1 in 6 female Australian students raped

[Knife]

Haha yeah, it's a model when actual people who were actually raped (and if you demand proof then nobody ought to ever touch you again, let alone fuck your worthless carcass) express their genuine feelings that the opinions stated by a police officer indicate that the cops don't really care about people who have been raped!

Again, how is this different than any other violent crime? Are rape victims some how special over say, violent assault victims, or people who survived a murder attempt? Is the mental/emotional trauma rape victims suffer superior to that of someone savagely beaten? Rape PTSD is worse than 'got the shit kicked out of them to with in an inch of their life' PTSD? Police still somehow are supposed to investigate those crimes, part of which I assume is to question the victim and investigate the charge. This is pretty much the core of the argument going on in this thread at the moment, as I read it. SVPD is saying that you should investigate completely each case, including questioning the validity of the charge made by the victim, and a bunch of people incensed by the very notion that the victim should be treated in any way that could be interpreted as thinking he/she could be wrong/faking it/mistaken.

Hell, why accommodate people who've been raped anyways! Discussions move so much quicker if they aren't there to speak up for themselves!!

That is actually your cute little straw man you've apparently spent time crafting up in your home. Nobody has said to not accommodate victims. The question being asked is are we accommodating too much that both inhibits proper investigation, and causes actual harm to the victim by reinforces the notion over and over again that they are victims.

(PS: I bolded the part you should have read before making yourself look like a heartless fucker.)

I have all the sympathy to people who have suffered through horrible situations. I'm a vet for christ sakes and a nurse, I have a working concept of PTSD. But I also understand, hence my analogy to kids with cancer, that if you do nothing but identify a person by their victim hood, you steal away the other things that person is, and reduce them to a mere one dimensional symbol, and hurt those people by stealing away those things. If a bunch of people do nothing but treat you like a victim, you become nothing but a victim, destroying their self esteem, their sense of individuality, and hope. So if you want to make an emotional argument, I would contend that stealing all that away from them long term is every bit as dehumanizing as their short term horrible event. Psychologically speaking, if people who went through that process, and are identifying themselves as nothing but a victim, of course trying to challenge that (in effect taking that away from them) is fucking horrible and scary because that's all they have left. So I understand the vitriol about it, doesn't make it any more right or correct though. We should be looking out for their long term mental health as much as their short term health as well.


Edit: fixed a quote tag.

[Lusankya]

The reason that I rarely talk about being raped by my ex is because I cannot separate the rape from the two and a half years of abuse that surrounded it. The rape itself was not particularly more or less traumatising than, say, having him handcuff me to the basin and threaten me with a knife, or the way he would constantly call me a worthless slut and a whore, or the way he would literally tickle me for hours on end (which still gives me panic attacks to this day), however the fact that I cannot talk about the rape without bringing up the rest of it - a time of my life that I very much wish to just expunge from history and my memory - keeps me quiet about it. Those conditions which made the rape possible in the first place, and the fact that I stayed with him long after he raped me, are plenty enough stigma to keep potential partners from trying to date me, and to destroy my relationship with my sisters. Now, I suppose some people will jump in and say, "ah, but that's the abuse that's harming you, not the rape itself", but those people are missing the fact that in my mind, they are one and the same thing.

And no. I didn't go to the police about it. The odds of any charges actually being placed seemed remote, and had he discovered that I'd gone to the police, I very much believe that he would have come after me, and I felt that cooperating fully with a police would have put a very big damper on my plan of getting the hell out of the state so that he'd definitely never be able to find me again. These were of much greater concern to me than helping to improve rape reporting statistics.

Gods, I hate this thread.

[PainRack]

The reason that I rarely talk about being raped by my ex is because I cannot separate the rape from the two and a half years of abuse that surrounded it. The rape itself was not particularly more or less traumatising than, say, having him handcuff me to the basin and threaten me with a knife, or the way he would constantly call me a worthless slut and a whore, or the way he would literally tickle me for hours on end (which still gives me panic attacks to this day), however the fact that I cannot talk about the rape without bringing up the rest of it - a time of my life that I very much wish to just expunge from history and my memory - keeps me quiet about it. Those conditions which made the rape possible in the first place, and the fact that I stayed with him long after he raped me, are plenty enough stigma to keep potential partners from trying to date me, and to destroy my relationship with my sisters. Now, I suppose some people will jump in and say, "ah, but that's the abuse that's harming you, not the rape itself", but those people are missing the fact that in my mind, they are one and the same thing.

