Dennis Prager says women campus assualts lie

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

You can't lump everyone who's not on the bandwagon into the denialist category. I wasn't convinced about the scope of the problem until I read the study that Terralthra linked to. It wasn't that I felt threatened or had some psychological need to deny the truth, I just hadn't come across clear evidence yet. If the awareness movement had promoted the crystal-clear 2002 study instead of the murkier 1985 "1-in-4 study", I wouldn't have needed any convincing. If a relatively well-informed pro-feminism person like me only just now sorted through the bullshit on this issue, then the average guy has a long way to go. Said average guy is also a lot less cerebral and cool-headed than me, so if I got momentarily pissed off by the insinuation that I was threatened by women speaking out, then that's a shit debating tactic for getting the message out, and it will do a lot more harm than good.

[Terralthra]

Arthur, please do keep in mind that an at least three different ways, that 2002 study is an underestimate. A serious underestimate.

[Phillip Hone]

Arthur_Tuxedo, I see where you're coming from, but you're looking at this the wrong way. Making people angry and uncomfortable is the only way to confront an entrenched cultural problem. Do you think the phrase "marriage inequality" is any less enraging to certain people than "rape culture? is? It's not. Accusing people is necessary because so many people (read: not just men) are a HUGE part of the problem. Not because they're going out and raping people themselves - that's only a small number of people. What's easier and more worthwhile to address is the majority of people who aren't rapist themselves but engage in things that facilitate rape, such as victim blaming.

-edit-

And for what it's worth, as far as offending men goes, much of the discussion I've encountered about "rape culture" includes a discussion about male victims sexual violence and even goes into the unique problems they face ("men can't be rape!1111"). I don't think the movement is going out of its way to alienate men at all.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Simon, the reason you see such a knee jerk reaction to this issue is that often times men being accused of rape are presumed guilty until proven innocent.

Do you actually have any evidence that this is the case? Beyond media sensationalism, which isn't exclusive to rape (it happens for any high-profile crime ... remember George Zimmerman?), I have never seen any evidence that men accused of rape are treated worse than alleged criminals of any other class. This just feels like a vague appeal to a group that doesn't actually exist, like people earlier in this thread referencing "crazy feminists who think ALL men are rapists".

[General Zod]

Simon, the reason you see such a knee jerk reaction to this issue is that often times men being accused of rape are presumed guilty until proven innocent.

Do you actually have any evidence that this is the case? Beyond media sensationalism, which isn't exclusive to rape (it happens for any high-profile crime ... remember George Zimmerman?), I have never seen any evidence that men accused of rape are treated worse than alleged criminals of any other class. This just feels like a vague appeal to a group that doesn't actually exist, like people earlier in this thread referencing "crazy feminists who think ALL men are rapists".

I usually see just the opposite. You have people leaping to their defense from everywhere and ready to denounce the women as lying harlots. Especially if they're a football player and/or popular athlete.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Arthur_Tuxedo, I see where you're coming from, but you're looking at this the wrong way. Making people angry and uncomfortable is the only way to confront an entrenched cultural problem. Do you think the phrase "marriage inequality" is any less enraging to certain people than "rape culture? is? It's not. Accusing people is necessary because so many people (read: not just men) are a HUGE part of the problem. Not because they're going out and raping people themselves - that's only a small number of people. What's easier and more worthwhile to address is the majority of people who aren't rapist themselves but engage in things that facilitate rape, such as victim blaming.

-edit-

And for what it's worth, as far as offending men goes, much of the discussion I've encountered about "rape culture" includes a discussion about male victims sexual violence and even goes into the unique problems they face ("men can't be rape!1111"). I don't think the movement is going out of its way to alienate men at all.

Well, there's no way to prove whether one approach vs. another is better without the hindsight of history, but the most successful social movements that come readily to mind were the least antagonistic. MLK's (and Gandhi's before him) approach to civil rights worked and Malcom X's didn't. The recent marriage equality movement had its success rooted in making people realize that gays and lesbians were just regular people, and they already knew and liked some of them without knowing it. The only tactic I can envision that might be effective here is making people realize that people they know are both victims and perpetrators of sexual assault. Arguments about cultures of rape and people being threatened by status quo changes are just fodder for conservative demagogues to rally the troops.

[Terralthra]

There are reasonable arguments that MLK's approach to civil rights worked (inasmuch as it did, debatably) as much because people saw that the options were cooperate with the peaceful ones or else the "by any means necessary" ones will get that much more motivated.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Hmm, like a "good cop, bad cop" approach. Hopefully that will be effective on this issue, too. I suppose we will just have to wait and see.

[Channel72]

My opinion on this is basically summed up by the following article:

Source: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2 ... -are-false

How Many Rape Reports Are False?

A lot of statistics are floating around the Internet: Two percent, say many feminists, the same as other crimes. Twenty-five percent, say other groups who quarrel with the feminists on many issues, or maybe 40 percent. Here’s the real answer: We don’t know. Anyone who insists that we do know should be corrected or ignored.

The number of false accusations is what statisticians call a “dark number” -- that is, there is a true number, but it is unknown, and perhaps unknowable. For a deep dive into the reasons it’s so hard to know, I commend you to Cathy Young’s new piece at Slate, in which she details all the problems that confound investigations into false rape accusations.

Here’s what we do know: The 2 percent number is very bad and should never be cited. It apparently traces its lineage back to Susan Brownmiller’s legendary "Against Our Will," and her citation for this figure is a single speech by an appellate judge before a small group of lawyers. His source for this statistic was a single area of New York that started having policewomen conduct all rape interviews. This is not data. It is an anecdote about an anecdote.

The 41 percent number beloved of men’s-rights activists is better; it involves a peer-reviewed study by Eugene Kanin of a police department in some unknown small city. False reports could only be declared if the victim herself withdrew the charge. However. We’re talking about one city, in which 109 rapes were examined over a period of nine years. As feminists point out, victims might have withdrawn the charges simply because they found it too traumatic to engage with the police department, not because the accusation was false1 . And the study itself is now pretty elderly. A lot has changed in 20 years, including, possibly, the number of false rape accusations in this city and the rest of the nation. This number should be used only with grave caution.

But so should any other numbers, such as the 8 percent figure that is commonly attributed to the FBI. When you dig into the research itself, you find it is often heavily inflected with the authors' prior beliefs about what constitutes the “real problem”: unreported cases of rape or false reports? So Kanin is frequently chided for accepting the results of a police department investigation that included offering the victims a polygraph, because this is intimidating for true victims as well as women making false reports, and it could raise the incidence of false negatives. On the other hand, if the rate of false rape reports is quite high -- much higher than that of other crimes -- then this might be a reasonable precaution. It’s possible that by encouraging police departments not to polygraph rape victims, we have fixed a cruel system in which innocent victims are bullied into recanting. It’s also possible that we’ve increased the number of false accusations that proceed to investigation and conviction.

