand that their partner was unwilling.

Bah, this is hard to talk about.