Over at Abyss2hope. Come check out the variety of posts included in this edition.
For general information about the carnival against sexual violence, including the call for nominations, check out the new blog dedicated to this carnival.
Over at abyss2hope
Also the carnival now has it’s own blog http://carnivalagainstsexualviolence.blogspot.com with links to past editions and information on future editions.
Over at abyss2hope.
Since I started speaking out about my rape and rape in general, I’ve been called a man hater, anti-male and a few derogatory labels I won’t repeat here. Yet as I think about why I speak out and blog against rape and other forms of violence and exploitation, hating men isn’t even at the bottom of the list.
What’s number one?
Preventing harm.
In an ideal world no one would be charged with rape because everyone tempted to rape would resist temptation. I know we’ll never reach that ideal world, but we can get closer to it than we are today. Sometimes that means standing up against those who try to block this effort.
So why do some still insist on giving me the label man hater for my effort?
At first I thought they confused my opposition to rape as an opposition to men since men commit most of the rapes. I thought they couldn’t have read much of my blog or they would see that I’m also against the exploitation and rape of men and boys.
Then it clicked. The label has never been about me.
It’s all about them. To define me as a man hater you have to refuse to truly see and value rape victims as full human beings who didn’t deserve what was done to them.
The women who tried to slap that label on me frequently talk about protecting their sons. And if that protection harms girls and women that seems to be an acceptable trade off. Those women who say they are only protecting the men and boys in their family often say they were feminists through college and beyond but finally came to their senses.
These women remind me of parents who fight to get every school levy passed until their last child graduates and who then switch sides to lead the fight against all subsequent school levies.
For these people it is all about them and their self-interests. They were never true to any philosophy about education. Those ex-feminists were never true feminists, they just aligned themselves where they saw potential benefits such as increased pay for women.
Either that or the intrinsic definition some have of what it means to be a man includes a level of violence and self-centeredness I see as criminal.
As a woman, I’ve experienced the harm that comes when men think of girls and women as something less than them. But my concern has never been limited to the harm that I have felt personally or that I am more likely to feel because of my gender. From as early as I can remember, my mother stressed respect for others and that it was wrong to exploit others just because you can.
So the label feminist has too narrow of a scope.
As I read Newsweek: An Inconvenient Woman about Mary Magdalene, the label of egalitarian popped out at me. It spoke to my responsibility not to see myself as inherently superior to anyone else, not even rapists. It means I can’t buy into monster myths.
For those who want to claim superiority, egalitarian is a nasty thing to be. It means you are no better in the eyes of God than the leper and you have no excuse for exploiting people you see as inferior.
This stratification of humanity relates to the view held by some in the Church that Eve caused Adam to sin just as rape victims caused their rapists to lose control. To me this ignores the lesson I learned from the story of Eve, Adam and the apple. And that is that passing the buck for the actions you take is as old as humanity. God didn’t like it then and I doubt God approves of it now.
In my comment on Alas: Gender Does NOT Trump Race, I wrote:
The view that any type of oppression/discrimination/hatred trumps another forgets that they are all symptoms of the same problem. And that problem is exploiting groupings of people for our self-interests and then using those same groups as scapegoats.
This underlying system harms even those who aren’t oppressed/discriminated against or hated because it creates a toxic environment.
Unfortunately, many see this toxicity as being caused by those who don’t quietly let the toxic system hurt them by staying in their proper place.
Many who want to deny racism/sexism/etc are likely scared that the unjust system will turn on them. The last thing they want is to be treated the way they treat those they discriminate against.
We tend to think others mirror our way of thinking so from the emotion put into attacking those who fight against sexism and sexual violence, anti-feminists must be afraid that feminists want to turn the tables on men.
They may feel that violence-against-women legislation does just that, but there’s a huge difference between making those who hurt others — with little risk of punishment — accountable for their actions and switching who can victimize without fear of punishment.
So if I’m an egalitarian, why aren’t I as vocal in all the areas where people are harmed or discriminated against? It’s very simple, I’m at zero degrees of separation when it comes to rape and the ripple effects of rape. In other areas, I can be supportive but I don’t have the same level of experience and insight.
