GG guardian article - Rape - "bad sex"

[Chaosandcoffee]

guardian link

Germaine Greer talking at Hay about reducing sentences for rape - well actually just reframing rape altogether - rejecting it as a violent crime in itself - where there isn't physical injury etc.

Don't know if there's already a thread. I've just deleted my attempt at discussion. I've reread the article and I don't feel like trying to be rational and open minded. But maybe someone can help me out.

I agree we should be questioning the current system.
I could swallow a huge does of pragmatism if it meant change - I could live with destimagtising rapists. But it is pragmatism and it is very unpalatable - I'd need to be sure that it would change things. And not link it to minimising the impact.

I'm slow at posting, have read your recent post Reality and that dissonance has been rattling around in my head a lot without me being able to explain it as well.

Imagine if a man were as likely to get a rape conviction as, say, a drink driving conviction.

I actually can very easily imagine this and it would be a nightmare. Being a rapist would be completely destigmatised and the result would certainly be far more rape. I imagine few women would go through their lives without being raped.

Clearly the legal system is not working for rape victims currently, and it’s not “verboten” to question why. But a solution that would remove even the distant prospect of any meaningful recourse to the law for those whose rapes are not deemed serious would be even worse.

But Sloth, that’s the point. There are probably just as many rapists as drink drivers. Few women DO go through life without being assaulted at the very least.

I don’t agree it would be destigmatised. I think drink drivers are thought of as the worst scum in most circles these days.

Actually marital/relationship rape does destroy women. It might not leave physical scars, it might not be violent or scary, but it absolutely destroys your soul.

Being betrayed on a regular basis by someone who professes to love you destroys your trust in people. Being used and made to feel like your function is to be used destroys your sense of self worth. Being told that it's not really rape destroys your ability to trust your own emotions.

I would never seek to minimise the damage done to women who are raped violently by a stranger. It's an abhorrent crime and I can't imagine how awful it is to have that happen to you. But at least women who suffer it get sympathy, and are allowed to be angry, and are believed.

I think she is making a nuanced case and that doesn’t go over well these days.

It is widely agreed that rape is one of the worst things you can do to a woman. That itself would be an incentive for many rapists to rape. The humiliation, trauma and shame experienced by the victim are precisely what is exciting to a certain type of man - something that they wouldn’t achieve by inflicting another kind of assault.

Few women DO go through life without being assaulted at the very least.

I know this of course. But I don’t believe the majority of women currently experience rape. And at any rate, lowering the penalty does not mean less evidence would be required. Evidence for rape would remain incredibly hard to gather. I am not arguing that we don’t need to completely rethink rape law; I just think this particular solution would be a gift to men. And a gift to rapists.

If drink drivers are really thought of as the worst scum, why are there so many of them? And is the goal of legislation to make people feel like scum or to actually reduce the incidences of a particular crime?

When a transgression is common it absolutely becomes destigmatised. This is at the core of, for example, the argument about criminalising men who buy sex. We can clearly see that in places where buying sex has been destigmatised by decriminalisation, far more men buy sex. It is normalised. I know GG is not arguing for full decriminalisation of rape, but the same logic applies.

But drink driving has become stigmatised - it used to be completely acceptable and everyone did it.

Now, because of both a legislative and cultural change, it is not culturally acceptable (though of course some people still do it). People take keys off drunk people, they look out for their mates and there are real consequences to getting a conviction. It’s very easy to lose your job, for instance.

I’m not, in any way, saying that rape is equivalent to drink driving. But it is a very common crime that has wider societal consequences as well as causing terrible harm to victims.

There has to be a way to change the narrative so that rape is culturally acknowledged and condemned as the everyday violent crime that it is. At the moment, the legal system is complicit in the lie that rape is that rare occasion when a stranger attacks a woman at knifepoint in the park.

If every man knew that his risk of a conviction and being on the sex offenders’ register (and quite probably losing his job as a result) was immeasurably higher, then I think we might see a reduction in incidence of rape.

At the moment they are almost guaranteed to get away with it, even if it goes to court.

Also, the stats show that drink driving legislation did dramatically reduce incidence of it. Yes some people still do it - this is true of every crime. But it used to be something that everyone did, not just scum.

Rape is very common, it is an everyday crime. Treating it like it’s as rare as murder helps no-one. Again, this is not to suggest that it isn’t extremely traumatic for victims.

*But drink driving has become stigmatised - it used to be completely acceptable and everyone did it.

