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[G-Flex]

I don't think any form of sexual assault should be legal, regardless of the sex of the offender. Punishing only one sex for it is downright unfair.

In UK, one needs a penis to be a rapist. Without one, one can still rack up other sexual assault charges, but will never get charged with rape itself.

Yeah I've heard about that particular law. Ridiculous.

Bear in mind there are even plenty of people who don't even believe it's physically possible for a woman to rape a man, whether because they think a man won't "get it up" unless he wants it (which is wrong, wrong, wrong) or because they exclude all the other possible forms of rape.


Regarding changing the law and its effect on gender relations: Not prosecuting woman-on-man rape is misandristic, yes. It's also misogynistic. It stems from the idea that a man must always be able to overpower a woman, that sex is a man's choice, and that women can't play the/an active role. Women aren't seen as capable of, or responsible for, that decision/crime.

Hopefully with a couple of burly cellmates eager to "spiritually marry" Rev. Jeffs and consummate that marriage the way he did with young girls.

Can we not make rape jokes in here, please?

While that would certainly be poetic justice, I consider rape as a form of punishment barbaric. Of course, a part of me would enjoy the poetic justice and irony of it, but I don't consider prison rapes of even heinous criminals to be lawful.

The fact that this even has to be said is sickening. It's socially acceptable, for some ass-backwards reason, to joke about male-on-male rape as if it's not a big deal, especially in prisons, and to act as if that's just part of the punishment a prisoner has to go through. Imagine how people would respond emotionally if someone said he hoped that a woman would get raped in prison by men.

I like to think that people are civilized and at least close to humane enough to not resort to raping people as punishment. Or, hell, looking the other way when people do it.

[Nadaka]

Kael, I actually think Andir has a point in making that analogy. By abstracting the crime, it becomes clear that there is injustice when the same crime is punished differently solely based on the gender (or class, or race to get even more abstract) of the perpetrator.

I am also a little uncomfortable with how "polygamist" gets lumped in with "cult leader" and "child rapist" without a second thought.

[GlyphGryph]

Andir, I understand what you were trying to accomplish, but that's not really the best way to go about it.
Especially since murder or kidnapping would have been a much better analogy, serving your point without need to change the class of the crime to something that is likely to set people off.

Women are perfectly capable of getting their murder (or kidnap) on, and the law does not need a different name for that to protect women as a whole.

Even then, I'm honestly not sure how you expected that comparison to actually help, considering who you're arguing against.

Anyways, I was always going to add something about it being mysogynistic to declare, legally, that a woman is incapable of doing something a man could do (raping), but G-Flex beat me to it.

[Bauglir]

@Kael:

To be fair, I think the point he might have been getting at is that Virex is having difficulty considering the problems people are raising because of an emotional response to the word "rape". And that that emotional response happens to include insisting that women need to be protected from it at all costs, rather than that people need to be protected from it. And I want to be clear, that change in definition is a strict expansion; women fall under the category of "people", obviously.

So he picked an arbitrary example where insisting that men and women should be treated differently is obviously ridiculous, and attempted to draw an analogy. He could have as easily brought up assault or blackmail as he did theft, and the analogy would have been the same. Certainly, it seems kind of obnoxious to insist that rape can be compared in no way to some other, non-sexual crime, and he definitely didn't equate them. He even explicitly said that they're not the same crime; unless you think that the psychological trauma resulting from rape is relevant to why women ought be preferentially treated compared to men, then you're attacking a pretty ridiculous strawman.

EDIT: I forgot a couple important words.

[Leafsnail]

While I feel his conclusion is correct, Andir's analogy is completely invalid (and has a nasty insinuation about property).  You're taking an situation where it's two different actions (and some people argue that one is different to the other) and changing it to a situation where it's the same action in both cases.

[Phmcw]

Sorry you read it that way... I'm simply trying to direct the argument to the false logic that any one sex should be favored in legislation on any matter.

Let me explain to you nicely before I excuse myself from the thread: in the terms of the "law" you were refering to, you equated rape- someone getting their body used against their will, with someone losing their car, an object.

I'm sure the problem isn't with how I read your post. I'm horrified you could say anything to objectify rape victims bodies like that and then passively aggressively tell me you're sorry I took it that way as if it's my fault for getting offended by your terrible statement.

EDIT- That's the attitude that makes this thread uncomfortable.

I disagree with you there : he's trying to make a point by making a paralel with a less emotionally charged crime. Murder would have been perfect, though : would you find it just not to call it domestic violence if a women beat his husband within inch of his life? After all, most domestic violence is done by men.

[Heron TSG]

Let me give you some of my personal experiences, Virex.

My uncle had a bottle of soda poured on his head and then was beaten with a frying pan by his wife. He couldn't fight back, because if he did he would've been going to jail. He couldn't call the police either, since they'd just laugh at him.

It took years for him to get custody of the kids, and only after his wife was diagnosed with serious depression. Had the genders been flipped, everything would've been very different.

