Sexual Relations (a post on feminism)

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Actually  Louise I made no such implicit statement, but instead confirmed that the number given by meikle are from the Department of Justice.  I also went on to state that the Uniform Crime Report records those arrested.  In order to obtain an arrest warrant, there needs to be sufficient evidence.  Police do not simply drive out to arrest people based on an unconfirmed statement.  They have to have arrest warrants which means a judge has to look at the evidence.  Both the numbers, as I mentioned, are from the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  These are considered the two primary resources for criminologists. 

So instead of jumping up and down with unsupported references about 88,000 women lying, one can do a quick search for what is called False Accusation percentage.  At face value this number is 8%.  So 8% of the accusations given by the Department of Justice (note not the FBI because those are actual arrests) are considered to be false.  Yet, digging a little more one can find that an intensive study was done that reduced the number to 3% false reporting.  The reason behind the more in depth investigation is that false reporting is not a universal rule and the requirements to be considered a false report change from district to district.  For the record the average rate of false reporting among other crimes is 2%. 

I do agree with Jelly Doughnut that this discussion of feminism has spent too long in a discussion of women being raped.  This does little to contribute to the overall discussion except to side rail the focus in a less useful direction.

Also, that is a big stretch to say that pornography is to receive credit for the past 25 years of reduced rape.  I suppose feminists should have just shown Double Penetration videos at rallies.

[Jude]

http://www.slate.com/id/2152487/

I mean, of course I think there's a lot that has lowered it.  I don't think pornography is responsible in any major way, it was mostly for the data involved, I just think it's good news that things are getting better.

These discussions are depressing, and it's just nice to have something to feel good about.  No one wants to think that 1 out of 6 women in the US are going to be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Crime in general, including rape, is on the decline across the United States.  The Department of Justice figures and the Uniform Crime Report both make indications of this.

[Jude]

Yep, and this is something everyone in this discussion can be happy about despite how we feel on the issue of feminism.

[gaggedLouise]

@Pumpkin Seeds,

"False accusation percentage" seems to be a flimsy or controversial concept (I only get one single google hit and it leads us to a discussion where the concept is called vague and unsourced). And one reason for the limited usefulness could be that it's not the police, nor even the attorneys who decide what accusatons are "truthful" (tell the truth). They don't get to do that singlehandedly - any rape or sexual assault case is decided in court, provided it gets there for a real trial. If charges are pulled back before the actual trial (not just a pre-trial to decide on setting of bail etc) is begun, the reason often seems to be that the evidence - technical and testimonies - was considered too weak to carry in a trial. This is also a long-standing major reason for acquittals. Are you telling me that we, um, need to bring down the level of careful scrutiny or the demands of accuracy of evidence, in order to nail more offenders, more men rapists?

The recent Strauss-Kahn case in New York indicates, to my mind, that an accusation is in no way the same as a final fact of rape. It also shows that some attorneys are a bit too trigger happy.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

No, I’m saying that for a person who doesn’t approve of personal stories or the use of single events to sway an audience there is certainly a lot of those being used in your posts.  I have put forth information from sources in the majority (if not all) of my posts, while yours have been oddly devoid.  Even now you put forth one case to refute numbers from two reputable sources. 

Also, do not attempt to extrapolate a statement that I wish for the scrutiny of evidence to be lowered based on my relaying of crime statistics.  Any case that is dropped or plea bargained down before trial is done so for a lack of strong evidence, that is not exclusive to rape cases.  So not really sure where you are going there.

[gaggedLouise]

I pointed out that as a police, you can't really decide beforehand , in a solid way, what accusations are "true" and which are false (or overstated). You're pointing to police statistics but the very nature of what the police are supposed to have measured means most of those true/false decisions would have to be the police's own stuff, provisory at best, seeing that most of the cases didn't go to trial: This is a logical argument against the use of those figures, not  technical as in "I don't believe that, I don't want to take it into account".

With the DSK case, I was singling it out but I thought it would be plain that it wasn't the first one to make me consider attorneys sometimes going overbold or pulling in people to score points in front of the public. In America attorneys, and some judges, are elected by popular vote, right? So they may have a personal interest in delivering striking cases and sometimes in being seen working certain kinds of crime, in order to get re-elected. In most Western countries, all judges and prosecurtors/attorneys are appointed, generally by other law people, and they don't have to fawn to the public to win or keep their posts.