Now, because of both a legislative and cultural change, it is not culturally acceptable (though of course some people still do it). *

The nature of the legislative changes consist of increasingly stringent regulations and harsher punishments. The maximum penalty for drink driving was increased relatively recently. This is the opposite of what is being proposed by GG for rape.

Why would less harsh punishments for rape supposedly lead to higher conviction rates? This doesn’t follow at all - can you please explain?

I don’t mean to pick at you, but I think deeming certain rapes to be more traumatic than others is extremely dangerous, as is the idea of reducing rape sentencing. I’m really troubled to see these ideas promoted in a feminist context.

I thought that those comments were largely related to her own experience?

I think some of it may come from her experience of being young, beautiful and part of the cool London set in the 60s and 70s and also being part of a particular section of society where people were having a lot of casual sex with no moral or physical consequences - the post pill/penicilin still cures everything/pre- Aids days.

The book Groupie by Jenny Fabian is a trashy autobiograhical description of the London music scene at that time. It is a roman a clef (although that makes it sound more important than it is) There isn't a character based on Greer but there are characters Greer probably knows in real life. Some of the sex described by Jenny Fabian is seen by her as great- some less so and some are unfortunate sexual experiences which might now be classed as rape but isn't viewed the author in that way. This attitude fits with Greer's flippant description of it being no big deal.

So yes, I think this comes from another time another place in her life.

lass I agree. I think her views are simply outdated and are not in line with the current situation at all. In fact it’s only within the past 30 years or so (less) that marital rape has been a crime. Removing a condom during sex without consent is only now being recognised as a crime. Progress is being made - slowly, I admit - by recognising more different types of rape. Not by writing off the entire offence as merely an annoyance. In legislative terms I’d like to see more work in widening the definition of rape, not limiting the types of rapes viewed as worthy of serious punishment.

Also this from GG is just crazy: ““If we are going to say trust us, believe us, if we do say that our accusation should stand as evidence, then we do have to reduce the tariff for rape.” Who is saying the accusation alone should be sufficient evidence to convict?! She seems to be engaging with an argument no sensible person is making.

What do you suggest Sloth?

It is difficult to feel its progress to broaden our understanding, widen definitions but without convictions or shaping offending behaviour.

Chaos i agree with you and I don’t think widening definitions alone is the solution. But think of the marital rapes that have resulted in a conviction that never could have if we hadn’t broadened our definition of rape. A small fraction of the whole, certainly, but nonetheless convictions that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred.

I don’t know enough about the law to suggest a comprehensive solution, but my instinct is that harsher penalties would be a start. Not because rape is in every case the worst thing that can happen to a woman (agree with PP who attribute this kind of thinking to patriarchal values), but because for many victims it is devastating and no amount of saying that it SHOULDNT be will change that.

I do know that what GG has suggested makes absolutely no sense, as less serious crimes do not require a lower burden of proof. There would be the same number of convictions but the punishment would be community service. Not to mention the destigmatisation effect.

Rape already has high maximum tariffs. The problem isn’t the penalties but the fact that rape is to all intents and purposes legal under our current system.

A rapist is vanishingly unlikely even to be reported, let alone tried and convicted (and conviction rates are shockingly low even in cases that do get to trial).

It’s only GG who has made the suggestion that women shouldn’t be traumatised by rape (and her overall point is more nuanced than that anyway). No-one in this thread has suggested that, but we are trying to consider ways of reducing rape through cultural and legislative reform.

This is NOT the same as minimising rape or saying that women shouldn’t find it traumatic.

Maximum penalties are not regularly enforced for rape. Average sentence is still under ten years, I think, and plenty get out in well under five years.

Can you please explain how lower penalties will lead to increased convictions? Are you, like GG, suggesting an accusation should be all the evidence needed?

And yes, it is minimising rape to suggest the punishment should be community service.

I think its an interesting point and i'm sure this came up a few years back. I get that rape is rape but from my group of friends, those who have suffered rape have all been what would be called date rape and none of us went to the police. I think bloody angry rather than traumatised would best describe the emotion. Would a lesser punishment have meant the police would be more likely to investigate? I'm not sure it would make a difference as it would still be our say against theirs with no other evidence.
Luckily in my case,' karma' took care of his punishment so didn't need the police to get my justice.

Our justice system doesn't deal well with rape (understatement) but I'm not sure putting it on a par with shoplifting would help.

GG is also conflating no violence with not traumatic, and that's plain wrong.

I think GG's proposal is very flawed and by it shows her lack of empathy for those women traumatised by rape.

