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The Mathematics of 'Legitimate Rape' and Pregnancy
Hugh Pickens writes "James Hamblin, MD writes in the Atlantic that it's unclear how common the misconception that women rarely become pregnant after rape may be, but remarks by Missouri Senatorial nominee Todd Akin that 'if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down' (video) may provide some benefit as a learning opportunity. 'From a holistic perspective, one might hypothesize that a woman's body could respond to the extreme stress and trauma of enduring rape in such a way that she would be physiologically more likely to miscarry (or not to conceive at all),' writes Hamblin. After all there is a multi-million dollar alternative reproductive health market aimed at optimizing an environment for conception so there could be something to a theory that the other, much darker end of that spectrum functions analogously. But that hypothesis doesn't hold, to any relevant degree. A widely-cited 1996 study from the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology sampled over 4,000 women and found that the rape-related pregnancy rate was 5.0 percent and studies from other countries have reported the percentage to be even greater."
The whole reason that this comes up is because you get guys, who ignore facts and place their bias out there are the truth. This is why you get Kentucky trying to get rid of evolution, stupid senators making dumb comments about rape. Throw in the good ole-boy network of reenforcing stupidity (on basically anything) we get these stupid statements and stupid laws.
[citation needed]
"But that hypothesis doesn't hold, to any relevant degree. A widely-cited 1996 study from the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology sampled over 4,000 women and found that the rape-related pregnancy rate was 5.0 percent and studies from other countries have reported the percentage to be even greater."
A more likely explanation is that the women were already using some form of birth control or that they simply were not in the fertile period of their cycle.
Presumably James Hamblin is an older white male. He seems to be missing the point here. The problem with the statement isn't that it's factually / scientifically inaccurate. The problem is the term "legitimate rape." The senator's statements (if taken with any bit of truth) imply that if a women were to get pregnant in the case of rape it was not a "legitimate" or "real" rape.
This is just more from the "war on women" department. And while I don't agree with the stupid soundbite slogan "war on women" -- the disturbing trend which gives rise to it is a serious problem politically, but more important, socially.
There must also be 'illegitimate rape,' right? Send that clown packing back to the anti-woman nut house he escaped from.
This is news for nerds, not tech news. Science is for nerds. Math is for nerds. I assume that's why it was added here, since we all know that sex is definitely not for nerds.
The hypothesis is that women do not get pregnant through sex unless the sex was consensual, and the evidence is that in fact they do. I suppose some statistics would be involved if you wanted to do a hypothesis test. But it's not some complex mathematical model, nor hugely contested.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
One of the many books I've read on the subject - I believe it was O -The Intimate History of the Orgasm actually stated that in studies rape lead to a higher fertilization rate than consensual relations. I won't get into the theory of why, because it will potentially piss off feminists. I'll just say it is documented and statistically significant.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Take your science and your math somewhere else. If we were interested in facts and evidence we wouldn't have joined the GOP.
Well, actually understanding the science of and mathematics of things in the news falls into the general purview of "News for nerds". It's tenuous, but I found the articles informative and directly related to current events (i.e. "news"). I feel like the article is more on topic than your complaint about it.
What Akin said is the way he believes it works, as advised by someone who shares his beliefs in pro-life.
What Akin truly missed out on was a golden opportunity to keep his ignorant trap shut, other than to refer to medical journals. Elections are dangerous times to be spewing things you know little to nothing about, giving air to your personal views. He now has a snowball's chance in Hell of being elected, but doesn't seem interested in aborting his campaign.
There is Science & Medicine and there are the political ways people try to interpret, shape and steer what studies say, then there are idiologues, who even the mainstream can identify as nuts, particularly the gender who are saddled with an unwanted pregnancy and are forbidden to do anything about it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This is also stuff that matters.
Doing a scientific analysis of elements in the news is always good for nerds. It's good for everyone, we need more of it.
Also, consider shit like this and this.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
When you get pregnant after rape, you either secretly liked it, or it was consentual.
The bastards the US calls politicians never seize to amaze me with their vile.
and fully believes all kinds of impossible, stupid, and just plain unrealistic things. it's in his blood.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Based on no empirical evidence, I am guessing that rapes are actually more likely to lead to pregnancy than consensual sex because of modern family planning. A woman who is expecting sex is more likely to be using birth control than a woman who is raped.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Hmm...as a man, I've yet to be harmed by this "sex weapon". Do you need a license for it?
If the odds of becoming pregnant through rape are 5%, that actually puts them at somewhat higher than through ordinary means (which are thought to be about 1 in 30). How does one account for that?
Honest question; I don't know how that would work.
It could well be a math issue - you don't believe statistics is a good way to find out the relative probability of something?
Also, political threads = potential flamewar and lotsa page views. Even free software nerds need money.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
It varies with local laws. Here is a link from the state of Utah: Girl, 13, charged as sex offender and victim.
A lot of people in the press have been playing fast and loose with Paul Ryan's connection to all this (largely for the flimsy reason that they were both cosponsors of the person-hood amendment), so I don't know what GP had in mind. But this much is worth reflecting on: Paul Ryan and Todd Akin also cosponsored a bill that would allow medicaid only to spend money for abortion services for women who were victims of "forcible rape" (instead of just "rape," which is how the law reads now). We might well have wondered why in the world Ryan and Akin thought that distinction was important. We still don't know about Ryan, but the evidence now seems to indicate that, for Akin, the answer may be that only "forcible" rapes are "legitimate." This, IMHO, is a repugnant view and we should be probably inquire to make sure that the GOPs VP nominee doesn't believe it too.
caritj.org
It is true that one common meaning of the word "legitimate" is "lawful". But another common use of the word "legitimate" is to imply merely that it actually -happened-. For instance: a legitimate arson would be one where a guy burned a building down for fun. A non-legitimate arson would be where a guy burned down a building because the owner of the building paid him to as part of an attempt at insurance fraud. Similarly,
a "legitimate rape" would be one in which nonconsensual sex was forced on someone. An illegitimate rape would be "girl pretends that consensual sex wasn't to get back at her boyfriend". Neither of those situations are pleasant, but they do both occur.
Something that *never* gets brought up (and ignored in discussions when I bring it up) is this fact: my genetics prof. when I was a freshman in college pointed out that if you believe that conception starts at fertilization then about 3/4 of the people conceived never are even born. This is because of the body's spontaneous abort mechanism that ceases pregnancies that have genetic problems.
I wonder if Akin confused this with his idea that rape victims spontaneously abort. (Given Akin's lack of intelligence this is probably given him too much credit).
Of course this idea sets a lot of the anti-abortion arguments on it's ear, since if you believe it then hell is filled with unbabtised babies.
That depends on your views regarding premarital sex.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Since when is this a site for *tech* news? There are other sites that do that. This is a "news for nerds" site, and tech news is just part of that.
This "women can't get pregnant from forcible rape" meme has been around for a long time, though, and the right to life movement has been promoting this myth for years now. It has been used as an argument against emergency contraception.
This particular story is about public ignorance of science, so it may not be news *to* nerds, but it qualifies as news *for* nerds. It's not news that ignorant people believe in creationism, it *is* news when creationists use their clout to restrict the teaching of evolution or to give equal billing to creation "science". It isn't news that some people (largely the same people who push creationism) believe a woman can't get pregnant from rape. It *is* news when somebody runs for office proposing to make laws based on that superstition. It's news for *everybody*, but the nerd's special bailiwick is the science and math part.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Well, there's the little matter of that bill to restrict Federal funding for abortions, based in no small part of kinds of rape (ie. violent vs. statutory) that Akin and Ryan co-sponsored. While Ryan can't really be held to account for Akin's apparently first grade understanding of female reproduction, the fact is that both men are close allies when it comes to how the Federal government should define rape. Ryan isn't in the center of the target, but he's certainly somewhere on it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Total logic fail. A 15 year old male having sex with a 15 year old female is not statutory rape. You lose.