I'm aware that cops and attorneys can sometimes be so hellbent on getting someone in that they feel they "know" he's guilty, know it as an objective fact. You probably have to feel that way sometimes to soldier on as a police detective or a prosecutor. But it doesn't translate to any kind of objective truth.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

The numbers are from the amount of people that have come forward and reported being raped (Department of Justice) and the number of arrests made for that crime (Uniform Crime Report).  So I do not see how the nature of police work comes into play logically.  If you are saying that people lie, then this is certainly true.  Most researchers are aware of this knowledge and as such setup fields of error.  There are also numbers utilized such as false reporting.  A logical argument against two sets of numbers from two sets of agencies is not going to be, women lie.  Especially when we are dealing with numbers like 88,000 and 191,000.  To continue forth with that logic that this many women lie each year ( keep in mind the number has decreased steadily over the past few years) is running into the idea of a conspiracy theory.

Honestly, that is not logic at all but an attempt to throw dirt on something by using personal opinion to sway the reader’s feelings.  “Well we all know people lie and rape is all subjective, so well then women lie about it and we can’t trust numbers.” 

Restated, in the year 2005 191,000 women reported being raped.  In the year 2009 88,000 arrests were made on charges of forcible rape.  Women lie is the rebuttal. 

That is not logic. 

[gaggedLouise]

Nope, what I'm saying is that you seem to be equating the number of instances where a person has contacted the police and filed charges for rape, subtracted by the number of accusations that were later (informally?) deemed false or erroneous by - the police, sometimes in league with a local court attorney, and possibly also removing those that were taken to court and the defendant/s acquitted - you're equating that with the (minimum) true number of rapes.

That's erroneous, a logical error. No rape is certified until an offender (or offenders) has been found guilty in court. At least not certified in a way that could produce workable statistics. And an arrest doesn't prove diddy either about what happened. Yes there are false accusations and no, the occurence of a rape is not always as easy to determine as a case of overspeeding.



Concerning the popular election of judges and judiciary, because someone made a post, and then removed it,  saying this didn't occur in America. These pages seem to indicate otherwise: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1515970

http://attorney-online.info/publ/business_law_articles/expenditure_for_elections_of_judges_grow_in_the_usa_courts_are_still_independent_part_1/5-1-0-285

http://attorney-online.info/publ/business_law_articles/expenditure_for_elections_of_judges_grow_in_the_usa_courts_are_still_independent_part_2/5-1-0-286

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/07/27/midday2/


The paper  "Public Defender Elections and Popular Control over Criminal Justice" by Ronald F. Wright, published in the Missouri Law Review, opens:

"Voters in the United States select some of the major actors in criminal
justice, but not all of them. Among the major figures in the criminal court-
room, voters typically elect two of the three: the prosecutor and the judge, but
not the public defender. Prosecutors in almost all states are elected at the
local level. Judicial elections offer more of a mixed bag, but a strong majori-
ty of jurisdictions elect their judges in some form or other. Unlike prosecu-
tors and most judges, however, the public defender is typically not an elected
official ---"

http://law.missouri.edu/lawreview/docs/75-3/Wright.pdf

I'm not sure of just how recent that last paper is: looking at the url it could be from 1975 (at least, it's hardly a hundred years old, judging from the style of writing), but the other ones are certainly more recent and I've heard of several occasions where the office of judge, especially in local courts - not courts of appeal - is an elected one, and that this is a widespread practice.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Where did I make that claim or develop that formula?  I’ve heard of people putting words in another’s mouth, but not mathematical equations.  I have maintained at all times what those numbers are and what they mean.  To my knowledge I have never said that those were the number of women raped in the United States.  I think you are seeing an implication that I never made.  The numbers are what they are.

And yes, district attorneys are elected to their positions.  As are sheriffs and some low level judges. 

[meikle]

That's erroneous, a logical error. No rape is certified until an offender (or offenders) has been found guilty in court.

Logically erroneous is claiming that a rape only occurred if someone is called guilty in a court.

Rapes that occur and rapes that are convicted are two different statistics.  Ra != Rb.

[gaggedLouise]

Actually  Louise I made no such implicit statement, but instead confirmed that the number given by meikle are from the Department of Justice.  I also went on to state that the Uniform Crime Report records those arrested.  In order to obtain an arrest warrant, there needs to be sufficient evidence.  Police do not simply drive out to arrest people based on an unconfirmed statement.  They have to have arrest warrants which means a judge has to look at the evidence.  Both the numbers, as I mentioned, are from the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  These are considered the two primary resources for criminologists. 

