"If recording my own rape isn't enough evidence, what is?"

I don’t even like comparing which scenario out of totally unfair scenarios is ‘best’

No one is comparing

Re BDSM I have no idea why acts which would be normally refuse to accept people can consent to, are suddenly ok if it’s part of sex.

It has to be a jury of your peers. You can't be prosecuted by the state, and then have state-funded experts deliberate on your fate.

Actually in cases like rape, you should. The current system is not fit for purpose. It’s time to change it and have a reliable system instead.

I would say that BDSM has made it the case that we need to improve and strengthen the laws around rape

Well yes. We are continually told by the 'BDSM community' that its not about actually injuring people or whatever. So..if thats the case, what would be wrong with it being accepted that injuries during sex..are a problem. Consensual BDSM couples would be able to continue doing whatever they wanted to and if an injury occurs, have the option of just ignoring it as it was consensual, but 'they wanted to be throttled' would not stand up in court at all. I don't really get why people into BDSM are so against it, it won't impact their own sex lives in anyway, unless they are also someone being very irresponsible and that, which we are told doesn't happen with 'real BDSM'?

It has to be a jury of your peers. You can't be prosecuted by the state, and then have state-funded experts deliberate on your fate.

I don’t even like comparing which scenario out of totally unfair scenarios is ‘best’.

The goal should be: all guilty men go to jail and no innocent man does.

Fuck everything else. That is the goal. Let’s aim for that and talk about how to achieve it.

Step 1: total revamp of how rape cases are tried and replace jury of public with a jury of professionals who work in this area.

I was on a jury for a sexual assault of a girl by her stepfather. There were various shocking things about the whole process but of course I can't discuss them because of jury secrecy, which is crap. A couple of other factors though, it was three years since the assault, and it was the second trial as the jury had failed to reach a verdict the first time. In this time the girl had changed into a young woman just over the age of consent - I can't be sure that this affected how people viewed her, but I don't think it helped. The other thing was that the prosecution and the defence were terrible - didn't subpoena witnesses that would have helped with evidence, and there were factual inaccuracies (to do with geography and how something couldn't have happened) that no one challenged. In general I would say that men are concerned with the idea that someone's life might be ruined if it's a false accusation and probably nothing would persuade them (obviously not even a fucking recording) that it might not have happened / been consensual.

Ive read it a couple of times now so if ive gone word blind I apologise

different

I was replying to this

I’m sorry but it’s nuts to say that it’s ok for one innocent man to be convicted of rape to ensure that 10 guilty ones are as well, or a hundred, or a thousand. That’s not on andyou can fuck off woth your utilitarian bullshit

I cannot see where anyone has said this

The poster you quoted said It's better to have ten guilty men go free than have one innocent man suffer

Thats not the same thing at all!!

I imagine sitting in on a rape trial would be harrowing, regardless of whether you’ve been raped. I was fortunately not abused as a child, but that does not mean I think I could sit dispassionately through a child abuse trial weighing up evidence like an automaton. However maybe the general public need to accept the distress in order to provide a representative jury or it needs scrapping for cases where the average person would be emotionally effected by the content for experts who have the skills and training to hear this type of evidence and cope should be employed. But then I imagine the rape conviction rate would increase dramatically and then society can’t pretend it’s not happening or that women get confused as to whether they consented or not for silly lady reasons.

I would say that BDSM has made it the case that we need to improve and strengthen the laws around rape

Also me saying BDSM has effectively made rape legal, is not me saying its not the rapists fault. Just that there are even more fucking excuses to be made.

This is disgusting, but not surprising. I often say in rape cases that..even if someone had cctv evndeice of the raoe the guy would still get off, and it seems I have been proved right, though not cctv.

Agree that BDSM has made rape legal, as anyone can claim the ;liked it rough, roleplay' etc defence.

