Tag: rape

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Campus Duplicity

Dr. Foubert said he considered many of those responses a form of “excusing the perpetrator and blaming the victim,” and was very concerned about it. NY Times, 2014-10-28

MIT’s Study of Sexual Assault

The Real Rohypnol

I could not imagine a more emblematic example of how duplicitous this issue has become than the quote above: Dr. Foubert, responding to details in the MIT study that show that “large numbers” of undergraduates agreed with statements suggesting that the blame for sexual assault “did not always rest exclusively with the aggressor”, says, oh, we can ignore that data. Just pay attention to the results I like.

The results seem to imply that this university campus is just rife with monstrous men committing sexual assault everywhere with near impunity (only 5% of the victims ever report it).

Let’s start with the fact that only 35% of the student body completed the questionnaire. We don’t need to assume that a higher majority of victims than non-victims might be willing to take the time to complete the questionnaire, skewering the results, because it is obvious that that possibility exists. Dr. Foubert trusts this minority when they assert that they have been victims of unwanted sexual conduct, and then heaps contempt on the same minority when “two-thirds agreed that ‘rape and sexual assault can happen unintentionally, especially if alcohol is involved'”.

This is called “cherry-picking” your data. You take the results that support your ideological commitment, attribute fabulous reliability to this data, and then ignore the same “reliable” results that don’t.

Foubert is “concerned” about the fact that many of the supposed victims feel they might be co-responsible for the sexual activity that took place. As, perhaps, in “I guess I shouldn’t have gone to the bedroom with him while I was drunk and my friends were urging me not to”. No no– women must not even be permitted to think that that would be unwise.

In other words, we need to train these women to see things the way we want them to see them, instead of how they actually see them, without having been programmed.

Foubert wants everyone to report every unwanted sexual advance to the campus police and the authorities. He asks the students who did not report these assaults, why they didn’t: “more than half” didn’t think it was serious enough. Perhaps some did not think it worth the trouble (heresy!). Some, possibly, didn’t want to ruin somebody’s life over an incident they feel they can handle.

A few years ago, two children were killed in a car accident on the 401 highway. The driver of a transport truck was clearly at fault. Yet the parents of the children refused to demand “justice”, or severe punishment. They felt that the driver would benefit more from their compassion and forgiveness than from a stern prison sentence. Dr. Foubert would undoubtedly feel a need to insist that these parents demand a pound of flesh. He would be “concerned” that they don’t understand what needs to be done in that situation. He would argue that other parents of children killed in at-fault accidents have been undermined.

Perhaps some of the girls filling out his survey just don’t believe there is a lot to be gained by getting back at someone. Is it really all that satisfying? Yes, yes, we will conduct the charade of “trying to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else”, and we know the necessity of that cover, because otherwise, you know, it looks like revenge.

Oh my, no, — that cannot be permitted. Dr. Foubert will undoubtedly embark on a vigorous program of re-education to correct this deficiency. Everything is serious. Everything is assault, if you don’t have an explicit “affirmative consent” (which is “consent consent”, and will shortly be replaced with something like “affirmative positive consent”, or “consent consent consent”, until the authorities realize that even more gravity is required.

 

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Rape Culture

The Pentagon poll defined sexual assault broadly enough to include a slap on the behind-and half of its self-reported victims were men. Cathy Young, Reason.com

It is such a touchy topic. Why? Because there is a very well documented history of men dismissing rape as something trivial and victims as complicit. If a professor or an employer or a soldier was accused, his colleagues and compadres rallied to his defense. Defense lawyers were allowed to make suggestive forays into a woman’s sexual history. There was a cultural adherence to the idea that it was impossible to rape a truly unwilling woman, and the shame of it all. In conservative nations today, that attitude yet prevails.

There has been progress, though not enough, on these issues, But there also been excess, to the point where some feminists openly assert that any woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted should automatically be believed, which, in defiance of the facts, many seem to insist on in the Sinclair case (left). And yet we continue to have cases where women clearly lied and men have been falsely accused, reputations destroyed, lives upended. And too often, these lies have been excused and the women or girls who made the false accusations have suffered no consequences.

I am more than a little perplexed by the number of women, including prominent politicians like Kirsten Gillibrand, who continue to insist that the woman in this affair must have been assaulted, no matter what her credibility issues. Some even insist that, whether she was “assaulted” or not, any relationship between two people who have unequal power or authority is inherently abusive. Does this mean that it is impossible that two people in such positions can be mutually attracted to each other or have a mutually consensual relationship?

Or is this all about the adultery? Our moral repugnance at the thought of two adults having consensual sex.

These peoples’ jobs, by the way, is to kill people. When pilots recklessly bombed their own (and Canadian) troops in Afghanistan, all was forgiven, even when other soldiers warned them that the target was questionable. When they bombed a wedding by mistake killing more than a dozen old men, women, and children… It was understandable. Boys will be boys. War is hell. And when helicopter pilots murdered a group of civilians in Iraq, including a Reuters reporter: well, you just don’t understand the pressures these boys are under. They were just doing their job. We’ll give each victim’s family 2000 big U.S. dollars.

But when two of them touch each other and kiss and bring each other to physical ecstasy? THIS must be stopped.

And when it is revealed that the affair was more than consensual– well, it can’t be consensual, really, because he was her commanding officer. She couldn’t possibly have said no, or reported him immediately. She could wait three years (until it became apparent that he was not going to leave his wife for her, and that he had other girlfriends).

One letter writer in the New York Times says: “Excuse me? Wives are raped by their husbands all the time.” I’d be curious to know what she means by “all the time”.

This is a model of “justice” which essentially works out to this: a woman can start an affair with a superior officer any time she pleases and, no matter how she behaves in this relationship, always retain the option of suddenly deciding that she has been assaulted and forced into sex. She thereby is able to excuse her own behavior, which, under the Military Code of Justice is also illegal (if the sexual partner was married) and destroy her lover, economically, socially, and psychologically.

This is obscene, but it appears to be the standard that Gillibrand and others are demanding.

The Redefinition of Rape

Other Notes

Real Wisdom, from the NY Times article above:

At the same time, students need to be told clearly that if they are voluntarily under the influence (but not incapacitated), they remain responsible for their sexual choices.

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Throw Away the Key

I’ve heard people say that you might as well lock sex offenders up forever because almost all of them re-offend.

There are facts available. The link in the left column provides more detail, but here’s a summary. The numbers represent the percentage of offenders who were previously convicted of the same offense.

  • Incest offenders ranged between 4 and 10 percent.
  • Rapists ranged between 7 and 35 percent.
  • Child molesters with female victims ranged between 10 and 29 percent.
  • Child molesters with male victims ranged between 13 and 40 percent.
  • Exhibitionists ranged between 41 and 71 percent.

Do these numbers surprise you?

Since the feminists have joined forces with the Moral Majority on crime issues, I find myself part of a very, very small minority of old-fashioned liberals who don’t believe that locking people up for long sentences accomplishes very much– except for the grim satisfaction of seeing someone else suffer. If that’s what you want. And it is what most people want.

Sorry. Dark moment for me. But it is what most people want.

Some days, doesn’t seem like there is much light on the other side.

On Sex Offender Recidivism