A Crash Course in Feminism Mk. II (or, why everyone should be a feminist)

[Gotthammer]

His account was that she was grinding her bum into his groin. They had been kissing earlier.

THAT IS NOT CONSENT. Neither is "kissing and holding hands and hugging" - I mean the idea that if a girl kisses or even grinds on a guy that she must have wanted to have sex with him is ridiculous. Maybe she's demisexual? Maybe she was feeling sore from residual cramps? Maybe she - get this - wanted to kiss him but didn't want to have sex. Asking 'do you mind if I touch you sexually?' shouldn't be unrealistic. Yeah, maybe you could spice it up a bit but better than relying on the "feeling" you get, especially from someone who is incredibly drunk.

On the flip side, why would a bloke risk everything to get his chirps in - something he can do adequately on his own?

Because time and time again it's shown that he'll get away with it scot-free and even have people lining up to defend him no matter the evidence presented of his guilt?

[Morgrim]

My logic is that if someone is so drunk they cannot remember what happened the next morning, then they are clearly too drunk to be giving active consent. So if one person is saying "they agreed!" and the other person is saying "I would never agree, but I can't remember what happened" then I am going to automatically assume that the first person is a rapist because the second person was drugged when you got their 'agreement'.

Basically the first person committed daterape, and is scum.

[Al Shut]

But how exactly is the first person supposed to be able to judge this? Where is the line? At what point is the second person effectively banned from having sex because he/she is too drunk to be giving active consent? Assuming we're not talking about unconsciousness.

[Denzark]

THAT IS NOT CONSENT. Neither is "kissing and holding hands and hugging" - I mean the idea that if a girl kisses or even grinds on a guy that she must have wanted to have sex with him is ridiculous. Maybe she's demisexual? Maybe she was feeling sore from residual cramps? Maybe she - get this - wanted to kiss him but didn't want to have sex. Asking 'do you mind if I touch you sexually?' shouldn't be unrealistic. Yeah, maybe you could spice it up a bit but better than relying on the "feeling" you get, especially from someone who is incredibly drunk.

I have not said myself or the jury in this case (more importantly) consider that to be consent. They considered it to be a reasonable indication that an advance may be accepted. And they accepted that his non verbal response when rebuffed, resukted in him immediately leaving - ie he did not complete the offence. On the subject of 'incredibly drunk' he was also drunk. Possibly drunk enough to read the situation wrongly. Irrespective his claim he left when told 'no' was accepted.


Because time and time again it's shown that he'll get away with it scot-free and even have people lining up to defend him no matter the evidence presented of his guilt?

In this case insufficient evidence was presented of his guilt. Irrespective of whether the police rendered some or all of it inadmissible through poor technique if the evidence can't add to the jury reaching a conclusion of 'beyond reasonable doubt' they must acquit. And anyway, don't be dramatic. "No matter the evidence"? Whatever. If you genuinely believe this rather than are being hysterical it would be a nugatory exercise to demonstrate how that statement is tosh.

My logic is that if someone is so drunk they cannot remember what happened the next morning, then they are clearly too drunk to be giving active consent. So if one person is saying "they agreed!" and the other person is saying "I would never agree, but I can't remember what happened" then I am going to automatically assume that the first person is a rapist because the second person was drugged when you got their 'agreement'.

Basically the first person committed daterape, and is scum.

I agree Morgrim. That would be one possible assumption. However, the implication is that the victim may possibly have lied about the lack of consent. Or said something that a reasonable person (a concept in English Welsh law of a person of sound mind reaching a conclusion that most people would given the same circumstances ie 'if I stab this person in the heart he may die - even if I don't mean for him to') may think is consent even if it wasn't. And when the victim has self acknowledged that their memory cannot be relied upon due to intoxication, then their account becomes similarly less than reliable.

[Charon]

This is quite complex.
According to the consent of most posts here I have been raped around 3 times and in 10 more cases I have not given active consent before I was undressed.

[CoffeeGrunt]

This is quite complex.
According to the consent of most posts here I have been raped around 3 times and in 10 more cases I have not given active consent before I was undressed.

A lot of the time it's a matter of reading implication. If a person invites you back to their place, is grinding sexually on you, and otherwise kissing\hand-holding, they're doing everything except signing a form in triplicate saying, "I am most likely wanting this."

The question is, how can you ever get solid consent if there's only two parties to witness? Are you going to bring a friend along as an alibi? How drunk is drunk? At what point does that particular person's ability to decide what they want disappear?

How can you get that consent in a foolproof, watertight way on a night out? Witnesses, recording their consenting, getting them to write their consent down?

The problem with the justice system is that it demands ironclad evidence. The problem with the patriarchy is that it will take the male's side and blame the woman, and the problem with the feminist side is that it often blames the male. What exactly can a male in this situation do to ensure they don't get labelled a rapist even when the courts decide he is not?

[eldargal]

Well the feminist side blames the male because men are the overwhelming majority of rapists (even in cases with a male victim) and they get away with it because we have a male dominated culture which teaches us that it is a womans job to both be responsible for her own safety as well as the males behaviour. I mean you literally have rapists acquitted when:

1)It is shown the woman was too drunk to give consent
2) Sex is confirmed as having occurred
3) The man admits to having sex with her

I mean you literally have guys saying 'yeah we had sex and she was unconscious but earlier that evening she winked at me so I assumed she wanted it' and the jury will acquit them.