Shorter: You cannot treat “percentage of reports that were found to be false by investigators” as “percentage of reports that were actually false.” Some women may simply have recanted to disengage from the system. Some police officers may decide a case was false when it wasn’t. On the other hand, we also know that false accusations can make their way through the system pretty far -- witness the Duke lacrosse players and Brian Banks.

What we know is that we don’t know. We should not presume that every rape victim is telling the truth because it would make it easier for victims to come forward. Nor should we presume that every rape accusation has a 50 percent chance of being false. We should look at the facts in each case and judge them with the knowledge that some women do lie about rape -- for revenge, to cover up some problem in their own lives, to get attention and sympathy from others. And also with the knowledge that men lie, too, violating their victims a second time in order to cover up their crimes. And that while men have gone to jail for rapes they did not commit, many other men have avoided the jail time they deserved for terrible crimes against women.

That’s not a very satisfying answer, because rape is inherently a hard crime to prosecute. If someone comes into a police station with their face bashed in, you can be pretty much certain that unless they’re a professional boxer, a crime has occurred. If a rape kit shows evidence of sexual intercourse, however, all that tells you is that … something happened. Because this is something that a lot of people do to each other voluntarily, you cannot proceed immediately to the arrest. Usually there are only two witnesses, telling different stories. Often drugs or alcohol were involved, and intoxicated people make lousy witnesses.

We don’t want that to be true. Rape is an especially heinous crime, and heinously unfair -- it is mostly something that stronger men do to weaker women. How can we pile on an extra dose of unfairness -- by failing to prosecute so many of the crimes?

Feminists would like to rectify that unfairness by treating rape accusations as presumptively true, making it easier for victims to come forward. That’s understandable. But there’s a risk that this makes it easier for false accusations to get through the system, resulting in destroyed lives for men such as Brian Banks. Men’s-rights activists would like to make it harder for innocent men to get caught in a web of lies, so they want rape accusations to be interrogated with deep suspicion. But treating rape victims as possible or likely liars may make it harder for them to go forward, leaving rapists free to stalk their next victim.

No one wants to openly advocate for a hard choice that will end in injustice for someone. So instead we get the war of bad statistics, with each side claiming certainty when all we really have are dark crimes and dark numbers.

Summary: false rape accusation stats are unreliable, especially because whether or not a particular instance of sexual intercourse constitutes rape is often subjective and highly circumstantial - revolving around details which are lost to time or an alcoholic haze.

We all agree that the ski-masked psychopath rapist who stalks women at night is not the problem here - the problem is more like the high-school/college douchebag who sort of, kind of forces a woman to have sex via social pressure, a few drinks, emotional manipulation, etc. Yeah, we all hate "that guy" - but unfortunately if we're going to start legislating based around "that guy's" tactics for getting laid, we're probably going to create an atmosphere where any casual sex with a woman you don't know too well is potentially legally dangerous.

Anyway, I find it a bit irritating that we can't talk about how these sort of stats are possibly unreliable without people accusing me of trying to downplay actual rape.

[Starglider]

We all agree that the ski-masked psychopath rapist who stalks women at night is not the problem here - the problem is more like the high-school/college douchebag who sort of, kind of forces a woman to have sex via social pressure, a few drinks, emotional manipulation, etc. Yeah, we all hate "that guy" - but unfortunately if we're going to start legislating based around "that guy's" tactics for getting laid, we're probably going to create an atmosphere where any casual sex with a woman you don't know too well is potentially legally dangerous.

Physical coercion is already illegal. We can (and should) legislate against having sex with someone who is unconscious or otherwise mentally incapable of giving consent. However we cannot reasonably legislate against 'social pressure' or 'emotional maipulation'. That requires social change, and telling men that 'these methods are unacceptable' won't have much effect; generally speaking most men still want sex and a lot of men see pickup artist type techniques as the only way to get it. We can (and should) work on convincing women to resist and ignore such techniques, but on its own that has a few problems as well; there are always going to be people with low willpower and self-confidence and it means putting up with harassment indefinitely. The men aren't going to stop because their approach works less often, because they're strongly driven to get sex and are already used to frequent rejection; also statistically if most straight females aren't willing to forgoe partners entirely (or share) then some women will necessarily have to accept these techniques as a way to start a relationship. This is probably for the best as otherwise the resulting frustration would almost certainly result in increased violence.

Thus to really tackle this behaviour it is necessary to combine 'don't do this' with demonstrating to the relevant males that there is another (feminist-compatible) approach that actually works (more often than their pickup-artist type behavior), and culturally normalise it as necessary to remove any macho stigma vs the 'conquest' approach. I have seen some minimal efforts in this direction, but nothing really effective as yet, understandably as "stop being creeps/rapists" is an easier message to articulate than "here is a equalitarian and effective way to engage in romantic relationships". Unfortuantely (a) without (b) is effectively telling the 'bad guys' to "stop having any interest in sex" (and be completely obedient and subservient to the perceived feminist desire for them to stop being interested in sex). Obviously that isn't going to work and in many cases will provoke a backlash.

[Guardsman Bass]

Summary: false rape accusation stats are unreliable, especially because whether or not a particular instance of sexual intercourse constitutes rape is often subjective and highly circumstantial - revolving around details which are lost to time or an alcoholic haze.

I don't see why it isn't enough to use the FBI estimate, which is the most reliable out of the set. No figures on crime reporting rates are going to be perfect, especially on a crime like rape where the whole thing is wrapped up in sexual stigma. And it fits with the general low reporting rate on rape and sexual violence - you're not going to have a ton of false rape accusations when simply making the accusation opens you up for trouble and scorn.

As for your anger about being accused of downplaying rape, you basically just did that in your second to last paragraph. "It's unacceptable to legislate around 'that guy's' 'tactics for getting laid' lest we make people more careful about consent in casual sex". "That guy". "Tactics for getting laid".

However we cannot reasonably legislate against 'social pressure' or 'emotional maipulation'. That requires social change, and telling men that 'these methods are unacceptable' won't have much effect; generally speaking most men still want sex and a lot of men see pickup artist type techniques as the only way to get it.

California is trying exactly that with the "affirmative consent" laws, and with efforts to have on-campus discussions about what that means. Don't be so quick to write off trying to change the norms and behavior of men in these situations.