That depends on the state. For example, in New York state, both would be charged with statutory rape.
Whether said law is a logic fail itself is a different matter.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Yeah. It's called a marriage license.
:(){
So, no true rapist gets their victim pregnant?
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
"largely for the flimsy reason that they were both cosponsors of the person-hood amendment"
that;s not flimsy.
From Ryan's historical actions, it only seems he thinks women can not be raped unless they are somehow harmed outside of the sexual intercourse part of the rape. Hitting, slapping, etc...
This is part of the rising war on women form that party; which stems from the religion rights belief that women are second class citizens.
AS an FYI: Mormons also believe women are 2nd class citizens.
*For brevity.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But it is a math issue. Akin has made the claim that somehow women who are raped can fend off pregnancy. So, there is a solid claim here that can be investigated, and before one starts pondering the means by which women can prevent rapists' sperm from fertilizing their ova, it seems useful to investigate the rates of pregnancy from rape.
Actually, what I find interesting is that I've read in various places that the odds of pregnancy from a single act of coitus is somewhere around 5%, so if 5% for rape is the statistic, then, from a purely biological point of view there is little difference in fertilization rates between consensual unprotected coitus and forced coitus.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It should matter to nerds and anyone else that a man who displays such little care of concern for the nature of reality is a member of the House and seeking office in the Senate of the United States. He represents a constituency the neither understands basic science nor believes that it is necessary to do so in order to make decisions that will govern your personal and professional lives.
Listen to what he is saying, and imagine the implications. A woman is raped... she is forcibly inseminated & the embryo is viable. In this twit's world (and that of others who want to force their 'values' on you) she would have no right to seek an abortion of this undesirable pregnancy. Period.
Furthermore, he's implying that he's been informed by doctors that, "there are ways the female body has of shutting this thing down." First of all, he doesn't understand basic biology. Secondly, he's sadly misinformed about the nature of the rights of the individual. Third, if this is the kind of leadership you want to see in Congress and you're a geek, how do you think it's going to effect your ability to seek federal funding for any research that runs afoul of the whims of a such a zealot?
If you still think it doesn't matter, then move to Missouri and see if can help Akin in his quest, but don't expect to be able to discuss science openly for fear that you'll be expelled from his inner sanctum of trusted keepers of the supreme knowledge.
From the NIH
CONCLUSIONS: Rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency. It is a cause of many unwanted pregnancies and is closely linked with family and domestic violence.
Offer up your own daughter for sacrifice, Mr. Akin, but keep your simplistic, religious immorality out of my life!
Statutory rape is often unforced.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
There's a whole range of rape. One the "legitimate" end is physical violence, somewhere closer to the middle is coercion or emotional manipulation, a little to the other side of the middle is taking advantage of drunk chicks in a bar, further this way still is fully consensual sex, but one person happens to be 16 and the other 22, and finally all the way on the opposite end is "it was a bad idea or I changed my mind, so I'm going to call it rape"
Weak argument. EVERYTHING is stuff the matters to someone. Buy putting nerds in the phrase, it implies a specific class of people and categories for topics.
News for Football; stuff that matters.
You really wouldn't expect an OEM discussion to appear.
That said, this part of the discussion, statistics and the physiological discussion certainly is news for nerds.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm reluctant to feed the troll, but it needs doing:
Seconded. While nobody should doubt that women can use sex as a women from time to time, EVERYBODY should doubt, for lack of evidence, that this phenomenon is discursively significant when set beside the shockingly common, underprosecuted, and yet extremely serious crime of rape.
Meanwhile, there is an embarrassment of evidence about the prevalence of rape and the ways in which our criminal justice system and society at large do not take the problem seriously enough. This social problem is caused, in very large part, by efforts to discredit and embarrass victims with much the same rhetoric as the GP's. So if, when confronted about a story about someone not taking rape seriously enough, your response is something like the GP's, you are either ignorant of the very well known facts, a cretin, or have your head way up your ass. Probably all three.
caritj.org
Akin's comments were tasteless and ignorant of current knowledge/data, but since no one else is coming to his defense, I will.
There are two aspects of his comments to which people take offense. To get the first out of the way quickly, "legitimate rape", the 2004 Maryland case of "delayed withdrawal of consent" is an example of "rape" that is not "legitimate".
Now, onto the pregnancy statistics. The theory that rape resulted in few pregnancies was common among conservatives, as TFA states. It came from the amlgamation of two scientific reports. First, studies have shown that female orgasm increases fertility because the vagina draws the sperm up like a conveyer belt as well as opens up the cervix. Second, until just a couple of years ago, rape victims reported orgasms in only 5-20% of cases. A recent study, however, showed that up to 90% of rape victims orgasm -- including those who could not otherwise normally orgasm. Women in previous studies were too ashamed to admit it (and in fact it's the greater psychological trauma than from having been penetrated).
This is an explanation for what was reported only in 2003, which is that the chance of pregnancy is greater with rape than with consensual.
Akin's information was out of date, was widely accepted by anti-abortion advocates (esp in the past), and had some scientific basis that was skewed due to rape victims' misreporting.
I agree for the most part, but the world is not black and white. Here's a little hypothetical thought experiment:
A teenage man (say, 19, so above majority age) goes to a party, which involves alcohol. He gets drunk enough to become sufficiently intoxicated to black out the evening. He wakes up in his bed at home, after being dropped off by friends. 3 months later, a girl who was at the party claims a paternity suit against him for her now 3rd month pregnancy, the test shows positive. he does not remember giving consent, and does not remember the woman at all.
Now, Flipside.
A teenage woman, (Say, 19, so above the age of majority), goes to a party which involves alcohol. She gets drunk enough to be sufficiently intoxicated to black out the evening. She wakes up at home in her bed after being dropped off by friends. She has semen stains in her panties. She does not remember giving consent, and promptly makes use of a female hotline to report her "rape."
These situations are essentially identical, however the female's view holds more gravity than does the male's. Contrary to what many feminists might claim, a non-consentual pregnancy and subsequent child support mandate can ruin a man's life, just as much as the unconsentual pregnancy itself can ruin a woman's. In both cases, informed consent could not be considered a given, because both were heavily intoxicated. This makes both instances fall de-facto under the umbrella of rape.
Both cases have identical themes: A person is encouraged by the party to become intoxicated, and is then taken sexual advantage of while judgment is impaired. That is straight up rape.
Why is it then, that men in this circumstance are more frequently saddled with being the SOURCE of the rape, and denied protections as a victim of rape, while women are more frequently granted the protections of being the victims of rape, while men are saddled with the blame for such rape?
I would say it is because of cultural bias, and double standards; women are percieved as more vulnerable, (when both are equally vulnerable to alcohol and other drugs), and thus requiring the stronger protections. Men are conversely considered to be "stronger", and being raped in this way is even culturally approved of in a disturbingly sick fashion.
I really do believe that it is possible to have a no-fault rape case. Both participants get smashed and fuck like rabbits while out of their minds, and assert they would never have consented to the sex while sober. How does the law react to such a circumstance? Does it punish both victims for their over-indulgences? Who pays child support?
See the problem?
From the mentioned study: "The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45);" If you sample 1000 randomly chosen women of reproductive age, you would expect some proportion of them to be using some form of contraception such as an iud, oral contraceptive, slow release implant or similar which would block contraception. Some of them will probably be pregnant already. None of those women is likely to conceive as a result of being raped, and of the remainder, it is unlikely that on any given day more than 25% would be at a point in their menstrual cycle to be fertile. I don't have all the numbers to hand, but I suspect that if you remove all the "can't get pregnants" from the pool of potential rape victims, you may find that the 5% of who fall pregnant is a much higher % of those who could potentially get pregnant from being raped. How many couples do we hear about who try for 6 or more months before they succesfully conceive? That's less than a 17% chance of contraception, assuming all other possible negative factors are deliberately eliminated. If only 1 in 4 rape victims is in a fertile window in her monthly cycle, then 5% of all rape victims of reproductive age suggests 20% of those who could potentially conceive are ending up pregnant as a result of the rape, and if other negative factors are taken into account, I suspect that the actual rate of conception amongst rape victims who could potentially conceive is even higher.
