Sigh. Combination of out of context quoting, and simply declaring me wrong because you happen to disagree with me.
Regarding any mention of abstinence whatsoever in sex ed: Gbaji wrote:
Which is exactly the language that the current Liberal agenda wants to remove from sex-ed classes.
I didn't respond to this because I've had a really busy workload. I haven't read this forum since then. If you read my recent response, you'll see that I did provide evidence for my statement. The "Abstinence-plus" position is effectively identical to what almost everyone (cept a few religious nutballs) have advocated, yet is attacked regularly by Liberals (and conservatives but for different reasons). Why? Beause it contains the word "abstinence".
Regarding the rights of parents to teach their children creationism in the home or at church: Gbaji wrote:
However, I could certainly find Liberal groups who clearly *do* have the agenda of making it illegal to teach creationism to any children,
Out of context. And unproven by you. One could actually argue that this has already been the case for some time, so it's generally not discussed.
This link has some interesting information.
The study found that almost half of all Americans had never even heard of creationism. Um... Clearly, it's not being taught in our schools, even in a philosophy or religious studies class. Why do you suppose that is? Is it "illegal"? Dunno. But clearly, there's some very active effort to keep that from being taught in any form at all in our schools.
I'm not making a judgement on the value of teaching it. I'm just saying that currently we *don't* teach it. Not in science (which I agree with), but not even in a humanities type class. My point was about the semantics of the argument. While the *valid* argument is that creationism does not belong in a science class, that often gets transmorgified into "ceationism does not belong in school". The sheer number of times it's expressed this way gives weight to that assessment.
And I certainly *can* pull out opposition papers about school vouchers, based on the assumption that they'll be used to allow students to learn creationism instead of, or in addition to, evolution. If you recall, in that thread, that's the primary point I was trying to make. That a combination of factors is not just preventing creationism from being taught in science class, but is preventing it from being taught *at all* in any form of class (even elective ones), and is making it harder for many parents to choose to send their kids to private schools if they wish to have them taught it.
I didn't write a dozen paragraphs on the topic for the fun of typing. I did it because the issue is far too complex to shrink down to a single sentence. You lose the entire argument when you do that (and remove all context).
Regarding rape and the proof thereof: Gbaji wrote:
if there's no signs of struggle, you weren't raped. You just made a bad choice. Deal with it...
Sigh. Out of context again. That was *specifically* in response to the article Pat had linked. I was talking about a particular situation in which a girl claimed she was physically forced to perform oral sex on the defendant, yet there were no signs of struggle, nor did she claim there was a threat of violence or a weapon, or any of the other scenarios people tossed out there as possible reasons why someone might be raped without any sign of struggle.
In that case, she did just make a bad choice. My main point was not that statement, but that the redefining of rape to include date rape was partly responsible for this change, since it made it easier for women to accuse men of rape, with less burden of proof required.
Regarding "date rape": Gbaji wrote:
"What "date rape" is, is when a woman has sex with someone but says she didn't really want to. "
Yup. Another one out of context. Look. I was talking about what is different between "rape" and "date rape". While some will often parrot the textbook definition (being raped by someone you know), that's not the issue I was going after (and why have a different term for it? It's rape whether you know the person or not, right?).
Realize that the entire entrance of "date rape" in the common lexicon came about as a result of the Knoss study. It's the one that found that 1 in 4 college aged women had been raped, but only 27% of them thought they had. This gave rise to a whole slew of assumptions about why, and the date-rape phenomenon was born.
However, when you look at it objectively, you'll find that the only thing that really differentiates rape and date-rape is whether there's demonstrable coersion or not. So, if someone threatens you with a gun, you've been raped, but if he takes you out on a date, you both have some drinks, he invites you to his place, and you have sex, but then at any point in the future decide that you didn't really want to, that's labeled as "rape", and sublabeled as "date rape".
According to this
article, my definition is not far off...
Quote:
He noticed, for example, that Koss and her colleagues counted as victims of rape any respondent who answered "yes" to the question "Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?" That opened the door wide to regarding as a rape victim anyone who regretted her liaison of the previous night. If your date mixes a pitcher of margaritas and encourages you to drink with him and you accept a drink, have you been "administered" an intoxicant, and has your judgment been impaired? Certainly, if you pass out and are molested, one would call it rape. But if you drink and, while intoxicated, engage in sex that you later come to regret, have you been raped? Koss does not address these questions specifically, she merely counts your date as a rapist and you as a rape statistic if you drank with your date and regret having had sex with him.
Realize that those statistics make up the bulk of what we now think of as "date rape". While there is some overlap (specifically in the case of use of so-called date-rape-drugs), those are extremely rare, and would qualify as "rape" under virtually all legal definitions.
That was the point I was getting at. There is a legal definition of rape. It generally requires some degree of proof of physical force or coersion in order to qualify (although some states have adopted Koss' definition leading to some really screwed up laws). There is also a social definition of "date rape" which is includes actual rapes that occur on a date, or by someone you know, but *also* include the scenarios Koss included in her study. That's the differentiating part that I was referring to. And I still stand by my statement.
Here's another one:
Quote:
She also questioned the feminist perspective on male/female relations: "These feminists are endorsing their own utopian vision of sexual relations: sex without struggle, sex without power, sex without persuasion, sex without pursuit. If verbal coercion constitutes rape, then the word rape itself expands to include any kind of sex a woman experiences as negative."
It's hardly an indefensible position...
Edited, Mon Oct 17 23:58:37 2005 by gbaji
