To not see why people are so annoyed...?

[curiousgeorgie]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2709730/Richard-Dawkins-sparks-outrage-Twitter-debate-saying-date-rape-bad-stranger-rape-worse.html

Sorry for the daily mail link, I know some don't like that.

I think I agree with him and I don't think it takes anything away from victims.... Am I wrong?

The problem with this is that it's perpetuating the myth that 'real' rape is only committed by a stranger. In reality these only account for 8% of sexual assaults and are relatively rare. It's downgrading the majority of rapes that are committed by someone known by the victim.

A victim of a stranger rape is seen as more 'blameless' and is more likely to get a conviction in court. If the perpetrator is known to the victim it's easy for her to be blamed as somehow she must have brought it on herself. The sense of shame, guilt, fear and abuse of trust is much worse. It's also much harder to report and get a conviction.

If you want a more accurate picture of 'real rape' ( and why Dawkins is so wrong), check out the recent thread about why women don't report rape, where over 400 women bravely wrote about what happened to them...

Jesus. Sorry, must've forgot this was mumsnet for a second and that you can't possibly have a reasonable discussions

Oh fuck off, are you seriously trying to say that a reasonable discussion about rape is not possible on this site?

Rape is rape no matter who does it,sexual violence against anyone and all types have far reaching long lasting effects that may be different but are equally horrific.

OP you stated that you could not see why people were/are annoyed.
We are trying to explain it to you. That to me equates as a discussion.

I am saddened that you even had to ask in the first place.

" 'there are varying degrees of murder and no one questions this, but it doesn't make the person any less deceased' and that is spot on."

Varying degrees of murder? So if you end up dead at the hands of someone you know that is way better, less violent, less final, perhaps, less longlasting, than if you end up dead at the hands of a stranger?

A raped woman (or man) ends up raped all the same.

You're a special sort of stupid aren't you?

If I get punched by someone I know, it's not going to hurt less than getting punched by a stranger. There are no varying degrees of rape. It's all horrendous.

Also, these degrees of murder you speak of, are about whether it was premeditated or not, not the act itself. First degree murder is premeditated and planned murder, second degree is impulsive crime of passion, third degree murder is manslaughter. It's not "Oh, well he used chloroform and the victim didn't feel anything so it's 3rd degree since it was humane" it's "Did he mean to? Did he plan it?"

So, based on that, no there are no varying degrees of rape. Rape is always a premeditated thing based on power and control.

OP, the thing you have been wrong about is taking a completely shit analogy used as an example for a purely philosophical point and thinking the actual content of the example was the point being made.

Rape is rape regardless who is doing it

So squeaky does it make a difference if the rape was premeditated? A lot of date rape isn't. The man finds himself in a situation where he might reasonably have expected that consensual sex was on the cards. Both parties have had a lot of alcohol. He didn't set out to rape her at the start of the evening it was just a date that may or may not end in sex. He thought it was going well but due to his own intoxication he miss read the signals.

doesn't make it ok or not terrible but it is different to lurking in the bushes waiting for a random stranger to attack in the same way that a woman murdering her husband in a fit of rage is different to her formulating a detailed plan to poison him

What is the mansplaining fuckwit using as the quantifier in Uncle Dicky's Helpful Hierarchy of Sexual Assault? Is it the physical experience? Or the psychological after-effects? Is he presuming that stranger rape will be more violent, sadistic, painful, or whatever? Or that being raped by someone you know, and may have had consensual sex with previously, will be nicer, somehow, like a bit of an inconvenience in the name of friendship? Where does his theory leave him if stranger assault is an abortive attempt to penetrate, but a husband rapes his wife violently and grotesquely for hours, and on a regular basis? What about the fact that being raped by someone known to you means that you are an object, a non-human, a hole to them, someone you have your life entangled with, and all the fall-oit that will come with that, etc.?
And WTF with categorising paedophilia?!

I just don't get why he needs to comment on the topic at all. Is he telling some rape and abuse victims that they should consider themselves lucky, or stop making a mountain out of a molehill?! What purpose does it serve to come out with this bullshit?

Actually, I think the reason is quite sad - he was abused at his public school, and has coped with it by brushing it off as nothing particularly traumatic. Now, he may genuinely feel that way, BUT... he seems hellbent on trying to convince any other sufferers of sexual assault/abuse that they shouldn't be that bothered about it, or that others have it worse than them. He's insisting that everyone else collude in the diminishment of abuse and rape that he uses to delude himself that he wasn't affected, to keep himself comfortable.

Also, that he is a misogynist twat.

YABU OP. Richard Dawkins is a vile misogynist who further victimizes survivors of rape and abuse to keep himself in the eye of the media make his increasingly ridiculous points. And he is very wrong when he says that stranger rape is worse than knowing your rapist.

Frontier There is not such thing as impulse rape. You cannot misread the word "no", pushing him off, telling him to stop, etc... If the girl is so drunk she's passed out, you can't mistake her for wanting to have sex either. You can't accidentally rape someone. It's not possible.

All rape is premeditated. At some point the rapist made the decision to force himself on the person despite protests or lack of consent.

Frontier, non-rapists don't 'misread the signals', drunk or not. An expectation of sex means fuck all. Yet another rape myth.

And how different one rape is from another doesn't mean that one is 'worse' or 'better', FFS.

You know who knows what rape is like? Rape victims. And each one has their own subjective experience. No-one gets to decide for them the severity of their experience or after-effects.

ie the outcome is equally terrible for the victim/their family in both cases but in the murder the perpetrator would be treated differently by the courts. why us the rape different?

