Feminism general thread

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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby AdmiralMemo » 01 Sep 2014, 17:56

Duckay: Please don't take offense to my joke. My viewpoint and experiences are very different from most of the posters here, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Matt wrote:In the case of the courts martial described, what was the ruling?
I thought he said it here:
Lord Hosk wrote:it is fully possible under the law for two people to simultaneously rape one another without even the slightest use of force or threat and the only coercion is mutual.

...

both are now registered sex offenders and were kicked out of the Army.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Lord Hosk » 01 Sep 2014, 18:01

Fayili wrote: when the punishment for plagiarism has heretofore been harsher than the punishment for rape.


This is horrible, similarly Ray Rice was arrested for domestic abuse and the NFL suspended him for two games and fined him 529,411.24 which is the amount earned from those two games so basically they suspended him without pay. Josh Gordon came up hot for pot in a random drug screen in the off season and he was suspended for a year and fined a years salary.

The way our culture treats crimes make me sick.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Lord Hosk » 01 Sep 2014, 18:10

Matt wrote:In the case of the courts martial described, what was the ruling?

-m


Both were found guilty, both were given other than honorable discharges. They were offered the chance to appeal and present new evidence, they both accepted the discharge.

He had been in for four years and already completed his first enlistment so the other than honorable will have minimal lasting effects other than he is required to list his discharge that way if he lists it. The bigger issue for him is he is now a registered sex offender and will have to update the government of whatever area he goes to depending on their local laws.

She was on her first enlistment which means that that she is now ineligible for all VA benefits and she is now a registered sex offender and will have to update the government of whatever area she goes to depending on their local laws.

All in all its a huge impediment to both of their lives, worse for her, although the army gave them both the same punishment.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Duckay » 01 Sep 2014, 18:15

AdmiralMemo wrote:Duckay: Please don't take offense to my joke. My viewpoint and experiences are very different from most of the posters here, so take what I say with a grain of salt.


I'll endeavor to explain why I found the joke offensive, if that helps anyone reading this thread.

Your joke read to me (and given that I stated what I thought your joke was saying in a previous comment, and you didn't argue, I am going into this assuming that I did interpret it correctly) like something that I've heard a million times before. It seems like every time advances are made in the politics surrounding rape or comments are made about rape statistics, there's a voice saying, "But what about false accusations? How do we protect ourselves against those?"

Now, there's nothing wrong with that in theory. It's valid to ensure that we are not throwing people under the bus. However, I (and many other people) have noticed that this will happen even in circumstances where there's absolutely no reason to think that false reports will increase or be more likely to be taken seriously. So why do people keep making jokes like that? I don't know. Honestly. What I do know is that it typically comes across as very dismissive. I'm very pleased that these changes may mean that fewer women are treated disrespectfully over having been the victim of a crime, and it's jarring to hear a voice come in and say, "but it isn't any less likely that false reports will be made (even though it's not any more likely, either), so let's talk about that instead". To follow it up with a joke that reads to me like you're insinuating that it's better to disrespect your partner's privacy than to be accused of rape, and yeah, I feel a little bit offended.

To be fair, though, the fact that this comes in the wake of a major hacking incident didn't particularly help.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Matt » 01 Sep 2014, 18:42

Further clarifications requested:

In martial cases are there different standards of evidence required for conviction?

And am I correct in reading this as someone laid charges, then the accused counter-charged the original plaintiff and then they were both found guilty?

Because that sounds like a legal clusterfuck, rather than a particularly good example of how the legal system fails.

I'm also inclined to think that in the case of both parties being found guilty, there may have been additional evidence submitted that maybe you weren't privy to?

(Tbh, I'm a little dubious of using martial courts as an exemplar for the handling of rape allegations in all cases.)

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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby empath » 01 Sep 2014, 19:56

I'm sorry, maybe you young'uns have some slang connotation for 'clusterfuck', such that "a legal clusterfuck" could mean something other than "a particularly good example of how the legal system fails"?



