"Rape...is not caused by rapists" WTF!?!

[Unacceptable]

If you aren't aware of the rapist Brock Turner and the campaigners who think he's getting a hard time, have a read of this guardian link.

AIBU to think that the statement from Leslie Rassmussen decrying political correctness that harms poor boys like Brock is the dumbest piece of shit I've ever read?

Even in their drunkest, most ridiculous states my Husband, Brothers and adult sons would not rape a woman because, and I'm sure Leslie wouldn't want to entertain this notion, they wouldn't rape somebody because they aren't rapists!!!!

Brock clearly is.
Having sex without consent is rape.
Forcing yourself upon an unconscious person is rape.

You don't have to be a stranger in a dark alley to do that, just your normal, average, everyday twat.

I know it is hard to accept the wrongdoings of a loved one.
I know we'd all fight to protect those we care about but you can still fucking accept the mistakes that people make...even if you can't get your head around it, don't bury your head in the sand and pretend it's less of an abuse because 'he's a nice guy'.
When will people wake the fuck up?

Link: gu.com/p/4kk46/stw

I think that would be mutually beneficial Citizensmith1, though 'bully' was the definition and a coercive mindset was the analogy - it seems that everything must be taken completely literally or die in the attempt.

I would be much obliged, since you don't want to talk to me, if you didn't talk about me in a space where I'm clearly going to become aware of it. It's passive aggressive, rude and a rather pathetic attempt at intimidation.

By all means, return to your life without the benefit of my insight :) I don't think an announcement to that effect was really necessary.

Hi Kind

That sounds like very helpful input.

On another thread is,the story about the woman who sent back a flurry of dick pics to a man who sent her an unsolicited one. He stated "you should like it, youre agirl"

Women online everywhere are getting this,stuff WITHOUT CONSENT. They have done nothing but be online, sometimes in a dating context but often not even that.

Men sending the pictures do not care about consent.

Sometimes assault victims are criticised for not saying no. But we should all be assumed to be in a default state of no. All too often, there's no focus on what the instigator did to ensure consent was there, to be certain they had a yes.

When it comes to rape, there seems to be constant confusion about what actually happened and what a jury will believe happened.

A jury may think a victim who continued to see her rapist consented. That doesn't change the fact that she was raped.

A jury may think a victim who was calm and factual after the rape wasn't upset enough. That doesn't change the fact that she was raped.

A jury may think the defendant seems kind and upstanding. That doesn't change the fact that he raped someone.

What I find insidious about the constant legal arguments is the idea that unless a group of strangers judge a woman to have been raped, she wasn't raped. What a jury thinks makes no difference to whether a woman was raped or not. Not one bit of difference.

Gone - do you believe that it is a regular occurrence for women to consent to sex, then decide later they didn't consent, accuse the man of rape and then get a conviction?

Honestly, it's really REALLY not hard to not be a rapist.
But if you're finding all these shades of grey and nuances and complexities, and it seems really difficult for you, maybe follow these simple guidelines:

If a person seems drunk, don't have sex with them.
If a person says "no" to sex, don't try to persuade them.
If they seem unhappy or unenthusiastic, don't have sex with them.
If a person is crying during sex, stop. They're probably unhappy or scared.
If a person is silent or not moving, stop. It's extremely unusual during sex! They may be asleep or unconscious, or scared or unhappy.

I'm not saying that all these cases would be rape. I'm saying that the worst thing that will happen here is that you will NOT have sex with someone who actually was happy to have sex with you. That is not a big deal. No one's life was ever ruined by you NOT having sex with them on a particular occasion. Err on the side of caution. Only have sex with people who agree to it, and are sober, happy, enthusiastic, vocal and moving. You then never need to fear "accidentally" becoming a rapist.

If you have trouble noticing that your sexual partner is unhappy, unenthusiastic, crying, silent or not moving, I don't think you should be having sex at all. You are in danger of becoming a rapist. But most people DO notice. In some cases, they pretend that they don't, or they just don't care.

Normal people don't need these kind of guidelines. Because normal people find it very easy to determine whether or not they are committing a rape.

I don't really care about the legal definition of rape or whether a jury would convict in such and such an obscure case. Your standard shouldn't be what is legal, or what would stand up in court. It should - what is moral and right?

Well said Bravada.