... is that the Republicans are hosed this November if they continue to double down on all of this.
And this is one of their central tenets on rape, that there is "legitimate rape" and "well, it's not rape-rape, because she had an orgasm" or "she deserved it because she dressed like a slut and forced the weak spined guy to rape her." It is so central to the "pregnancy as punishment for moral failing" in fundie circles that they will not relinquish this point. Because to relinquish it means they could be wrong on other things about pregnancy and abortion too. It's a point of faith held very deeply.
Which is why the GOP platform calls for a constitutional ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape.
But don't you dare call it a war on women. Right? *spit*
So get the popcorn, and find your favorite chair, because this is going to be an epic amount of derp.
--
BMO
The guy serves on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Citation: http://gop.science.house.gov/Members/Default.aspx
So this guy has a say in the nation's direction on those things.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2003/olrdata/jud/rpt/2003-r-0376.htm
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Which is all fair. When a moronic claim is made science is a good way to determine exactly how moronic it is.
Whether or not Akin's claim is true also has no bearing on whether women should have access to reproductive health services. It also has no bearing on whether or not Akin himself is a bumbling fucknut waste of human flesh who should be processed into a cheap meat-substitute.
Depends on the state.
Arizona
13-1405
Sexual conduct with a minor to engage in sexual intercourse with someone under age 18.
SO some 15 have sex with someone else 15 is, in fact, statutory rape in Az.
Here is a list.
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2003/olrdata/jud/rpt/2003-r-0376.htm
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I wasn't logged in, but to repeat my question (which is sincere—I'm trying to understand the science, not defend Akin's claims):
I'm confused about the numbers in the paper's abstract. They say the pregnancy rate is 5%, and the number of resulting pregnancies annually in the U.S. is 32,000. That means the number of incidents of rape is 640,000.
Other sources claim the number of reported rapes in the U.S. is around 90,000. How do we reconcile these numbers? Surely the authors don't claim that 86% of rapes in the U.S. go unreported?
There is a famous argument by Judith Jarvis Thomson that suggests that even GRANTING that a fetus is a full-fledged person with the same rights as everyone else, that STILL they do not have the right to infringe on the rights of the mother:
You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.
Do you have a moral obligation to spend nine months hooked up to this person to keep them alive because you were selected to loan out your kidneys by a third party?
IMHO statutory rape shouldn't exist at an age 18 threshold.
If we're going to argue immaturity while the persons body is well capable of the act then the brain doesn't finish maturing until 25.
Additionally it might slow down this rash of two under 18 parents with a kid all of a sudden.
The age should be lowered to 16 at the very least, and Canadas law of 14 made the most sense.
The instances of an under-14 year old girl going after sex in a bar somewhere and actually getting away with people thinking she's 18-19+ are extremely rare. The instances of a 14+ girl doing the same are extremely common. This is what the original law was based on. The 14+ year old is probably physically matured(they almost definitely are by 16), and is likely very curious about sex. There are a fair number of these girls that then go out and look for an older and (They presume) more experienced guy to introduce them to it, often lying about how old they are in the process. The guy doesn't even always find out how old she was.
Most guys in Canada follow the under 18 guidelines anyways as a general rule, however I know more than one that's been hit with a 15 or 16 year old that looked way fucking older. Now you have to I.D. them before you can let them on for a ride.
From the other side I know at least two girls I went to high school with that did exactly what I described. This was out of a class of 32, so percentages of girls doing this are actually significant, though this is somewhat anecdotal as it is a small sample size, I wouldn't be surprised to find similar throughout north america.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be some form of punishment, but 14-18 non-forcible sex should be a much more minor offense of some sort, with under-14 being the auto-rape.
To be fair, that's not true. I find his remarks more abhorrent because of the underlying thesis:
Akin's argument is essentially that when a woman is "legitimately raped" i.e. doesn't want to have sex with the man forcing himself on her, there can be no pregnancy. Therefore, whenever a rape victim gets pregnant, she actually wanted to have sex with that man, so it wasn't "really" rape, because secretly deep down she wanted it. Therefore, since she wanted to have sex, she should be responsible for the product of that act -- the baby. And thus, its okay to put her in jail if she aborts the rapists baby.
That's why the Republicans have been out there trying to split hairs between "rape rape" "forcible rape" "legitimate rape" and the term us commie hippie pinkos use (i.e. RAPE). Because, as any republican pastor could tell you, deep down that every feminist secretly wants a good round of "illegitimate raping" at least once a year.
Ugg's Observations On The Act Of Boom Boom And It's Prevalence In Attempted Matriarchal Dominance Systems
(translated from crude stone circles [footnoted with wall paintings] found in the Rift Valley)
One of many reasons why I am a devout evangelical atheist is because of all the Ten Commandments int he Bible, God chose not to outlaw rape. The Christian God apparently chose " Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." as a more important rule to lay down than "Thou shalt not rape." Rape has been used as a form of violence and control since the beginning of recorded human history, and in fact it has only been within the past hundred years that it has been seen as the true horror that it is in modern society, and this is IN SPITE OF religious dogma, not because of it.
God could have chosen to make it perfectly clear that this was one of the most evil sins that could be committed and should be outlawed under all circumstances. But the God presented in the Bible, and in the Koran, chose not to.
This is one of the reasons why I'm an atheist.
i think you misunderstood number of people in the study for number of rapes per year. one of these is MUCH higher than the other.
I am so sorry.
I read the whole thing and I did not violently disagree with any of it.
But when I got to the end I could not help but laugh out loud at work.
Just had never had the term "auto-rape" inserted into my head before.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Did you realize that Rep. Todd Aken is on the Committee for Science, Space and Technology (according to his Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_akin)
Isn't it amazing that someone this clueless about technology/how the world actually works would be on this committee?
Now do you think that this belongs on Slashdot?
Do you think Aken should resign?
Your "couples wanting to conceive" group will disproportionately sample less-fertile couples, as the most fertile couples will already have kids.
paintball
Naughtius Maximus, of course.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
Shouldn't an atheist say "those ancient dudes who made up the Bible chose not to..."?
Just sayin'
Which is all fair. When a moronic claim is made science is a good way to determine exactly how moronic it is.
Best quote.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I have a few different answers to this:
a) it was a joke about relationships that are so entrenched that their group decisions effectively constitute a layer of obligation similar to laws; in which case, 'woosh'
b) cultural norms regarding premarital sex in your community could effectively pressure you into behaving as though you needed to get married before sex could be used in this manner, even if you didn't personally believe it was right
c) the idea of using sex as a bargaining chip to force people to marry is, itself, a weaponization of sex ('woosh' again)
d) laws are, at some level, the aggregate results of political beliefs of the people (politicans, ancestors, whatever—don't debate politics in response to this post, please) they affect, and are hence dependent on your views and the views of others near you when considered at a national or global scale
Take your pick!
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Just my quick $0.02 because I keep reading the word "feminist" used as a pejorative.
Unless you think women should not be able to vote, get an education, drive, or hold the same jobs men do, you are a feminist.
Feminism is often associated with the left-wing equivalent of right-wing nutjobs. While yes, there are a small %age women out there who fit an unflattering image of what most conservatives visualize when they hear the word feminist, in reality, most civilized mature people are feminists, regardless of political party, religion, or other demographic.
Of course, those of you who think women actually do belong uneducated, imprisoned (nonconsensually), barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, are truly not feminists.
Carry on.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Akins rant was a success. Recognition and discussion has reached a national level for this candidate, but do we even know who hes running against? people are rightly polarized and outaged now but this strategy seems to be an old one for the GOP that harkens back to their sterling allies on AM radio. Say something incendiary, let the audience simmer for a while and see what they think, then direct the conversation where you think it needs to go.