He's not commenting on the topic. He used an utterly cackhanded example to try to explain a point in philosophy regarding logic.

What really pissed me off is that on Twitter, men - and it was only men - were posing questions to defend Dawkins like "If you heard a friend or family member had been raped, wouldn't you hope it was by her boyfriend than by a stranger?". I mean, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCKING FUCK?! They were actually discussing what a relief it would be to find out that someone had 'just' been raped by someone she knew. It's such possessive, territorial misogny: "this is OUR chattel. It's fine for one of Our Lot to use it, but not an outsider".

he was abused at his public school
each one has their own subjective experience. No-one gets to decide for them the severity of their experience or after-effects
He's insisting that everyone else collude in the diminishment of abuse and rape that he uses to delude himself that he wasn't affected, to keep himself comfortable
Well, is'nt that an...interesting...set of contradictory points.

I actually can't believe you typed that Frontier

There is no difference. Rape is a sexual act committed against a person who not consenting. That can include unable to consent because of intoxication/drugs/coma/age and so on.

Squeky is correct. Premeditated means the act was thought about before it was committed. Even during a drunken encounter as you describe the man has to think about putting his dick in another person before he does it. That is not as unconscious as breathing therefore a thought process exists. Hence premeditated.

You can't take someone else's experience and stick your own parameters on it to define it as 'better' or 'worse' than another experience.

He had no reason to drag other peoples rape into it at all.

Maid, if he was that unaffected, why would he need to keep insisting to everyone else that lots of abuse and rape is 'mild'? I see that you're trying to point out that me saying he's deluding himself is not respecting his subjective experience, but meh. He's clearly deluded about so much of rape.

There may or may not be a case for in a legal sense discriminating between tje levels of violence used and treating that as a aggravating factor. However, the violence constitutes a separate offence. I.e. it is not violent and non violent rape. It is rape and violent assault or rape and abduction.
And in cases of intimate partner rape there may or may not be more violence but what there usually is fear and coercion.

A fear that is greatly compounded by the fact that the survivor (sorry cannot think of a better word) cannot get away. They cannot reach safety. There ordeal is not over. They have to face that person day in day out.

Their trust in others can be shattered. It is bad enough to fear strangers. To fear every one you know because you just cannot be sure anymore that anyone can really be trusted.

Yeah sure they could try to have that person arrested or prosecuted but in the knowledge that the chances of a successful prosecution are slim precisely because of ill thought out arguments like the above. If even a prosecution is successful the emotional cost is likely to be very high.

there is no not so bad rape. There is no not quite a rapist.

For me the difference is that if i was being raped by a stranger in an alley, the fact of being raped would be less of a worry to me than the thought that I might then be murdered. I would be in fear for my life.

In a date rape, I would feel furious and degraded but assuming that "the date" had never previously been violent then I would not be worrying about being murdered and a certain element of terror would be removed.

On balance I would find the date rape less horrifying for that reason. Although having never been even close to either situation, i am only speculating.

For me the difference is that if i was being raped by a stranger in an alley, the fact of being raped would be less of a worry to me than the thought that I might then be murdered. I would be in fear for my life.

In a date rape, I would feel furious and degraded but assuming that "the date" had never previously been violent then I would not be worrying about being murdered and a certain element of terror would be removed.

On balance I would find the date rape less horrifying for that reason. Although having never been even close to either situation, i am only speculating.

As far as his logical argument goes though. X is bad Y is worse. This does not make X good is correct.

Therefore, he will assume that his follow on argument is correct and anyone who cannot see that cannot understand logic.
But where he went wrong was ...well so many places. The use of the word 'mild' the phrase 'touching up'.
Deciding arbitrarily that one abhorrent act is worse than another abhorrent act. The whole argument falls to bits if X and Y are equal, are unquantifiable or incomparable or X is 'worse' than Y.
all he has really established is X is bad. Y is bad.

In short he needs to go away and learn to think before he opens his mouth. (Although I suspect he said exactly what he meant to say attention seeker that he is)

Thinking bollocks is bad. Tweeting blatant misogynist arse crap is worse. This is not an endorsement for thinking it.

So to answer your question YABU for not seeing why people are angry.
It is offensive, ill thought out and not logically correct either.

I had counselling after a sexual assault. I used similar terminology as Dawkins with the counsellor, i.e. the sex assault wasn't as bad as being raped and I was downgrading the impact. It took a while but she set it out as black and white... you've either been sexually assaulted, sexually abused or raped or you haven't. There's no grading system and none are any easier than the other to recover from in her experience. She was right and accepting that helped with the healing process.
There's no 'mild' when it comes to sex assault/rape/paedophilia. It is all bad no matter what the circumstances and something that should not be graded. He used the wrong subject to explain logic.
I can only make an assumption that you haven't been raped, sexually abused or sexually assaulted. I think if you had, you would understand why anyone who had experienced these things would be annoyed at the use of 'mild' with any of these experiences, or if you have experienced this, then you are making the mistake I did in downgrading something that should never have happened to you because of a false perception that it wasn't as 'bad' as somebody else's attack. So I have to say YABU OP.

montsyma 2 women every week are killed by their violent partners.
You are far more likely to be killed by someone you know.

Whilst you may fear one more than the other your fear would mostly likely be unfounded and based on the bias towards reporting stranger crime more than intimate partner crime.