TheSparrowHawk
What a jury thinks makes no difference to whether a woman was raped or not. Not one bit of difference

I agree completely. The reason I mentioned juries is that they are made up of ordinary people with ordinary beliefs. Some among them may have more knowledge about rape, others far less so. That goes for the judge, police and barristers too. All these people, who are from among the general population, do not always find it easy to see whether what happened was rape or not.

If all discussion about grey areas is simply shut down by those who know more, rather than explaining, nothing is being done to change thinking.
Some people may be reading here for example who will be on a jury in a month's time.

And if the most important thing of all is to stop unwanted sex and abuse regardless of whether there is a trial, which it is, then the more parents who might be reading here understand, the better it will be.

I certainly know lots of mothers of boys who think certain clothing is sending out the wrong messages that the girl wants sex; that is a girl has gone willingly with a boy and allows petting, what is he to think? Parents whose sons and daughters are seeing rape porn every day; men in general who think you do not need to listen to a feeble 'no' as women like assertive men; where I am sure even young girls would think a boy asking for consent is 'weedy'.

I bet they would not dare say anything here, but if they did, and instead of being shouted down someone explained to them in detail, why their assumption was wrong or dangerous, that might help make a difference over time.

And what of what Gonetosee said about a man and his lack of consent?
For me, in that situation her friend was in, where the woman was in the role the man so often is, where there was a sort of 'soft' coercion on the woman's part replacing a man's more usual 'you led me on' to the other person - it helped me imagine the whole general context of the blurred line between allowed persuasion and coercion even more. I did not see it as a what about the menz red herring.

I agree totally about challenging assumptions - that's what feminists do day in and day out.

What people are objecting to on this thread is the implication in gone's posts that a man can 'accidentally' rape a woman, because he can't tell whether she consents or not. The tone to her argument is that we shouldn't blame men in those situations, which is a very dangerous tone to set.

Definitely we should acknowledge the shit ways in which society excuses rape - again, that is a major part of feminism. But we should not, for a second, imply that men have a get out of jail free card because of those excuses.

What I object to about gone's posts is that she's taking a feminist understanding of why sex is a complicated issue for women and using it to imply that consent is a complicated issue and therefore we should be careful about accusing men of anything.

It's worth remembering that the system and society we have in place now is the legacy of a world run entirely by men, for men. If it's suddenly not working for them any more then they should do something to change it, rather than expecting women to put up with 'accidental' rape.

I actually thought gone was pointing out situations where the woman 'goes along with' something she doesn't actually want/enjoy but her partner isn't aware of this. (Not situations of coercion)

Bravada
Your standard shouldn't be what is legal, or what would stand up in court. It should - what is moral and right?

I couldn't agree more.

The difficulty of 'proof aside', however, the people in a jury, and the barristers, police and judge are just ordinary people drawn from the world at large and a barometer of what ordinary people are thinking outside the court too.

So change is brought about from the outside in and starts with even small things.

After all that has been discussed here I am very aware of how important it might be to not over manipulate/persuade/cajole/decide-for little children and teenagers, in case it sets them to be too compliant; and to watch out when teaching good manners, to also teach them how to have extreme 'bad manners' when necessary. And to talk and talk about never assuming consent; that you have no right to bully someone or hurt someone because you think they are bad.

A situation where there is no coercion and a woman goes along with sex for her own reasons, and her partner is entirely unaware of that (which makes him a pretty shit partner tbh) is not rape.

Kind all human beings should try not to rape other human beings, regardless of sex. Does that help? Women having sex with men can also follow my guidelines, if they find consent hard to work out. Same sex couples can also follow them.

People with strange ideas who might be about to sit on a jury can read the Mumsnet rape myths link posted earlier, that would be a good start.

I fail to see how you are helping these potential jurors? By continuing to insist that it is difficult to work out whether you are raping someone or not, you are supporting these kinds of myths, and outdated ideas, not challenging them.

Gone - do you believe that it is a regular occurrence for women to consent to sex, then decide later they didn't consent, accuse the man of rape and then get a conviction

I think it is anything but a regular occurrence for the woman to go through this then accuse the man of rape and then get a conviction; but I do think it does happen that a woman (girl) gets sort of pushed a long into sex with her 'boyfriend' or acquaintance, having perhaps only feebly said no, or not having dared say anything at all for a variety of reasons, and afterwards feels very upset, that she had been robbed of choice, and wonders what happened. Often she will blame herself.

The man would not stop to consider he had done anything wrong. He would deny it was rape. He would say, and believe, he had consent all the way along the line.

