Man's 'right' to have sex is more important than vulnerable women's right to safety.

All I can say, is that your opinion on the case of P is ruled by your fear of men in general.

When Kittens said you were being dismissive? Yeah, that's what she meant. Women aren't allowed opinions about rape unless those opinions benefit men, and if the woman has been raped then her experiences will be used to discredit her opinion.

P has never sexually assaulted anyone.

Nowhere does it say that. Psychologist said in her report: "Based on descriptions of his previous and ongoing behaviours, this is most likely to take the form of sexual harassment through the form of repeated, unwanted sexually explicit messages to females whose numbers he has obtained or whom he contacts through social media or dating sites. [JB] has also been observed to have limited social boundaries around women, particularly those who are vulnerable but also women in pubs or clubs whom he has approached whilst dancing. Additionally he acknowledges not being able to judge women's reactions to him and that he is unwilling to directly ask for clarification of these issues. In these and similar situations the risk is of [JB] sexually touching these women without consent. In terms of vulnerable women who do not have the capacity to consent to sexual relations, there is a risk of [JB] not recognising or respecting this fact, resulting in the potential for rape to occur."

I've bolded the bits that detail already-observed behaviours.

• He's sexted women who didn't want to be sexted.
• He doesn't have social boundaries around women in person.
• He knows that he can't tell whether a woman is is interested in him and despite this self-awareness doesn't want to ask her to clarify.

And yet you think he's not a rapist-in-waiting? You think that, despite all those massive red flags, he'll somehow ask for consent in bed? Those red flags are what's ruling my opinion on this, not my sexual assault history, not my PTSD, and not my reasoned fear of men as a class.

When I posted my FTFY, I crossed out PTSD once and left it uncrossed out the second time.

That constant hyper vigilance and scanning for threats is PTSD keeping you in red alert & fearful minimising your chance of getting caughf unawares by some bastard man wanting to get his dick wet at your expense.

I suppose the only parallel which does occur is people with serious mental health issues being sectioned.

Yes, because of their potential to harm others. Being suicidal isn't enough to get you sectioned, you have to be a clear danger to others.

It’s a tough one. If a professional psychologist identifies someone as being dangerous and a potential axe murderer should we wait for them to do it before acting or should we just lock them up just to be safe even if they’ve so far done nothing?

We're not talking about locking this guy up. We're talking about the equivalent of not letting a potential axe murderer have an axe.

After the Dunblane school shooting, around 10,000 law-abiding shooters had their pistols confiscated by the Govt and section 5 of the Firearms Act was amended to ban private ownership of most pistols. Few people outside the shooting community consider that ban disproportionate, yet many on this thread think that banning one man, who already has form for sexual harassment and does not understand the need for consent and this lack of understanding is supported by observational evidence, from having unsupervised access to women is disproportionate to protect an unspecified and potentially unlimited number of women.

No one seems to want to engage with the fact that he already has form for boundary violations. No one seems to want to engage with the reality that, to have sex (which the ruling was explicitly about), a man, who is known not to understand the need for a woman to consent, will have to be left alone and unsupervised with a woman.

He can have supervised dates, supervised nights out, supervised everything, but not supervised sex. And sex is when he is the most danger to women. Sex is when he most needs to understand the need for the woman's consent. And he doesn't. And the only way to give him that access is to knowing put women at elevated risk of rape.

Nobody gets banned from driving in the UK for drink driving without previously drink driving though.

A more apt analogy is perhaps "Should we allow someone to have driving licence if we know that they do not and cannot understand what a stop sign means? They will be fine as long as long as they happen to drive down roads that do not contain one, but it's quite likely they would encounter fairly quickly and then people will get hurt."

I wasn’t sneering at anyone crikey

Nobody gets banned from driving in the UK for drink driving without previously drink driving though. I don’t want to be portrayed as an apologist for sexual assault but feel uncomfortable about this preemptive pre-crime type rhetoric. I suppose the only parallel which does occur is people with serious mental health issues being sectioned.

It’s a tough one. If a professional psychologist identifies someone as being dangerous and a potential axe murderer should we wait for them to do it before acting or should we just lock them up just to be safe even if they’ve so far done nothing? And who decides?

