Rape, blame, responsibility, Amnesty, etcetera.

I thought he (nick) was just playing 'devil's advocate'. i think you're absolutely right about the 'why the fuck would you' point about blame ratio in such situations ethan, but to attack Nick in this way still seems unfair, but whatever really.

i went out of my way to say that were weren't different kinds, but yeah i know it does kind of license this kind of thinking.

I mean, it's not really rape if it's your passed out/drunk/struggling gf, right? I mean, it's not like the authorities can prove it or really think much of it...

in britain at least we have a through-and-through sexist police and judiciary, but at the same time it's hard to tell cases where sexism has been in play from those where they really *do* have trouble proving non-consent in date rape cases (front page example: numerous footballer 'roasting' incidents). i'm not defending it or being a police apologist, but the difficulty of prosecuting is as much a fact of life in this society as the number of people prepared to commit date rape.

it's really just to do with trying to get to the causes of the problem rather than wasting time pointing out the obvious (that the problem is a bad thing). granted people tend to go about it in a cack-handed fashion. if nick's suggestion is sincere then he'd do well to expand on it hugely though i suppose it would cause offence however detailed (still doesn't mean people need fly off the handle onto a high horse, even if this is ILX). there are lots of interesting questions re sexual behaviour of men and women and the subject of rape tends to bring most of them rearing their often ugly heads. but with presumably everyone ultimately being so unanimous in their views on this matter, threads like these only really deliver vitriol based on misinterpretation. unfortunately there's no satisfactory answer to the question of 'why do they do it', excuses such as 'because they're evil' (wrt the rapist) and 'because they asked for it dressing like that' (wrt the victim) are equally feeble.

boozy babes wearing short skirts need to be encouraged in their behavior by feeling safe and protected to the utmost extent of the law, and that's the end of it as far as I'm concerned

Because: I defy you to explain to me what these "dangerous situations" are. Most of the usual suspects that get trotted out up top -- drunkenness? flirting? revealing clothes? being in private with men? -- are things that people do all the time, constantly, normally, without getting raped willy-nilly, which is precisely as it should be and mostly normally is. And I'd guess that most of the women who are victims of rape never put themselves in any position more dangerous than anyone else's life: their big "dangerous" moves were walking down the street in sweatpants in the middle of the day, having fathers, having boyfriends, or any of a million everyday things.

So without even getting into the details of this, and the bizarre idea that it should be the victim's responsibility to protect herself (that being raped is equivalent to leaving your iPod on the table when you go to the bathroom, that we should "expect" rape on the human-nature level of petty theft), the whole thing strikes me as idiotic on the face of it. There's no thread of "dangerous situations" that women put themselves in, unless that dangerous situation is just "normal participation in the world around us." The thread that does exist in all instances of rape is the same one: that there are men who do it.

And oh we can fret forever about the most confused and subtle of cases here, the real headscratchers and vexed ones, but that's beside the point. It's the expectations in this whole discussion that are striking me as flatly ridiculous.

EXACTLY

nabisco, you've been on the internet, right?

seriously though is Nick just playing devil's advocate? Cos he doesn't seem to be explaining his point very well.

This morning on the radio Nicky Campbell was asking a woman from Amnesty whether she thought a prostitute being raped was equally as bad as a nun being raped. I was surprised there wasn't already a thread on the topic actually (specifically relating to the Amnesty survey thing).

Also I'm in the UK, right? I finished work several hours ago and I can't (quite) sit on the net all day monitoring a thread when I am at work - if that makes me a scaredy cat, so be it.

Trife, Evan, whatever the fuck you're called and whoeverthefuck you are, I don't really know or care, you seem like an asshole.

see, there, he admits he's only even attempting to argue another viewpoint because it's in the news!

Does any of this make sense?

Yes, it makes perfect sense.