The GOP is elected on the coattails of the culture war, nothing less. Once in office they act solely in the interest of the upper class but they need a vehicle to get them there. Points to Akin for avoiding complicated issues like the economy, for which the GOP have no coherent or reasonable answer but to continue shoveling money into the cauffers of the rich.
Good people go to bed earlier.
People of the United States should remember that Paul Ryan(R) (forcible rape) along with Todd Akin(R) (legitimate rape) co-sponsored the "Sanctity of Human Life Act:H.R. 212" which says that life starts at fertilization and guarantees that life full protection under the law which of course has the effect of making women who miscarry guilty of murder.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
The problem is you drank too much alcohol. This is why I don't drink that much alcohol and why I go pining at women before they've had more than maybe one drink, and that's edgy for me. I VOMIT before I lose my sense of reasoning (alcohol mainly affects me physically, but also even small amounts of alcohol basically stabilize my emotions and prevent clinical depression), and that takes ...what ... 3 or 4 beers, plus 4 ounces of whiskey, and an ounce or two of rum in an hour on an empty stomach? I did it once for an experiment.
That's great, but I don't trust women to be rational if the LIGHTING is different, much less if they've had ANY alcohol. Women are emotionally unstable, you can get them to do ANYTHING with the right shift in just about any social factor--lighting, temperature, whether or not they're hungry, boredom and recent excitement, the tone of your voice, facial expression, the presence or lack of presence of people, presence of cameras, etc. Alcohol is a quick motivator, it changes their perception on a subconscious level (alcohol = fun = be fun) and on a physical level (it's alcohol). At the end of the night after a dozen Jaeger bombs I don't think a girl has her head screwed on straight AT ALL.
If she doesn't say outright "hey whatever happens" or "yeah fuck me at the end of the night" when she's sober, not doing that. As for me, I'll have a couple good beers or throw an ounce of whiskey or brandy (Christian Brothers VS) in a sniffer and carry that for 4-6 hours. I don't need to pound shots that taste like piss, what the hell is the point of that? (Though jaeger bombs are oddly tasty... must be all the spices in jaeger, I should look into that).
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I know this sets the requirements pretty high, but I think it's reasonable to expect our lawmakers to investigate what the legal distinction between "rape" and "forcible rape" is, and vote accordingly. Ryan was either not educated enough to do so, which is a character flaw - or he understood the distinction and chose to support "only forcible rape" provisions intentionally, which is damning.
Elsewhere in the Old Testament, there are very specific rules about what should happen if somebody is raped:
1. If the woman is not married or engaged, the rapist pays her father 50 shekels of silver, and marries her.
2. If the woman is engaged, the town is supposed to stone both her rapist and her to death. (both of these are from Deuteronomy 22) Apparently the justification for this one is that it's her fault she didn't scream loudly enough.
3. If the woman is married, that's adultery, so both of them should be killed. (Leviticus 20:10)
Which goes to show exactly how much the people that wrote those books cared about women.
I am officially gone from
If the penalty for any sex outside marriage is death, how does one additionally punish rape?
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
But it is a math issue. Akin has made the claim that somehow women who are raped can fend off pregnancy. So, there is a solid claim here that can be investigated, and before one starts pondering the means by which women can prevent rapists' sperm from fertilizing their ova, it seems useful to investigate the rates of pregnancy from rape.
This is exactly it. The "big deal" isn't that a conservative thinks there is some sort of magic that God put in women to prevent unwelcome pregnancy (conservatives believe all kinds of ridiculous things so this is not a shocker at all). The big deal is that Rep Akin was appointed to the Committee on Science, Space and Technology in the U.S. House. This obviously puts him in a position to influence the nation's policy toward science, and since he is clearly a firm disbeliever in science as a whole it is really important that as many people know about this tragic mismatch as possible.
I think there's a fundamental difference between being beat up and having an orifice or two violated for the sexual gratification of someone else. If you have personally experienced the latter, you might have justification for speaking the way you do.
I haven't, so I'm not going to assume I can downplay the significance of the event by classifying it like any other "run of the mill" beating. Everyone I've met that has undergone both - and I've met more than a few - has clearly indicated that they are not the same thing.
coitus!
Sheldon, is that you?
Yes, it is an EXTREMELY unfortunate term because it seems clearly to suggest that large categories of rapes (in fact, the large majority of rapes -- most are not the stereotypical "violent encounters") are, in fact, not rape.
And, yes, the scientific inquiry you suggest may be a legitimate one. But what Akin was suggesting was not a scientific inquiry it was a scientific conclusion backed up by no scientific evidence whatsoever motivated only by political expediency. The actual evidence (so much as there is) tends to show just the opposite.
As for what you say about statutory rape, maybe maybe not depending on the case. Part of the point of the law, of course, is that some minors cannot actually meaningfully consent to sexual activity urged by an adult. But then again, plenty can. But we don't need to get bogged down in this. As you acknowledge yourself, there are other categories of rape that are non-forcible such as date rapes, etc.
caritj.org
Perhaps it was in the 15 Commandments, but Moses dropped the 3rd slab.
Wish I had mod points. You, my good Sir, hit the proverbial nail straight on the head.
The "Over" in "Overindulgence" pretty much spells that part out.
While you personally have a stronger resistance to alcohol than say, some other person, it does not mean that alcohol effects you any differently chemically. As such, the thought experiment is not invalidated by your anecdote.
Your proposal on how to behave at parties is directly corollary with the institutionalized double-standard I was referring to. Women can be more carefree in their behaviors, while men must be more proactively guarded, in order to avoid the problem. The addressing of the double standard is the problem; Men dont want to admit that they might not be in complete control (that is culturally unacceptable), and women dont want to admit that they could have been aggressors while drunk. (Dont you know, women are the FAIRER sex! they are delicate little flowers!)
Being straight-up asexual, I see this problem differently, with much less sexual politicizing. I see one type of person being forced to be more guarded and careful, to counter a predatory and/or shamelessly callous but socially protected behavior in another.
Really, BOTH should be guarded, as BOTH are vulnerable to the effects of over-consumption of alcoholic beverages.
An excellent observation. It's absolutely fascinating to me that the GOP's social conservative line isn't all that far from the hard-line Islamist line that a female victim of rape somehow actually was responsible for that rape and really it's more a situation of fornication, rather than violence.
There are some truly disturbing people filling up the hard-right ranks of the Republican party, and considering that Paul Ryan is a co-sponsor of amendments that seem to stem from this very kind of thinking, it certainly shines a new light on Ryan as well.
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Why would there be an "evolutionary arms race"? Unless offspring resulting from rape are somehow less viable than offspring resulting from consensual sex, and rapists pass on their proclivity to commit rape to their offspring, there's no evolutionary pressure one way or the other. Evolution operates because of natural selection; if an inherited trait is survival-neutral, there's no selection for or against that trait.
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
Interestingly enough, there was recently a case that sorta dealt with the first situation: A 20-year-old woman slept with a 16-year-old Justin Bieber, committing statutory rape. A pregnancy ensued. She claimed paternity against Justin Bieber, but changed her mind and dropped the claim once she realized that to claim paternity would be to admit to her crime of rape.
As far as I know, this kind of situation hasn't actually been tested in court - the tough part is that it's probably in the best interests of the child to have dad's financial support, but at the same time it seems unfair to punish dad for being raped.
I am officially gone from
I posit that ignoring the assholes is what is causing this problem to begin with.
Ted Stevens was chair of the committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation when he made his little "series of tubes" speech, and that didn't get rid of him. He only resigned when he was convicted for corruption (he might not have been chair anymore at that point, I'm not sure), and he was only just barely removed from the senate despite his conviction.
Being competent isn't what matters as long as you can convince your base that your opponent is a socialist who wants to take their jorbs.