Well, there's no way to prove whether one approach vs. another is better without the hindsight of history, but the most successful social movements that come readily to mind were the least antagonistic. MLK's (and Gandhi's before him) approach to civil rights worked and Malcom X's didn't.

Both those movements were extremely antagonistic even if they didn't overtly use violence as a tactic. MLK's folks carried out marches through the middle of highly racist cities and towns, hoping that the resultant violence against them would make the news and generate sympathy and political support for them. Same goes for boycotts, protests, lawsuits - all of these were very antagonistic to the existing racial order.

[amigocabal]

So there has to be some way to ask the question by building up to it. And when it comes to "sex you didn't want, because a man gave you alcohol or drugs," there is very often a real case for sexual assault charges, even if a judge might find there is insufficient evidence to convict of rape beyond a reasonable doubt.

the problem is under our legal, moral, and ethical traditions, sex under the influence is not always rape. In fact, it is only rape when the affected person (s) are so under the influence that they perceived not when they lay down, nor when they get up. Gen. 19:35

But it's shit like this that gives so much ammo to detractors. Obviously, the reality is that college campus rape is a serious, widely-occurring problem. But this should serve as a reminder that it never helps to exaggerate the data that supports any sort of important cause - it just gives ammo to detractors and hurts the credibility of advocates.

Lesson: if you're passionate about some cause, don't fucking exaggerate. It may rally your supporters in the short term, but it just hurts your cause in the long run. Anyway, I'm not saying the 1-in-4 statistic is necessarily exaggerated because I honestly don't know - I'm saying that it detracts from the real issue, which is that campus rape actually does happen frequently.

So... when we don't even know if it's exaggerated, we shouldn't spread it because it will give detractors an excuse to mock us as exaggerating?

Yes, we should be sure of the truth.

What if that statistic were true? Should we then suppress that information consciously, for fear that people wouldn't believe it? How monstrous would that be?

It would mean our rape rates would be on par with the various ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and central Africa.

Does one false allegation hurting one man outweigh the problem nine actual rapes present for nine women? If so, that's horribly, hideously misogynistic.

False accusations threaten the integrity of our criminal justice system. Look up the following:

Grant Snowden

Gerald Amirault

Timothy Cole

Kern County sex abuse cases

It's the same thing with previous movements. Antiracist campaigns made a lot of white people incredibly uncomfortable and defensive; pro-women's suffrage campaigns made a lot of men defensive; pro-LGBT campaigns made a lot of bigoted straight people very uncomfortable. It's not just about "having the best argument" - the mere fact that you're raising the criticism at all will hurt feelings, but it still needs to happen.

The key is, you are not supposed to offend those whom you are trying to persuade. You are not supposed to make them uncomfortable towards you. I am unaware of any political campaign that was indifferent to the feelings of those whose support they were trying to gain- let alone deliberately offend them.

MLK and company were very effective propagandists. I am not aware of any speeches from them denouncing or defaming whites in general- such a thing would have effectively been a pro-KKK recruitment speech. Their finger pointing was directed towards the opposition leadership and figureheads.

Arguments about cultures of rape and people being threatened by status quo changes are just fodder for conservative demagogues to rally the troops.

One basic tactic of propaganda campaigns is not to be antagonistic towards neutrals and rank-and-file opponents. Personal attacks should be reserved for the opposing leadership.

For example, let us consider a campaign to oppose the repeal sex offender registration laws. Many supporters of that law have genuine civil rights concerns. Calling the rank-and-file perverts, rape apologists, or nithings would only harden their opposition to sex offender registries. By contrast, attacking those leading the campaign against sex offender registries may very well turn the rank-and-file against them.

MLK's folks carried out marches through the middle of highly racist cities and towns, hoping that the resultant violence against them would make the news and generate sympathy and political support for them.

In general, using violence against peaceful speakers is a poor propaganda tactic, as demonstrated by the U.S. labor union movement of the 19th century.

Here is the thing about the labor movement. It was merely a campaign for laborers to get a higher price for goods and services they were offering, similar to Verizon trying to get a higher price from me for their services.

What businesses did back then in response was the equivalent of me throwing a brick through the window of Verizon's offices as a response to a demand for higher prices. We all know how that influenced public opinion.

[amigocabal]

California is trying exactly that with the "affirmative consent" laws, and with efforts to have on-campus discussions about what that means. Don't be so quick to write off trying to change the norms and behavior of men in these situations.

I have questioned the wisdom of such laws. In the first place, is not consent, by definition, affirmative? I am unaware of any law that even posits the existence of non-affirmative consent. Would not non-affirmative consent be like irrational number that can be expressed as a ratio of two non-zero integers?

The L.A. Times editorial board has misgivings about the law.

But is there a role for the government in mandating affirmative consent? It seems extremely difficult and extraordinarily intrusive to micromanage sex so closely as to tell young people what steps they must take in the privacy of their own dorm rooms. Colleges, to their credit, are struggling to clarify and strengthen their policies on sexual misconduct, and are seeking to provide better support for victims of sexual assault in the face of growing concern about the issue. But must they become so prescriptive as to try to set rules about exactly how sex should proceed? There are serious questions about whether such a policy is either reasonable or enforceable.

Can we not simply enforce existing laws against rape? Why change the definition (assuming that affirmative consent is somehow differently from non-affirmative consent, if something like that can even exist)? The problem is not caused by 2,500+ years of legal, moral, and ethical traditions about rape, but by people who defy them.

[amigocabal]

I think the biggest resistance you'll encounter is the expansion of what "rape" is from the obvious "she said no/resisted" to the much more ambiguous "she wasn't completely enthusiastic".

Is there any area of the law where enthusiasm is an essential element of consent?

I am unaware of a Supreme Court case throwing out the evidence collected from a warrantless search because while the searchee said yes to the search, it was not enthusiastic enough.

[Simon_Jester]

So there has to be some way to ask the question by building up to it. And when it comes to "sex you didn't want, because a man gave you alcohol or drugs," there is very often a real case for sexual assault charges, even if a judge might find there is insufficient evidence to convict of rape beyond a reasonable doubt.

the problem is under our legal, moral, and ethical traditions, sex under the influence is not always rape. In fact, it is only rape when the affected person (s) are so under the influence that they perceived not when they lay down, nor when they get up. Gen. 19:35

...Uh, a Biblical quotation is not evidence. Nor is it a "fact." Not in the context of modern law. Why don't you just come right out and say that your real problem is with the definition of "too drunk to consent," and you think it should be relaxed so that more drunk women can get taken advantage of?

