Now that I am up and running, I have a little dittie for Erica's Anxious Masculity Watch:
"Real Men" deny that their gender is responsible for rape.
I was sitting in a diner with two of my dude friends who, apparently looking for a fight avec moi, started discussing the woes of the poor helpless males out there who, because of rape shield laws, are at the mercy of the slut-whores who lie about rape and accuse innocent men. They were saddened that so much evidence can be excluded so as the whole debacle comes down to "he said/she said".
We went back and forth for quite a while, my volume increasing with every response (I may have made some patrons uncomfortable), and at the peak I finally blurted out, "well none of this would be a problem if men didn't rape!"
Crickets.
The conversation basically stopped. The problem isn't that women can falsely accuse men of rape. It isn't that women can be raped. The problem is that men rape in the first place...not only do they rape, but they rape a lot. All the problems that result only result because of that very fact.
I would really like there to be a study of how many men rape. Is there? There are tons of statistics about how many women "go and get themselves raped", but if dudes rape 1/3 of women, how many men do you think are raping? Surely it's not 1/5 of dudes who are raping 1/3 of the women...you think??? If that were even close to the right number, that's fucking scary. Even if it were 1/10 of men that are raping, that's still so high. I don't think all rapists out there are repeat offenders, and I'm sure there are men who've raped once or twice. It would be interesting to know, and also interesting for men to know how much of their gender is responsible for the physical act of raping. As I proof-read this I am becoming disturbingly aware of how uncomfortable this paragraph is. Because we never (as a society) consider this perspective. Of course we don't, because then it would become glaringly obvious to men that they are the problem in the rape equation.
It's amazing how, in light of my dude-friends' empathy and sadness for wrongly accused dudes of the world, that they are still both pro-death penalty. Fascinating how their concern for wrongly accusing dudes dissipates when you are no long discussing robbing a woman of her control over her body.
4.28.2007
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9 comments:
Brilliant! Your conversation stopper was better than a punch to the face!
I can't speak much for state laws because they are all over the board, but much evidence that would be excluded by the federal rape shield law would be excluded under basic relevance rules (FRE 401, 402, 403) without the statute. Evidence such as "she sleeps with tons of guys" or, "she dresses provocatively" wouldn't be allowed under FRE 403. This sort of evidence is of marginal relevance at best and is very prejudicial. Why should any evidence that is relevant and not outweighed by a 403 harm (probably unfair prejudice in this case) be excluded? I can't think of any evidence off hand that would violate the federal rape shield statute and not 401/403, but there might be some and the exclusion of this evidence is a hard question to answer. The biggest problem, of course, is that lots of judges are douche bags (especially low level state judges) and allow in evidence they shouldn't. Had judges been properly keeping out irrelevant evidence there would be no need for rape shield in the first place.
Federal Rules of Evidence:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/
Thanks, nerd-o. I was trying not to teach Federal Rules of Evidence, but since you "opened the door"... ;)
I agree.
Andy is much less interesting now that he's a law student. :)
(kidding, Andy)
I think the percentage of guys who are rapists is probably higher than one might guess. Particularly if you get into the grey area of "She said no at first, but then I badgered her until she finally gave in just to get me to shut the hell up" or "She said no, but then I used emotional abuse and manipulative bullshit to get what I wanted" and that sort of thing. The number of douchebags in the world is astoundingly high.
Good comeback to your particular douchebags, btw.
I agree...the proportion of men who rape is probably high. But if that is true, then rape is NOT a crime...it's a way of life. I mean, this is an activity that many of dudes engage in and many women have to deal with, absent any involvement with the legal system.
They should phrase the statistics like this: "Study shows that 1 in X Dudes will Rape in Their Lifetime". What would that do for awareness? Would it give dudes validation or put them in check?
Rape is a great tool for Dude society to use to 1) keep the bitches in their place, and 2) criminalize those who Dudes have an interest in oppressing. I guess they have drug laws for #2. How efficient of them.
*sigh*. Something is wrong.
Yes Rock, I am the biggest nerd among nerds.... I figure it is best that people have some idea what they are talking about before they argue though.
I would be interested to see what the statistics consider "rape" because it can be an extremely broad catagory. For example, an intoxicated person can not legally consent, thus you are a rapist if you have sex with an intoxicated person.
Maybe I live in my own happy little world, but I am always shocked that girls actively worry about rape daily, that is a very sad thing to me.
Actually, many girls DO worry about rape daily, and though it's sad, it's also kinda necessary, which is ridiculous. As horrible as this sounds, it seems the only way to prevent rape if you're a woman is to assume that every man you're around is a rapist until you REALLY REALLY get to know them. And even then, women get raped by men they THOUGHT they knew really well. I know a statement like that is gonna piss a lot of the guys off that don't rape, but hey--sorry. If men didn't rape, as Rakhi said, this wouldn't be an issue. As it is, they do, and so thus we cannot afford to trust them to not rape. There are many ways to get away with it, and I'm betting the majority of them do. Rape is so rampant, and I'm guessing it isn't reported half as much as it happens. I know of three instances of women being raped, and none of them reported it. A lot of times it's because of the reasons Erica gave--manipulation and getting "talked out of" the knowledge that they were violated, as well as the lack of clarity in sex education. Sure, we were all told that we had the right to say no, but even though that seems clear, it's sort of vague. How does one say no, for example, if they cannot--their mouth is covered, or a classic trick--whip it out and put it in her before she even knows what's happening.
A quote from Ariel Levy--paraphrased: "We were always told we had a right to say no, but in college this confused us because we always said yes." The implication here is that, perhaps dating back to when a woman first loses her virginity, a yes once is a yes forever--something women perhaps feel, and men DEFINITELY know they can exploit. There are probably two types of rapists--those who do it once and never do it again, and those who do it A LOT. A lot of them just like to abuse, but also I think that a lot of these men have the attitude: "what's the big deal? It should be fun, and even if it's not, she's not gonna be hurt--it's just a little fuckin." No bruises= no lasting damage. They don't even consider a woman's rights to not have sex--they only think of how she's denying him "the right" TO have sex. And then a lot of men that don't rape start the woman-hating when they hear about rape victims, because they fall into that whole "nice guy" thing that Erica had on her blog, where they blame women for being abused because they themselves would never abuse a woman, and so why the fuck aren't these women with a "nice guy" instead of a jerkoff? Men consistently use rape to control women, or blame women, or anything else they can do to hurt women. Even if it's not intentional, which perhaps it wasn't in the case of Rakhi's dude friends.
If anyone is interested Crawford and Unger's "Women and Gender" book has a chapter dedicated to violence against women. (Chapter 13). After numerous studies they conclude that ... "many victimized women (atleast 73%) never label forced sexual intercourse as rape." Which makes the actual victimization rate 10-15 times greater than the FBI estimates it to be. I read this book as part of a Psychology and Women course, but it has a lot of valid information.
Also, according to these authors 15% of rape is committed by women, men just don't talk about being victimized as often.
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