"Voting for" an amendment is a bit different from "Co-Sponsoring" an amendment. The latter implies that he had some editorial control over the content.
I have always been of the opinion that while Christian conservatives decry Islam as evil, they are secretly jealous of it. Afterall, Islam has permeated many governments in the Middle East to a degree which most Christian conservatives could only hope to achieve.
"I'm a humble person really,
I'm actually much greater than I think I am"
No, GP is saying that the 7th and 10th commandments forbid you from coveting your neighbor's possessions, and unmarried women were considered one of those possessions. So if you covet your neighbor's 18 yr old unmarried daughter, you are breaking these commandments. GP makes a the jump that raping someone is an extreme form of coveting them, and so is covered under these commandments.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
A lot of the problem is that it's hard to determine the truth in a lot of rape cases, and our system is supposed to err on the side of the accused. The US criminal justice system sets "beyond reasonable doubt" as its standard. In a lot of alleged rape cases, it's the victim's word against the accused's, which is pretty much impossible to prosecute.
As for which is more common, rape or false rape accusations, I have absolutely no idea and don't want to touch that issue with a ten foot pole. I think they're both serious crimes, at the very least.
Actually, technically, you are incorrect.
The contract has nullification options, with the most common being "failure to consumate the marriage".
Additionally, where divorce isn't no-fault, lack of sex (alienation of affections) is also considered grounds for divorce.
So while the "contract" may not specifically mention sex, the "rules" for breaking said contract generally do.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Older than that. A bit of research shows that it goes back millenia, and a bit of thought behind "what would move a person to such a hypothesis?" suggests that it is as old as men trying to justify rape.
Forget diamonds, copyright is forever.
It definitely is rape if you're using a ten foot pole.
The other group says if an individual hasn't been seen yet, it doesn't exist, and thus executing said individual is fine and not murder.
This is something that a lot of pro-choicers have to tell themselves so they feel better about themselves. By any reasonable definition a fetus is a human being, all of the arguments to the contrary to hold water, IMHO. "It's just a collection of cells!", yeah, well, so are you. "It doesn't even have a brain yet!", well, neither does someone in a persistent vegetative state, but it's still considered murder to put a bullet in their head.
Now I happen to be pro-choice, I believe that the issue is one of balancing the rights of the Mother vs. the rights of the unborn child. I don't believe that soceity has a right to tell one person that they MUST do something to keep another person alive. The analogy that I like to make is organ donation -- can I be compelled to give you a kidney, blood, or bone marrow if I'm the only compatible donor and the alternative is your death? Of course not, my right to control my body is paramount. Likewise, I don't believe we have the right to tell a woman that she MUST carry a baby to term.
One can be pro-choice without rationizing their position with moral hair-splitting about the fetus not being a person.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
He corrected it to state that he meant "forcible rape." Local Fox affiliate.
I think there's a fundamental difference between being beat up and having an orifice or two violated for the sexual gratification of someone else. If you have personally experienced the latter, you might have justification for speaking the way you do.
How so? When I was a child, people used to beat me for their personal gratification. It stopped being a problem for me in middle school, when I realized I was actually pretty fucking resillient. At 80 pounds, some 280 pound monster in my class decided for his own amusement he'd slam me into a couple walls and the corner of a door... no bruises, broken bones, after the beating I got up and laughed at him and wandered away. He looked ... terrified. Never fucked with me again. Guess it killed his hard-on.
I can tell you that repeated beatings teaches you not to ride your bike down a certain street; and that constant taunting until around 10th grade teaches you to not do ANYTHING to draw attention to yourself, EVER. Eventually my anti-social isolationist personality gave me the edge to observe and notice that the most socially successful people are outgoing and do a lot of stupid shit, but just shrug it off when they call it wrong and everyone thinks they're retarded. Make a joke, strike a pose, make a pass at a girl and get rejected ... and just shrug, smile, and say something dumb and self-deprecating, then continue on (maybe a little more conservative) and in two minutes nobody will care.
People didn't taunt me because I did stupid shit. They taunted me because it entertained them. They had a target, they had a way to show off to their friends, to attack somebody else and draw everyone else into it. It created a crowd, a kinship: everyone hate on the quiet kid, he's harmless and it's fun to be a dick to him. This was never my fault.
How is getting raped any different? People stealing my shit, beating me, turning everyone against me... why not stick a few things in a few places too? In the end it comes down to the same shit: I should have punched every one of these fuckers in their mouths, repeatedly, until they learned to not be dicks. The moral high ground didn't work; laughing at stupid bullies works because I'm just that fucking strong, they can't hurt me, and it embarrasses them in front of their friends standing around. It's an attack, and it's injurious, and they back down. Sitting around quiet and walking off.. I've done that when punched, beaten, taunted, and people just laugh to themselves and call me names. Quip at them, maybe it'll hurt, maybe they'll try to shut you up with their fists... that works too, if they're going to bring their fists I'll bring MY fists and we can see who limps away.
The ones that did get punched were done in one. Nobody came back from that. Too dangerous, they left me the fuck alone. Corey was spooked after I laughed off his assault but he tried again a whole damn YEAR later and I put him on the ground and kept him there until I was damn well done showing that I had irrefutable power over his giant ass. Could have smashed that boy's skull to a pulp at any time and he was still 3 times bigger than me, and he kept trying to throw me off for 2 minutes. Never touched me again... guess he hated being that helpless in front of 40 people and 2 gym teachers (gym teachers don't do shit, they just shout at you while smiling inside).
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Cite your study so the rest of us can read it. I call bullshit.
caritj.org
In this case? No its not because the stigma of rape means for every one reported there are probably 7 that aren't so the stats are crap. in the end none of that matters though because tarded is tarded and common sense alone should have been enough for the vast majority to go "WTF, is he high?" and that should be the end of that.
After all we have people that think the earth is 6k years old and Adam rode on dinos but I don't think trying to show them the math don't work would help, do you?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
See, I'm an engineer. A scientist. What's in a name? "Legitimate" in that context is just as good as anything else. Of course, it is an unfortunate term politically. And, I am well aware of political agendas fueled by pesudo-science.
The term may be inflamatory, but such things sometimes are useful to draw attention to the rest of one's argument, whereupon it can be considered in the whole on its merits.
I do think the term "rape" has been diluted to the point of being rediculous. There is a difference between consensual sex between minors, women who lacked dimished capacity through their own voluntary consumption of alcohol, those who changed their mind right in the middle of the "main event", and those that are grabbed, manhandled, stripped, penetrated, and quite possibly beaten within inches of their lives. I grew up with the last of these as the mental image of rape. All the others might very well be exploitation, assault, even sexual assault, sleazy and wrong, but they do not rise to the same level of violence, depravity and the body's possible reaction. I might even be so bold as to suggest that if the evidence does not support the hypothesis, perhaps the rapes studied were not "legitimate enough" to use the author's own vocabulary.
I would further suggest this: the ever-increasing set of actions which get included under the legal umbrella of "rape" are likely part of a misandrist agenda to create in the mind the image of the most violent act above so as to encourage a "guilty if accused because the crime is so horrible" societal bias. "No" is no, and wrong is wrong, but to vigorously prosecute those who's actions barely meet the legal definition, in circumstances often lacking mens rea, because they are easy pickings, while avoiding the harder prosecutions, in order to pack prisons-for-profit, is a greater injustice to women (and people in general), than an inappropriately chosen adjective.
In Liberty, Rene
Do you really think that male contempt for women is so high in the West that they'd dismiss rape claims out of hand?
Also, yes. You just did, in very elaborate fashion.
caritj.org
What about the father's right in the decision? He gets no say at all?
If that's the case..then to make things legally fair...if HE doesn't want to keep the pregnancy, and she does...then he should be free of fiscal responsibility of the child. That would be fair..no?
