Plum Crazy

Geez. I hadn't heard about the Dougal case.

Maybe it's just me, but that yahoo news article about the rapist bugs me. Part of it is the line "There's a lot of emotional damage that goes with being raped, especially when the victims are men."

I don't really see the value in trying to suggest that men or women experience more emotional damage from being raped. It seems to me that it's a pretty heinous crime, and that the emotional damage is pretty effing damaging regardless of your gonads.

I don't really see the value in trying to suggest that men or women experience more emotional damage from being raped. It seems to me that it's a pretty heinous crime, and that the emotional damage is pretty effing damaging regardless of your gonads.

Yeah, that bugged me too.

PS, were you on that princess/superhero conversation over at Feministe? Your URL looks familiar.

Agree that it really shouldn't matter who suffers more from rape. It's scarring no matter what gender you are.

However, I have serious reservations about this law, and yes, it's of the variety what if someone is falsely accused. Say a couple drinks heavily, and the woman initiates sex. The two of them have a major fight or he is caught cheating the next day. She turns around and says she was too drunk to consent to sex the night before. Tests back her up. What then? Closed case, the guy is guilty, and he's forever branded a rapist? Or would there be provisions in the law to safeguard against such a circumstance? I also have reservations about the back calculating. There seem to be some questions about its reliability. Without more information, I cannot say whether I would support this law.

That said, I do realize that the circumstance I cite is rare, and that the law would do more good than harm and help more often than not. Still, as with any law, there must be precautions against false accusations.

Still, as with any law, there must be precautions against false accusations.

Name one law that has a precaution against false accusations, other than the law that makes it illegal to file a false accusation. One's protection against false accusations with this law is exactly the same as it is with every other law on the books - that it's wrong and illegal. People can go to jail for making false accusations. What more do you want?

What more do you want?

In the case where a man is falsely accused, to know that it's not simply the word of the woman and the alcohol test that determines guilt, but that the man will have an opportunity to defend himself and stand a reasonable chance of being found innocent. Not too much to ask for.

The case would go to court, like any other case, where a defense would be presented. This law would not obviate trials. No one is doing away with due process.

BTW, rape convictions in England only occur in 6% of cases. I'd rather say this law would move things towards where a woman might have a reasonable chance of obtaining a conviction. Men are in no danger of not having more than a reasonable chance of being found not guilty (IIRC no one is ever found innocent in a trial in England).

If we ever get to the point where men are in far more danger of being falsely convicted than of being found not guilty even when they are, I'll have more sympathy for the "false accusation" argument. Since we're not anywhere near that, I'm really not too worried about injustice towards men. I'm worried about addressing the actual injustice that women face on a very regular basis.

Agreed that there's far more injustice towards women than men and that the onus is far more on women than men in rape cases. Even if it's only a slight chance, which I agree it is, I just don't want to see injustice occur in an effort to redress another type of injustice. So long as there's protection against false accusation and the science behind back calculating isn't too fuzzy, I don't have a problem with the law.

"were you on that princess/superhero conversation over at Feministe? Your URL looks familiar."

I was, indeed. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's how I ended up here, too.

Jon, we don't let the potential for a false accusation prevent us from passing otherwise good laws, because we trust in the legal system to root out false accusations. Is it possible that the situation you bring up could happen?
I guess so.
Is it probable?
Not very.
Consider how many other potential crimes you can falsely accuse someone of. I could accuse my neighbor of keying my car, or breaking into my house, or of assault. There aren't any special protections to ensure that I don't falsely accuse my exgirlfriend of robbery or any other crime, so why should we expect there to be some kind of special protections in place for the rare and unlikely event of false accusations for this law?

I don't really see the value in trying to suggest that men or women experience more emotional damage from being raped.

There isn't any, but I can guess why people say that ("especially for males").

The false assumption is that it's doubly traumatic for a heterosexual male to be raped because that's not the kind of "sex" he's oriented to have. As if, rape is bad for women, but hey, at least if she's hetero it's something her body's oriented towards. (Yes, this is only a short step away from "Why not relax and enjoy it?")

Why this assumption is false and damaging, of course, is because rape is not sex, to the victim. Not the "wrong" kind, not the "right" kind, not any kind.