Sufficient evidence for an arrest is not final evidence and at that early a stage in investigation, the evidence is going to be much weaker than what is actually needed to bring a case to conclusion and have anyone sent to jail. Especially with a crime that often takes place at somebody's home, or in a hotel room, or in the open at night, with no exterior witnesses, and where both filers and suspects can have many reasons to hide awkward facts or to invent circumstances, and are strongly engaged emotionally.

So instead of jumping up and down with unsupported references about 88,000 women lying, one can do a quick search for what is called False Accusation percentage.  At face value this number is 8%.  So 8% of the accusations given by the Department of Justice (note not the FBI because those are actual arrests) are considered to be false.  Yet, digging a little more one can find that an intensive study was done that reduced the number to 3% false reporting.  The reason behind the more in depth investigation is that false reporting is not a universal rule and the requirements to be considered a false report change from district to district.  For the record the average rate of false reporting among other crimes is 2%. 

(my boldening)

The statistics on the amouint of "false rape accusations" was obviously provided from police data level, even if they were processed higher up by some commission. It doesn't take into account how things look on courtroom level: by the implied "true accusations" or veracious filings for rape, it has to mean such reports filed with the police and considered true by someone at the police, perhaps some of it in conjunction with an attorney. The vital point is that the scrutiny provided in the court room clearly doesn't come into question before those numbers are singled out as the 'true accusations'.

No one has quoted or linked anything so far that shows what the police actually labeled those figures in their statistics. If the police, ior the Department of Justice, seriously said, this is the true accusations we have here, then they would have gone in advance of courts or defied the courts (if the statistics were compiled after the cases had gone to court and many of them had been rejected; of course many never went to court at all). But thenm, the summing up of those 92% as "true accusations" could hwell have been made by someone lese, interested in boosting the apparent number of rapes that don't get a fair hearing. Anyway, if those statsoitic were supposed to show the number of truly occurrring rapes, or even give a rough idea, that's a logical error.

Yes, to claim that a given rape has actually taken place, in a sense that makes it useful within statistics, there has to be a positive court decision behind it. Except in some cases where somebody says he/she was raped by a total stranger, and the fact of assault is borne out by medical examination soon afterwards, but the victim has no idea at all who it was. But those cases could oinly be a small fraction.

"instead of jumping up and down with unsupported references about 88,000 women lying..." - you are very clearly trying to push it on me that either I have to accept those statistics or else I must be claiming that a very large number of already assured rapes didn't take place and that every one of those 88.000 women are lying.  A clumsy attempt at rethorical blackmail. No, there can be many reasons why a case wasn't taken to court or was pulled back. The woman, or the attorney, may have come to realize that what they thought was rape didn't fit what the law demarcates as rape, and so they found it impossible to go on, or wee not allowed to go on by the judge, by the rules of the court. This kind of thing happens, and with the word rape being used in a vague way it's likely to be happening more and more.

Rapes that occur and rapes that are convicted are two different statistics.

Well, you're doing just what she did, putting an equals sign between the number of "actual rapes" /i.e. factually true rapes/ and the number filed to the police. This is illogical, at least if you want any kind of reliable numbers to make statistics from.

[Will]

Well, you're doing just what she did, putting an equals sign between the number of "actual rapes" /i.e. factually true rapes/ and the number filed to the police. This is illogical, at least if you want any kind of reliable numbers to make statistics from.

It's also illogical to say there's no relationship between the two at all.  It's avoidance.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Honestly at this point Louise you’ve gone way off the deep end.  According to your logic, if I was murdered and nobody caught my killer then I was not murdered.  I just had an unfortunate accident with a bullet.  No conviction = No crime.

Yes, you are basing the throwing out of reputable and dependable evidence based on “women lie.”  Your entire claim to logic comes down to two words, “women lie.”  Everything you are saying essentially boils down to, “women lie.”  So since women lie, discount all numbers.  Yet even if there is conviction information there come the contention of wrongful convictions. 

As for the false accusation number, it is gathered from what each district believes counts as a false accusation.  False Accusations also go to court because that is illegal.  The district police turn in the number of false accusations of a particular crime they receive to FBI for the Uniform Crime Report.  From there a statistic is generated.  The reason for the revision in some studies is because of the subjective nature of the false accusation report among certain districts and the inconsistency in the rules. 