Honest opinion? You are coming across as talking down to her and suggesting that she's a bit crazy and should be handling her trauma in the way you see fit. It is a hard subject to talk about, obviously, but the tone clearly isn't working here if you look at the way she's reacting.

I don't want to rub it in, Allcome - I think you are right on the topic of this thread especially about the LA resource issue - but Kitten's right here. I think bd67th should hear that from more than one of us.

@bd67th
Look I’m sorry for my tone. I tend to get very logical and literal when I talk about sexual assault stuff because I have to keep the emotions locked down. I did not know it would have a poor effect on you. It’s the only way I know how to cope. So I apologize for that. No hard feelings hey? Best wishes.

@TheProdigalKittensReturn

Ok. Thank you for the feedback. I was/am trying. I admittedly have been upset by some things bd67th said to me like when she said of sexual assault:
“Just because "you're alright Jack" doesn't mean the rest of us are.”

And when I said, that’s a wrong assumption because I’m a survivor too, she wrote:

“I think you're not bothered about the possibility of it happening again”
(Not true btw)

Yeah, she upset me and so the tone you see is me getting my Spock on. I get Uber-logical and literal because I can’t allow any emotions out.

But I will take your observation on board and try and do better in future.

Honest opinion? You are coming across as talking down to her and suggesting that she's a bit crazy and should be handling her trauma in the way you see fit. It is a hard subject to talk about, obviously, but the tone clearly isn't working here if you look at the way she's reacting.

Women who are afraid of men are not being unreasonable. Given the state of the world it's an entirely rational fear to have. It's definitely not unreasonable to be alarmed by the idea that a man's inability to understand the fact that women's consent matters shouldn't be considered relevant when that man indicates that he'd like to pursue sexual relationships.

I'm also deeply uncomfortable with anyone sneering at rape survivors on a feminist forum. If MNHQ must delete comments, those are the ones they should be deleting.

Me too. Have I sneered at bd67th? It was not my intent. I have tried to be nice and honestly trying to help her by mentioning PTSD and trauma counselling. As I mentioned upthread, I am a rape survivor myself (child & adult rape). I’d like to think she is also doing her best too. It’s a hard subject to talk about.

@bd67th
I wrote that you may have PTSD and urged you to try and get trauma counselling because of the fear you are living with.
You replied by quoting me with the word PTSD crossed out and said I presumed too much about your mental health. Indicating, to me that you do not have PTSD.

I wrote that reports or shows on sexual violence are a common trigger for PTSD and you stated that such a trigger is:
The lady on the phone reassured me that a delayed response like mine, triggered by something else (i.e. the EVAW report) long after the original attack, is commonplace and not evidence of some kind of insanity.

So how else was I supposed to read that? You disagreed that you may have PTSD by crossing it out and you then disagreed with me on the EVAW report being a trigger for PTSD, why else would you say what you said?

Now you are sprinkling your posts with PTSD despite crossing it out before? And are now saying the EVAW report was a trigger of PTSD when before you disagreed calling it a commonplace reaction and not evidence of some insanity
(which you now say you have despite indicating by crossing PTSD out that you do not)

So very confused here. . So let’s leave that to one side...

All I can say, is that your opinion on the case of P is ruled by your fear of men in general. P has never sexually assaulted anyone. There is a moderate risk that he might if unsupervised, but he will be supervised. Your prediction that P will deny women agency is crystal ball thinking. He may or he may not just like any other person does to another when they commit a criminal act. In this society, we do not lock people up or deny them autonomy on the basis of a crime that they have never committed or conspired to commit.

I’m very uncomfortable with other people having potential agency over specially me

Another aspect of this: many or even most women live in a state of permanent discomfort with other people men having potential agency over them. It's called "the fear of rape and harassment". A while back, we had a thread from a woman who had been sexually harassed/assaulted on a train. Try to imagine that: you can't even catch a train without running the risk that some arsehole is going to touch you up.

Which is why, when the LA are trying to protect women from a man who has form for violating women's boundaries and doesn't understand why he needs consent, I cannot sympathise with the man at all. If the fairy godmother turned up and said she could make it so that no man could ever harass or hurt me again but the price would be never orgasming or having sex again, I'd take her up on the offer because sexual assault is so unpleasant that I'd trade all sexual pleasure to avoid it. This guy who is unhappy that the LA won't let him get his dick wet because he might rape a woman, boo fucking hoo he can cry me a river.

