Right you pesky feminists, which sort of rape is *worse* <Dawkins related>

I actually am beginning to hate the way logic is used, it proves precisely fuck and all in roughly that order. It's merely a useful tool to formalise thought and express an idea.

The redundancy of his entire witterings lies in the fact that different misfortunes hit different people in different ways. To stay away from rape for a second, say two people are violently mugged, while one person struggles and deals with with little or no visible outward signs, the second goes on to develop severe agrophobia and social anxiety.

Neither victim is at fault, but trying to categorize objectively what will always be subjective reactions to the same stimuli is a fools errand, because people are different. I don't even take his scientist approach to this seriously as there ARE scientists who masters in their field just as much as he is in his. Now when the ill educated attempt to encroach on his turf in the creationist vs evolutionists he gets all uppity, but apparently he is allowed to pass comment on all manner of subjects no matter his ignorance.

Tortoise but in terms of the law, what's 'worse' for the woman doesn't come into it. It is about the giving of consent, as simple as that. It's a yes/no - there is no maybe.

This is important, because women will react to rape in different ways. So say scenario 2 happens to two women. 1 of them is utterly destroyed psychologically, never leaves the house, etc etc. Woman 2 manages to deal with it in a different way and to all intents and purposes can pick her life back up, on the surface at least.

So should these two acts attract the same punishment?

Sarah arrogance is luckily something Prof D has in spades.

I don't really understand all this. Which do you think is worse for the woman:

1. She has foreplay with her long term boyfriend. This develops into having intercourse, which she enjoys. Part way through, she realises that she has been forgetting to take the pill. She tells the boyfriend she has changed her mind and he should withdraw. He continues to orgasm before withdrawing.
2. The next door neighbour comes round to borrow something. Finding her alone, he ties her up and rapes her, so forcefully that he causes her internal injuries.

Should these attract the same punishment?

And paedophilia? How can that not include more and less serious paedophilia? There's a massive range.

Rape is rape. That's all there is to it and I can't understand the problem. If Richard Dawkins had this happen to him I think he'd have understood.

It does take a staggering amount of arrogance to think you can judge how "bad" a subjective experience is for another person.

Well what we really need is a clever man to let lots of other men know that if you rape a woman who you already know it really isn't so bad.

Thanks for that Dawkins, you utter prick, thanks a lot.

Monty, I think the issue with what you're talking about is not that the men didn't intend to rape but that they didn't consider what they did to be rape. That doesn't mean that it's not rape and that they're not guilty. You don't have to know what you're doing is a crime in order to be a criminal.
If someone puts his penis in you without your consent it is rape, regardless of whether he would call himself a rapist or not.

I always say this on rape threads and I'll say it again. Sex is an entirely optional activity that no person should ever feel obligated to engage in. If you feel obligated then there is something seriously wrong. It should be voluntary and at least purposeful (ie to have a baby) and ideally enjoyable. It should not ever ever ever be something you feel pushed into or required to participate in.

If a man genuinely can't tell whether a woman wants sex or not then there's something wrong with him and he shouldn't really be around people as he's a danger.

Get a grip

I can see the headline now:

Dawkins in Saying Something Stupid, Wrong and Offensive SHOCKER!

I'm already scared when I walk at night. I'm already pretty sure that I could be sexually assaulted by a stranger (because I have been socialized in to that fear).

But what if after a decade my husband the man I love and have had children with and shared my whole adult life raped me?

Ah well, that wouldn't be too bad would it? Right?

Dawkins is a total and utter cunt. He really fucking is.

Sorry folks, I'm no lawyer and I'm not au fait with much in the way of criminal law full stop, so I'm reluctant to make judgements on the current legislation.

My comments can be taken at a personal level for me only, and I'm conscious I breach them too. It's not something I'm happy about.