There is no logic in saying one conviction = one crime.  There are a myriad of reasons why a conviction cannot be made.  This may include police error, prosecutor error and mistrials.  None of these involve evidence.  There is also the difficult nature of obtaining evidence regarding a rape.  If a woman takes a shower, evidence is lost.  If the perpetrator wears a condom, evidence is lost.  If the woman is drunk, a prosecutor may not take the case believing a jury won’t believe consent wasn’t given.  For a long time women were not considered to be raped unless they fought back, while at the same time people were telling them not to fight back because they would get hurt. 

At this point you are ignoring evidence and using false logic to deny scientific information while giving no information of your own.  I will not continue this line of dialogue with you and look forward to someone bringing the thread back on track.

[gaggedLouise]

Honestly at this point Louise you’ve gone way off the deep end.  According to your logic, if I was murdered and nobody caught my killer then I was not murdered.  I just had an unfortunate accident with a bullet.  No conviction = No crime.

If your body wasn't found and there weren't any other kind of super solid evidence that you had been killed - like, your mattress drenched in blood and with bullet holes but no corpse - then it would be impossible to say in any way that you must have been murdered. And no judge worth his wig would allow for a trial, or even putting a suspect in long-term custody, on the supposed crime, unless they had that kind of evidence that a murder had taken place. To include it in murder statistics would be, to put it frankly, a fake.

Rape often leaves nowhere near as obvious and unmistakable traces as a murder. You know that, don't you?

I am trying to defend the integrity of justice here, and the right of people not to have their lives smashed to pieces on misguided accusations, not to get sent to jail or even death for crimes they didn't commit, unless they have actually been found guilty, but I can see that's no priority of yours or of some others.

I also think it's distasteful to try to use trumped up figures and conjectures made from them to implicate all men in a wide arch of "rape culture". Makes great propaganda though.

[meikle]

Rape often leaves nowhere near as obvious and unmistakable traces as a murder. You know that, don't you?

If it's harder to prove a rape after it occurs, doesn't it make more sense to assume that it is happening and not being proven (because all it takes to lose the evidence of rape is to, say, take a shower, a not at all unreasonable action when some violent attacker's jizz is lingering inside of you) than to assume that 191,000 people lied about being raped in 2005?

I am trying to defend the integrity of justice here, and the right of people not to have their lives smashed to pieces on misguided accusations, not to get sent to jail or even death for crimes they didn't commit, unless they have actually been found guilty, but I can see that's no priority of yours or of some others.

Funny how nobody else is even discussing how things ought to play out in court.

I also think it's distasteful to try to use trumped up figures and conjectures made from them to implicate all men in a wide arch of "rape culture".

For the millionth time, though, I'll repeat: it's not a competition.  It is not Men vs Women or Us vs Them.  It's "stop fucking defending rapists", it's "stop calling rape victims liars", it's "stop making it a scarier proposition to go to the police about rape than remain silent", but it's not a fucking competition.

With that, I'm going to follow Pumpkin Seeds: you are not arguing in good faith, and so I am not going to continue on with you.

[gaggedLouise]

If it's harder to prove a rape after it occurs, doesn't it make more sense to assume that it is happening and not being proven (because all it takes to lose the evidence of rape is to, say, take a shower, a not at all unreasonable action when some violent attacker's jizz is lingering inside of you) than to assume that 191,000 people lied about being raped in 2005?

Circular proof plus an attempt at making anyone questioning your figures appear as the crony of the rapists. Come on!

Funny how nobody else is even discussing how things ought to play out in court.

Some of the others have bowed out because they didn't want any part in a discussion that's been getting increasingly obsessed with pushing guilt and hinting that men as a gender are to blame for the misfortunes of women.
I am not surprised that certain people here have no interest in what happens in court. You and Pumpkin are basically counting on that women should be given every concession of credibility as soon as they file charges of rape, and that men should be taken care of and - lynched? We know they are guilty anyway. It could be done long before there is any time to question things closely in court.

[meikle]

"[my] figures" are the figures of the United States Department of Justice.

nobody is talking about punishing men.  that is your own persecution complex at work.

[Will]

Some of the others have bowed out because they didn't want any part in a discussion that's been getting increasingly obsessed with pushing guilt and hinting that men as a gender are to blame for the misfortunes of women.

It's probably best not to make assumptions about others' motivations.  The truth might be a bit different.