Because that's basically the only logical place I can take your argument here.

Remember that the point here is that you have to somehow ask women "have you been given alcohol or drugs, gotten heavily intoxicated as a result, and made to have sex you would not have consented to while sober?" Because in many such cases that IS rape, and even when it isn't it's still a real social problem that young women deserve to be warned about.

Unless, of course, we're preoccupied with the fact that a statistic MIGHT BE significantly exaggerating the number of rapes.* So preoccupied with that fact that we basically stop caring about the actual point of the exercise, which is to give women a realistic appreciation that rape is in fact a common danger, that it doesn't only happen to "sluts," that males they thought were friends actually may try to get them drunk or drugged to have sex with them, and so on.

*It isn't, and others have demonstrated this in this very thread.

Yes, we should be sure of the truth.

So... let me get this straight. You personally think this statistic is exaggerated. Despite considerable reasons to think it isn't, presented in this thread, right in front of your eyes. And therefore it should be suppressed, and NO statistic should be given out. Or if there is such a statistic you're prepared to give out, you haven't told anyone what it is.

What utter bullshit.

What if that statistic were true? Should we then suppress that information consciously, for fear that people wouldn't believe it? How monstrous would that be?

It would mean our rape rates would be on par with the various ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and central Africa.

Or that rape is underreported in those societies too. Come on, this isn't hard to grasp.

Does one false allegation hurting one man outweigh the problem nine actual rapes present for nine women? If so, that's horribly, hideously misogynistic.

False accusations threaten the integrity of our criminal justice system. Look up the following:

So is the answer to my question yes, or no?

We've never been able to prevent people from being falsely accused of any crime. There is no reason to suppose that informing women about how common rape is, or how to avoid it, will cause an upsurge in the rate of false accusations. And yet... somehow the false-terror of false accusations* trumps the actual terror of knowing that there is a double-digit chance that during her lifetime, any given woman will be raped. Somehow the first issue is a big enough problem to prevent us from doing anything about the second issue. Even things that shouldn't impact the first issue at all.

At which point the "what about false accusations" thing starts to sound like a dog-whistle for "let's not take women seriously or pay attention to their concerns because men are people and women are baby-makers with dumb opinions."

*Which are quite rare, at most 10% of a single-digit percentage of the percentage of actual rapes, and therefore happen to about 1 in 1000 men.

It's the same thing with previous movements. Antiracist campaigns made a lot of white people incredibly uncomfortable and defensive; pro-women's suffrage campaigns made a lot of men defensive; pro-LGBT campaigns made a lot of bigoted straight people very uncomfortable. It's not just about "having the best argument" - the mere fact that you're raising the criticism at all will hurt feelings, but it still needs to happen.

The key is, you are not supposed to offend those whom you are trying to persuade. You are not supposed to make them uncomfortable towards you. I am unaware of any political campaign that was indifferent to the feelings of those whose support they were trying to gain- let alone deliberately offend them.

And yet, whites were empirically made very uncomfortable and felt defamed (often unjustly) by even very moderate and considered anti-racist statements.

Because just walking up to a podium and saying "I think black and white people are equally good" is enough to get a genuine bigot thinking "eeeew what if my daughter marries one of those inferior subhumans?"

MLK and company were very effective propagandists. I am not aware of any speeches from them denouncing or defaming whites in general- such a thing would have effectively been a pro-KKK recruitment speech. Their finger pointing was directed towards the opposition leadership and figureheads.

And in this case there is no opposition leadership; there is an amorphous mass of evil men, and a larger but more diffuse mass of men who tolerate their evil, or act in ways that enable it.

MLK's folks carried out marches through the middle of highly racist cities and towns, hoping that the resultant violence against them would make the news and generate sympathy and political support for them.

In general, using violence against peaceful speakers is a poor propaganda tactic, as demonstrated by the U.S. labor union movement of the 19th century.

Well, in this case the entire movement is a complaint about ongoing massive-scale violence directed against women, to the tune of a million women a year being victimized or brutalized in terrible ways.

You would think they'd already have all the political support and public sympathy they need just from that.

I have questioned the wisdom of such laws. In the first place, is not consent, by definition, affirmative? I am unaware of any law that even posits the existence of non-affirmative consent. Would not non-affirmative consent be like irrational number that can be expressed as a ratio of two non-zero integers?

And yet this is routinely used as a gray area by defense lawyers in rape cases. It goes like this:

"He pinned me to the bed, pulled off my clothes, and had sex with me without a condom."

"But did you say no, clearly and unambiguously? Remember, you can be charged with perjury for misrepresenting information on the stand..."

[gulps] "I was so drunk I was slurring my speech and I can barely remember what I said, on account of all those martinis he bought me!"

"Your Honor, gentlemen of the jury, let the record show that there is NO evidence, not even the plaintiff's own testimony, that she said 'no,' in clear or unambiguous tones. Therefore, my client had no reasonable way of knowing that this sexual act was supposedly happening without her permission!

Obviously this is bullshit. Consent is indeed an affirmative thing, and a person too scared or intoxicated to give unambiguous consent should be assumed by default NOT to have given consent.

Thus, when the law is changed to confirm this, there is no change to the sensible interpretation of the law. The law is merely modified to fit a logical, consistent definition of "consent" and close a loophole.

But is there a role for the government in mandating affirmative consent? It seems extremely difficult and extraordinarily intrusive to micromanage sex so closely as to tell young people what steps they must take in the privacy of their own dorm rooms. Colleges, to their credit, are struggling to clarify and strengthen their policies on sexual misconduct, and are seeking to provide better support for victims of sexual assault in the face of growing concern about the issue. But must they become so prescriptive as to try to set rules about exactly how sex should proceed? There are serious questions about whether such a policy is either reasonable or enforceable.

Can we not simply enforce existing laws against rape? Why change the definition (assuming that affirmative consent is somehow differently from non-affirmative consent, if something like that can even exist)? The problem is not caused by 2,500+ years of legal, moral, and ethical traditions about rape, but by people who defy them.

That would seem to not be true. Even now, the laws on the books in many places can let a man get away with rape on the grounds that the woman didn't shout "NO!" loud enough. Not long ago, it was normal for the courts to simply dismiss rape charges as false out of hand unless there was evidence that the woman had risked her life by struggling violently against a stronger attacker. Or because the woman had knowingly entered the man's home, or allowed the man into her home, as though that was in itself consent to sex.