Sick Mouthy, how could this be a thread? The answer is just sort of, "yes" and that's it, or am I missing something?

nick, it is a gigantic waste of bandwidth. i am outraged.

xpost oh hell no

The first one is the idea that women's choices or situations in life somehow affect their right to not be raped, something it's implied that a nun "earns" or a prostitute "waives." That's the part we all reject flat-out; that right is basic, human, and non-conditional. Nobody puts himself in a position where it's "more okay" to murder him; nobody puts herself in a situation where it's "more okay" to rape her; period.

The second subtext is that rape is more or less wrong depending on how much the victim might be expected to "mind" -- which (a) kind of trivializes rape by assuming some women might not care so much, and (b) is kind of funny, as a notion, since most of the issue with rape is precisely that the perpetrator isn't, you know, paying much attention to what the other person does or doesn't want. There are arguments to be made that an act is more or less morally reprehensible depending on the amount of damage it does in its own context -- this is a part of why we take the sexual abuse of a child more seriously than that of an adult -- but that's just so complex and not at simple nun/whore play here: couldn't it be worse to violate a vulnerable, unstable, often-exploited prostitute than it would be to violate some particularly strong and saintly nun, firm enough in her faith to withstand with fortitude the evils of the world? And more importantly, since when does any rapist sit around gauging exactly how life-destroying his actions are going to be in relation to the particular victim? How can anyone involved ever claim to know exactly how deeply something like this will hurt one person versus another? And how much does it matter, anyway, with something that's this bad to begin with? And in the end, what bearing does this have on anything, anyway? It certainly doesn't change the ways our laws should respond -- so why are we playing St. Peter and ferreting out exactly how awful an awful act turned out?

The third subtext of the question is that men are so stupid that we'll perceive any form of sexual receptivity as consent directed at us in particular -- that we know to keep our hands off nuns, what with the wimples and all, but prostitutes are just too confusing. This is deeply insulting to the vast numbers of men who never come anywhere close to raping anyone, ever.

I dunno: you can take that thing apart on any number of levels. (In terms of the danger to society, my first thought was the the nun-rapist is likely just nuts, whereas the prostitute-rapist is likely to be an exploitative menace who knows what he can get away with!) But it always comes back to the same thing: in both a moral and a legal sense, it's just wrong, no matter what the circumstances. Killing hobos isn't "more okay" than killing priests; raping prostitutes isn't "more okay" than raping nuns.

If it is a wife instead of a nun or prostitute, should it be "more okay"?

in 33 states, there are still some exemptions given to husbands from rape prosecution. When his wife is most vulnerable (such as, she is mentally or physically impaired, unconscious, asleep, etc.) and is unable to consent, a husband is exempt from prosecution in many of these 33 states.

The only person demonstrating any "glee" on this thread is you, moron. And I don't see what's wrong with being moralistic? But seeing as you've no problem with accusing people you don't even know of being racist, misogynist, priveleged neo-rapists I don't imagine for one second that you'd even begin to understand that.

because, er, "A third of people believe a woman is partially or completely responsible for being raped if she has behaved flirtatiously, a survey suggests".

A THIRD OF PEOPLE BELIEVE THIS. who the fuck are these people, and why are they such total and utter cunts?

that's why it's a thread. because one-third of people who responded to that survey said a woman was in some way responsible for being raped. these things matter. they need discussed. ILX is a discussion forum. i want to discuss who these people are, why they feel like that, and whether "society" can do anything to change them, or whether we should just line them up and shoot them in the fucking face.

christ. (one third of) people = shit.

someone could make the argument that men are socialized in a context which encourages rape or the objectification of women. is a man who absorbs these social tendencies 100% responsible for them? no one would make the argument that a woman who absords this social environment is anything but a victim i presume. while their are social norms dictating that rape is wrong, there are also contrary messages meaning the opposite.

i personally would blame the rapist 100% for the rape not because i can honestly claim that he is a free acting agent but because i have to think that it's in our interest to perpetuate the fiction of morality.

sorry if this seems weird or offensive--just a thought experiment really. i think a lot of confusion abotu who is "responsible" for rape is really patriarchal bullshit, so maybe this sort of questioning is out of place.

i am pleased that the pinefox likes my posts here but i fear this one may not be up to his standards.