It would be like an alien trying to communicate how to walk from Los Angeles to New York City without getting a closer look at the Earth than what astronauts can see from the moon. Hey, from up there, the Earth looks like a perfect globe and all you have to do is follow a curved line. That alien would probably grumble that humans don’t know how to follow even the simplest of instructions.
My view is often closer than the moon analogy, but I could easily say things as hurtful and as ignorant as many people say about the impact of rape.
Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Anti-feminists and their pals, Feminism, sexism, etc, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 5 Comments »
In the comments of my post, False Allegation Worse Than Rape? cross-posted to Alas Ed wrote:
Would you rather be raped or incarcerated for 1, 10, or 20 years. Maybe I am a freak but I will take a rape, ESPECIALLY the I am too drunk to remember kind, over giving up years of my life. No hesitation, no second thoughts.
Okay, I’ll take your choice and run with it. Since rape by it’s definition is beyond the rape victim’s control, I’ll create a full scenario from that to show how this “easy” choice may not be something that’s over and done with in one night.
Since many rapes happen on college campuses, our fictional raped man is a senior who has landed his perfect job and his perfect fiance. He’s at a party where he bumps into a girl he dated his freshman year. He broke up with her when he discovered that she was into drugs, porn and sleeping around. This night she hands him a Coke (he gave up drinking alcohol at the same time this relationship ended) and tells him that she’s turned her life around and because he once cared for her, he sips his drink and listens to her financial plans even though he wishes he could be anywhere else.
The smoke and the noise start getting to him and he tells this girl that it was good seeing her, but it’s time for him to go since he has a big test in the morning. She tells him that she’s ready to leave also, but the walk to her dorm takes her through an area where a girl was raped the month before. Because he’s a gentleman, he reluctantly agrees to see her safely to the entrance of her dorm.
The girl waves at those around them and tells them she’s being seen safely home so they don’t have to worry about her. A few people wink suggestively, but our man needs fresh air too much to correct anyone’s impression about his intentions.
The next morning, our man wakes up naked in a strange bed. He’s in a dorm room and it isn’t his. He sits up and feels like he’s going to puke. As he rushes to get dressed and get to his class which he’s already late for, he nearly trips over a tripod.
By the time he gets his supplies from his dorm room and gets to the class where his big test has already started, he’s so waxen that the professor suggests he go to the infirmary. He doesn’t and instead somehow makes it back to his dorm room and collapses.
The next morning he’s fine and he soon takes that exam and he just knows he aced it. Friday night, he and his fiance have a romantic encounter and everything is once again as it should be.
The end?
Not so fast. This man was raped, remember.
A few days later, a group of students he doesn’t know well point at him. He hears something about him being movie star material. His fiance has told him more than once that he has the looks to be a model, but looks aren’t what matter to him. Still, he gets a little ego boost.
The day after that, his fiance has her best friend return his engagement ring. He tries to contact her, but is told to stop stalking her.
A week later, his favorite professor stops calling on him.
A month after he walked his ex-girlfriend home, a representative from the perfect employer who made a written job offer, tells him that his job offer is being withdrawn. The person says something about a background and credit check. He immediately goes online and requests his credit report, but it is still pristine. His name isn’t uncommon so maybe his future employer has mistaken someone else for him.
He goes online and searches for his name and finds it listed on his ex-girlfriend’s web site. To see what she’s written about him he would have to pay since she has a fee-based members-only section. Adults only.
He vaguely remembers her saying that she was paying her way through college by designing and maintaining web sites, but this isn’t what he envisioned. He wants to know what’s linked to his name, but he doesn’t want to pay to find out.
He talks to several friends and the ones who, like him, stay focused on the goal of building a stable future don’t have a clue. But a friend he parted ways with around the same time he broke up with this old girlfriend, winks and calls him a real stud. Feeling nearly as sickly as the night he walked his old girlfriend home, he waits while this old friend turns on his computer.