I am not surprised that certain people here have no interest in what happens in court. You and Pumpkin are basically counting on that women should be given every concession of credibility as soon as they file charges of rape, and that men should be taken care of and - lynched? We know they are guilty anyway. It could be done long before there is any time to question things closely in court.

As much as I appreciate you leaping to defend all malekind and our right to a fair trial, I promise you, it isn't necessary.  I'm not all that worried about getting lynched, so save the hyperbole. :P

Burden of proof is a good thing, I won't disagree with you on that.  Wrongdoing should be proven to at least a reasonable degree before punishment is administered.  Mistakes do get made, people do lie, and memory can be faulty.

But to use that fact to discredit any and all rape statistics, even from extremely reputable sources, is pure avoidance.  One in every six women is a lot of women.  There is of course going to be a margin of error due to the aforementioned mistakes and dishonesty in testimony, but you can't possibly believe that margin of error is one hundred percent... Can you?  My mind is seriously boggling at that possibility.

[Noelle]

BUNNIES

HUNGRY BUNNIES


DERP BUNNIES


MOBILE BUNNIES


BUNNIES ON LEASHES


TWO BUNNIES


LITERATE BUNNIES


BUNNIES, BUNNIES, BUNNIES!




there, now don't you feel better?

[Jude]

It's "stop fucking defending rapists", it's "stop calling rape victims liars", it's "stop making it a scarier proposition to go to the police about rape than remain silent", but it's not a fucking competition.

Out of curiosity, who here do you think is defending rapists and calling rape victims liars?  I think Louise's point is that 'some people are lying about being a rape victim.'  My point was that some people are mistaken about it -- and my points on the fallibility and suggestibility of memory was completely ignored.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

That would probably go toward what has already been established by both sides.  Rape is very hard to prove and often times the key witness, the rape victim, was subjected to a trauma during the course of the memory.  Witnesses, while being required for accusation, are often considered unreliable by lawyers because of such theories as memory suggestion and impairment.  That often times the woman is intoxicated, drugged or in shock is also a contributor.  Her reliability is about as good as that of anyone being assaulted at the time of the attack. 

Seriously, is this what feminist theory and thought have been taken down to.  A focus on how men are falsely accused in rape charges?

[Jude]

There are some feminists and feminist organizations out there that are majorly overstating the direness of the situation

It was part of the OP.

EDIT:  By the way, I consider myself a feminist (I ascribe to the belief that men can be feminists too).  That's why I'm concerned about the claims we're making and how we make them.

In my experience (which is admittedly limited) this sort of response (misery poker as it's been referred to) is pretty common when you discuss this sort of thing with men who are not feminists and are unaware of the subtle problems in our society that leave women disadvantaged.  I think this happens because the way we communicate the problems that women face activates their latent human tendency to defend groups that they are part of because they feel personally attacked.  I think this is a fault in our message -- both in how it's constructed and the severity of our tone.  I say this because I was, not that long ago, a man who would've never called himself a feminist that was changed to that way of thinking through a series of thoughtful, polite debates with a very rational, intelligent, and patient feminist who listened to everything I had to say and countered my arguments with pure reason in a sympathetic fashion.

I'd like to see more moderate feminists emerge who use careful language and avoid jumping the shark with exaggerated terms like "American Culture of Rape."  There may even be some truth to that, but it's a question of tactics.  If you barrage people with mountains of claims and make them feel like you're saying 'everything is wrong' as things are now, they will shut you out and you will ultimately fail to complete your objective (bettering life for women) even if you are speaking the truth.

Admittedly, it's easier for me not to be shrill, insulting, or lacking in patience because while these problems affect people I care deeply about (my ex-girlfriend, my sister, my mother, my friends), they do not affect me in a strictly direct sense.

[gaggedLouise]

It was part of the OP.

Indeed (unfortunately DarklingAlice, who pointed out that incidents and allegations of rape are sometimes not useful as the hurricane center of a debate on feminism, has been on a journey ever since and hasn't been around for this one).

Seriously, anyone reading this thread can rapidly see I never said all women who file about rape and don't have it vindicated in court would be liars. Rape is a bit less physically clear-cut than murder or overspeeding ("illegal penetration" isn't all that does it) and some rape charges simply don't match what the law means by rape.

[ColdBloodedJellyDoughnut]

I find it very interesting how a thread that started off being about feminism in general and a little bit about rape, has become focused on rape. I think for the feminist cause, Sexual assault is more key. That's more about objectification and inequality than rape, which is about violence and control. Of course, sexual assault is an even more subjective charge than rape.