And no. I didn't go to the police about it. The odds of any charges actually being placed seemed remote, and had he discovered that I'd gone to the police, I very much believe that he would have come after me, and I felt that cooperating fully with a police would have put a very big damper on my plan of getting the hell out of the state so that he'd definitely never be able to find me again. These were of much greater concern to me than helping to improve rape reporting statistics.

Gods, I hate this thread.

It sounds like the pain from this incident still remains with you Lusankya. Is there anything we can do to help?

[Knife]

Indeed, my sympathies.

[SVPD]

Allright, then I misread your point and find myself in agreement.

Fair enough.

Allright, then I misread your point and find myself in agreement.

Fair enough.

I misinterpreted your meaning. Your general attitude seemed high-handed to me, and coupled with the focus on this sort of situation ("are you sure you didn't want it on some level?") plus the dismissal of every rape victim organization, I felt you were dismissing the victims as a matter of course.

I apologize for the misunderstanding. I am not trying to be high-handed here, nor dismiss victims, but the fact remains that some victims are liars and some are wrong about being raped, and it is unfair to the accused from both a social and legal standpoint to treat the accusation as true. In the case where the accused is eventually acquitted, they must face intense scrutiny from everyone around them; scrutiny not subject to the rules of the courtroom. In cases where the case or charges are dropped they may get off legally, but what of the cloud of suspicion that might remain without formal acquittal?

Worse, I believe that a social attitude of treating rape claims as true until shown otherwise contaminates the jury pool of society and tends to subtly move the legal standard to one of "guilty until proven innocent". Unfortunately, the major weakness of the jury system is simply that people cannot be sanitized of their stupidity, predjudices, or mistaken thinking before deliberating on a case, nor be counted on to make that decision purely upon reason. A cornerstone of a just society is the principle that accidental findings of innocence are far better than accidental findings of guilt and I am very wary of anything that predjudices this.

I have to apologize. I took the context you spoke in to be all about stigmatization as a cultural and societal impulse. I didn't fully get your POV, thus I felt you were conflating the legal issue of rape contra other sex crime with the phenomenon itself. Those are different things, yes?

I would say that they are different, but inextricably intertwined. Social attitudes do not have the power to put a person in prison, but they certainly influence the attitudes of the jury making that decision. Similarly, social attitudes do not let someone go free who has committed a serious crime, but they can affect the probability of that happening very strongly.

Here I have to disagree. While it is a complex issue, the equality index I speak of is a pretty potent indicator of the level of actual power and agency women have in society.

I do not agee with the underlying asumption that gender equality can really be measured except in very gross terms. I think there is a meaningful difference in gender equality between, say Iran and Italy, but I think that saying there is a difference between Italy and Canada is a case of false precision. I also believe that such measures contain an underlying assumption that gender equality as the West defines it is necessarily what women everywhere want. Perhaps they would if they were better educated, but I would rather not go off on that tangent.

Here I think you may have misread my meaning. My opinion is the reverse: I feel that equality in France is a bad joke, and that any society that fails to exceed its quota has significant problems. Perhaps I am biased on that account.

I apologize for misunderstanding you, but I also must ask why, if you think France is a joke, would you think it impossible or extraordinary that the U.S. exceeds it in this one particular area

Not so. I felt it pretty obvious that, given how a few years back a prosecutor literally told the victim "you'll have to excuse me, but you really do look like a hooker" (Swedish link, but Google translator should be able to handle it), the Bjästa case, etc. ad nauseam, that you didn't contest the fact that victims are indeed blamed as part of shaming tactics in other countries. Your defense was then viewed through that perspective, and I concluded you were dismissing similar tactics and opinions for the US only. I understand now that I was mistaken.