I wish that would not happen as often as it does.

Bravas list would be good to give to school children.

'The man would not stop to consider he had done anything wrong. He would deny it was rape. He would say, and believe, he had consent all the way along the line.'

I agree that this would happen. And it shouldn't.

There are many jokes about how difficult women are to understand, how they are always changing their minds, how even they themselves don't know what they want, how they insist men are wrong even when they're right, etc. Putting consent into that toxic mix is easy - that nobody can ever know whether a woman consented to sex or not, even she herself probably doesn't know. And then people think it's utterly unfair to lock up a rapist when he couldn't have known what the hell the woman wanted.

Here's a sample such joke: "If a man alone in the woods speaks, and his wife cannot hear him, is he still wrong?" The joke is supposed to be funny because women always say men are wrong (regardless of the facts or the context). That feeds the myths that women who cry rape are doing so regardless of facts, probably out of some automatic reflex that accuses men of being wrong.

"I'm not saying that all these cases would be rape. I'm saying that the worst thing that will happen here is that you will NOT have sex with someone who actually was happy to have sex with you. That is not a big deal. No one's life was ever ruined by you NOT having sex with them on a particular occasion. Err on the side of caution. Only have sex with people who agree to it, and are sober, happy, enthusiastic, vocal and moving. You then never need to fear "accidentally" becoming a rapist.

If you have trouble noticing that your sexual partner is unhappy, unenthusiastic, crying, silent or not moving, I don't think you should be having sex at all. You are in danger of becoming a rapist. But most people DO notice. In some cases, they pretend that they don't, or they just don't care."

Yup.

The Sparrowhawk:

What people are objecting to on this thread is the implication in gone's posts that a man can 'accidentally' rape a woman, because he can't tell whether she consents or not. The tone to her argument is that we shouldn't blame men in those situations, which is a very dangerous tone to set.

And the fact she compared us to how a rapist works - what a charmer.

The tone to my argument isn't necessarily that we shouldn't blame men - I think we should blame men every bit as much as they should be blamed. I have zero tolerance for rape and hate the thought of it as much as anyone else. However I don't think it's enough to say 'if you feel like you were raped, you were'. I just don't.

This may be true most of the time but it's making too many assumptions about people and people don't always act as they would be rationally expected to. It also seems ridiculous to say that women can drink as much as they want to and have all the sex they want but if there is any misjudgement it is automatically a deliberate act of rape by the man, who must be soberly able to correctly evaluate his partner's state of mind regardless of what she might be telling him she wants. It's an unrealistic ideal and failure to follow it wouldn't make someone a rapist.

While I trust the vast majority of women to correctly infer what happened to them during a period of time that they don't remember, I don't think it's impossible for mistakes to happen. While I trust the vast majority of women not to make a rape accusation if their actions truly made it reasonable to believe they were participating and consensual, I have reservations.

Without wanting any rapist to go free, it's rather unjust to men is that there is a movement towards a pre-determined outcome rather than genuine reflection on this issue. Consent cannot be complicated because that would be open to abuse and consequently dangerous. Therefore consent is not complicated and anyone who can think of situations where it might be must have an anti-woman agenda and be soft on rape into the bargain. But I think you're making a mistake in closing down genuine conversation for fear of where it could go. If consent is never complicated, that would become apparent. As far as I (and others) can see, it's not apparent. But it is to many here. Fair enough, but some members of juries will be asking these questions and it's a shame you have no considered response that avoids expletives and fully takes into account the 'unusual' situations that may make it to court.

The fact people don't agree with you doesn't mean there isn't genuine reflection on an issue, gone.

My reflection is this: It also seems ridiculous to say that men can drink as much as they want to and have all the sex they want if unsure about his ability to correctly evaluate his partner's state of mind.

We tell people not to drive or operate machinery when drinking for this very reason - and if they did we wouldn't say it was "a misjudgement" or that their doing so was a result of an "unrealistic ideal".

It's not that hard to have sex, whether you have been drinking or not. Perhaps no one should be having sex while drunk, I can see a case for this. What I don't see a case for is your idea that if two people have sex while drunk it is the woman (who by virtue of her biology, physical strength and stature who is more likely to be the more vulnerable of the couple) who bears responsibility for what transpires if a man "misjudges" the situation.