That said, I don't particularly think that these recent changes are making it worse, and I do approve of them.

But as always, a justice system still needs to rely on human beings to exercise judgement in 'grey areas' (which *I* take to mean "any case that actually goes all the way to trial", such that both parties haven't already come to a common understanding on the case), and as such is only as good as the abilities of its court officials. It's never gonna be any more perfect than we are, but it could be a lot worse.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Lord Hosk » 01 Sep 2014, 20:16

The short answer I cant give as I dont know what the full standards of evidence are. I do they follow the rules laid forth by the state bar associations and every lawyer and the judge have all passed the bar in at least one state. There is a judge a 'jury' consisting of at least 3(in this case 5) officers a trial attorney (prosecutor) and a defense attorney. I have never been at a civilian trial but it seemed very similar to what you see on TV, other than everyone in the room being in full dress uniforms.

I was called as a witness in both cases, I was asked very similar questions by the trial attorney and then asked very similar questions by the defense attorneys. When did it happen, did I see them drinking, what was the demeanor before hand, what was their demeanor after, how long were they in the room, did I hear any struggles, was I concerned for their safety. Her attorney also asked me questions about why I didn't do more to guarantee the safety of my fellow soldier which I still don't feel I failed in anyway.

Yes, from my understanding the young woman after being made fun of for her choice in men, changed her story to rape, and then reported the rape. After hearing that he was accused of rape on the grounds that she was drunk, he said "well then she raped me too" and filed charges. There were independent investigations conducted in each case by different investigators. Both were confined to quarters for the three-four weeks of investigation. The trials had the same judge, different prosecutors different defense different jury, almost all the same witnesses.

He had just a military lawyer and was found guilty basically on the grounds that she consumed alcohol beyond what considered to be a impairing level and could not legally give consent no matter what she said at the time. His trial took two days and I was there for both.

Her trial started a week later, she retained a civilian lawyer in addition to her military lawyer. Her trial lasted four days I was there for the first second and fourth day. Her civilian attorney was very aggressive and was warned by the judge on several occasions. In the end she was convicted on the same grounds he had consumed alcohol beyond what is considered to be a impairing level so he could not have given his consent.

Both were sentenced to time served plus the other than honorable discharge.

I think it was a legal cluster, but also a example of how the legal system fails. From my perspective the charges were brought in her case out of shame from peer pressure and in his case anger, not out of any real feelings that they had been taken advantage of sexually in either case.

Its possible that something came up in the third day of her trial that I didnt hear, but I didnt hear anything in the rumor mill that was unexpected. These weren't closed proceedings although you did have to get permission from the judge, a Lt Col., but to me that seemed more a formality, before they started the session anyone who wasnt a witness for that day had to talk to the judge, the few people who did were all allowed to stay. I was on the witness list for both days for his trial and for day one and two of hers, I approached the judge on the fourth day and before even saying anything he said "yeah you are fine"
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Avistew » 01 Sep 2014, 20:34

Honestly, I know being wrongly accused is horrible, but the cases of someone being wrongly accused and then found guilty after a trial can't possibly be more numerous than the cases of someone being raped and unable to do anything about it, while the rapist stays at large.

The case of the two people being simultaneously found guilty is definitely showing a failure in the system, but in my opinion the failure should be more along the lines of "since you weren't able to consent, you cannot be found guilty of doing something you didn't consent to". It seems similar to how two underage people having sex have been both found guilty of statutory rape in the past, and I'm pretty sure the system was changed afterwards to account for things like that.

On White Knighting, I always thought of it as someone who is only attracted to people who seem "broken" because they want to "save" them and be loved and praised, and as a result I really thought of it as a relationship thing. I can definitely see the "jump to the rescue of someone who doesn't need you because you think it will make you look good angle" but I think it would be silly to accuse all allies of such a thing.