Fair enough. I'm afraid I cannot read Swedish, but I do speak passable Spanish and have not found Google translate to be all that great.

It has nothing to do with popularity, it has to do with relative levels of equality. You thought I wanted to engage in nationalistic bashing. I didn't and don't; I see no need to do so. Some of the sentiment may have filtered in from the post where I chastised SanchezTheWhaler for comparing the US to a fictional monochrome Europe, but that was exactly what I was opposing. Different nations have different views on these matters, to varying degrees.

Understood. All I am saying is that the opinion of European nations that the U.S. is parochial and backwards is pretty unimportant; many Americans view European nations as condescending and self-righteous. The correctness of either view is not sometihng I think we should sidetrack onto.

I think we have a fundamental disconnect here. I've not read this as being specifically about the legal system; I've read it (perhaps with the Bjästa case in mind) as an indictment of the reaction of society as a whole. How will you be treated by colleagues, friends, etc? Will you be ostracized, reported against by ostensibly neutral parties, trivialized or threatened as in the Bjästa case? How will authorities react if everyone but the victim claims that "she just does it for the attention"?

Well, first of all I do not think that, in the U.S. at least, very many people will claim the victim "does it for attention". In fact, I doubt it is the normal reaction in Sweden or the cases you have cited would not be so newsworthy. That may happen in certain cases, but in some cases the victim is doing it for attention. I do not think individual cases are an indictment of society although they may indict particular prosecutors, judges, or others.

Second, I think that the perspective and reactions of others should not be based on the viewpoint of the victim, but on the viewpoint of the person holding it. Certainly if they dismiss a claim of rape out of hand based on the victim's manner of dress or because she's a "slut", they are being unreasonable and backwards. However, if their reaction is more along the lines of "I'm not saying she's lying, but I want more facts/the other side of the story" that may come across as suspicion, distrust, or lack of sympathy to the victim, but in reality is simple fairness. At one time, rape victims had a legitimate complaint that their trauma was being dismissed on irrelevancies like skirt length, but in recent years, any attempt to examine the facts or point out problems in the accuser's story has been attacked as a "short skirt defense."

Not so. I waited until you played the rape card, because I had no intention of doing that until the subject was raised and forced my hand. This was after you dismissed the viewpoint of the victims as being irrelevant, or so I took your words to mean.

On the contrary, I pointed out my wife's experiences well before that, replying to Thanas, because it is my experience that few people are able to debate rape without eventually claiming the other person does not care about victims. If you missed that, that's understandable.

*deep breath*

At any rate, I apologize for my more vitriolic outbursts. They were unnecessary, inflammatory and pointlessly personal, and I'm sorry to have said them. Moreover they attacked my perception of your argument rather than your actual intent, which I misread.

So again, I'm sorry. I had a shitty day, which predictably made me leap into an argument I should have approached in a rational manner.

Fair enough, and thank you for your apology. I apologize if anything I have said has come across as antagonistic.

I agree on the first, but not completely on the second. It would depend on how extreme said conclusions are.

If the conclusions are extreme because they simply bear no relationship to the data, that would be true. On the other hand, if they are extreme in terms of being heavily biased in favor of or against victims because that is what the data indicates, they really aren't being extreme at all, in my view.

[Lusankya]

Indeed, my sympathies.

It sounds like the pain from this incident still remains with you Lusankya. Is there anything we can do to help?

Thank you both for your thoughts.

I'm doing mostly ok these days. I'm very fortunate in that I have parents both willing and able to help me to achieve what I want to do to set my life back on track.

[madd0ct0r]

Certainly if they dismiss a claim of rape out of hand based on the victim's manner of dress or because she's a "slut", they are being unreasonable and backwards. However, if their reaction is more along the lines of "I'm not saying she's lying, but I want more facts/the other side of the story" that may come across as suspicion, distrust, or lack of sympathy to the victim, but in reality is simple fairness. At one time, rape victims had a legitimate complaint that their trauma was being dismissed on irrelevancies like skirt length, but in recent years, any attempt to examine the facts or point out problems in the accuser's story has been attacked as a "short skirt defense.".