So yes, actually, the problem IS caused by 2500+ years of legal, "moral," and ethical traditions about rape. It's just that you have a very selective memory.

[amigocabal]

the problem is under our legal, moral, and ethical traditions, sex under the influence is not always rape. In fact, it is only rape when the affected person (s) are so under the influence that they perceived not when they lay down, nor when they get up. Gen. 19:35

...Uh, a Biblical quotation is not evidence. Nor is it a "fact." Not in the context of modern law. Why don't you just come right out and say that your real problem is with the definition of "too drunk to consent," and you think it should be relaxed so that more drunk women can get taken advantage of?

Because that's basically the only logical place I can take your argument here.

Remember that the point here is that you have to somehow ask women "have you been given alcohol or drugs, gotten heavily intoxicated as a result, and made to have sex you would not have consented to while sober?" Because in many such cases that IS rape, and even when it isn't it's still a real social problem that young women deserve to be warned about.

the proper question would be, "Were you so intoxicated that you were unaware of what was going on nor able to communicate consent?" The standard is not whether the drunk person would have consented if sober, but whether the drunk person had the physical capacity to consent.

I will use warrantless searches as an analogy. Under our 4th Amendment jurisprudence, such searches are lawful is conducted with the consent of the searchee. A searchee who is passed out drunk at home would clearly not be able to consent to a search for 4th Amendment purposes, and as such a warrant would be required (absent other factors under 4th Amendment jurisprudence that would justify the search).

But what about a drunk person who consent under the influence, but would not have consented while sober. I doubt that the courts would throw out the results of such a search on 4th Amendment grounds.

to oput it bluntly, sex with someone sufficiently intoxicated would be rape- not because the person would not have consented while siober, but because the person could not consent at all.

It's the same thing with previous movements. Antiracist campaigns made a lot of white people incredibly uncomfortable and defensive; pro-women's suffrage campaigns made a lot of men defensive; pro-LGBT campaigns made a lot of bigoted straight people very uncomfortable. It's not just about "having the best argument" - the mere fact that you're raising the criticism at all will hurt feelings, but it still needs to happen.

The key is, you are not supposed to offend those whom you are trying to persuade. You are not supposed to make them uncomfortable towards you. I am unaware of any political campaign that was indifferent to the feelings of those whose support they were trying to gain- let alone deliberately offend them.

And yet, whites were empirically made very uncomfortable and felt defamed (often unjustly) by even very moderate and considered anti-racist statements.

If they were defamned unjustly, then they would remain on the fence (if not outright joining the KKK.)

If they were defamed justly, then they were not the target audience in the first place.


Fortunately, not enough of them were made very uncomfortable nor felt defamed that they could have prevented the success of the civil rights movement

Because just walking up to a podium and saying "I think black and white people are equally good" is enough to get a genuine bigot thinking "eeeew what if my daughter marries one of those inferior subhumans?"

The genuine bigots were not the target audience.

MLK and company were very effective propagandists. I am not aware of any speeches from them denouncing or defaming whites in general- such a thing would have effectively been a pro-KKK recruitment speech. Their finger pointing was directed towards the opposition leadership and figureheads.

And in this case there is no opposition leadership; there is an amorphous mass of evil men, and a larger but more diffuse mass of men who tolerate their evil, or act in ways that enable it.

And the latter was the target audience. Directly accusing them of aiding and abetting the evil would have only driven them into the arms actually committing the evil.

In general, using violence against peaceful speakers is a poor propaganda tactic, as demonstrated by the U.S. labor union movement of the 19th century.

Well, in this case the entire movement is a complaint about ongoing massive-scale violence directed against women, to the tune of a million women a year being victimized or brutalized in terrible ways.

You would think they'd already have all the political support and public sympathy they need just from that.

Laws requiring registration of sex offenders are widely supported, as are laws keeping sex offenders from our schools. See here for an example. Few people can credibly argue that victims of rape have little public support.

I have questioned the wisdom of such laws. In the first place, is not consent, by definition, affirmative? I am unaware of any law that even posits the existence of non-affirmative consent. Would not non-affirmative consent be like irrational number that can be expressed as a ratio of two non-zero integers?

And yet this is routinely used as a gray area by defense lawyers in rape cases. It goes like this:

"He pinned me to the bed, pulled off my clothes, and had sex with me without a condom."

"But did you say no, clearly and unambiguously? Remember, you can be charged with perjury for misrepresenting information on the stand..."

[gulps] "I was so drunk I was slurring my speech and I can barely remember what I said, on account of all those martinis he bought me!"

"Your Honor, gentlemen of the jury, let the record show that there is NO evidence, not even the plaintiff's own testimony, that she said 'no,' in clear or unambiguous tones. Therefore, my client had no reasonable way of knowing that this sexual act was supposedly happening without her permission!

Obviously this is bullshit. Consent is indeed an affirmative thing, and a person too scared or intoxicated to give unambiguous consent should be assumed by default NOT to have given consent.

Thus, when the law is changed to confirm this, there is no change to the sensible interpretation of the law. The law is merely modified to fit a logical, consistent definition of "consent" and close a loophole.

Defense lawyers are obligated to use reasonable defenses for their clients.


This particular defense, though, has been rejected by the California Supreme Court. as a matter of state l;aw (and the California Supreme Court is of course the highest authority on California state law) such a defense must fail on the merits.

[Grumman]

Remember that the point here is that you have to somehow ask women "have you been given alcohol or drugs, gotten heavily intoxicated as a result, and made to have sex you would not have consented to while sober?" Because in many such cases that IS rape, and even when it isn't it's still a real social problem that young women deserve to be warned about.

the proper question would be, "Were you so intoxicated that you were unaware of what was going on nor able to communicate consent?" The standard is not whether the drunk person would have consented if sober, but whether the drunk person had the physical capacity to consent.

I would say you're both correct, and that it would be rape if the victim is so intoxicated that they cannot express consent or lack thereof OR if the victim has been drugged to make them consent to sex they wouldn't have consented to otherwise. If someone is drunk of their own volition and so consents to sex they wouldn't consent to sober, I would not call that rape. To do so creates the absurd possibility that two people can both be guilty of raping the other, or even that someone who gets drunk and rapes someone at knifepoint would be considered a victim and not the perpetrator.

I will use warrantless searches as an analogy. Under our 4th Amendment jurisprudence, such searches are lawful is conducted with the consent of the searchee. A searchee who is passed out drunk at home would clearly not be able to consent to a search for 4th Amendment purposes, and as such a warrant would be required (absent other factors under 4th Amendment jurisprudence that would justify the search).