I'm very uncomfortable with anyone who thinks that the agency of one man outweighs the agency of essentially infinite numbers of women.

I'm also deeply uncomfortable with anyone sneering at rape survivors on a feminist forum. If MNHQ must delete comments, those are the ones they should be deleting.

some kind of insanity

Wow. PTSD is not insanity. That’s really dismissive of me and other PTSD sufferers.

Re-read my comment and show me where I said "PTSD is insanity". Re-read my comment again and realise that I was implying that PTSD is not insanity, far from it. I was, and still am, anxious in a crowded train because of the risk of sexual assault on trains. I only recently stopped feeling sick upon realising I fancied a man. I thought I was losing my mind, that the PTSD had interacted with my pre-existing depression to produce something far worse and I was going to end up sectioned. The RC lady reassured me that my symptoms were within reasonable bounds of PTSD.

Sorry I tried to help you.

I do not respond well to passive-aggressive snark from people who put words into my mouth that I never actually wrote.

So, the statement 1 in 3 men would not stop if you told them no is not an accurate reflection of the survey.

It's a logical inference I made based upon the following premises:

• One third of men think that continuing past a consent withdrawal is not rape.
• If that continuation is not rape, it's not wrong.
• If an act is not wrong, there's no reason to stop the act.
• Therefore one-third of men consider that they have no reason not to continue past a consent withdrawal.
• Continuation is likely to be pleasurable for the man, therefore he has a reason to continue, no reason not to continue, and so will continue.

This reasoning can be rephrased as "If men don't think that not stopping is rape, what makes you think they will stop if I tell them to?"

I’m very uncomfortable with other people having potential agency over specially me

Rape and other sexual crimes involve the perpetrator having agency over the victim and denying the victim her agency over herself, with psychological consequences that can last for life. The LA have been trying to prevent P from denying the agency of multiple women (potentially any woman he interacts with) and traumatising them into the bargain by denying P agency in one aspect of his life. They are trying to balance the needs of many women versus the desires (not needs) of one man.

It seems a minority here are comfortable and think this is clear cut but then where do you stop? Where’s the cut off? Everyone will have have there own definitions and everyone will have to venture in to their own grey areas. I suppose I don’t even know what I’m arguing for or against except I’m very uncomfortable with other people having potential agency over specially me when I’ve never even had a parking ticket never mind anything more

One man in three wouldn't stop if I told him to

That statement is actually a mischaracterization of the survey. I followed your link to the EVAW report and downloaded the data tables.
First, they surveyed 3922 GB adults (men + women) so the responses are tracked by sex.

Second, the survey was asking people what they thought counted as rape, not whether they would stop or thought it was a lesser crime like sexual assault or coercion.

The section of rape and harm this is taken from asked 3543 of the survey takers
“For each of the following, please say which you would personally consider to be rape if a man did this to a woman:”

The question was “If they are up for sex but then change their mind halfway through but the sex continues.” (Note the question is poorly written as it doesn’t say that she tells him no or that he is otherwise aware)

This would always or usually be rape: 57% men, 69% women
This would always or usually not be rape: 34% men, 23% women
Don’t know: 8% men, 7% women
Prefer not to say: 1% men, 1% women

So, the statement 1 in 3 men would not stop if you told them no is not an accurate reflection of the survey. The survey does have some troubling results showing men and women are confused as to what is rape, but many of the questions are not clear either.

@bd67th
some kind of insanity
Wow. PTSD is not insanity. That’s really dismissive of me and other PTSD sufferers.
Sorry I tried to help you. You are exhibiting key symptoms of it & I was worried you were a walking wounded with no help or sympathy.

But if as you say you’ve been assessed & helped by rape crisis and your trauma level & responses are actually minor, then forgive me for thinking it might be otherwise.

Have finally had time to read the full judgement properly now.

Basically, the LA doesn’t want to supervise P in the area of sexual relations. They want to keep him involuntarily celibate because it’s easier and cheaper. That’s all this judgement is about. Next would probably be how to supervise P and similar people to ensure no extra risk to others.

I have to agree with DoctorAllcome about this.