Far too soon he sees what happened that night. And he looks like a willing participant in the making of porn. The woman keeps her face averted so his identity is the only one that is unquestionable.
Without having to think about it twice he says, “She must have slipped drugs into my Coke. This was rape.”
The other man laughs. “Yeah, that’s your story and you’re sticking to it.”
Within hours it seems like everyone on campus starts calling him, “Raped Man.”
He goes to the campus police and the officer tells him that’s what you get when you do drugs or go binge drinking. The man then asks if he at least had enough common sense to use protection.
He hadn’t even thought about STDs. With his ex-girlfriend’s drug habit, she could very possibly be HIV positive. He gets tested, but he’s told he needs to be retested for HIV even if this test comes back negative.
He scrounges together enough money to pay for an attorney without talking to his parents. The attorney sends a letter demanding that the video be removed immediately. A letter is sent to his lawyer saying he signed a consent form. He remembers signing a form his freshman year when she wanted to submit his portrait to a competition. The lawyer asks him how he could be so stupid.
The rest of his senior year doesn’t get any better and college becomes an endurance event. He contacts other employers who offered him a job, but they tell them the position he was offered has already been filled. Six months after graduation, he finds a job but it pays far less than the position he lost. He saves every extra dollar and has a new lawyer make an offer to have the video removed. A ridiculous counter offer is made but he feels he has no choice so he pays it.
He gets involved with his local church and finds a safe place. He avoids talking about his college experience. Two years after he was raped, he has another HIV test taken and to his relief, it comes back negative. He then asks the woman he loves to marry him and hopes she will never learn about the video. He doesn’t even think about telling her what happened to him.
As they build a family, he prays that video never surfaces again.
This sort of scenario could happen to a college woman. Even the refusal by so many people to see her as a real rape victim. Only a woman might get far enough in the process to be identified by many as someone who made a false allegation of rape.
The scariest part is my fear of posting this scenario since some will try to use it to minimize the impact of rape on women. “See, men can get raped too so stop talking about gender violence. If we can endure it without legal recourse, you can too.”
Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Feminism, sexism, etc, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 38 Comments »
Rape is a truly terrible act. There is not much worse than rape, but this article details something that might be. An unnamed fifteen year old girl reported to police that a Connecticut cab driver tried to rape her but she escaped.
This man’s acknowledgement that rape is a terrible act is undermined by the facts of the false rape case (that might be worse than rape) as reported by WFSB:
“The reason she ran off was she didn’t want to pay the cab fare,” Moscato said. “But on the other side, here’s an officer and you see someone running, screaming. We have to act quickly, because (what if) we have someone who is a predator out there?”
The incident happened on May 8 and the charges were dropped on Tuesday May 23. Despite the rhetoric being tossed out by those who think most accused rapists are the real victims, this case highlights that law enforcement doesn’t blindly take the accuser’s word as fact.
As someone who has been raped (more than once) and falsely accused of a crime (only one time) both were highly stressful, but being raped was the far greater violation. People who try to put false allegations (including all allegations where the person charged claimed it was consensual and which couldn’t be proved or disproved) on the same level as acknowledged rapes are in fact trying to minimize the crime of rape.
In a comment on my post about the women’s Duke lacrosse team’s plan to wear bracelets that say innocent, crossposted on Alas, Nyk writes:
I’m sorry, but being a woman [rape victim] does not give you a special right not to face peer pressure. If you have to stand up for what’s right, you have to do it, man or woman, and if you don’t do it, you are personally at fault for that. Not anyone else. You. This is a lesson I learned in a very difficult way, but in the end, it is still true. Those who desire a perfectly “fair” world are destined for unhappiness, because life is not fair even at its best, let alone at its worst.
What I find so interesting about this comment is:
1) Women rape victims are at fault if they crumple when besieged by pressure from their peers, with no distinction between true peer pressure and illegal attempts to subvert justice. It assumes that rape is not traumatic enough to interfere with resisting whatever your peers throw at you. Any weakness is the victim’s fault and not a consequence of the trauma of rape.