If everything is her decision...then let her support it if the father doesn't want any part of it...eh?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
A lot of this is a matter of what you read into the bible and how you deal with the cultural differences. The verses in Deuteronomy are principally about punishments for adultery and premarital sex. As evidenced by verse 27: "because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her." and in verse 24 "she did not cry for help though she was in the city" the woman is never considered to be wrong in the case that she was raped.
Here are the verses in question:
It's important to understand that at the time men were expected to look after women, so your daughter would live at home until she was married and if she was attacked it was assumed that there was someone who could come and fight off her attacker. In the case of a wife, it was assumed that the husband or his slaves or servants would be there to keep her from getting raped. So the assumption is that if she's having sex, she is doing it willingly and concealing it from her husband/father.
Applying these verses to modern life would be difficult as many women live independently for much of their lives. But they clearly can say a woman who was raped has not sinned. These laws don't consider the case of a woman who isn't living at home and isn't married, so it would probably be wrong to try to apply it in that case. Also, it is no longer culturally acceptable to betroth you daughter to someone, so that further complicates any contemporary application.
I don't mind paying my share of it.
I don't mind paying my share of well-baby services, national parks, promotion of the Arts, space exploration, pregnancy care, taking care of people who have fallen upon hard times, etc, etc, etc.
I object far more to paying for weapons systems that are black holes of funding and deliver barely-functional weapons. I object to paying for wars that never should have been waged. I object to paying for subsidies that wind up going to already-highly-profitable corporations.
Oh, and I don't like welfare fraud, either.
But some 20 years ago, while hearing a far-right-wing co-worker rail about welfare while the Savings and Loan Scandal was ramping up, I realized something. In the Savings and Loan Scandle, rich people bilked ordinary people of billions, then managed to skate away scott-free. My tax dollars helped "fix the mess". Essentially I indirectly gave a bunch of my money to Neil Bush. (to name one, but there were others)
Since then I have come to believe that far more of my tax dollars go to people making more than me than go to people making less. I don't begrudge the downtrodden. Even if he's a lazy bum, and I don't believe most are, it's a small price to pay, to make sure that the truly deserving are covered.
By the way, you may never need pregnancy services. Do you have a wife or sister? What about your mother?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
*shrug*, I base my viewpoint on the prerogative of one to control what happens with their body, I make no comment on the wisdom or lack thereof of our child support system.
Of course, there are two bulletproof methods of ensuring that one doesn't father unwanted children. Failing that, there is a nearly perfect method of accomplishing the same. I guess it comes down to risk vs. reward; one should to weigh the value of an intravaginal ejaculation against the possibility of an 18 year commitment to rear a child.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Depending on the marital/betrothal status of the woman, rape violates either the proscription of adultery or theft in the Ten Commandments. Not revisionism. The Bible says raping a married woman carries the death penalty, and raping an unmarried, unbetrothed woman carries a substantial fine.
A couple caveats:
1. Rape was considered an offense against the owner of the woman (rape a married woman, you've offended the husband, and you die; rape an unmarried woman, you've offended the father, pay him a fine).
2. There is nothing in the Bible against raping your own wife.
The lack of understanding about the Bible is something I would expect from an atheist, so no harm no foul. Just amend your complaint next time. :)
Semicolons replace conjunctions, not prepositions.
I have always been of the opinion that while Christian conservatives decry Islam as evil, they are secretly jealous of it. Afterall, Islam has permeated many governments in the Middle East to a degree which most Christian conservatives could only hope to achieve.
US right-wing conservatives are very similar to fundamentalist muslims - that's probably the reason they hate each other: it takes one to know one.
They are really the two sides of the same coin. Each of them thrives on the existence of the other.
Just imagine for a minute there was universal peace around the world (or just peace between Israel and the rest of the Arab world, all issues cleared etc - the need to Hamaz and all those other nut-cases would vanish instantly - as well as for their Israeli counterparts.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Which goes to show exactly how much the people that wrote those books cared about women.
As for Deuteronomy 22:24 (your point 2), the stoning of the woman is because it was consensual. If she had screamed out or fought off her attacker, then she would not be stoned. It has nothing to do with how loudly she screamed out, just with whether it was consensual or not.
Deuteronomy 22 is not about rape, but consensual relations outside of marriage. But then I bet you really already knew that.
Since the vast majority of rapes go unreported
I'm curious as to how one measures an unreported event. What metrics are we using for that, and how do we show that they are accurate?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Implications...IMPLICATIONS? It's not implied that Thou Shalt Not Steal...It's COMMANDED.
Why couldn't the God of the Bible COMMAND men to NOT RAPE.
It's pretty straightforward.
It's this use of ambiguous weasel words throughout history in almost all religious texts. If God wanted people to not do something, really really not do them, he would have made it unambiguous.
Commandment 11: Thou Shalt Not Rape. Ever. For real.
There, see, that wasn't so hard.
But the Christian God presented in the Bible chose not to do that.
Except that that was only half of the issue. Because this comes out of a discussion about rape and abortion, and since both Akin and Ryan are cosponsors of amendments that would withdraw Federal funding for abortions based on the "kind" of rape, I don't think you can just pretend that Akin is a lone nutball. I don't think you have to be Sherlock Holmes to draw a line between Akin's ludicrous statements and the amendments that he and Ryan had cosponsored. This is giving us a window on the kind of bizarre logic and myths being invoked by the social conservative wing of the GOP, and since some other prominent Republicans are on record repeating almost the same claim as Akin, I'd say the GOP has some fucking morons trying to concoct policies around abortion and women's rights based on shamefully idiotic bullshit.
Akin will ultimate take the bullet for this stupidity, but you can't tell me he is the only anti-abortion Republican who doesn't believe in magic powers of rape victims to fend off rapists' sperm.
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So out of every 3 women you know, you know that 1 of them has been raped?
That statistic doesn't make any sense and that should ring alarm bells immediately.
The method of collection is clearly bunk.
Men get raped more than what? Sheep? By who? Other men of course. Since 90% or more of those men are straight, and rape is not a problem for them as they are clearly demonstrating while incarcerated, why would you think for a moment those very same men wouldn't also take the sex they want on WOMEN who they prefer to men when they are out of prison? One in three women will be raped in their lifetime. Even Catholic alter boys don't have to endure those kind of odds. Guys, please get a clue, even a small one, sex is not a right (unless its with yourself in a private place), and taking sex with a nonconsensual partner is by definition rape. That includes date rape, raping a spouse, if she says no, no means no.
Sadly there are women that use sex as a weapon, and that is dastardly, because the male sex drive is a big handle on the male psyche (and excuse the unintended pun), but attacking a man there is simply a low blow. Unsportsman life conduct. Someone caught doing this should receive serious punitive damages to show others, this is no way to get ahead (again no pun intended.) However, when you can show me that there is an epidemic of this behavior resulting in one in three men being abuse this way in their lifetimes, we'll talk about tit for tat (again sorry.)
I know its easy to make this a humorous subject, and that's sad, because its deadly serious. A lot of rapist kill their victims hoping to avoid prosecution. A man was just recently found on a 1987 rape, murder in northern California because of the state's expanding DNA library. We need to be teaching our young men that this is a zero tolerance behavior, and that anyone who thinks that women are meat to be used, is an idiot and a dangerous sociopath.
No, that statistic is in line with my personal experience. But you have to know a woman pretty well before she'd tell you if she'd been raped, so it's likely that you just don't know how many of the women you know have been raped. The statistic is not bunk at all, and I'd strongly encourage you to learn more about this subject.
Show me yours, cuz I'm showing you mine... Here's a 2007 study on just rape by the National Department of Justice, and in particular the rapes that involve the use of incapacitation and rape drugs. You can't tell me that slipping a ruffy into a girls drink qualifies as foreplay or that what follows is consensual. Fact is, there is an epidemic of rape, and a lot of it is violent, involves incapacitation, and is undereported because clowns like you minimize the importance of dealing with this problem with the gravity it deserves and stigmatize the victims. Your position is irresponsible, and I'm sorry you know someone who was unfairly treated. That doesn't excuse the behavior or make it any less of a problem in our culture. You show me your numbers. mine say its one of the most common bad things that happens to women in this society. Please, change my mind, show me that its all just a mistake, and women are conniving bitches out to lead poor men to the slaughter. Yeah, I didn't think so.