Would this be the crux of the argument here?

It's interesting (and frustrating and tragic) the way some people have taken his words as discouraging.

Is this a failure to communicate? It was said it was not his words, but the feeling that came off them. Could SVPD have written the same sentence in a different way that was not off-putting? Since he is interested in a fair result, finding the right way to approach the situation is important. Hence the formal 'rape case training'.

He'd come off as pretty neutral to me, so why was that not the case universally? I imagine when actually dealing, in person, with somebody a lot more reassurance would be needed. exactly the same as a 'beaten to within an inch of death case.' The difference i can see here would be belief.

Nobody would have trouble believing i'd be been beaten up, the evidence is clear. But if i was feeling pretty torn-up, if my self-confidence had been systematically dismantled over years of abuse, then I might have trouble believing somebody would believe me. I'd need a huge amount of reassurance and support just to think they were neutral.

I'm having to think really very carefully here about what I write and how I write it, because I don't want to make whoever is reading feel worse.

Not all accusations of rape are correct. One girl I knew got caught up in an investigation because her drunk friend make the accusation on her behalf. She was equally drunk and was unable to defuse or explain the situation until the next morning. The man (whom I know nothing about) had to spend the night in the cells.
She (not her friend) was fined for wasting police time. A mutual female friend appreciated the justice of the case, but said it simultaneously made her less likely to go to the police in future.

In another case a male student at my school accused a male teacher of sexual assault. the teacher committed suicide. the case was closed, but never resolved.

Looking at the former case, how do you manage to balance justice with perception of police sympathy? A victim seems to need a lot of support to come forward. a lot of reassurance to overcome the fear that people will not believe her. Any mention of false accusations or honest mistakes massively undermines that support but these things do happen. How can the police balance this?

SVPD could be right, the actual social stigma of being a rape victim might have been successfully removed from US society. It might not have, I've not seen much evidence either way. Just to be clear, I'm talking about after the case, in the victim's day to day life. Unlike, say, rural Pakistan, you do not bear any shame for what happened to you, nor would anybody try and make you feel shame.

In this context, could a victim's advocacy organisation, in it's constant fight against the 'stigma' accidentaly be making victims feel worse? if the real life social stigma is actually negligible, would being told about how it used to be just make you feel more sensitive and more self-doubting? Could someone constantly telling you 'You are not to blame, you have nothing to be ashamed about' lead to you taking the opposite message away?

[SVPD]

Just to be clear, I am not saying there is no social stigma anywhere in the U.S.; I am saying its degree and frequency has been reduced by a great degree, to where the assertion of it as a major issue for rape victims by rape advocacy groups is A) no longer accurate or a appropriate and B) actually makes the problem of nonreporting worse.

I would also point out that while rape might have been erroneously excused in the past on reasoning like "short skirts", that was not applied to every case even in the era where it was common, and American society has never approved of bona fide rapists. Rather, up until attitudes and legislation changed, there were too many unjust obstacles to establishing that rape had occured.

[Big Phil]

I'm bringing this example up because it's timely.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/h ... ton17.html

In a nutshell, a University of Washington basketball player was accused of rape a few months back. The allegation was investigated and prosecutors decided there wasn't enough evidence for rape. The girl in the case was 16, and apparently did everything right - she went to the hospital, got a rape kit done, etc. Please note, the allegation here wasn't forcible rape; it was statutory rape (i.e., sex with a minor), except that in Washington State the age of consent is 16, so unless the prosecutor's office could somehow prove it was forcible - and this was very much a he said, she said situation - all they could expect to convict him for was providing alcohol to minors.

At the time that this was in the news, nobody was calling the girl a slut, whore, or saying she deserved it. Many people were wondering why in the fuck two 16 year old girls were going over to the house of a 22 year old man they met on Facebook, but I suspect sex/rape or not, that would still be a typical criticism of her behavior.