2) I’ve seen no similar commands directed at those who say they have been falsely accused of rape. None of the personal responsibility crowd is telling them that they should stop expecting life to be “fair” and that if they can’t handle being seen as possible rapists, it’s their own fault. Those who refuse to believe certain rape charges instead paint the alleged rapists as tragic heroes victimized by unfair justice systems and evil women. They’ve looked into these men’s hearts and know they would never commit rape. Any evidence against them must be false.
3) It is extremely pessimistic. It also ignores the fact that only the most privileged always expect to get what’s perfectly fair. I’ve found that those who have been spoiled with “perfect fairness” have the most trouble when they end up on the wrong side of the fairness/unfairness scale. And if they can’t have perfect fairness, nobody else should expect fairness, not even rape victims.
Many of those who support alleged rapists skip “not fair” or “peer pressure” and go right to “witch hunt” or “lynch mob.” Since both of those latter phrases describe actions where people get murdered, alleged rapists are to be seen as potentially greater victims than women who are raped.
I guess it’s my problem that I don’t accept this unquestionable truth.
Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Anti-feminists and their pals, Feminism, sexism, etc, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 99 Comments »
Lisa Tanner was cited on March 24, 2005, for playing music too loud at her house and was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. Lisa says she asked for a breathalyzer test and was refused. She was banging on a window. Police say she was “a possible danger to herself.” Inside her cell, she was ordered to get on both knees. When she refused, four officers entered the cell and tied her down in a device called a “pro-straint” chair.
This case may not be an isolated incident since other people treated in the same way might not have had the connections or the resources to hold the police accountable that are available to a woman whose father is a prosecutor.
From what I read about this case, it like so many others, seems to be a procedural and training problem rather than a case of rogue officers. That makes it more problematic since the situation won’t be resolved by disciplining or firing police officers.
What makes it even more serious is that improper restraint by multiple officers can lead to cutting off the restrained person’s airway. To a poorly trained officer, the person’s frantic struggle to breathe may be seen as violence and result in more pressure being applied.
That’s a deadly combination. And one that puts those who are trying to uphold the law and our justice system at risk of becoming scapegoats for problems they didn’t purposely get involved in.
As my other posts related to police/authority abuse or misconduct show, abusive and unethical treatment have a greater scope than any one agency or police force:
Ethics and the defense attorney who represents alleged rapists
Ethical interrogations and the rape victim
Abu Ghraib dog handler gets 6 months for refusing to be “soft and cuddly”
Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Whatever | 5 Comments »
Under the Senate bill, approved without objection by the House with no recorded vote, the “Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act” would bar protests within 300 feet of the entrance of a cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery from 60 minutes before to 60 minutes after a funeral. Those violating the act would face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.
If I’m understanding the bill correctly, it only covers national cemetaries.
What I find telling and disturbing is that this same disgusting behavior by the same group occured at the funerals for those who died of AIDS and at the funeral of murder victim Matthew Shepard, but no law was passed to stop this group’s hate speech until they started targeting heroic victims.
To me there is a clear difference between free speech and harrassment of individuals and this group has a long history of engaging in a pattern of harrassment. If this law and others like it only protect certain funerals, they should be thrown out because the law is based on why protesters are there (merit of the victim) and not on what they are doing.
Also posted on my blog, abyss2hope.blogspot.com
At Feministing: More. Duke. Crap. Samhita opposes the decision by the women’s Duke lacrosse team to wear bracelets that say innocent in a game against Northwestern.
The team members could have avoided having their decision attacked if they’d chosen a different slogan such as Justice for All. Isn’t that what we are all supposed to want? It doesn’t bash anybody and doesn’t label any innocent person as a liar.
In the comments Hujo wrote: Stop scapegoating on the patriarch trip and just take control of your own life!
Keeping control of our own lives is what those opposed to rape and gender violence are working towards. But following Hujo’s order would make rape victims feel they are the only one’s responsible for their rape.
