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Original poster

Thoughts needed on this comment, please, sensitive issue.

246 replies

shipherlady · 03/12/2013 09:50

Please do not read on if you're sensitive to comments regarding rape, I do not wish to upset anybody, just need impartial advice.

Anyway, dh and I having discussion about women's roles, basically, he held the view that if a 'woman does not pull her weight' financially, men have the right to rape them and do what they want in the bedroom. We were having a massive argument at the time, and he is at pains to say that this is what happened in the past ( I question this) and he has no desire to do this at all, but that is 'how it was' in the past when men earned all the money.
OK, now logically, I should be OK with his 'impartial' assessment of the past -even though I disagree with it-however, it's made me feel uncomfortable.
What do you think?

OP posts:
Contrarian78 · 04/12/2013 20:40

Ok incorrect use of the word "sympathy" the point remains though.

That comment from your husband (the father of your children presumably - if you have them) is totally unacceptable. On a par with what the ops husband said. Why have you not left him?

garlicbaubles · 04/12/2013 20:42

That's such a rapist-centric point of view, lovemenot, it's stupefying! He seems to believe that, after suffering an assault and being made pregnant by force, the rape victim should go on to have the baby & raise the child as some kind of homage to her attacker. (why else would he think an abortion 'revenge'?)

Are you still with this man?

lovemenot · 04/12/2013 21:28

I'm still with him, but only because I'm afraid of him. I'm getting my ducks in a row and have spoken to my solicitor. It's now a matter of finding the right moment to tell him I'm done, and it won't be pretty.

garlicbaubles · 04/12/2013 22:25

Oh no, poor you! I'm relieved to hear your escape plan's all sorted ... do you have to tell him?

MistAllChuckingFrighty · 04/12/2013 22:26

Lovemenot, don't wait for a moment to "tell him", wait for the moment to leave (and make it ASAP). Good luck x Have you a thread ?

DirtyLittleSecrets · 04/12/2013 22:55

"Ok incorrect use of the word "sympathy" the point remains though."

No the point doesn't remain. You specifically said he wanted sympathy for the attacker, that means that the lecturer and YOU both feel your emotions are right and women's are not.

Anyway I don't know what sort of person would even try to defend such an attitude, did your lecturer not realise there was a very real chance that one of the women in that room had been abused? Did he not feel it more appropriate to talk about what a massive step this was for women's legal rights? No, he chose to focus on the 'right' that had been taken away from men.

garlicbaubles · 04/12/2013 23:05

he chose to focus on the 'right' that had been taken away from men.

Yes, that's it DLS. Thank you for crystallising it.

I'm a bit Hmm about retrospective laws in general, as they're usually used for things like taxes and public service fees. If the law against marital rape was enacted retrospectively, though, it seems reasonable to suppose the man knew he was doing harm to his wife. Feeling entitled to do harm doesn't look like a good enough reason to complain about being prosecuted for it. I haven't looked this up but am guessing the enactment came after a longish period of notice, during which any 'entitled' rapist husbands would have been expected to mend their ways.

waltermittymissus · 04/12/2013 23:26

Contrarion, you're posting on a thread where the OP and now another woman have suffered abuse at the hands of violent men and where one of them has been threatened with rape.

Now is not the time for your intellectual debate. In fact, why you felt the need to start it on this thread is beyond me.

It's sinister at worst and fucking nasty at best.

MistAllChuckingFrighty · 04/12/2013 23:28

he has form, believe it or not

waltermittymissus · 04/12/2013 23:32

NC?

MistAllChuckingFrighty · 04/12/2013 23:34

pardon me ?

waltermittymissus · 04/12/2013 23:35

Grin is he a name change?!

MistAllChuckingFrighty · 04/12/2013 23:37

Oh, sorry. Nah, it's all under this charming facade.

waltermittymissus · 04/12/2013 23:43

I'm delighted surprised I've not come across him before.

waltermittymissus · 04/12/2013 23:46

Advanced search.

I HAVE come across him before.

Disengaging now.

MistAllChuckingFrighty · 04/12/2013 23:47

Good plan.

tinmug · 04/12/2013 23:59

Cuntrarian's abstract, intellectual sympathy for the man retrospectively convicted of raping his wife seems a lot less "intellectual" and "abstract" when you consider that the couple were separated; the woman had told her husband she was divorcing him; the woman had moved out of the marital home and back into her parents' house; the man forced his way into that house to get at the woman; and he physically assaulted her during the course of the rape. And of course, Cuntrarian being the learned legal scholar that he is, can safely be assumed to be fully aware of these facts.

garlicbaubles · 05/12/2013 00:02

Shock Bloody hell!

garlicbaubles · 05/12/2013 00:04

Oh, sorry, I meant "poor misunderstood man, he didn't know he was breaking the law" Hmm

Disengaged. Shipher and lovemenot, I'm sorry for having been part of the derailment. Won't happen again.

DirtyLittleSecrets · 05/12/2013 08:10

Same here, sorry for getting off topic but I was sexually abused as a child so I guess I must be emotional and irrational about this subject! I just could not ignore the very obvious double standard of this so called lecturers emotions on the subject but the women also having an emotional response being seen as unintelligent.

CailinDana · 05/12/2013 08:32

The first man convicted of marital rape assisted the prosecution greatly when he bragged that the police couldn't touch him because the victim was his wife. That bragging not only helped in his conviction but also inspired his wife to take action after years of abuse. Pleasing irony.

CailinDana · 05/12/2013 08:33

Sorry that should say the first man convicted in Ireland.

tinmug · 05/12/2013 08:54

Cailin If I understand it correctly, the Marital Exemption was the basis of the appeal brought by the man I was referring to in my previous post. So he was arrested, charged with rape, tried and convicted; and then he tried to get the conviction overturned on the basis that the woman he had assaulted and violated was his wife. Not on the basis that it was consensual; and not on the basis that he hadn't done it. He wasn't arguing that he hadn't raped her. He was arguing that it was ok to rape her.
The appeal court judge told him to go fuck himself, poor mite :(

ProfPlumSpeaking · 05/12/2013 09:00

Contrarian despite being only a woman, and so ruled by emotion rather than logic in areas where we disagree - how could it be logic, when you are always right? - I have actually managed to study rather a lot of law in my life. I hate to sidetrack the thread but just so that you don't make the same mistake again, marital rape has always been illegal: the judicial system in England and Wales is declaratory. When the 5 Law Lords unanimously declared marital rape to be illegal in 1991, they were declaring that the common law had been that for all time (and previous cases were all mistaken and/or could be distinguished). You may therefore put away your intellectual sympathy for the poor man who thought he could legally get away with attacking his wife in 1988, 1989 and 1990 but later discovered that actually he couldn't. Of course, otherwise, I would share in your intellectual sympathy for someone who thought he could legally do something cruel, violent and immoral and on that basis chose to do it.

Sorry, OP, to be sidetracked. Are you ok? It is difficult to know what is normal after a while in an abusive relationship. Try to think of a friend of yours and imagine what she would do if her partner treated her the way that yours does you. That might help get everything in perspective.

Contrarian78 · 05/12/2013 09:17

Look, most of you are missing the point, but in doing so, you're sort of making it. The reason I mentioned the debate was not necessarily to get into the rights and wrongs of marital rape, but rather it was to demonstrate - which most of you are here - that a reasoned and rational debate about such an emotive subject - isn't possible. The OP in her original post says that she should be ok with his 'impartial' assessment of the past

It was only later on in the thread that it transpires that there was a little more to it than that.

I'm guessing that the lecturer doesn't use that case as an example anymore Smile