Yesterday the news broke that this same basketball player has been charged with promoting prostitution (he's been pimping out his "girlfriend"). On my way in to work this morning I was listening to sports radio - about the friendliest audience this guy could expect to have - and about the nicest thing they said in his favor was (paraphrased) "this guy screwed up again? What an idiot. He needs help." They didn't attack the alleged victim, they didn't make excuses for him, they didn't even do what they did last time and say "we need to wait until the facts come out." They put all of the blame and responsibility on the accused, none on the victim.

Now why am I bringing this up? Primarily because, if blaming the victim were as prevalent as rape advocates and some here on this board assert, then I would expect comments such as "she's a prostitute - you can't believe anything they say," or "she wanted it - it's not his fault." or even "wait and see until the facts come in." But you're not seeing or hearing that. Even the comments section (a domain of mouth breathers by an large) is largely absent of people blaming the victim; having read through the hundred plus comments, I only saw two or three people saying anything bad about the victim, and they're getting hammered by the other mouth breathers in the comments.

Now as a male who has never been raped, I acknowledge that I may be a little missing something, but I'm not really seeing any stigma or blaming the victim behavior here. The hammer is clearly falling on the alleged rapist/pimp, not on his victims - if there really were a terrible stigma and people still blamed the victim, I expect you'd see a lot more defense of his behavior than simply a handful of anonymous posters defending him in the comment section of the newspaper.

[Lusankya]

Stigma doesn't just take the form of "blaming the victim", you know. It can also take the same kind of stigma that you get from suffering from mental abuse. Sure, people will be nice to you, but if you want to get a date? Well, you'd better damn well make sure they know you really well before telling them about it, because if they don't, then they're not going to be interested in dealing with your your trauma-related issues. And you know, given that most rape is acquaintance rape, your issues are quite likely to manifest in situations related to relationships. Now, granted these issues can be difficult for guys to deal with, but they're not exactly made better when guys stop pursuing you early on, or dump you early on in the relationship because they discover that they exist.

You know, actually, something just occurred to me. It is absolutely retarded of all of you to be talking about how there's "no stigma against rape", when you live in a society where there is a stigma against talking about sex in general. People who are victims of other crimes (robbery, arson, assault, etc.) they can actually talk about it in public, because they can describe what happened without using the Spoiler

S-- word.

Rape victims have no such recourse.

Yet somehow you all seem to believe that there's no stigma against rape, when at the same time, your country goes completely nuts when it sees Janet Jackson's nipple. Right.

[SVPD]

Stigma doesn't just take the form of "blaming the victim", you know. It can also take the same kind of stigma that you get from suffering from mental abuse. Sure, people will be nice to you, but if you want to get a date? Well, you'd better damn well make sure they know you really well before telling them about it, because if they don't, then they're not going to be interested in dealing with your your trauma-related issues. And you know, given that most rape is acquaintance rape, your issues are quite likely to manifest in situations related to relationships. Now, granted these issues can be difficult for guys to deal with, but they're not exactly made better when guys stop pursuing you early on, or dump you early on in the relationship because they discover that they exist.

That's a rather different form of stigma, and one not specific to rape.

Second, if that IS the sort of stigma attached to rape victims then that rather weakens complaints about it. Not only are other people you start dating not obligated to deal with these issues, that sort of "coming out in relationship situations" is a pretty significant burden on them, and may come across as blaming them for something someone else did to you.

You know, actually, something just occurred to me. It is absolutely retarded of all of you to be talking about how there's "no stigma against rape", when you live in a society where there is a stigma against talking about sex in general. People who are victims of other crimes (robbery, arson, assault, etc.) they can actually talk about it in public, because they can describe what happened without using the Spoiler

S-- word.

No, it's not retarded of us at all. First of all, just because there's some inhibition about talking about sex in America does not mean we support that, and second, there is really not that significant a stigma against talking about sex in general. Sex gets talked about plenty.

Rape victims have no such recourse.

Um.. yes, actually they do, and they can talk about it in public. I realize that there is a common caricature of American society on SDN, but quite frankly, it's exactly that - a caricature.

Yet somehow you all seem to believe that there's no stigma against rape, when at the same time, your country goes completely nuts when it sees Janet Jackson's nipple. Right.