Been there, done that. Eventually realized that it was my rapist who refused to take personal responsibility and who used me as a scapegoat for his actions.
Ain’t it funny how those who insist the loudest that others must take personal responsibility are usually trying to dodge responsibility for their actions or their words or their failure to act?
The same people who keep saying “real” rape is horrific seem puzzled that anyone would be angry toward those who rape and those who say the rights of accused rapists should trump the rights of alleged rape victims. They refuse to understand why any sensible person would be angry when alleged rape victims are vilified while alleged rapists are placed on a pedestal?
As for why shows of solidarity in support of accused rapists is problematic, see my earlier post:
Peer pressure led rape victim to drop charges, Tecumseh police say
The intent may be to see that there is justice for all, but the reality is that these shows of solidarity perpetuate environments that are hostile to rape victims and which lead to victims refusing to cooperate with law enforcement. Then if those rape victims are raped again, they are called proven liars by the same type of people who treated them horribly the first time.
Also posted on my blog, abyss2hope.blogspot.com
A man standing trial on sexual assault charges apparently killed his wife, their two children and himself hours before he was to testify Thursday, authorities said.
When I posted earlier today on my blog about who people would blame if a rape suspect committed murder in response to being charged, I didn’t think I’d find such a case this soon.
The responsibility for this crime belongs to the one who committed it, not to his alleged victims.
Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Feminism, sexism, etc, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 2 Comments »
Sex education teachers must present abstinence as the preferred behavior for unmarried people under a bill signed Tuesday by Gov. Jim Doyle. The legislation means teachers must emphasize that refraining from sex before marriage is the most effective way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
I’m waiting for the bill that requires education on sexual ethics including what is and is not legal sexual behavior. The closest I ever came to that type of talk was during a greek mythology class when the teacher let the discussion between students stray into who can have sex, when and with whom. Most boys believed they were under no obligation to wait, but their bride should be a virgin on their wedding night. One boy delighted in mocking that double standard.
Before that all I got was a gym teacher in junior high school breaking the rules to explain what the sex organs were and how they functioned.
Too often the traditional abstinence message turns teen sexuality into a hockey game where the girl is the goalie who is told she must protect her goal (virginity) at all times. The boys meanwhile are encouraged, either explicitly or implicitly, to try to get past the girl’s defenses.
If you buy into that analogy, it makes perfect sense to ask, “What was she wearing?” and to blame the girl for failing to stop a boy from scoring. It also makes many acquaintance rapes just part of the game because the girl or woman let her defenses down. Rape charges are then like a bad call from a ref who wasn’t anywhere near the game you were playing.
But healthy sexuality is not a competitive sport where you must have winners and losers.
Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Feminism, sexism, etc, Gender and the Body | 77 Comments »
A woman is dead and her boyfriend is in custody after a weekend shooting in St. Paul, police said.
I once assumed everyone would see this as a tragedy all Americans want to fight, yet in Time To Address Domestic Violence Abuses by Phyllis Schlafly, she writes:
The reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was signed by President Bush in January without any public debate, but evidence is now surfacing which Congress should have examined before the law was passed. VAWA is a nearly-billion-dollar-a-year extension of one of the major ways that Bill Clinton bought the support of the radical feminists. Why Republicans passed this bill is a mystery. It’s unlikely that the feminists who will spend all that money will ever vote Republican.
Is this Ms. Schlafly’s way of trying to bring more violent men into the Republican fold? I’d dismiss her as a radical fluke except a known side effect of at least one state’s gay marriage ban removes women like the victim in this recent case from protection provided by anti-domestic violence laws.
It’s telling to me that I haven’t seen a single gay-marriage-ban proponent working to close this gap.
DAYTON, Ohio - A constitutional amendment banning gay marriage bars prosecutors from charging some unmarried people under the state’s domestic violence law, a state appeals court ruled.
Friday’s decision by the 2nd District Court of Appeals is the first from Ohio’s 12 appellate courts to rule that the Defense of Marriage amendment, passed by voters in 2004, means that the domestic violence law does not apply to unmarried people.