The unwritten subtext of this whole thing seems to be a conflict between the law about the rights of people with LDs and/or limited capacity and resource availability to support them in exercising those rights while minimising risk to themselves and others.

(Not meaning to sound snarky! I think it is interesting how much the law can or can't prevent likely crimes)

One of those driving links is an American case and the other the judge suggests the ban could be appealed in future.

www.nopenaltypoints.co.uk/lifetime-driving-bans-uk.html
Suggests you're "allowed" to be caught for drink driving multiple times before a lifetime ban would be considered - it is very rare (far too lenient imo).
So an interesting comparison!

What’s your solution though?

Carry on as they have been, keeping him away from unsupervised contact with women.

It’s a momentous consequence legally for people who’ve never committed of any crime to be subject to such restrictions.

I went to secondary school with a girl who was severely visually-impaired. She will never be allowed to ride a bicycle except as a tandem stoker with a sighted pilot and will never be issued a driving licence. "Momentous consequence legally" or sensible safeguard to protect her and others? I consider this case to be the same.

carwreck www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/ayrshire-engineer-handed-lifetime-driving-11069850 www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2109966/Judge-bans-17-year-old-driving-LIFE-speeding-car-crashed-tree-injured-friends.html So it happens but no idea of prevalence.

PTSD is regarding the rational fear of a trauma

Given that this fear is rational, why would I want to get rid of it? I would argue the false sense of security I had before reading that EVAW report was truly the irrational behaviour and my behaviour is now rational:

• I'm now listening to my misgivings and refusing to remain alone in a room with a man if I feel uneasy because I know how likely it is that he doesn't respect my "no".
• I'm now not letting "gotta be nice" stop me from telling creeps on the train to get lost.
• "One man in three wouldn't stop if I told him to" is in the back of my mind when interacting with men and it makes me more interested in how they respond to "no" in other contexts, because if he won't take "no" for an answer outside the bedroom he won't take it in the bedroom.
• I'm looking out for and heeding red flags instead of not even seeing them because I wasn't looking or disregarding them.
• I'm working through the Freedom Programme workbook and plan to attend a course.
• I'm prioritising my safety over social mores because I'm now (correctly) more scared of men than of others' disapproval.

This is objectively a healthier attitude than before, and that includes.the hypervigilance. If I'd been hypervigilant aged eight when those two older boys walked into that mixed changing room, perhaps I'd have screamed or fought or run.

Who benefits from me having my trauma response removed? I don't. Men do, because no longer being traumatised may mean that I stop telling men who hit on me to fuck off. Restoring my sexual availability to men benefits men, not me. I'm bi, I can date women, I don't need rape weapons in my life nor their entitled owners.

I’m shocked the rape crisis Center did not help you.

What makes you think they didn't? The lady on the phone reassured me that a delayed response like mine, triggered by something else (i.e. the EVAW report) long after the original attack, is commonplace and not evidence of some kind of insanity. That alone was supremely helpful.

@doublebarrellednurse
God that’s scary regarding your female patient. You make a good point that parroting back words doesn’t equal understanding concepts. Its not the test failing so much as the application and assessment of what is a pass.

@OkPedro
I can’t imagine anyone who has been through sexual abuse or rape making comments like that or having your opinion

No imagination needed. I exist and I have my own opinions. Sorry to not fit your stereotype for “victim”

@bd67th
PTSD is regarding the rational fear of a trauma you have experienced in which you feared for your life happening again. If it were an irrational fear it would be called a phobia or paranoia. So I am baffled as to why you think I was implying your fear is irrational? I was doing the exact opposite.

Still hearing your attackers laughs= Flashback where you relive the trauma. A key symptom of PTSD

Being celibate= avoidance behavior where you avoid any situation that might lead to trauma repeat is also a key symptom of PTSD. For example people in car accidents refusing to get in a car.

Triggers= reading reports on sexual violence or watching it on TV making it all come back is also common PTSD symptom. For example, I popped on Netflix and it started to auto play the trailer for Believable (about a serial rapist) and just seeing a few seconds of that freaked me out that I was crying and shaking and shut off the TV and had a half day of misery curled up in bed.

I’m shocked the rape crisis Center did not help you. But then I’m still waiting for trauma counselling myself.....and I have the PTSD diagnosis because of what happened to me.