But what about a drunk person who consent under the influence, but would not have consented while sober. I doubt that the courts would throw out the results of such a search on 4th Amendment grounds.

to oput it bluntly, sex with someone sufficiently intoxicated would be rape- not because the person would not have consented while siober, but because the person could not consent at all.

That is one half of the equation. The other is that if a drunk person consented to a search, but they were only drunk because the police wanted them to consent, that would also be an illegal search.

[Elfdart]

Summary: false rape accusation stats are unreliable, especially because whether or not a particular instance of sexual intercourse constitutes rape is often subjective and highly circumstantial - revolving around details which are lost to time or an alcoholic haze.

I don't see why it isn't enough to use the FBI estimate, which is the most reliable out of the set. No figures on crime reporting rates are going to be perfect, especially on a crime like rape where the whole thing is wrapped up in sexual stigma. And it fits with the general low reporting rate on rape and sexual violence - you're not going to have a ton of false rape accusations when simply making the accusation opens you up for trouble and scorn.

As for your anger about being accused of downplaying rape, you basically just did that in your second to last paragraph. "It's unacceptable to legislate around 'that guy's' 'tactics for getting laid' lest we make people more careful about consent in casual sex". "That guy". "Tactics for getting laid".

Let's look at what he wrote, to be clear:

We all agree that the ski-masked psychopath rapist who stalks women at night is not the problem here - the problem is more like the high-school/college douchebag who sort of, kind of forces a woman to have sex via social pressure, a few drinks, emotional manipulation, etc. Yeah, we all hate "that guy" - but unfortunately if we're going to start legislating based around "that guy's" tactics for getting laid, we're probably going to create an atmosphere where any casual sex with a woman you don't know too well is potentially legally dangerous.

I'm assuming he used the word forces figuratively here, rather than literally. In the latter case, it's an open-and-shut case of rape. In the former, it is just being a douchebag to get laid. Threatening to dump your SO and find someone new if she won't put out is not rape. Trying to convince someone you've started dating that if she's not willing to give you a blowjob then she's too uptight and not cool enough to hang out with your in crowd is not rape. Giving someone drinks/buying them dinner/gifts/etc and hinting that if she wants to keep getting these presents they'll have to give you sex is not rape.

An asshole isn't necessarily a rapist.

California is trying exactly that with the "affirmative consent" laws, and with efforts to have on-campus discussions about what that means. Don't be so quick to write off trying to change the norms and behavior of men in these situations.

While the latter is a good idea, the former strikes me as silly. First there's the sheer absurdity of expecting people to ask for express permission at each stage, and treating any case of one partner jumping the gun as rape. You ask and receive permission to remove her bra and fondle her tits but you start sucking on them without asking, so now you're guilty of sexual assault? It's laughable.

Secondly, someone who's willing to commit rape is going to to be willing to lie about it afterward ("But your honor, she begged me to jump her bones!"), so even with the new law, you're back to square one with one person's word against another's.

Now, if the purpose of the law is to get derelict police and prosecutors to take rape seriously, there are better ways to do it than turning every hook-up on campus as a game of Simon Says.

I've been ball-busting Dennis Prager for years, including on his own radio show (It's pretty easy to get on, which should tell you how big his audience is), but in this case the fatuous old gasbag kinda has a point. If you're going to lump everything from leering to catcalls to groping to rape under the umbrella of "sexual assault" (Jon Stewart used the term for some frat boy popping a coed's bikini top at a beach party) then you're cheapening actual sexual assault claims, and the reaction to future charges will be indifference or outright dismissal and scorn.

I just find it amusing to hear this right-winger echoing what Dr. Kinsey (who is right up there with Darwin in the Right's pantheon of bogeymen) said over 60 years ago. Namely, that if all the sodomy, perversion and "crimes against nature" laws were strictly enforced, then most of the male population would be in prison: everything from adultery to homosexuality to miscegenation (none of which are crimes now, thank goodness) to the all to common cases of teenagers being charged with statutory rape for screwing around with other teens only a couple of years younger. We just had a case in Virginia where the police wanted to photograph a teen's hard-on because he sexted another teen.

[Simon_Jester]

the proper question would be, "Were you so intoxicated that you were unaware of what was going on nor able to communicate consent?" The standard is not whether the drunk person would have consented if sober, but whether the drunk person had the physical capacity to consent.

But what about a drunk person who consent under the influence, but would not have consented while sober. I doubt that the courts would throw out the results of such a search on 4th Amendment grounds.

to oput it bluntly, sex with someone sufficiently intoxicated would be rape- not because the person would not have consented while siober, but because the person could not consent at all.

You are missing a point by considering the matter only as an amateur lawyer.

From the point of view of a woman who wants to preserve her own safety and bodily integrity, getting drunk and having sex she would otherwise have gone 'ew, no' to is not better than getting so drunk she passes out and is raped while unconscious. She is just as much at risk from unwanted pregnancies or STDs. She is at just as much risk of social stigma, perhaps more so.

Now, the question of "was this woman physically capable of giving consent" affects whether the man can be legally convicted of rape. But that is not at issue here. Remember, the original complaint was that the "1 in 4" statistic is exaggerated. Except that the "1 in 4" statistic is not a legally actionable statement; it is not a matter of criminal law or even civil law.

It is a simple matter of asking women "were you the victim of sexual misconduct pressed upon you by coercion or intoxication?"

Not every case of a woman answering "yes" to that question will necessarily lead to a rape conviction if tried in court. That does not matter, for purposes of trying to count the number of rapes that occur, and pass on that number to the general population.

For this purpose, you splitting hairs about whether the survey is using the same definition of 'consent' as the law is really is beside the point. While successful hair-splitting about consent might save you from going to jail if you stood accused of rape in court, it would not have any effect on the consequences of the act for the victim. And the women who might become victims of this crime have a right to know how common the crime really is, not just how common convictions for the crime are.
______________________________

And yet, whites were empirically made very uncomfortable and felt defamed (often unjustly) by even very moderate and considered anti-racist statements.

If they were defamned unjustly, then they would remain on the fence (if not outright joining the KKK.)

If they were defamed justly, then they were not the target audience in the first place.

Actually, attempting to shame people into acting better is a time-honored technique that can work quite well when done correctly.

But more to the point, what you do not seem to grasp is that the target and non-target audiences are mingled, and that they don't carry little magic HTML tags that say "is-a-target" and "is-not-a-target." A person who is bigoted may be convinced to stop expressing their bigotry openly, may be filled with doubt about their bigotry. May be cowed, at least to the point where they stop causing active suffering for the targets of that bigotry. Conversely, a person who is not bigoted may feel sympathy for friends or relatives who are, may be infected by their viewpoint, or may feel uncomfortable with the idea that this friend of theirs is a bad person.