Sooooo.... you took the following data:
1.5-10%, 2-8%, 2%, 2%, 3%, 3-31%, 3.8%, 5.9%, 8%, 10.3%, 10.9%, 11%, 11.8%, 18.2%, 20%, 22.4%, 24%, 41%, 41%, 45%, 47%, 90%
and reached the conclusion that it's 10-50%? Looks to me like the median is 11%. If you want to discount older studies and you look at only more recent studies, say 2000 and later:
3%, 5.9%, 11%, 11.8%, 41%
Median is also 11%. In short, approximately only one in nine rape accusations is false. But you better believe that rape victims get smeared almost every time based on the assumption that they're lying, and fear of this is one of the main reasons that keeps people from coming forward most of the time.
Freeze Ray. Tell your friends.
How about I don't believe anything that is a big hot steaming pile of opinion... give me a basis to believe something, a fact or two, perhaps a report, or an expert in the field and that doesn't mean farmer John. I don't say the guy doesn't have friends who were treated unfairly. Not exactly a meaningful sample population. If there is an evil conniving bitch in town falsely accusing innocent boys of dirty deeds, by all means, slap her hard in a court of justice. Make her pay for her wanton criminal behavior. The whole reason such a bad lady exists, is because the crime she's crying about, is common place, and it generates strong emotions in a lot of people who have themselves been assaulted.
But please lets not compare the huckster to the rapist, having your body penetrated forcefully against your will is one of the worst things a person can experience, think of it as on a par with being stabbed. Only worse, because one of the most wonderful things in life has now been turned into the most horrible thing another person will ever do to you. Let put it in context for you so you can empathize. Some big bad person hog ties you and proceeds to place your manly bits on a large stump, then takes a rather large tenderizing mallet to your package. When he's done, every time you go to the bathroom, you'll relive the experience, and forget about sex, that's just out of the question. You don't know which is worse, the physical, emotional or psychological injury, but you're clear they're all competing for top spot. How do you cope, who do you talk to, where do you go for help? Welcome to the world of rape.
If someone steals my TV, I (and/or the law) has to provide proof that the TV was mine and that it was stolen before a theft charge can be pressed, yes? Same basic burden of proof here - or at least, there should be. But that's usually not how it works; it's almost always on the basis of she-said-she-said, with the victim presumed to be telling the truth regardless.
That's EXACTLY how it works. Someone comes in and takes your TV from your house. The TV-taker says that YOU said it's ok that he took it. You say it's NOT ok that he took it. Since it was originally your TV, you are (for lack of a better term) the "gatekeeper" of said TV, and the new possessor of the TV should be investigated for theft. There's a reasonable suspicion that it was taken.
Sure, there are people out there who will say "Sure! Take my TV, and have fun rooting around inside it!!!" only to call the police and blame you for theft. These people are few and far between. As for the Wikipedia page; read it very closely. The Victoria study comes up with about 2.1% false claims to rape. Kanin's report has been totally discredited as a random sample study, and while it would be pretty damning, if it was a solid "what percent of rapes were false accusations", read the experiment. They found 45 *known* false cases to study, of 109 total rapes, in a specific urban area, specifically to determine what makes a person commit a false accusation; nothing about that selection is a "random sample". After you read the experiment, it was pretty clear the study was to determine why false rape accusations occur (and it did an admirable job at that). The other studies, of which only the numbers are provided, all added up, amount to just under 13% of all rape accusations as being false. Even if 20% of rape charges are false, they all need to be investigated, just like any other accusatory violent crime should be.
A wiki for a wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusations Rape fits in pretty closely to child abuse and stalking, regarding false accusations, and ALL possible accusations should be investigated. I'm sorry, fellas, but beware the ink you dip your pen in. If it's crazy ink, you may get nicked, especially since it's a he said/she said situation. If you're gonna bang a chick, make sure she's not part of the ~10% who'll use it against you, and by the same token, no really does mean no. Follow those tidbits, and don't bang things younger than 18, and you'll never have to deal with this. That's just the way this cookie crumbles; very much like taking a "free" TV from the crazy cat lady when offered.
In fact the ancient Jews were once a Matriarchal society, and that is up until the founding of the Judaism we all now know and love, that fixed than whole "Women are people" problem" right up. Here's a laugh. The work by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford Anthropologist, on stress and societies dominated by alpha males is absolutely fascinating. In fact what he discovered using baboons (who by the way made superb surrogates for human male dominated societies) was that patriarchal societies are marked by naked aggression, bullying, posturing, violence, coercion, politics and high levels of stress for all but the alpha males. Whereas matriarchal societies tend to be happy, collaborative, consensus based, and in general lovely places for all the members of the troop. Go figure. Matriarchal societies don't fare well, because they don't tend to war. They prefer to negotiate and come to mutually beneficial agreements, and what fun is that, you need to justify that military industrial complex... stupid women. Anyway, just an really interesting look into the monkey in man.
Look around. What do you see? Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, Buddhism, and a wild mix of African religions that are strongly influenced by the other middle east religions. The vast majority of people on the planet live in violent patriarchal societies, because those are the ones fighting to rule the world. You can't poke a stick in a bunch of pissed off brown people without seeing the religion at the core. If you think the history of Europe or America is any better, think again. So. Patriarchy like Fascism is great for getting things done, but the quality of life it leaves behind is sort of sucky. Maybe we can learn something from the Baboons.
* "...women can use sex as a WEAPON..." of course. Oops.
Oh, that makes so much more sense now. Glad you cleared that up.
"Sex as a WEAPON" like "I stab you with my sex?" "I blow you up with my sex?" "I shoot you with my sex?" Oh, wait, I see, a man assaults a woman and she was using sex as the weapon, he was just the innocent victim of the attack. Got it.
I totally understand this. It's like me (a rich person) using money as a weapon. I have something other people want, so they beat me up and take it. All my fault, I was using it as a weapon, and they were the victim of the weapon.
Sheesh, unless you are missing an eye due to a vicious hard nipple attack, seek professional help if you think sex is ever a weapon.
Really Slashdot, there was really no need to try to work 'mathematics' into the title. Just say "Why doesn't everyone have a debate on abortion?"
On topic, I imagine the belief that "you can't get pregnant if you're raped" is even less common than "you can't get pregnant if you're on top".
To be as fair to Akin as possible he seems to be saying;
"The abortion-for-rape argument is a red herring as it's very difficult to become pregnant from rape. Therefore most women claiming rape to obtain an abortion are fraudulent. In cases of actual rape, overall I still believe the life of the baby takes precedence.
Sure, his premise is clearly wrong, but man the people mindlessly reacting over this really piss me off.
http://www.mediaradar.org/research_on_false_rape_allegations.php
False allegations of rape are believed to be more common than many persons realize. These are the findings of four research studies:
A review of 556 rape accusations filed against Air Force personnel found that 27% of women later recanted. Then 25 criteria were developed based on the profile of those women, and then submitted to three independent reviewers to review the remaining cases. If all three reviewers deemed the allegation was false, it was categorized as false. As a result, 60% of all allegations were found to be false.1 Of those women who later recanted, many didn't admit the allegation was false until just before taking a polygraph test. Others admitted it was false only after having failed a polygraph test.2 ... the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing.6 It should be noted that rape involves a forcible and non-consensual act, and a DNA match alone does not prove that rape occurred. So the 25% figure substantially underestimates the true extent of false allegations.