This last Spring, my Psych 101 class was asked by the sheriff of a nearby county to help them test for sexism in their judicial/police system. A few of us, including myself, volunteered. I figured that it'd be interesting to get an inside view of the legal system, and they were offering a small payment in compensation, so there was that. Anyway, the nine of us that volunteered were matched into five situations, and then one or the other of each pair would call '911' (actually the number used by the 911 workers participating in what they thought was a quarterly testing drill) and we would go from there. The pairs were as follows, sans names and other identifying factors.

Pair 1: A man who pretty much lived at the gym paired with a woman who usually accompanied him to lift weights.
Situation: The man had been beating his 'wife'. The 'wife' made the emergency call.
Result: The man was 'sentenced' to a sentence rated at ~3. (1 being a minor prison sentence, 10 being life in jail)

Pair 2: A fairly average guy paired with a fairly average woman. Neither really exercised or anything.
Situation: The woman had been abusing her 'husband', and he proceeded to call '911'.
Result: After much hemming and hawing, the jury decided in favor of the man, 'sentencing' the woman with a rating of ~2.

Pair 3: A huge guy paired with the smallest of the women.
Situation: The woman had been abusing her 'husband', and he proceeded to call '911'.
Result: No sentence given, citing that the man should have been able to defend himself.

Pair 4: A pair similar to that of Pair #2
Situation: The man had raped the woman, and she called '911'.
Result: Decided in favor of the woman, with a sentence rating of ~4

Pair 5: Me and the woman from Pair #4.
Situation: I had been raped by the woman, and called '911'.
Result: The jury was divided. We were called in personally to add in more evidence, rather than the others which were all anonymous descriptions. We were given some lines to say, but the jury wanted some further evidence yet. I was asked to attempt to bench press 140 pounds, the weight of the woman, as well as a couple other physical tasks. The woman was asked to do some other similar tests. Eventually, after several hours of deliberation, they decided in favor of me, with a sentence rating of ~2.

It wasn't the most scientific endeavor I've ever participated in, but apparently it resulted in a few policy changes in the local courts, after we had revealed that the juries, almost to a person, didn't think that any given woman could reasonably overpower any given man, barring evidence that they could see before their very eyes. (For example, me trying and failing to lift even the solid weight of the 'offender', even without the bar itself trying to stop me, only changed the minds of a couple of them, and it took quite a few more such tests before they were all in agreement.)

[Bauglir]

While I feel his conclusion is correct, Andir's analogy is completely invalid (and has a nasty insinuation about property).  You're taking an situation where it's two different actions (and some people argue that one is different to the other) and changing it to a situation where it's the same action in both cases.

What I don't get is why a man raping a woman is a different action than a woman raping a man, except mechanically. Which would be like arguing that it's a meaningfully different crime to steal a Ford than a Chevrolet. The analogy seems valid, though maybe he could have picked a better example than theft, and I really don't actually see objectification as a valid implication from it.

It's for the same reason that Mr. LaForge can compare overloading an enemy starship's shields by reversing the polarity of the deflector dish to overfilling a balloon and thus popping it, without implying that the same shields can be overcome by pricking them with an actual pin, or that they are made of some elastic material.

[kaijyuu]

The fact that this even has to be said is sickening. It's socially acceptable, for some ass-backwards reason, to joke about male-on-male rape as if it's not a big deal, especially in prisons, and to act as if that's just part of the punishment a prisoner has to go through. Imagine how people would respond emotionally if someone said he hoped that a woman would get raped in prison by men.

Normally I wouldn't do this in a serious thread as this one, but...

You rock.

[RedKing]

Kael, I actually think Andir has a point in making that analogy. By abstracting the crime, it becomes clear that there is injustice when the same crime is punished differently solely based on the gender (or class, or race to get even more abstract) of the perpetrator.

I am also a little uncomfortable with how "polygamist" gets lumped in with "cult leader" and "child rapist" without a second thought.

It's lumped in, because all three are correct attributions in this case. He is the leader of a splinter Mormon group that practices and advocates polygamy, and the charges on which he was convicted stem from forcing a 12-year old and 15-year old into intercourse with him, because they were his "spiritual wives". I apologize for the "hoping he gets karmic payback in prison" part, but then that's just me. I like to see people that do evil receive their just desserts.

[Darvi]

Might be revelant

[Nadaka]

RedKing: There are a lot of people who would see the following headline as subtly racist or contributing to racism, even if it is true for the case in question: "Black man assaults and robs white couple in downtown parking garage."

[RedKing]

RedKing: There are a lot of people who would see the following headline as subtly racist or contributing to racism, even if it is true for the case in question: "Black man assaults and robs white couple in downtown parking garage."

I'm sorry, am I supposed to feel bad for discriminating against polygamists? Something which is a voluntary choice and is illegal in the United States (and indeed in most of the industrialized world)?

[kaijyuu]

Personally I've got nothing against polygamy, provided everything's consensual and all. Maybe they feel the same?

[Kay12]

Me neither, it doesn't really concern me how many people share a bed if it's cool with everybody. This is a *progressive* rage thread, sticking to conservative relationship structures is ill-advised...