Does this mean that those in favor of the gay marriage ban see gay marriage as a greater sin than murder?
Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Anti-feminists and their pals, Feminism, sexism, etc, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues, Same-Sex Marriage | 10 Comments »
I’ve been finding so many interesting posts related to the fight against sexual violence in the blogosphere that I created the Carnival Against Sexual Violence. The carnival is open to personal stories, creative expression (poetry, art, etc.), raising awareness, solutions and more.
Since this isn’t a problem only for women and girls, posts by men are welcome.
The first submission deadline for the Carnival Against Sexual Violence is Monday 29 at 1 am and the first carnival will appear on June 1. The carnival will be hosted on http://abyss2hope.blogspot.com
Nominate a post (your own or someone else’s) and pass the word.
Marcella
A Food and Drug Administration panel voted 13-0 today to endorse a promising new vaccine that could stop viruses that cause nearly 70 percent of all cervical cancers and genital warts, but the potential distribution of the vaccine is causing political and cultural controversy.
Apparently, some so-called family values types would rather see girls and women die of cervical cancer (3,900 die each year) than support the widespread use of a vaccine that might make sex look safer. Since I doubt the fear of cervical cancer is the deciding factor when girls choose whether or not to have sex, this vaccine won’t spark a sexual boom.
As someone who has a free pap screening to thank for catching the problem in the pre-cancer stage when I was in my early twenties, I feel it is negligent to withhold a safe vaccine for the HPV virus based on family values.
I didn’t catch the HPV virus because I decided to become sexually active, I caught it because of rape or behavior that stemmed from rape.
Even though I only spent one night in the hospital, my surgery (cold knife conization) had a brutal effect on my body. Long after the bleeding and cramping finally ended, I barely had the energy to move. When summer arrived, the heat frequently leveled me. Nearly a year passed before I felt normal again.
But I was lucky.
With this vaccine, others won’t have to rely on luck.
This case is also another example of the hidden dangers that can harm rape victims. For more on the dangers that can follow rape, read these posts:
Girls and alcohol poisoning
Recognizing the heroes nobody sees
Rape judgments
I wish my experiences were completely out of the norm for rape survivors, but I haven’t found that to be true, especially among those of us who bought the lie that what happened to us was our fault.
Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Anti-feminists and their pals, Feminism, sexism, etc, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 13 Comments »
… boys will be boys?
What if youthful rapists don’t grow out of the habit of raping when they leave an environment where they have easy access to victims?
What if boys and young men who raped their peers got a thrill from rape and sexual exploitation they can never recreate when the sex is fully consensual?
What if those who declare that college rapists pose no ongoing danger are wrong and those rapists only change their MO?
What if many Internet predators go after children not because they are pedophiles in a clinical sense but because children have the fewest defenses against sexually exploitive people and they can pursue their targets without friends and family noticing their little hobby?
Wouldn’t you want to stop these rapists before they become fully developed sexual predators?
Also posted on my blog, abyss2hope.blogspot.com
***PLEASE NOTE***
The comments on this post are open to feminist and pro-feminist posters only.
The judge at the trial of former Enron CEOs Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay handed prosecutors a strategic victory Wednesday, saying he would tell jurors that “deliberate ignorance” of fraud at the collapsed energy company was not a justifiable defense.
If prosecutors in criminal rape cases were allowed to show jurors that the defendant practiced “deliberate ignorance” and the jury was told that this practice is not a justifiable defense, many of the “he said/she said” defenses would crumble.
This wouldn’t be unfair to defendants since they would be allowed to show how they verified that they had legal consent.
Also posted on my blog, abyss2hope.blogspot.com
***PLEASE NOTE***
The comments on this post are open to feminist and pro-feminist posters only.
Eric Haskett was merely taking a nap in a car when he roused suspicion in a rural Frederick County neighborhood. A neighbor traced Haskett’s license plate to an address once used by a registered sex offender.
Then his girlfriend’s parents told him to scram; law enforcement officials, including three FBI agents, began investigating; and Haskett began fearing that the suspicions could cost him his job at a gag shop that sells such kid-friendly items as whoopie cushions.