In a nine-year study of 109 rapes reported to the police in a Midwestern city, Purdue sociologist Eugene J. Kanin reported that in 41% of the cases the complainants eventually admitted that no rape had occurred.3
In a follow-up study of rape claims filed over a three-year period at two large Midwestern universities, Kanin found that of 64 rape cases, 50% turned out to be false.4 Among the false charges, 53% of the women admitted they filed the false claim as an alibi.5
According to a 1996 Department of Justice report, âoein about 25% of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI,
And according to former Colorado prosecutor Craig Silverman, âoeFor 16 years, I was a kick-ass prosecutor who made most of my reputation vigorously prosecuting rapists. ... I was amazed to see all the false rape allegations that were made to the Denver Police Department. ... A command officer in the Denver Police sex assaults unit recently told me he placed the false rape numbers at approximately 45%.â7
According to the FBI, about 95,000 forcible rapes were reported in 2004.8 Based on the statements and studies cited above, some 47,000 American men are falsely accused of rape each year. These men are disproportionately African-American.9
Some of these men are wrongly convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned. Even if there is no conviction, a false allegation of rape can âoeemotionally, socially, and economically destroy a person.â10
----
Dash Cams, Polygraph Machines, and other Recording devices. Because humans lie.
Eyewitnesses misremember.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I'd say about 1 in 5. But the statistics vary *wildly* by geography. The -majority- of south-african women I know have experienced rape, or atleast sexual abuse, while perhaps only 1 in 10 among Scandinavians, Americans are somewhere in between, I'd say.
Here's a hint: if 1:3 sounds *wildly* out of proportion to you, perhaps you don't know many women, or don't know them all that well. Or your social group and local environment is among the safer ones.
Where can one get help if _that_ happens?
Please advise !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Implications...IMPLICATIONS? It's not implied that Thou Shalt Not Steal...It's COMMANDED.
Why couldn't the God of the Bible COMMAND men to NOT RAPE.Implications...
I wouldn't put too much importance into the actual wording, because the wording of the King James Bible is just that - it's the wording the translators working under the request of King James used. In the original hebrew bible, it's not commanded. Instead of the equivalent of "shall", the word hebrew word for "will" is used.
You will not steal.
So in the original bible, the ten commandments are not considered commandments, but descriptions of the behaviour of a true believer. A true believer will not steal. No, never. It won't even get to his mind that stealing is worthwile. He just won't lure for his neighbor's wife. No mention of women outside of the neighborhood. Or women who "don't belong to someone" (except to herself). The only protection against rape a biblical woman has is being owned by a man and then only against the neighoring true believers. Serfmaids? No protection. The own brother, father, husband? No protection. Living in a shabby neighborhood? No protection. Living for yourself? No protection either.
I know its easy to make this a humorous subject, and that's sad, because its deadly serious. A lot of rapist kill their victims hoping to avoid prosecution. A man was just recently found on a 1987 rape, murder in northern California because of the state's expanding DNA library. We need to be teaching our young men that this is a zero tolerance behavior, and that anyone who thinks that women are meat to be used, is an idiot and a dangerous sociopath.
The way to solve that problem is for guys to step up to the plate and be real men and fathers to their sons. Sadly, there are a bunch of guys (aka "not men") who are mere sperm donors (to put it very charitably) with one night stands and basically not caring about what they do with their reproductive abilities.
There are also a whole bunch of stupid women who sleep around with a bunch of guys that don't even deserve the time of day, but that doesn't excuse the guys who are also being pricks in this case. If a guy performs an act that creates a child, he damn should take care of that child which is produced.
There is even less of an excuse if you have made some sort of even remote "marriage" commitment (speaking very loosely by even including "common law" marriages or even simply becoming married by registering in a hotel together), where by making children you also commit to raising that child until they become an adult. That includes simply being a father and taking responsibility for those children.
If you have a son, sit down and explain the facts of life to your son about sex and that women are people and not something to be used. Then again I do think that a great part of the problem is that a bunch of these guys simply don't have a father who is willing to even talk to them at all, or even a significant male role model of any kind to do the same thing. Football coaches used to do this until too many lawsuits made it impossible to talk to kids frankly in that manner.
Logic error: that assumes that the alternative is "convict all people just based on a rape accusation", rather than the reality, a investigation to determine guilt followed by a trial.
8/9, however, *definitely* warrants serious investigations and suggests that today's conviction rates are way lower than the rape rate.
Freeze Ray. Tell your friends.
I do not believe those statistics mean what you believe they do.
I don't trust recantations in rape cases. There are strong social pressures to not have been raped, and this is likely particularly the case in the USAF, where a rape accusation, however accurate, might end the victim's career. Moreover, people's memories are unreliable, and victims of traumatic events might well start remembering a situation where they were in more control, so that they can tell themselves that they aren't arbitrarily vulnerable to rape. Remember that people often lie about things that concern them.
Polygraphs, in addition, make really poor lie detectors. Their only use is in suggesting to a questioner that something that came up is likely emotionally significant.
In the USAF study, I don't know what the reviewers were looking for. Were they supposed to judge whether a rape had likely occurred, or whether it was prosecutable? What were their criteria? How did Kanin find out which rape charges were false?
There's a continuum between fully consensual sex and non-consensual, and there's often no physical evidence to distinguish. Cases of a rapist threatening a woman's baby (I got that second-hand, and I trust the person who told me about it), or credibly threatening a victim's life, are likely to be physically indistinguishable from rough sex with no foreplay (and that can easily be consensual). Assuming some sort of Bayesian analysis, whether an observer thinks a rape happened is going to depend heavily on whether that observer thinks false claims are likely or not.
The FBI forensic report says nothing about the number of rape claims that are false; it says that victims are often wrong about whose semen got into them. It's not relevant to whether X was raped or not, it's relevant to whether Y did it or not.
I might be able to check up on some of your studies if you'd provided the footnotes you obviously were thinking of, but right now I'm completely unconvinced by your claims.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Actually, violence against women in Norway is a major health concern according to an important study done there.
From the study: Results: "In total, 26.8% of 2,143 ever-partnered women had experienced any violence by their partner during their lifetime, and 5.5% in the year before the study."
These rates are on par with most of the developed world. Given these stats (One in four ever-partnered women battered within their relationship) I don't think the Scandinavians are going to get a pass on rates of rape -- insofar as it is defined to include spousal rape, date rape and other forms of coerced sex. If anyone has stats on Scandinavian rape rates (could not easily find any) it would be instructive to post them. I doubt they are much different from those in the developed world. Certainly not one in ten. Where did that figure come from?
As much as many Scandinavians would like to believe that their feet don't stink, it should come as no surprise that their feet do, indeed, stink. Almost as much as mine do.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
What about the father's right in the decision? He gets no say at all?
Of course not, we're second hand citizens, and it's even worse than that. Dad want to keep the child and mom doesn't? Fetus aborted. Mom wants the child and dad doesn't? Baby born, father forced to pay for raising it.
I would love to see things as you logically pointed out, but men have become second class citizens in the US.
Free Martian Whores!
Well I am Australian. Perhaps us bunch of ex-convicts just have higher standards of behaviour than the US.
Rape over here is rare enough that it will actually hit the evening news every time there is a reported case.
But South Africa, even as the most developed country in Africa, is arguably not a full-fledged member of the developed world. It is a highly divided society still (as we have seen in recent weeks with the miners' strike.) And it has a very high crime rate generally. One can take little comfort in having better statistics than they do -- cultural differences aside.
Culture of course is no excuse for violations of human rights, which include violence against women. There was a time when a broad swath of the US accepted slavery as a cultural norm. Just because a society itself believes something is right does not make it right. Violence in the home is as wrong in Jo-berg and Riyadh and Moscow as it is in New York or Oslo. The same, of course, goes for rape. Everyone has to do better.
These principles are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No society is permitted to hide behind its culture in order to protect institutionalized savagery and oppression against any group -- women included.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
In Numbers 5:13 it's not a reference to consensual sex, it is talking about her being caught in the act.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/