Very few men want to think "wow, my cousin's habit of getting girls falling-down drunk, taking them back to his place, and 'scoring' with them makes him a creepy rapist." Some men may be made uncomfortable by realizing that this is true. That doesn't mean we should suppress the evidence that such a thing happens, or pretend that it's morally acceptable, for fear of hurting someone's sensibilities.

Because just walking up to a podium and saying "I think black and white people are equally good" is enough to get a genuine bigot thinking "eeeew what if my daughter marries one of those inferior subhumans?"

The genuine bigots were not the target audience.

And yet they are present, and will be made uncomfortable.

So the fact that saying "this bad thing happens" makes people uncomfortable cannot be interpreted to mean "we should not say that this happens." Especially if it actually does happen.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, if you say you don't want to live in a world where 1% of babies are born with birth defects, you have a problem. Because in real life the rate is 4%. Pretending otherwise to shelter your squeamishness isn't doing you any favors.

The same reasoning applies to the rape rate. If you want to pretend that you live in a world where only one man in a thousand is crazy enough to commit rape, you have a problem, because the real number is at least sixty in a thousand, based on the survey Terralthra discussed. If you want to pretend you live in a world where only a few percent of women are raped, you have a problem, because it's not a few percent. It's more like twenty or twenty-five.

Pretending otherwise to shelter your squeamishness isn't doing you any favors. And it's certainly not doing women (who deserve to get a warning about the dangers they face) any favors.
____________________________________

Directly accusing [the target audience] of aiding and abetting the evil would have only driven them into the arms actually committing the evil.

Are you made more likely to commit rape by being told the fact that other people tell you that one in four women get raped during their lifetime?

Are you made more likely to protect a rapist by being told this?

Are you made more likely to be insensitive about rape, or to tell jokes and express attitudes that encourage other men to think they can get away with rape, because you are told this?

If the answer to these questions is "no," your analogy is worthless.

If the answer to any of these questions is "yes," your moral compass points in the direction of due horrible-idiocy and I no longer care about your opinions.
_______________________________________

In general, using violence against peaceful speakers is a poor propaganda tactic, as demonstrated by the U.S. labor union movement of the 19th century.

Well, in this case the entire movement is a complaint about ongoing massive-scale violence directed against women, to the tune of a million women a year being victimized or brutalized in terrible ways.

You would think they'd already have all the political support and public sympathy they need just from that.

Laws requiring registration of sex offenders are widely supported, as are laws keeping sex offenders from our schools. See here for an example. Few people can credibly argue that victims of rape have little public support.[/quote]You miss the point. Again. The point is that when women's organizations seek to actually publicize the number of rapes that really happen, they get people like Dennis Prager (and you) trying to stop them.

The fact that society is quick to advocate punishing convicted rapists does women little good if only a few percent of rapists are ever actually convicted. If whenever anyone tries to do anything to reduce the number of actual rapists*, people like you oppose it, then no, rape victims are not being politically supported. At least, not by you.

*Other than single out the few percent of men who are convicted as uniquely monstrous beings, that is.
____________________

Defense lawyers are obligated to use reasonable defenses for their clients.

They are not, however, required to use a defense that is reasonable in your opinion. Even if you are a lawyer, which I doubt, they're still allowed to use more or less whatever they can get away with, so long as it creates reasonable doubt that the law-as-written has been violated.

Saying "she could have resisted/said no/wore less revealing clothing" is very much a "traditional" means by which men accused of rape escape punishment by claiming the sex was consensual. So it is well worth our time to amend our laws to make it clear that this tradition has come to an end, and that consent is being defined affirmatively for purposes of the law's definition of 'consensual sex.'

This particular defense, though, has been rejected by the California Supreme Court. as a matter of state l;aw (and the California Supreme Court is of course the highest authority on California state law) such a defense must fail on the merits.

How can it POSSIBLY be a problem in your eyes if California law is rewritten to close a loophole defense that the California Supreme Court has identified as failing on the merits? It is to our advantage to rewrite the law to forbid and exclude defenses that fail on the merits. That way we're less likely to risk having a biased judge or suggestible jury decide to admit the defense and set a guilty defendant free.

[Beowulf]

You are missing a point by considering the matter only as an amateur lawyer.

From the point of view of a woman who wants to preserve her own safety and bodily integrity, getting drunk and having sex she would otherwise have gone 'ew, no' to is not better than getting so drunk she passes out and is raped while unconscious. She is just as much at risk from unwanted pregnancies or STDs. She is at just as much risk of social stigma, perhaps more so.

Now, the question of "was this woman physically capable of giving consent" affects whether the man can be legally convicted of rape. But that is not at issue here. Remember, the original complaint was that the "1 in 4" statistic is exaggerated. Except that the "1 in 4" statistic is not a legally actionable statement; it is not a matter of criminal law or even civil law.

It is a simple matter of asking women "were you the victim of sexual misconduct pressed upon you by coercion or intoxication?"

Not every case of a woman answering "yes" to that question will necessarily lead to a rape conviction if tried in court. That does not matter, for purposes of trying to count the number of rapes that occur, and pass on that number to the general population.

For this purpose, you splitting hairs about whether the survey is using the same definition of 'consent' as the law is really is beside the point. While successful hair-splitting about consent might save you from going to jail if you stood accused of rape in court, it would not have any effect on the consequences of the act for the victim. And the women who might become victims of this crime have a right to know how common the crime really is, not just how common convictions for the crime are.

How is a guy suppose to know that the girl who apparently wants into his pants wouldn't consent if she were sober, under this standard?

And let's flip the situation: would a guy having had a drink or three result in the girl he's having sex with being a rapist if he would not have consented to having sex with her if he were sober?

And to add the final complication: neither of them would have consented to sex if they were sober. Are they both rapists, and victims?

[Simon_Jester]

Again, the point I'm making is that you are focusing on "is Person B criminally liable for committing rape" when I'm focusing on "does Person A experience the same consequences that would follow from something that is a rape, and for all practical purposes have to now deal with having been raped?"

For a woman who's worried about getting STDs, or getting pregnant, or feeling violated, there is very little practical difference between "sex while I was passed out drunk" and "sex while incoherent enough that the guy thought I was consenting, but I don't think I was and I really don't think I should have."

