AngryUndead wrote:
He wants different deffinitions for the words. This is basically the same reasoning that lead to the creation of PC and the term Date Rape in the first place I'll wager.
This tactic is fairly weak minded.
Imagine a biiiiig circle. This big circle is Rape. This circle has many circles inside it. They are labeled:
Forced - Physically holding the victim in place
Under Duress - Psychological/situational stress
By Aquaintance
By Stranger
Violent - Physical/Physiological stress, punishment by application for non-compliance.
These are not mutually exclusive, except Stranger/Aquaintance. Well I guess afterwords you know the person, in a particular sense... but thats more there than here. Also every one of the inner circles must actually be a part of the Aquaintance or Stranger circle. I'm sure most of you in a Stats or Math Modeling class have seen the graph I'm talking about. Even a Discreat Math course. Someone could probably whip it up in a program real quick. Of course we can't use the stats from before except loosely. They didn't give us a quite complete picture... which gbaji tried to capitalize on earlier.
I think what you want to do is remove the "Under Duress" outside of the circle and into a "Bad Sexual Descision" circle... except for the parts where it intersects with Violent or Forced as those would fit your definition of "Rape".
More or less correct. However, what you have to remember is that prior to somewhere in the mid 90s, that was how it was defined already. Ambrya's earlier link included a definition called "grey rape". I'd honestly never heard that definition used before, but that's basically what I'm talking about. It's my contention that what we today call "date rape" is an almalomation of "rape by an acquiantance" and "grey rape" as described in that link.
My argument isn't that we should remove something, but that it should not have been added in the first place. The relevance to what that link calls "grey rape" is high IMO. Basically, no one used the term "date rape" until they added "grey rape" into the mix. That's why I have a problem with the term as a whole. It's a classification that exists largely *because* some bright folks wanted to add non-physical coersion into the catagory of "rape", and realized it was easier to do that by leveraging the existing concept of "rape by an acquaintance", rolling the whole thing together and calling it "date rape".
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I think that what you fail to address though is the most critical element of most rape cases. Consent. Consent must be given and if it comes down to a case where it must be implied... you're fuc[u][/u]ked.
No. I'm not failing to address that. It's my key point. You have to remember that we're talking about legal changes and legal charges for a crime. So the issue of proving consent is critical. If you can't prove a crime has been commited, can you charge someone with that crime, arrest them, set a trial date, etc? Prior to the 90s, when the whole date rape thing became a big political issue, the criteria I mentioned earlier was pretty much the rule. If you could not show evidence of physical force being used, you couldn't charge someone with a crime. In exactly the same way I can't charge you with battery if I don't have any bruises on me or any witnesses to an assault of some kind.
My whole point is that what you can claim and what you can prove are two very very different things. In a sane legal system, there must be some minimum level of proof before a charge should even be leveled. What happened during the 90s was that we lowered the bar of proof needed to bring a charge against someone. In many cases (like that of the OP) lowered it to the point where any woman could charge someone with rape, with no evidence other then her own claim, and that charge would be taken seriously. The male would be charged, booked, bail set, etc...
That's my problem. It clearly was a problem in the OP. And it very definately was a legal change that came out of the "cause" to fight against date rape. I'm still confused how anyone can deny this. They happened at the same time. Date rape, while perhaps broadly defined as any rape by someone you know, changed only in that the "grey rape" idea was added. Since that focuses on non-physical sexual coersion and labels it "rape", that requires a much more lenient allegation process in order to ever hope to bring one to trial. I honestly didn't think I was trying to express a concept that was that complicated or difficult to understand. Clearly, the laws changed over time. Clearly those changes make it easier for women to charge a man with rape. Clearly, those changes occured at the same time that "date rape" was a big politcal issue, and many changes were made. The obvious conclusion is well... obvious.
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If you're with your wife, you both get wasted, go home, and have sex you're okay if she wanted to. But if she never said "yes" or otherwise gave verbal consent... then even she, your loving wife, could have a case. ***** could: does.
This is the problem I have with current Rape law. I'd discuss it with anyone who has the time or the compunction.
If none of that is what you're thinking gbaji then I guess you're a moron.
That's part of what I'm saying. It's a whole body of changes in our legal thinking about rape. Certainly the idea that a woman must give explicit consent is part of it. I remember a college town changing their laws a number of years ago, basically requiring that every act of sex or change of sexual "level" must be accompanied by an explicit and verbal request and approval. So basically, if the man does not ask the woman "can I take off your panties", regardless of body language or anything else, he could be charged with rape.
That's the change in thinking that drive situations like the OP. IMO, that does not empower women at all. As I've said a few times now, I believe it reinforces negative stereotypes about women. The assumption for the verbal permission thing is that if a woman is to drunk or otherwise incapacitated to verbalize consent, then she can't give consent is ludicrous and biased. So I guess a drunk man is always in control, but a drunk woman is just a victim? And that's what passes for womens rights these days?
There are just so many aspects of the entire issue that disgust me that it's hard to focus on just one. They promote negative stereotypes about women. They don't help the victims of violence at all, but just add to the "numbers" so it seems like they've got more company I guess. And the create situations like the OP that should never happen under any sane legal system.
Again. Ignore the semantics and look at what has changed. Call it date rape, grey rape, or stupid rape if you want. The fact is that sometime in the last 15 years, we've changed the laws as regards charges of rape. We've done so specifically to try to target men who take advantage of women. But in the process, we've created a set of rules that can easily be taken advantage of by any women with a mind to do so and a beef against a man. What you call it doesn't matter. The fact is that this is why soemthing like the OP can and does happen all the time.