Uh huh. Relevancy? Yes, America is somewhat more uptight about sex and nudity than Europe. There is no causal relationship between that and a generalized stigma towards rape victims.

While I extend my sympathy to you for what yo went through, you are a perfect example of why rape victims are not of questionable credibility. Not only do you start slinging around unfounded nonsense when you hear things that aren't unadulterated sympathy, in your case you leaven it with arrogant proclamations about what America must be like based on nothing more than your experience with a Superbowl performance.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

I have to say that I think that while SVPD is mainly wrong and there is a great stigma against rape, I don't think that the U.S.'s puritan streak makes it worse. Everyone always looks to Europe as the more socially progressive country, and the fact is that Europe's general attitude towards rape is largely more chauvinistic than America's. Compare the reactions in America and Europe to, say, Julian Assange's sexual assault, or Dominique Strauss-Kahn, or Roman Polanski. Prominent European officials and politicians fell over each other to whitewash and excuse their crimes, and even accuse the victims of lying and conspiring against the accused (not to say that this is the general reaction, but it is a normalized part of the discourse). You don't see that kind of behaviour from Americans when U.S. politicians commit similar acts. It can be argued that America's chaste vision of human nature, which leads to rape being considered to be worse than murder in many sectors of society, is also detrimental to the victims' mental and emotional health in different ways, but that's a whole other thing.

[Big Phil]

I have to say that I think that while SVPD is mainly wrong and there is a great stigma against rape, I don't think that the U.S.'s puritan streak makes it worse. Everyone always looks to Europe as the more socially progressive country, and the fact is that Europe's general attitude towards rape is largely more chauvinistic than America's. Compare the reactions in America and Europe to, say, Julian Assange's sexual assault, or Dominique Strauss-Kahn, or Roman Polanski. Prominent European officials and politicians fell over each other to whitewash and excuse their crimes, and even accuse the victims of lying and conspiring against the accused (not to say that this is the general reaction, but it is a normalized part of the discourse). You don't see that kind of behaviour from Americans when U.S. politicians commit similar acts. It can be argued that America's chaste vision of human nature, which leads to rape being considered to be worse than murder in many sectors of society, is also detrimental to the victims' mental and emotional health in different ways, but that's a whole other thing.

Dude, I don't want to jump down your throat, but comments like "I think that while SVPD is mainly wrong" with no subsequent explanation, evidence, or examples for why he's wrong, are really, really annoying. If you think he's wrong, and you're participating in this thread, you really should try to explain why you think he's wrong. What evidence can you point to that proves there is a stigma for rape victims?

[The Romulan Republic]

Isn't Assange still awaiting trial, and thus should be presumed innocent, or at least given the benefit of the doubt?

Regardless, while I don't know enough about European norms to contest your overall point and have no intention of doing so, there is a political element in at least one of those cases (Assange) which may cause people to leap to his defence. Some people will dismiss the charges against him as a set-up by the US, while others may overlook them on an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" basis (as disgusting as that would be).

Edit: I was replying to Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Isn't Assange still awaiting trial, and thus should be presumed innocent, or at least given the benefit of the doubt?

Legal authorities should consider him innocent, sure, so that he's fairly treated and tried. But he pretty clearly committed the crimes of which he is accused. Plenty of criminals never ended up before a court for their actions, but that doesn't mean we need to pussyfoot around what they did.

Regardless, while I don't know enough about European norms to contest your overall point and have no intention of doing so, there is a political element in at least one of those cases (Assange) which may cause people to leap to his defence. Some people will dismiss the charges against him as a set-up by the US, while others may overlook them on an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" basis (as disgusting as that would be).

Well, yes. Equally, any people defended Polanski because they had trouble separating "Great artist" and "rapist", and Dominique was largely defended by his political supporters (and anti-Americans, though it has come to light that he raped women in France too, but this was covered up as no big deal). But the hidden reasons behind these defences and excuses has nothing to do with the fact that it is a totally okay to excuse powerful rapists and blame their victims, with very little backlash over it. It's a pretty solid indication that rape is taken more lightly there than perhaps it should be. Even in America, accused rapists on sports teams get off and keep playing because they can make the league money, but you only see that kind of behaviour from the most atavistic quarters. In France, it can come from parliamentarians.