Men are seen as more important with more to lose and it becomes too easy to push all the shame and all the blame onto the woman
sacrifice her to preserve the reputation of the important person

Hearhere Abdolutely, people care more about a mans reputation than the violation of a woman’s body. We see it time and time again.

@Letssplash, you say men instantly saw it as a loophole that women could take advantage of, this suggests to me that many men are preloaded with the belief that women deliberately and consciously use false allegations as a weapon against men.
I think that in most men's minds a false allegation against a man is as serious as if not more serious than an attack on a woman.

If a woman makes a false allegation against a man this constitutes an attack on his reputation, we live in a patriarchal system where men have more power and status, therefore to him the loss of reputation seems like a greater loss than that suffered by a woman who is raped.

it just flagged up how different our experiences are. Yup absolutely.

I just don’t think jury’s made up of the general public, are appropriate for rape cases. There’s ample evidence it’s not working, why hasn’t it been addressed? What can we do? A petition?

I wish I could go back and re-live this now that I see the undercurrents, although I did notice the problem even then (I work in medical research, bias etc) so noticed it as an academic, not a feminist.

I don't think it is illegal to stay, but it is asking a lot from people emotionally and it sounds like there is a process for removing distressed jurors anyway. My friend was removed and said her case was brutal, involving children, so who on earth can they find to just sit through that stuff? I would also be worried that a future defense could show juror bias, but that is from American TV shows, I don't know if it's the same in Scotland/England/UK.

Hearhere - exactly, it is a problem, isn't it. The only technical issue is that it didn't specify only sexual assault on women, I'm sure men could have left too, if they had been victims (but we all know it's much lower rates). I was younger, and less feminist, when it happened, but I wish I'd paid attention to whether men could leave if they had ever been accused, even planting the idea of false accusations to people wanting out of jury duty would be bad. However, we didn't get out of it altogether, we had to come back for a different trial within three months.

I was surprised when I discussed this with people that the men instantly saw a loophole for women to take, whereas women felt it was stressful to decide the right thing to do depending on their own experiences. For women it was - "does being groped count," "am I biased because of this teenage thing that went further than I wanted it to..." it just flagged up how different our experiences are.

Surely there’s the problem right there. Anyone who is capable of empathising with the victim due to past experience or ability to care about what they’re hearing is taken out of the jury. The people then left are ones that can listen to this horrific stuff and come out with shit like ‘role play is totally plausible’.

Is it against the law to stay if you have been raped or assaulted? Maybe it would be the quickest way to redress the balance by women and men staying.

This is a jury of peers for the accused but not the victim and that has to change.

This is a bloody good point.

It's called Blackstone's ratio, and it's a central tenet of our legal system. We must err on the side of innocence.

So basically it doesn't matter what evidence there is, unless a man confesses to rape himself, he is 'innocent'?

It's called Blackstone's ratio, and it's a central tenet of our legal system. We must err on the side of innocence.

So in this case, its better to assume the woman what? Recorded this to get off and later and then felt scorned so decided to claim rape?

Or taped with the intention of setting him up?

Rather than assume this sick tape is exactly what it sounds like?

This situation where women are allowed to be excused from jury duty if they have been assaulted, on the face of it might seem reasonable and fair but when you look at the implications it becomes sinister

it's well known that many people find jury duty to be a chore and a burden, and many people will do anything they can to wriggle out of it, it's a right pain in the arse.
Here women have an opportunity to get out of it that men cannot access, there is an incentive for women to claim that they've been sexually assaulted when they haven't or to exaggerate the seriousness of the sexual assault because here is a situation where they can personally get an advantage from doing so.

So the men in the jury right before they go on to deal with a rape or sexual assault case are presented with a situation in which women are incentivised to lie about rape.
so the men in the jury are kind of preloaded with a feeling of resentment towards women who use this power to their advantage.
It kind of feels like we're all being stitched up here?

(Please note, I'm not claiming that women on the jury are lying, I'm just trying to explore the implications of the way that things are set up)