Going back to consent an alcohol, I have to admit I've been really shocked in the past by how people are willing to have sex with people who are drunk, or even get them drunk in order to have sex with them, without seeing anything wrong with that. You see lots of people saying things like "I'm in love with my best friend, how can I ask them out" and tons of advice along the lines of "Invite them over and get a few drinks to loosen up" my response to which being "ABORT! ABORT!".

I mean, this is just terrible advice. Why would you want to have sex with someone who needs to be drunk (or even just "loosened up") to agree to it? This is madness. I would never, ever have sex for the first time with someone I know to have drunk even just a glass or two. I've been in such situations and they're not nice. So nowadays anything but "I like you a lot, let's talk about it when we're both sober and see where we want to go with it" is just not acceptable in my book.

I'd be more willing to have sex with an established partner after one drink or two (that is, when they're less inhibited, but still mostly coherent) because I would think that they are fine with the concept of having sex with me (since we do it all the time) and having one drink is unlikely to completely change that. But to be honest I've never been in a situation where a partner had a drink that evening and we had sex instead of just going to sleep, so I'm not completely sure what I would do.

Now, I know I wouldn't have sex with a partner who is completely drunk but that's more along the lines of why I wouldn't have sex with a partner who is really sick. My responsibility to take care of them takes precedence over any "fun times" which can wait until they feel better.

Going back to the law, it's very specific to colleges and addresses a very real problem, and does not make it more likely that someone will be falsely accused: indeed, if people take care to follow that law, it should be easier to prove that their partner consented, and if they don't follow it, we just get back to the problems that were already there before the law was passed.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby J_S_Bach » 01 Sep 2014, 21:22

@Duckay
I don't think that AdmiralMemo's comment was out of line nor was it in bad taste. I read it as someone looking at the very real issue of false accusations and taking an idea past it's logical conclusion through satire. How would you decide a case when both parties were black-out drunk on the night in question? Or when both parties are completely sober? It becomes a sticky subject. Obviously, if we recorded ourselves 100% of the time these things wouldn't be an issue. It's an extremely simple solution (although unpractical) to an extremely complex problem. The joke I find helps remind people that currently there is no one right answer that will work. When dealing with any serious situation you don't want to be too heavy handed. Many people find humour as a good stepping stone into difficult topics or as a breather since many people may unknowingly get overly defensive in their positions and a satire can help open up new lines of dialogue.

@Matt
Really? perfectly clear evidence of a case where the legal system failed and you claim it's a bad example? Wouldn't a "legal clusterfuck" and "good example of how the legal system fails" be the same thing?

Many crimes have false negatives and false positives with prosecution. Men and women are afraid to report cases of rape for a myriad of reasons (I believe it is due to how prudish our culture seems to be). This progress being made is definitely a good thing and here's hoping that it continues.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Duckay » 01 Sep 2014, 21:34

It's perfectly fine for you to feel like the joke was not in poor taste. That's your right. It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth because I feel like it wasn't particularly relevant (after all, nothing about this actually affects false accusations one way or the other) and was therefore distracting from the topic at hand. It comes in a long line of people derailing conversations about rape to talk about other issues. Those issues are definitely important, but the fact that they so often come up as a derailing tactic in other conversations makes it a bit tiresome. I don't want to be dismissive of these issues, which are real and terrible, but making jokes about those issues when the bill we're talking about doesn't affect those issues seems weird to me.

That, and I found the joke about filming all sexual activity to be in kind of poor taste given the link I posted above.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby JustAName » 01 Sep 2014, 21:35

They're not usually afraid because of prudery, they're usually afraid because they're not believed, and treated awfully by the police and the justice system overall.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Lord Hosk » 01 Sep 2014, 22:13

I really hate the term white knight, it trys to shame people for trying to stick up for someone.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Matt » 01 Sep 2014, 23:46

J_S_Bach wrote:@Matt

Really? perfectly clear evidence of a case where the legal system failed and you claim it's a bad example? Wouldn't a "legal clusterfuck" and "good example of how the legal system fails" be the same thing?


