I'm sure many of you would have already seen/hear Dworkin's rape speech.....

I see we have someone here that not only believes that it's not sexual assault unless it's full on stranger rape, but also that women must ignore anything whatsoever that happens to them when they have had a drink? And possibly that women, in going out to have a drink somewhere "wild" as opposed to somewhere "safe" like a classical music concert () are consenting to be sexually assaulted?

What have wild nights out to do with anything that I wrote?

oh yes I have been on wild nights out loads but I don't get home and in a fit of hungover depression start tallying off every drunken attempt at a snog, every briushed nipple, every 'accudental' arm touch or every bum squeeze as a 'sexual assault' if it happened at a classical music concert or in a library then it would be a bit odd, but not when everyone is pissed up, trying to get off with someone and going out specifically to flirt and mess around.

Have you read the link in the OP? I'm guessing not.

As for, what am I talking about? I am talking about your assertion that figures that very high numbers of women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime are enormously inflated. Your claim is that those figures can only be correct if consensual and cheerful sexual contact is included. My point is that those figures can quite easily be correct if you stop and think for one second about everything that has happened to you and all of your friends in your life. Practically all females I know had been subject to some kind of unwanted sexual encounter involving a stranger before they were 20 and that's certainly not unusual. My life experience says that the stats are true, as do the life experiences of most women that I speak to. This stuff goes on all the time.

Your idea that the high figures are wildly inaccurate and can only be true if consensual acts are included in the statistic, only serves to minimise the experiences of the vast vast majority of women. Not helpful.

You might want to stick your fingers in your ears and say "lalalalalala" every time you hear a story of someone you know, or someone's daughter, or a work colleague, having something like this happen to them. I'm not going to.

what the flipping hell are you talking about this thread has done nothing to convince me that dworking (and her fans, clearly) isn't completly mental.

sakura your article doesn't seem to say what you said it said? An I missing something?

So we are going to have someone arguing that anything short of stranger rape involving a good kicking isn't really a problem.

So all the stuff that happens all the time, like being wanked at, groped, felt up, followed and verbally abused and all the rest of it, which happens from puberty to menopause (and sometimes outside those boundaries) isn't any kind of problem. From a schoolgirl being heckled by a group of men to show her breasts, to a teenager on a crowded bus with someone copping a good feel, to a woman being shoved up against a wall and assaulted, to a woman being masturbated at on an empty tube carriage. None of these things are a problem, obviously. Because if we saw them as a problem, we'd have to face up to the fact that the vast majority of women have had something of that ilk happen to them (or worse), and that it is a big problem. But we can't have that, can we. So we'll no-crime the 14 yo with some guy sticking his hand up her skirt on the bus, and we'll no-crime the woman who is shoved up against a wall and threatened with rape, and we'll no-crime the incident with the man masturbating at the woman on the train. And everything will be fine.

written consent? verbal? body language? are you saying that if someone grabs your bum affectionately it is analogous to having a glass shoved in your vagina? so that stat could be 3/4 of women have had their bum grabbed without them being asked first? really you are being utterly ridiculous.

Oh, wow. This bit made me cry and it's only the first paragraph:

"and in that scream I would have the screams of the raped, and the sobs of the battered; and even worse, in the center of that scream I would have the deafening sound of women's silence, that silence into which we are born because we are women and in which most of us die."

I met her once, she calle me 'sister' :)

oh i see.... its now 3/4 of women experience one thing that could be defined as sexual violence -like what How wide is that definition??

No you are right kissing IS sexual violence.. honestly if you are going to ddefine sexual violence wide enough so that 20 million women experience it then it is hardly a fringe behaviour and probably normal. I am not sure 3/4 of women have any sexual contact so I am pretty sure you are making this up.

No not mine, but other peoples' if the arguments made by feminists are 3/4 of women are raped. Daily. and half a million women were killed in mexico FOR FUN then it really doesn't help the credibility of feminists.

In one of my essays at uni I tried to write a rant that was opposite to intercourse to prove the point. Can't remember it her but it is something like this.

To dig, to bury to place in a state for decomposition, to dig, to dirty, to mess up, to contaminate and to infiltrate. Words meant for description deny the man a voice, allo him only to be the corrupter, the one who takes away purity and gives ruin instead, the defiler the unclean and the undeserving. To be a man is to be impure with every act, to be contemtible and to be hated. To masturbate is to self-hate and weakness, the wanker, the loser and the pointless, yet to see sexual fulfillment is to simultaneously destroy the object of your love. To persecute her beyond worth, and to dirty her beyond acceptance. Such is the fate of the man. His sex is base, contemptible and risible ridiculed in life and in death. satan and his hoards punish the men for his sexuality by heaping more sexuality upon him and turning him into a beast.

etc etc etc

I don't think dworkin did anything useful for women by going on about this stuff in such a deranged way - I didn't ever hold a mirror to 'my slit' and wonder about how something big would go in - i never had any idea how big a boys/man's penis was when I did that. I was amazed at how cool it was that I could have someone inside me, when men can't (though they can, actually onviously) and that intimacy and danger of it being embarrassing thrilled me. I never saw it as oppressive and controlling that it be the case.

no wonder people see feminists with jaundiced eyes

So your argument with sakura's points/accuracy translates to a sullied reputation of all feminists, does it?

That would seem like needless inflation to me.

The inflation of statistics as a rhetorical tool is poisonous to the argument being put forward. I've no idea whether or not Sakura's figures are accurate, but if they are in fact wrong by the degree of magnitude that is being suggested then that needs to be clarified.