I've felt for a while that GG is out of step with women criminally victimised by male violence of all types. She's too flippant about the impacts. Why doesn't she say the justice system is not fit for purpose for prosecuting crimes against women? For example, why doesn't she name the problem as the rape myths that many believe?

Instead she focuses on increasing the prosecution rate rather than get to the root cause of the problem and in that throws women to the wolves by downplaying the impact and shaming those who suffer serious ongoing adverse harm, often lifelong. She could have advocated for women but instead chose not to.

GG likes centre stage and in her ignoring of the real harm of rape not only dismisses its targets but withholds and misses valuable advocacy opportunities

Appendum

After re-reading the article I am even more angry - GG is actually being a rape apologist in that she says a penis can't kill (actually it can) plus ptsd from rape is less serious than that in combat- (no they are different types of ptsd and that caused by combat is often easier to treat than that caused by male violence, especially when multilayered by different guys from childhood)

She really shows up her lack of empathy and well her narcissism

I think she's wrong. I can see her argument about violent rapes, which is that prosecutors should focus on the violence rather than on the issue of consent, because that would get rid of the current approach of humiliating women in court by asking about their sexual feelings and how much they'd had to drink blah blah. In fact, it's surprising when you think about it that this isn't done already - if a man physically assaults a woman in the act of raping her, why not charge him with assault as well as rape?

But as for "non-violent" rapes, that's very hard. How do you decide when a rape isn't violent? Rape generally involves some force of coercion (unless the woman is asleep or paralytically drunk), and coercion necessitates a degree of physical harm. And as has already been pointed out, the act of penetration itself can leave physical damage. I can kind of see where she's coming from, though. Take that awful Ireland case recently. It just turned into the most humiliating experience for the complainant, and the men involved were found not guilty. Maybe in cases like that the jury are afraid of wrongfully convicting and ruining someone's life? Maybe if it was treated as a more minor offence, then juries would be more likely to convict? Maybe without the big song and dance of "THIS IS A RAPE TRIAL", the experience of the trial would be less dreadful for the victim?

On balance, I don't agree with her, because women I know who have been raped have been devastated by it. Not because they're delicate flowers but because being raped is horrible and frightening. It is an assault, just as much as being punched in the face.

I think, as I said on the other thread after the c4 interview, individual victim’s feelings are not particularly relevant here.

When something is a crime it is a crime because it is considered a harm to the state (society).

There was a big fuss a few years ago re victim’s feelings not being adequately centred in criminal cases. They introduced measures to make victims feel like their feelings were more important.

I fundamentally disagree with this. It was the wrong approach. The criminal law is, and should be, entirely about testing the accused’s guilt.

Victims are witnesses in that regard but their feelings about what happened are not relevant once society has decided something is a crime (a public harm). The degree of harm also should be based on more objective principles that each victim’s feelings.

The problem with rape is not that it is too serious a crime at the moment. It’s that we live in a rape culture which not only means men rape with impunity but also that rape myths effect juries, there is a narrative about rape generally that means there is a presumption that the woman is lying.

I think also that the criminal justice system (well meaning) colludes in this when it centres victim’s feelings re a criminal case and it plays into an existing theme re ‘rape victims are like x if you are not then it didn’t happen’. In reality it shouldn’t be self selecting the women who are traumatised and then calling them ‘not credible’ because they are traumatised.

And re focussing on the violence... no... she needs to read Evan stark re coercive control IMO. Physical violence is not the only thing that is harmful to society.

The trouble is, there are current,y only a very specific set of circumstances that mean a conviction, and they all tie in to a very patriarchal view of rape.

The victim usually has to be the right sort of victim, the right amount of traumatised, behave the right way afterwards. The rape has to be the right kind of rape. Sure, it might be illegal to rape your wife, but in reality it’s not is it? Because if she doesn’t report it straight away, gets up and makes you a cup of tea afterwards, tells anyone at any point what a good man you are, doesn’t immediately leave you, well then you can’t be a rapist, can you?

If we keep framing rape as the worst thing that can happen ever, then we keep having to play the right kind of victim in order to get justice. And the truth is most women freeze, behave normally afterwards, exchange texts, yes I made my rapist a cuppa afterwards (v common apparently). That’s not to say it’s not traumatising, of course it is. But I do also think that in a lot of cases its bloody annoying as well.

I was more traumatised after being burgled than being raped. But that’s a dangerous thing to say in public because people immediately think, well, it can’t have been real rape then.

It’s a very damaging narrative and it does need to change.

Entirely agree with Offred's points above.