Not necessarily, if the case is that the legal process in question handles prosecution differently than the civilian courts that hear the overwhelming majority of sexual assault cases- which is what my other questions were getting at.

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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Avistew » 01 Sep 2014, 23:50

I found the joke to be unfunny, but I didn't find it offensive. However it helped that I interpreted it as "everyone filming everything" and not "one side filming the other without their consent so that they can prove the sex itself was consensual". I think it takes a different tone if you imagine the people agreeing to film themselves beforehand rather than someone (even both people) doing it in secret.

Of course, nobody should be forced to show images of themselves having sex to prove that they were raped, or to prove that they didn't rape someone. This isn't something most people would be comfortable with and so it makes the solution potentially worse than the problem.

Matt's response of "never have sex when it's a grey area" seemed to me at less possible without disturbing consequences, if not practical for everyone.

To draw a parallel, "let's all get all STDs so we don't have to worry about catching them anymore" is a poor solution to a problem, while "let's never have sex and we won't catch STDs" is a solution that many people would consider not very practical, but it is possible and would not make the problem worse.

As for under-reporting, I have to agree with Fayili. People under-report because they know in many cases, they'll get more backlash than the person they accuse. In other words, there will be more people going "how dare you try to ruin their life by falsely accusing them" or "you probably enjoyed it" or "you probably asked for it" targeted towards the victim than "I can't believe you did that" or "you should be ashamed of yourself" targeted towards the accused.

People are very eager not to believe these kind of things, and to dismiss them or blame the victim. Even when people aren't blaming the victim, they might treat them completely differently after the fact and that's also not something a lot of people want to have happen to them.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Matt » 01 Sep 2014, 23:56

Lord Hosk wrote:I think it was a legal cluster, but also a example of how the legal system fails. From my perspective the charges were brought in her case out of shame from peer pressure and in his case anger, not out of any real feelings that they had been taken advantage of sexually in either case.


Eh, yeah, that sounds pretty generally like a shitty situation for all involved, but I don't know that I think that the verdicts issued were necessarily wrong, and I'd certainly argue that this story simply backs up my suggestion that situations in which capacity to consent is arguable, or consent is unknown shout just be avoided by declining to have sex. Intoxication is always a complicating factor, especially in encounters with strangers and casual acquaintances.

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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby empath » 02 Sep 2014, 04:39

Mind you, you DID bring up a valid point - the difference between civil and martial courts as applying to this situation.

When presented with this situation, the officers on the courts martial would have had a slightly different matter to consider. If Lord Hosk's perspective turned out to be the case for all, the big question they would have had sitting on their laps is:

"Should we entrust the power to kill (and potentially in the future, the ability to command others with that power) to someone who makes such accusations of others from the result of peer pressure or retribution?"

A CM always has to keep that 'is this person we're judging still fit for the responsibilities we're granting them?' question in mind. It could be that the accused is totally innocent of the charges laid, but their judgement and decision-making ability that allowed them to come to a situation where they are charged - or their actions in response to such charges - make them unfit for duty.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Firbozz » 02 Sep 2014, 12:08

Hopping back onto the topic of "white-knighting"

I've seen it used primarily as an insult, generally directed at men supporting women or voicing feminist views. In my experience, the term is used (by those using it, to be clear) to describe a man who is trying to "get in the feminists' good books." This generally has the subtext that the man is voicing feminist views or supporting women in exchange for sex, or in the hopes of being "rewarded" with sex by women.

This actually shares a few threads with the (ungrounded) accusations leveled at Quinn: both implicitly commidify sex. "White-knighting" ties into "nice guys" and the idea that sex should be (but isn't) received in exchange for being nice to/supporting women. Whereas in the case of Quinn, the assumption is made that if (and I say "if" because I want to touch on her personal life as little as possible) she had sex with someone, then she must been getting something in return.