If this sort of misunderstanding and overeaction keeps happening, public sex offender registries will become worse than useless. This case demonstrates that insufficient knowledge is a dangerous thing. If paranoia becomes rampant, it may come to the point where sex offender registries have to be removed from public view or we will need specific laws to protect those mistaken as sex offenders.
While people are panicking over the wrong people, trusted and unconvicted sex offenders will continue to have access to victims who may or may not be believed if they speak up.
Note: Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 24 Comments »
As I read yet another blogger rant about how they know with absolute certainty that many women do lie about being raped, I noticed the implication that those of us who dare to take all allegations of rape seriously are 1) deluded 2) man haters.
Those who habitually align themselves with alleged rapists don’t see sexual exploitation as harming anyone except those charged with sex crimes. How can they if their heroes are those who give a 16-year-old girl alcohol then use her as a child porn movie prop and their villain is the girl who blacked out and testified that she couldn’t remember what happened? They seem to feel justified in doing this because none of the convictions in this case were for the crime of rape.
Just because they can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Just because I told no one about being raped for two decades doesn’t mean it didn’t happen or that I have no right to call myself a rape survivor because my rapist was never charged or convicted.
I could counter specific faulty statements, but I’ll leave that for other posts. I want to get to what I see as a driving force in those who habitually align themselves with alleged rapists.
In any area we are in one of these states:
1) Unconscious incompetent
2) Conscious incompetent
3) Unconscious competent
4) Conscious competent
To move from state 1 to states 3 or 4, you have to go through state 2. But state 1 can be very comfortable while state 2 is the most uncomfortable and sometimes hopeless state.
I believe those who deny the scope of the sexual violence problem most vigorously are trying their best to remain in state 1 (and out of state 2) while they see themselves as being in state 4.
When it comes to sexual violence awareness, state 2 is where those who have exploited others sexually are forced to see themselves as fully responsible for their actions and where they must stop blaming their victims. Most don’t have the courage to do this without the threat of prison.
State 2 is difficult even for those who have never been sexually violent or sexually exploitive. They may have to see that they slandered true victims or stood by as someone they knew committed acts of sexual violence or taught children dangerous rape myths. Or they may have to accept that someone they trusted and loved made a deliberate choice to exploit them sexually.
When we’ve seen ourselves as always on the side of right, it takes courage to see where we’ve been wrong and where we have wronged others. Add a lack of knowledge about what to do to get into state 3 or 4 and it can be terrifying.
Many people retreat to state 1 and subsequently let their fear of state 2 and denial of what they learned there motivate them to increase their attacks on those who would drag them into such a terrible place.
Now on to the belief that all anti-rape activists are man haters.
To stay out of state 2, those in state 1 have to find a powerful reason to explain anti-rape activists’ true motivation since it can’t be that sexual exploitation, assault and abuse are serious problems in our society.
Since most alleged rapists are men, then the true cause for rape hysteria must be a deep desire to persecute men for being themselves.
A few of these ranters have gone so far as to refuse to take any rape charge seriously until victim advocates admit they have helped liars persecute innocent men. To test the irrationality of this request ask yourself if these same people would say something like, “I refuse to take murder seriously until you show me how many people faked their own deaths and made it look like they were murdered.”
It doesn’t compute. You either take a particular type of crime seriously or you don’t.
If you don’t believe certain types of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and sexual assault should be crimes, then focus on the decisions law makers have made and ask them to decriminalize certain acts and stop attacking victims of these types of crimes because you don’t think they have the right to say they are crime victims.
Note: Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Anti-feminists and their pals, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 47 Comments »
Aaron Graves, Duke’s associate vice president for campus safety and security, said the campus officer did nothing wrong as he “documented what took place” in the hours after the rape was reported, including “what he felt or perceived he heard” from Durham police.
I have to wonder if any of these people ever played Telephone. For those not familiar with this game, the first person whispers something in the next person’s ear and then that person whispers what they heard to the next person and so on until the last person tells everyone the message.
