Q, non binary male MEP says rape is a spectrum and has been demonised.

[MyAquaOP]

Apologies if someone's already posted and missed it but I've not seen it from a quick scan.

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Is my understanding that rape is purely penetration without consent.

I imagine he sees verbally coercive rape as less rape than physically violent rape. It isn't.

And yes, fucking irritating having a man explain the definition of rape. One wonders why he wants to minimise it. Sorry, 'demonise' it less.

Because yes, as a PP says, the word demonise gave the game away.

I think he really ought to be laying out a full and detailed explanation of his comments. Because a lawmaker using these arguments is quite unsettling.

They said that rape is committed by all kinds of men, noting how often fathers, brothers and other relatives harm women.

Their point was that portraying rapists as aberrant demons helps these ordinary men to quietly carry on abusing undetected. Society needs to recognise that no one looks like a rapist, and there are no clues in their appearance or identity.

He's not multiple people, he's just one man. There is no 'they'

He literally says that rape should be contextualised, that there are various forms of consent, that rape has been demonised, and we shouldn't think of rapists as monsters. He didn't say anything about brothers and fathers at this point.

I couldn't watch all 50 minutes of it, but I watched the section where he talks about rape and didn't hear what you wrote. Pehaps you could give a time stamp for that. It sounds like absolute rubbish.

He says that any individual can be a rapist and says "including yourself" to the female interviewer.

His point doesn't appear to be that by demonising rape we are overlooking family members who could be rapists (as though there is nothing demonic about child sexual abuse, which is what that would most likely be). What he is arguing is that demonising rape means we are not allowing for the possiblity of the rehabilitation of rapists. He talks about rape as though it's the kind of crime that anyone can fall into when they may be going through a tough time, like getting into trouble with the police when you're an alienated teenager or stealing if you're poor. Or "she said no but I could tell she really meant yes".

Only a man would come out with such rubbish and be so obtuse as to women's concerns about rape and rapists.

What he said is all in keeping with the general ideology of "queering". This is where categories are blurred with the (either intended or unintended) effect that harmful or dangerous things/people are tolerated more, and harmless or trustworthy things/people are lumped in with them to take a share of the blame.

It's right there when he implies that women can rape too.

He talks about rape as though it's the kind of crime that anyone can fall into when they may be going through a tough time

Yes it did sound like "hey if rape were a crime we'd all be guilty, right guys? Eh?"

Yuck. As if we needed more reasons not to vote Green

I agree with this. I think that we need to recognise that all of these seemingly bonkers statements and performances by these people are actually a calculated attack on boundaries in the name of a political theory of power structures that, in reality, is a predator's wet dream.

Spag edit

I think what is just as bad as what he said was the woman nodding agreeing with him

She said worse things arguably, like about rape not always being "scary". I think he took her cues and ran with them.

But she's not an elected representative so she can be as bonkers as she likes.

He also has a case of the Nibletts i.e. addicted to attention especially if it’s for doing/saying something transgressive. Cos those two are all about irritating ‘the Squares’. Very adolescent mindset 🙄

I had to look it up, he's thirty years old!

It should be added, his sympathy is always with the poor rapists who need to be rehabilitated, rather than with the rape victims.

I think in his view, everyone is on the rapist-victim spectrum, everyone is a bit of both and so we can all jointly shoulder both the blame and the victimhood. I think that sums it all up really, this entire 2020s liberal zeitgeist.

In the meantime, we are like, er, no. We aren't all on the rapist spectrum, Manivannan, speak for yourself.

Violence against women and girls IS their priority.

Not reducing violence against women and girls.

Its a feature not a bug.

@Kingdomofsleep ”It's right there when he implies that women can rape too.”

Yes it is. Rather than talk of the violation of
a woman’s body, he attempts to blur the fundamental questions of consent and perpetration with his implication that anyone can be a rapist. Biological sex cannot be erased from rape.

So another version of "she was asking for it, dressed like that", I guess.

I think even more than that, I think creepy people think that everybody else is thinking creepy thoughts too.

I read once a really harrowing article written by a woman whose brother was convicted of sexually abusing small children, and was suspected of abusing her child (his niece/nephew). She wrote that he said to her something like "but doesn't everyone think like that a bit when they see cute little kids" (I'm paraphrasing because I don't want to try and find the article) and her blood ran cold.

And if what The Times uncovered about his background is true, he's also a massive bloody fraud.

Which would appear to be 'in vogue' atm. 🙄

@Kingdomofsleep “everyone is on the rapist-victim spectrum, everyone is a bit of both and so we can all jointly shoulder both the blame and the victimhood”

But he speaks about his muddled concept of
rape on a spectrum but then says that none of the spectrum is less or more worse. He can’t have it both ways.

He has been elected to put his trans and non binary politics out there because this is a debate the captured Scottish Greens feel we need to have.

To be very clear, I do not agree with a single word he says! In his long statement reported afterwards mitigating his comments, he said he's a victim himself. So that's why I think he thinks it's ok to be rape-apologist as long as you're a victim too. Otherwise why bring it up?

Yep - at the very time they're needed most and could start gaining traction on environmental issues, they have turned into an unserious party of extremist nutjobs amd weirdos. Old school greens must despair.

re definition of rape in Scottish law being different.

Does anyone know when this was agreed?

It sounds like TRAs wanted to further codify in law that in transing you do literally change sex. ie the penis is a biological male organ so an artificial one isn't actually a penis.

Apart from anything else I would have thought it does not comply with the Supreme Court ruling.

I am not of course saying that anyone who is against their consent penetrated by an object shouldn't be protected by the law.

But I think that the whole reason why rape was and still is in England about the penis, is because it is about a very specific act of male violence.

I wonder if For Women Scotland would take this up as a campaign.

Its not just that it denies the reality of the act of male violation, but because it is part of the creeping process of using the law to say (via the back door) that trans people do become the opposite sex.

I dont remember any discussion at the time this was introduced so not sure how long ago it happened, and what the consultation process was.

@IwantToRetire the Sexual Offences Act 2009 defined a penis to include a surgically created penis when it was first enacted. Prior to that Scotland used uk law so I think the change must have been made in 2009

It doesn't need to comply with the supreme court ruling as its criminal law not civil

Thanks - and accept your point about about different laws.

But still think this is an example of how over the years, the accepted understanding of sex to be biological has been whittled away.

And this adds to the confusion, and has resulted in some people claiming that the EA is out of date.

I dont see how you can have a legal system that doesn't have a consistent understanding of what a woman is.

I wonder who in 2009 went to the trouble of having this redefinition of something that is a biological fact to be legally not.

A bit like the phrase "legal woman" now Scotland has a "legal penis".