[URL="https://medium.com/matter/when-pro-woman-means-the-opposite-e7a0a22bbe78"]Interesting article on how a fear of feminism shaped the development of evangelical Christianity[/URL] and evangelical politics over the last few decades:

But that started to change with the New Right revolution, and its insistence on feminism as the root of all social ills. That’s a legacy that has endured in today’s conservative Christian culture. What struck me most forcefully when I started reporting on the Quiverfull and homeschooling movements was how seriously they took the threat of feminism. They wrote a library of books instructing conservative evangelical women that women’s equality was a slippery slope, and that accepting careers or family planning led directly to divorce, abortion, child abuse, and gay marriage.

This first struck me as an almost hysterical overreach, but I came to see it as something else: Christian conservatives acknowledging feminism’s revolutionary potential, taking it far more seriously than did mainstream society. And that’s something else Faludi diagnosed early on. While the 1980s media raced to declare feminism’s obsolescence — a “fringe” issue and “sideshow” to the New Right’s more serious policy objectives — “the players in the right *wing fundamentalist drama knew better,” as Faludi writes. “For them, public punishment of autonomous feminist women was no less than the main event.”

The children of those players went on to create the fundamentalism we know today. In some cases, contemporary right wing leaders are quite literally their descendants. Conservative Caucus founder Howard Phillips, who Faludi writes about as a New Right architect obsessed with revenge, fathered Doug Phillips—**one of the most recognizable faces in the homeschooling world—**who helped popularize a vitriolic form of anti*feminism in that community. But the ideological lineage is there more broadly, in modern, culture warriors who have carried forward the New Right’s mission almost unchanged since the 1980s. The Phyllis Schlafly and Beverly LaHaye model of conservative women leaders who fulfilled their ambitions through anti*feminist campaigns continues on in today’s evangelical women’s leaders, who encourage followers to “rise up by stepping down,” and (no joke) join “a revolution that will take place on our knees.” These people may be dropouts from mainstream politics and culture, but they aren’t irrelevant. On the contrary, they’ve had a more direct influence on millions of Christian women (and men) than most political leaders.

[Charon]

This does not answer the question how to protect from rape accusations even when consent was given.

Also:

1)It is shown the man was too drunk to give consent
2) Sex is confirmed as having occurred
3) The woman admits to having sex with him

Happened 3 times to me. So technically I was raped 3 times (cause I was drunk). Should I take legal actions now? Or is this again a case of "men want it anyways"? At least 10 times I have not given a verbal consent. Consent was assumed by the woman. But I guess this (again) works only in one direction.

[eldargal]

You do know the chance of you being accused of rape is less than your chance of actually being raped if you are male? also frankly it is disturbing that so many men look at this as protecting themselves from being accused of rape rather than stopping themselves raping without realising it. But it is really easy:

1) Don't have sex with an inebriated woman
2) Ask for consent clearly in unambiguous terms
3) Ask her age to avoid statutory rape
4) Ask in front of witnesses, even if it is just a barman or something.
5) Only have sex with women who are clearly and unambiguously giving consent.

Really not hard.

No, if you feel you were taken advantage of in any of those incidents then it was rape. Consent does go both ways and the idea that men are always asking for it is deeply problematic because it is used to shame and humiliate male rape victims as well as feed into a hyper-masculine rape culture where men are told they should always want sex and it is ok to do whatever you want to get it. But it still comes down to how you feel. A woman who gets drunk and has sex and doesn't feel it was rape because she doesn't care she had sex isn't going to press charges just because technically it was rape. Likewise if you don't care that those women took advantage of you then what would be the point in reporting it?

[Gotthammer]

You do know the chance of you being accused of rape is less than your chance of actually being raped if you are male?

False reports are [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape"]~2% according to the US Dept of Justice[/URL], same as for any false report of other crimes.

In the UK

A 2005 study, "A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases" was the largest and most rigorous study to date commissioned by the British Home Office on UK rape crime, from the initial reporting of a rape through to legal prosecutions. The study was based on 2,643 sexual assault cases (Kelly, Lovett, and Regan, 2005). Of these, police departments classified 8% as false reports.[12]

The researchers noted that some of these classifications were based simply on the personal judgement of the police investigators and were made in violation of official criteria for establishing a false allegation. Closer analysis of this category applying the Home Office counting rules for establishing a false allegation and excluding cases where the application of the cases where confirmation of the designation was uncertain reduced the percentage of false reports to 3%. The researchers concluded that "one cannot take all police designations at face value" and that "[t]here is an over-estimation of the scale of false allegations by both police officers and prosecutors." Moreover, they added:

The interviews with police officers and complainants’ responses show that despite the focus on victim care, a culture of suspicion remains within the police, even amongst some of those who are specialists in rape investigations. There is also a tendency to conflate false allegations with retractions and withdrawals, as if in all such cases no sexual assault occurred. This reproduces an investigative culture in which elements that might permit a designation of a false complaint are emphasised (later sections reveal how this also feeds into withdrawals and designation of ‘insufficient evidence’), at the expense of a careful investigation, in which the evidence collected is evaluated.