[Lusankya]

While I extend my sympathy to you for what yo went through, you are a perfect example of why rape victims are not of questionable credibility. Not only do you start slinging around unfounded nonsense when you hear things that aren't unadulterated sympathy, in your case you leaven it with arrogant proclamations about what America must be like based on nothing more than your experience with a Superbowl performance.

And in a single blow, SVPD ensures that no other rape victims reading this thread are ever going do discuss rape with him ever. Good job. And I bet he doesn't even know what he did wrong here, either.

[Simon_Jester]

On the off chance that someone might profit from the explanation, would you be willing to explain in more depth, Lusyanka?

[Morilore]

Can I guess?

you are a perfect example of why rape victims are not of questionable credibility

rape victims are not of questionable credibility

(From context, that "not" appears to be a flub.)
This sounds to me like a terrible horrible no-good very bad thing for anyone to say ever. It's not even qualified as "rape accusers" or "alleged victims of rape" - he straight up says "rape victims." Also, it's retarded. So Lusankya says some things, and those things are cited as evidence that "rape victims" in general are not credible? My sister is bad at math, an example of girls being bad at math! My neighbor stole a car, an example of black people being criminals! Wow, confirmation bias is wonderful.

And hey, just for fun, let's throw in some implied "silly emotional hypersensitive wo-mon" herp-derping as well.

[Simon_Jester]

Okay, yeah, that sounds about right.

[Terralthra]

Isn't Assange still awaiting trial, and thus should be presumed innocent, or at least given the benefit of the doubt?

Legal authorities should consider him innocent, sure, so that he's fairly treated and tried. But he pretty clearly committed the crimes of which he is accused. Plenty of criminals never ended up before a court for their actions, but that doesn't mean we need to pussyfoot around what they did.

Eh? Are you privy to some evidence that hasn't been revealed to anyone else?

[Pick]

I'll never understand people who think emotion and compassion somehow undercut logic, as if the two can never act in parallel, and the results of applying one can never approximate the results of applying the other. Is it that they stopped attending philosophy class once they hit Cartesian dualism? Are they time-traveling Victorians? Are they subconscious victims of overarching societal biases? Are they unaware that apathy is a personal failing and not representative of mental superiority?

You know who this thread reminds me of? Scalia.

[SVPD]

This sounds to me like a terrible horrible no-good very bad thing for anyone to say ever. It's not even qualified as "rape accusers" or "alleged victims of rape" - he straight up says "rape victims." Also, it's retarded. So Lusankya says some things, and those things are cited as evidence that "rape victims" in general are not credible? My sister is bad at math, an example of girls being bad at math! My neighbor stole a car, an example of black people being criminals! Wow, confirmation bias is wonderful.

Since Lusyanka is claiming that there must be some sot of social stigma int he U.S. because of what she perceives as overall attitudes in the U.S. towards sex in general which A) are in accurate B) based on one particular incident during the Superbowl and C) result in a non-sequiter when used to point to a "rape stigma", what you're saying is really.. not even remotely related to what I said.

And hey, just for fun, let's throw in some implied "silly emotional hypersensitive wo-mon" herp-derping as well.

No one said anything of the sort. Lusyanka may be emotional and hypersensitive, but that's not because she's a woman, that's because she was a victim. While it's understandable that she'd feel that way, it's also a reason why what she says has to be taken with a large grain of salt when it comes to rape as a societal issue.

Rape victims have undergone a great deal of trauma, and that often affects their ability to look at the problem abstractly, just like anyone who has undergone any other horrible experience will often have problems in that regard.

[SVPD]

While I extend my sympathy to you for what yo went through, you are a perfect example of why rape victims are not of questionable credibility. Not only do you start slinging around unfounded nonsense when you hear things that aren't unadulterated sympathy, in your case you leaven it with arrogant proclamations about what America must be like based on nothing more than your experience with a Superbowl performance.