"White-knighting" is evidently a term used different groups with different connotations. Betsy has above shown another context in which it is used. It may just be a matter of different social circles (I've most often come across the phrase online).
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Matt » 02 Sep 2014, 12:50

I have basically only heard the term "White-Knight" used as a pejorative, except on occasion, when reclaimed (ironically) by the intended target.

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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Deedles » 09 Sep 2014, 04:30

Cross-posting in this and the Adam Baldwin/Gamergate thread.

Link - WHY WE’RE WINNING: SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS AND THE NEW CULTURE WAR

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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby J_S_Bach » 09 Sep 2014, 16:58

My wife recently told me about this post by the RCMP. She was quite upset about it and thought it was unnecessarily. I however am not sure how to feel about it but I am curious to know others opinions on it.

http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/nb/news-nouvelles/releases-communiques/14-09-05-155451-eng.htm

The only information that I could find is that a man in a pickup truck slowed down to ask a teenage girl, who had recently gotten off a bus, if she needed help and where she was going.
The RCMP are currently looking for him to "determine what his intentions were".

This happened in a small New Brunswick community (about 6500 people) where, in my experience, this behaviour is not out of place.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Duckay » 09 Sep 2014, 17:08

The most important thing to my mind that I feel like is missing from this story is that we don't know how the teenager felt under the circumstances. I know it sounds really ambiguous but if the teenager in question felt really uncomfortable about the way she was approached, that makes the investigation a lot more reasonable than if she felt it was very reasonable but someone else thought it looked weird, for example.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby AdmiralMemo » 09 Sep 2014, 21:39

Yeah, a ton of context has been stripped from this story. At face value, it seems like the RCMP are making a big deal over nothing. But if there's more to it than that, then it might be valid.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby korvys » 09 Sep 2014, 22:19

I'm pretty happy to give cops a lot of leeway to do basic investigation of whatever they think is suspicious, after all, they probably have more info and more experience with this stuff. This doesn't cover frisking people, searching cars, etc, though.

Someone reported something they thought was suspicious, the RCMP said ok, we'll have a look, and can anyone help. Seems fairly reasonable. Better safe than sorry, without going overboard.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby J_S_Bach » 09 Sep 2014, 23:09

My wife's issue with it is she saw it as someone asked someone if they needed help, that person declined and then reported to the RCMP. The RCMP felt it was a big enough issue to put out a notice and asked the community for help to identify the man. She fears it's a signal of a breakdown of our rural communities (something she's very attached to) and wonders when people will be too terrified to ask each other for help for fear of being hauled in by the RCMP for questioning.
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Re: Feminism general thread

Postby Duckay » 09 Sep 2014, 23:19

Personally, the way I see it is that different things could have happened and we have no way of knowing which.

Possibility A, the man in the truck saw a teenage girl who looked uncomfortable or unsure, and read that as a cue that she needed help, so he innocently offered it. As it was, she did not need help and didn't think anything weird had transpired, but later mentioned it to her parents who thought it sounded creepy and reported it.

Possibility B, the man in the truck saw a teenage girl who looked uncomfortable or unsure, and read that as a cue that she needed help, so he innocently offered it. As it was, she innocently misread his offer of help as something untoward and reported it.

Possibility C, the man in the truck saw a teenage girl who looked uncomfortable or unsure, and read that as a cue that she needed help, so he innocently offered it. As it was, she did not need help, and decided to maliciously report it even though she knew he did not have ill intentions.

Possibility D, the man in the truck had some kind of ill intentions and used the offer of help as a way to approach a teenage girl. She felt uncomfortable because she could see something funny was happening and reported it.

Because we don't know which of these things actually transpired, I don't think we can really say whether the RCMP or the teenage girl / her family are overreacting by reporting and investigating this matter. That being said, the very real possibility that there was a valid reason for investigating means that I personally think it's too soon to apply the slippery slope argument of "one day we'll be too scared to ask each other for help for fear of the RCMP".

I also think you're overlooking something; it certainly reads as suspicious to me that he asked where she was going. That's none of a stranger's business, in my opinion.

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