Quite, KIH; being a selfish scummy arsehole isn't necessarily illegal. Being cheated on can be utterly devastating and violating, but there's no law against it (perhaps there should be?) A man not caring if a woman is enjoying sex doesn't seem a guarantee that he's consciously and deliberately overriding consent. Isn't that a fundamental principle? Mens rea? Is this not a red herring in the stranger vs known issue? The stranger jumping out of the bushes will always have a guilty mind and so too might the husband, date, friend etc etc... But there is, for me, also the possibility of the might. There is a possibility that there wasn't consent, but there also wasn't mens rea - just selfish twattery.

I'm sort of thinking aloud here. Apologies to anyone offended by it.

Keepithidden - so with mere 'consent', an offence is committed ?

Monty - Maybe not rapist in the strict legal definition, but certainly selfish and uncaring.

Someone on FWR mentioned once that 'consent' should be replaced by 'enthusiastic consent'. Makes a lot more sense to me.

*sure

That's a very good question Petula I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm not that the answer is always 'rapist' though.

Kenneth Clark said something similar. I wonder what particular reason might drive these men to say this sort of thing.

monty, but what kind of man wants to have sex with a woman who is displaying "indifference or just getting it over with"?

I don't understand why these men keep wading into something so sensitive as rape discussion and then try to explain how "they didn't mean it in that way" after they get pulled up on it. It's fundamentally a highly sensitive area and using it in such a blase manner demonstrates not just disrespect and (probably) misogyny, but also a startling lack of awareness on how PR works too.

Monty - I vaguely understand what you mean about consent, but I'm pretty sure the kind of scenarios you're talking about are pretty rare. I have experience of these because my marriage is pretty messed up sexually anyway, not helped by the crap communication between DW and me. However, in all other situations between myself and women it is pretty clear cut and as Cailin says, reading someones signals isn't difficult.

The whole consent-debate on here has been a massive eye opener for me.

I think this comes down to a fundamental lack of understanding of what rape actually is. Many men seem to see rape as being basically the same as sex. They can't seem to get their heads around the fact that the act of putting a penis where it's not wanted is a an act violence in itself. It's clear Dawkins falls into this group. He sees rape as a bit of sex you don't particularly want (no big deal), and therefore it's the circumstances around the rape that make is bad or "not bad." So if someone you know and like happens to give you bit of sex you don't want, well that's just a bit annoying, but if someone you have never even met sticks his penis in you while using a knife to subdue you well that goes beyond rude to a downright nasty.
There are no degrees of rape. If a man puts a penis into a woman/girl's orifice without (uncoerced) permission, that is rape. Everything else that happens around that event is taken into account in the trial but has nothing to do with the rape itself, as there are no degrees of putting something in somewhere, you either do it or you don't.

Monty, the idea that a man who is right next to a woman, can hear her voice, her breathing, feel her responses and even her heartbeat can't tell whether that woman is enthusiastic or not boggles me. Men don't go around stuffing cake into people's mouths because they can't tell whether those people want cake or not, do they? Reading someone's signals is not hard at all, we expect people to do it competently all the time. And yet when it comes to sex suddenly men become blind, deaf, insensate and unable to simply ask "are you ok?" Why is that?

I'm a struggling to see it Catkisser. Sorry.

In my mind, I've started to acknowledge that there are different aspects to giving consent - from wildly enthusiastically obvious to obviously and vigorously not given. Imbetween those there is a sort of weird area where there's almost indifference (clearly only in terms of regular partners for most people) or just getting it over with. As I said, that area only exists for regular partners or, I suppose, one night stand scenarios. That's not to say that I can't see that 'vigorously not given' can't exist within those scenarios too. But given that I find consent is a slightly difficult concept to pin down, that extends to the central issue for me. You might say that some of those men were rapists, but I'm
thinking also about the impact on me. That comes at varying levels too.

I recognise that this doesn't help the battle about myths and so on. But that in itself doesn't answer the central question as it's a consequence and not a fundamental determining factor.