This is not a criminal trial we're talking about. Criminal standards of 'consent' do not apply. If one in four women end up having sex they really did not want, because they were forced to or because they were intoxicated, the consequences for them still matter. Regardless of whether they could successfully get a rape conviction in court, which we already know is hard to do unless there is open-and-shut physical evidence.

And they still have a legitimate right to know what the risks are, in today's society, that this can happen to them, with thus-and-such probability. To inform them of this, it is fitting and proper to say "1 in 4 women have experienced sexual activity they didn't want, due to force, coercion, or intoxication. It is, with considerable justification in my opinion, fitting and proper to abbreviate this as "1 in 4 women have been raped."

That is not the same thing as saying "Therefore, Your Honor, the following list of men responsible for these 75 million incidents of rape should be convicted of rape." It is not and does not attempt to be an argument in court, so a standard of evidence that only applies in court may not apply here.
____________________________________

Moreover the whole thing is a red herring, because we have an entirely different survey in which 6% of men basically admitted to being rapists, under a definition stricter than the one you accuse of having been used. Since they also admitted to averaging four rapes apiece, this strongly suggests that the actual figure for rapes is somewhere in the 20-25% range after all. Through a totally independent line of evidence that has nothing to do with "but let's split hairs over whether this survey used the correct definition of 'consent!' "

[Feil]

Before this can turn into any more of a brainbug...

The 1 in 4 figure is not a figure of how many women report (when surveyed) that they have been victims of rape or attempted rape out of all women. That number typically falls between 1/6 and 1/5. 1/4 is for women graduating college.

The 1 in 4 figure was originally reported by a 1985 survey but it does not "come from" the 1985 survey. In fact, a 1985 survey taken in isolation is basically useless for estimating modern figures - it's been thirty years, for goodness sake.

The 1 in 4 figure currently referenced by One In Four USA is derived from a 2006 study, the questions for which you can read on page 10 of the following document. None of the wordings seem ambiguous to me (in fact, the 1 in 4 figure may now represent a severe under-reporting of drug-enabled rape), but I suggest reading for yourself. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/210346.pdf

The wikipedia article that appears to have started this particular brainbug is obviously biased, neglects to mention that the combined 2.8% figure it mentions in the second section is for a single academic year, and most of the first two sections are drawn from a single non-scientific document (an opinion/argument book by a controversial author). Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Wikipedia's standard is verifiability, not truth.

[Channel72]

As for your anger about being accused of downplaying rape, you basically just did that in your second to last paragraph. "It's unacceptable to legislate around 'that guy's' 'tactics for getting laid' lest we make people more careful about consent in casual sex". "That guy". "Tactics for getting laid".

I don't follow. How is that downplaying rape? The point is that clear-cut instances of rape (like the ski-masked psycho who stalks women at night) aren't the issue here.

The issue is more like the following:

Guy and girl hanging out in a dorm room, watching TV (or Hulu or whatever kids these days do), drinking shitty beer probably - guy makes a few moves, girl laughs it off - indicating disinterest. Guy tries again a few times, as girl consumes more beer, and her blood-alcohol level steadily increases. Girl continues to laugh it off - guy gets more pushy, etc. Girl (at this point dozing off and extremely drunk) finally submits.

Is that rape? Yeah, I would say so. But how can we possibly legislate around that sort of rape? There are only two witnesses, the girl didn't physically resist, and there's no forensic evidence that would indicate rape. If the girl decides to press charges after sobering up a bit, there would be nothing to disambiguate her case from a case where the girl willingly consented after minimal prodding, or initiated the act herself.

Again:

If someone comes into a police station with their face bashed in, you can be pretty much certain that unless they’re a professional boxer, a crime has occurred. If a rape kit shows evidence of sexual intercourse, however, all that tells you is that … something happened. Because this is something that a lot of people do to each other voluntarily, you cannot proceed immediately to the arrest. Usually there are only two witnesses, telling different stories. Often drugs or alcohol were involved, and intoxicated people make lousy witnesses.

[Simon_Jester]

Again, what's really tripping people up here is urge, when they hear "this number of rapes happened," to respond "but how could we prove that they happened in court?" Apparently there's this notion in people's heads that what is really wanted by people trying to reduce the rape rate is somehow sinister. Say, to somehow create exceptions to due process for rape, so that men can be sent to jail purely because women say so in the absence of other evidence. Or something like that.

That's not the point. That's not the idea, that's not the purpose of all this.

The purpose of this is to spread awareness, make it clear that rape is something that happens often. That something like one in every 15-20 men does it, has done it, or will do it. That it doesn't just happen to one unlucky woman out of a thousand, it's a real danger and women are justified in doing things men may find a bit odd, in order to reduce their exposure.

And that yes, it is actually morally wrong to keep pressuring someone to have sex when you know they don't want to. And doubly wrong to do so when you're planning to make sure they wind up too intoxicated to consent. That no, this is not 'normal' behavior, it is actually a form of rape.

There are large sectors of the American public where this knowledge is, essentially, not present. Or at least partially suppressed, usually due to 'traditional' and inaccurate stereotypes about men, women, and sexual behavior.

So spreading the awareness, and making sure that people are actually thinking about this, and are prepared to accept it as a major issue that merits our attention, is the purpose of spreading statistics.

It is not about female separatists trying to paint all men as evil criminals. It is not about trying to erase the standards of due process in criminal rape charges. It is not about trying to create a list and say "these ten million American men are rapists and should die."

It is about just getting recognition of this as a serious problem, one that has not simply gotten 'fixed' by the spread of women's rights over the past half century.

Which, apparently, is a major uphill battle for some reason, and the fact that it appears to be one has done more to make me sympathize with feminists than any other single factor I can think of.

[Channel72]

Well, it's probably an uphill battle because, in the popular mindset, rape is a crime that is right up there with murder in terms of severity. A lot of men probably wouldn't even consider the idea that persistently pressuring a woman to have sex (alcohol or no alcohol), is remotely worthy of the word "rape", which should be something reserved for gang members and psychopaths. The word "rapist" doesn't usually conjure up the idea of a douchebag college senior - it conjures up the image of like, this guy or something - basically violent gang members and other ruthless criminals who brutalize women.

So naturally men don't want to be associated with that, or even consider that any sexual encounters they've had with women are anything remotely like that. The long-term solution is a cultural shift via education, but it's going to be an uphill battle because the word "rape" is an extremely powerful word which will constantly act as a stumbling block in this conversation. It's going to be difficult to equate persistently pressuring a woman to have sex, and like - violently assaulting and sexually brutalizing a woman. Since the word "rapist" conjures up the latter scenario this sort of resistance is expected.