And in a single blow, SVPD ensures that no other rape victims reading this thread are ever going do discuss rape with him ever. Good job. And I bet he doesn't even know what he did wrong here, either.

I didn't do anything "wrong." You're establishing my point precisely - rape victims, as a general rule, cannot talk about rape as an abstract matter, and have a hard time hearing about concerns other than sympathy for them. I suppose pointing out your backhanded, irrelevant America-bashing was something I did "wrong" too.

[SVPD]

I'll never understand people who think emotion and compassion somehow undercut logic, as if the two can never act in parallel, and the results of applying one can never approximate the results of applying the other. Is it that they stopped attending philosophy class once they hit Cartesian dualism? Are they time-traveling Victorians? Are they subconscious victims of overarching societal biases? Are they unaware that apathy is a personal failing and not representative of mental superiority?

You know who this thread reminds me of? Scalia.

Emotion doesn't always undercut a person's logic, but when they start making claims like "There was an uproar over Janet Jackson's boob!" (especially when the uproar was mainly a matter of the media and the government; the average person has a lot more to worry about than Janet Jackson's boob appearing during the Superbowl) it's pretty clear they are flailing about desperately for something to grab onto to justify the existance of a stigma - which is poor logic at best. Similarly, people you might want to date in the future not wanting to deal with your emotional issues are perfectly within their rights, and their reluctance to be blamed for someone else's actions is not the same as a generalized societal stigma that distrust victims' truthfulness, which is the issue at hand.

It's equally clear that, when large organizations loudly proclaim how badly you'll be treated as a rape victim, and then victims are reluctant to report rape, we should not be surprised that they're reluctant. When that same reluctance is then use as evidence of how badly they'll be treated -i.e., a "stigma", it becomes quite obvious that there is a large amount of circular logic going on. This is doubly true when reasons not to report such as A) the victim thinks or knows their claim of rape is weak, or unjustifiable legally, either because they do not understand the law or because they know perfectly well they DID consent or B) the victim does not report because of fear of retaliation from the original attacker, that only lends credibility to the idea that this "stigma" is a sacred cow of rape victim organizations that are unwilling to re-examine their thinking despite decades of progress.

No one here is claiming the U.S. is perfect or that further improvements in social attitude towards rape victims cannot be made. However, progress has been made and has largely gone unrecognized, and any further progress must not be made at the expense of the legal rights of those accused, nor by conducting a trial of public opinion of the accused that results in destruction of their reputation and life even if acquitted.

[Serafina]

Similarly, people you might want to date in the future not wanting to deal with your emotional issues are perfectly within their rights, and their reluctance to be blamed for someone else's actions is not the same as a generalized societal stigma that distrust victims' truthfulness, which is the issue at hand.

Of course they are "within their rights" That's not the issue. How about debating racism and saying that people are perfectly within their rights not to date a black person, therefore declaring that widespread refusal to do so is not a sign of racism?

The point is that being a rape-victim is a social stigma. Lusankya demonstrated one aspect of that stigma.
Apparently you want to claim that there is a valid reason not to date a rape-victim - probably that they are "damaged goods". Yes, being in a relationship with a heavily traumatized person isn't easy* - but this is not the case for all rape victims! Yet most men apparently refuse to date her, regardless of the actual degree of trauma. That's the stigma she is talking about. It's like refusing to date someone who had a car crash because you assume that that person is heavily traumatized - after all, some car crash victims are!

It's equally clear that, when large organizations loudly proclaim how badly you'll be treated as a rape victim, and then victims are reluctant to report rape, we should not be surprised that they're reluctant.

Duh. No one has been disputing that. What we are disputing is your inane claim that a rape victim won't get treated worse by society - especially since you started ignoring examples of such disfavorable treatment (see above).
So please, demonstrate that the advice of rape victim organizations is as out-of-touch as you claim it is, and that being a known rape-victim will in fact not lower your social status due to attached stigma.



*However, this is not in any way the fault of the traumatized person (regardless of the cause). An empathic, stable person can have a very good relationship with a traumatized person, as long as it is not seen as a stigma. The fault lies with the people who are prejudiced against traumatized people.