For those who haven’t played this game, the message quickly gets jumbled.
From what I’ve read from the Bowen-Chambers report about the flow of information from the investigators who interviewed the alleged victim to the Duke leadership, we have an institutionalized version of Telephone. Yet many continue to take these intermediary messages, which may or may not be within 6 degrees of separation of their original source, as if they came directly from the alleged victim herself.
Here are details about the victim that have been verified and which came from an official primary source (vs. coming from defense team or those involved in possible criminal activity):
But some people refuse to give this primary information any weight and continue to insist that this alleged victim must be considered the true perpetrator in this case because one man filed a report based on unverified secondhand information.
Go figure.
Note: Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Duke Rape Case | 8 Comments »
As I had expected, the news about the woman who has been ordered by a judge to take her children to see their father, the man who had raped her, is bringing out the claims by men’s rights activists that women frequently falsely accuse men of rape. A big problem is including unfounded cases with cases of outright false allegations. When a rape case is deemed unfounded, it does not mean the woman was lying.
This blog continues with some excellent information on how statistics on rape cases may feed into the myth that most rape allegations are false and therefore no rape occurred.
“Every year since 1989, in about 25 percent of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI where results could be obtained, the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing….”
There is a huge flaw in using this data to say that 25% of the sexual assaults reported didn’t happen and therefore 25% of the alleged rape victims are liars.
In many of the cases handled by the Innocence Project (where the quote above came from), those cleared through DNA testing were convicted of rape/murders. So making a direct correlation between a DNA mismatch and a false allegation (as the phrase is commonly used) would mean that no murder occurred. Since we know this isn’t true, the use of this data is meaningless in determining the percentage of alleged victims (in non-lethal rape cases) who lie about being raped.
An alarming national trend: False Rape Allegations by Eugene J. Kanin, Ph.D.
The investigation of all rape complaints always involves a serious offer to polygraph the complainants and the suspects. Additionally, for a declaration of false charge to be made, the complainant must admit that no rape had occurred. She is the sole agent who can say that the rape charge is false.
and
First, with very few exceptions, these complainants were suspect at the time of the complaint or within a day or two after charging. These recantations did not follow prolonged periods of investigation and interrogation that would constitute anything approximating a second assault. Second, not one of the detectives believed that an incident of false recantation had occurred. They argued, rather convincingly, that in those cases where a suspect was identified and interrogated, the facts of the recantation dovetailed with the suspect’s own defense
The investigation process used as the basis of this study raises a huge red flag. Even though the official stance is that all rape allegations are investigated fully, it’s clear that in the recanted cases investigators quickly assumed the accusers to be liars. Combine that assumption with the polygraph and you’ve got everything you need to get false confessions (and false retractions).
In the city studied by Kanin, there is no mention whether the recantations were given in response to a threat of criminal charges against those who reported rape or whether the recantations were influenced by a “We investigated your allegations and know you weren’t raped. What really happened was ____, isn’t that right?” type of questioning.
It would be fascinating if someone did a survey of all those who made rape reports in that city during the period of Kanin’s study to see how they would evaluate the police response and ethics. If they were asked: “Were you pressured to recant your rape allegation?” what percent would answer yes?
About reports of a 50% rate of false rape reports on campus referred to by Kanin, I suspect the high rate is due to combination of a mismatch in where people draw the line between “real” rape and unwanted but non-criminal sexual contact and the college’s desire to look as safe as possible. Likely the campus police would ask questions to see if the alleged victim did anything wrong or “stupid,” and if the answer was yes then the campus police could decide that what happened to her couldn’t be rape.
In my post Abyss2hope: Gang rape and university culture - a case study the gang rape describedwasn’t classified by the university as a rape. In fact if it were included in a study like Kanin’s it very well could be classified as a false allegation of rape.
The bottom line is I can’t find a single scientific reason to believe the claims that more rape reports are false allegations than any other type of serious crime.
Note: Also posted on my blog, abyss2hope.blogspot.com