And once again, though you are hell-bent on pretending otherwise, if a couple have sex and the woman is verbally consenting, it is not rape. We all know this to be true - so your "regardless of what she might be telling him she wants" is absolutely irrelevant, because if she is ACTIVELY saying she wants it (even if she doesn't) it isn't rape. If she is in an unsafe situation, there is a threat of violence or she fears for her life, that doesn't count... but that is true in all criminal situations, so why would it not be in this one?

And again, it's hard to take you seriously given that you have demonstrated time and time again on this thread that whatever happens, your interest is in protecting the male perspective. You really give yourself away even if you won't own it.

However I don't think it's enough to say 'if you feel like you were raped, you were'. I just don't.

You would deny women their own feelings over their own experience.

While I trust the vast majority of women to correctly infer what happened to them during a period of time that they don't remember, I don't think it's impossible for mistakes to happen. While I trust the vast majority of women not to make a rape accusation if their actions truly made it reasonable to believe they were participating and consensual, I have reservations.

This sentence bothers me. I know of no such cases. The cases in the public eye, of this nature, are the one that is the subject of this thread, and Ched Evans. In both of these cases, neither made a complaint of rape. The police did.

One woke up on a hospital trolley with injuries, and eyewitnesses reporting as to what had happened to her.

The other woke up in a hotel room with no memory - and reported her hand bag missing to the police. The police did the rest - and their investigation led to a charge of rape.

If you suspect that women are coming forward and reporting drunken, sexual encounters to the police every weekend as rape, then you are very mistaken. The exact opposite is true.

"Since the Sexual Offences Act 2003 came into force on 1st May 2004, rape has legally been defined in the UK as the penetration with a penis of the vagina, anus or mouth of another person without their consent."

The thing that makes a penetrative act into rape is the lack of consent.

Consent springs from the mind of the individual. So yes, if a woman feels she was raped, then she knows she did not consent or did not have the freedom or capacity to consent to sex, then SHE WAS RAPED.

In a court of law, the man may have recourse to the defence that he had reasonable belief in her consent; indeed, he may on occasion have had such belief (though juries tend to bend over backwards to accept such defences, IMO, for example, when a man claimed he didn't understand no as he didn't speak enough English, FFS). In that instance, he will be found not guilty.

IMO, that doesn't mean that the woman was not raped. Just as the woman sleeping in a hotel room was raped by the man coming in, as she did not consent to sex with him, even though his defence that he was in the wrong room was believed and he was not convicted.

I certainly didn't say, or mean to say, that women bear more responsibility than men - not sure where you're getting that from. In relation to the issue about sex with verbal consent never being rape, I am probably carrying that impression over from a previous thread, where it was repeatedly claimed that men should not take verbal consent as such if it was being given by someone who wasn't capable of making a clear-headed decision. Although I can imagine situations where this would be reasonable, because there is so much room for subjectivity in evaluating mental capacity, I found that ridiculous as a rule-of-thumb, so it has stuck with me.

In the cases where police find evidence of rape, it's a different story. That evidence must go with the victim's account to build up a picture which can then be given to a jury. Make no mistake, I wouldn't want a society in which women couldn't report rape or were ever made to feel they deserved it. However I also cannot avoid the knowledge that it's quite easy to wake up and think 'what the * did I get up to last night?' and be genuinely taken aback at the things you said and did. While I don't believe men should have sex with women who are incapacitated, it is also possible for two drunk people to have consensual sex and for that to be one of the things that neither party can't believe they did in the morning. In that case all the surrounding evidence would be very important and working out what did happen wouldn't be easy. A feminist response could be 'He should have known you weren't capable of deciding to have sex and as you now can't imagine having consented, you must have been raped' might be appropriate, but might not be. The feminist approach that I've encountered seems to assume this reading of the situation is unequivocally the right one and argues that if it wasn't correct, the event would never be reported as rape. I agree it would be unlikely, but I don't think it's impossible. However, we'll have to agree to disagree because clearly there is no resolution.

As an individual, I don't want to protect the male perspective. As a thinker, I don't like any perspective blindly dominating over all others. As a woman, I would like our stance on rape to be 100% watertight and reasonable and I personally find things a bit skewed - but understand this is a response to a system that has been terribly unfair to women over a long period of time.

detestable I agree with you that the not speaking enough English excuse is beyond ridiculous. You say you can imagine situations where there could be reasonable belief in consent; so can I. Not many, but occasionally I can imagine it happening. Some people can't. Fair enough - I don't think it's helpful to waste all our time circling the same ground.