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PostPosted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 1:11 am 
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The study you're quoting DE differs in the questions asked. From what I'm reading here:
Quote:
Definitions of rape and sexual assault.
The NCVS, NISVS, and CSA target different types of events. The NCVS
definition is shaped from a criminal justice perspective
and includes threatened, attempted, and completed
rape and sexual assault against males and females (see
Methodology). The NISVS uses a broader definition of
sexual violence, which specifically mentions incidents
in which the victim was unable to provide consent due
to drug or alcohol use; forced to penetrate another
person; or coerced to engage in sexual contact (including
nonphysical pressure to engage in sex) unwanted sexual
contact (including forcible kissing, fondling, or grabbing);
and noncontact unwanted sexual experiences that do not
involve physical contact.

The CSA definition of rape and
sexual assault includes unwanted sexual contact due to
force and due to incapacitation, but excludes unwanted
sexual contact due to verbal or emotional coercion.


So some types of coercion are excluded from the survey you're quoting, and seems to only apply to violent rape, excluding things like date-rape drugs, coercion, as well as some sex acts other than vaginal or anal forced penetration. It also is approaching it from a criminal justice perspective.

This is one of those cases where if you narrow the definition of rape sufficiently you can get the statistics to say whatever you want.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 1:20 am 
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Unfortunately it's not.

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(including nonphysical pressure to engage in sex) unwanted sexual contact (including forcible kissing, fondling, or grabbing); and noncontact unwanted sexual experiences that do not involve physical contact.

First, they're talking about definitions of sexual assault in that section. The statistics I'm talking about are rape statistics.

Second, one struggles to imagine how nonphysical sexual experiences - whatever those are - are a form of sexual assault, or for that matter "nonphysical pressure".

This is not a matter of people narrowing the definition of rape; it's a matter of people expanding the definition of sexual assault and then conflating it with rape.

Talking someone into sex isn't rape - ever. Even if they decide later they didn't want it. If they consented, and no subterfuge such as drugs was used to obtain that consent, it wasn't sexual assault, and it wasn't rape. Ever.

Also, it does not exclude things like date-rape drugs. It says "when the victim was unable to consent due to drug or alcohol use" meaning the victim's use. It does not exclude drugs being administered to the victim without their knowledge; no one disagrees that sneaking drugs into someone's system to have sex with them is rape.

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PostPosted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 12:20 pm 
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As I remember, it was in a closed garage, no one else there. No witnesses.

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PostPosted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 12:55 pm 
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To use the term Rape Culture in America is as abominable as the crimes of sexual assault, sexual abuse, and rape. There is no Rape Culture here. There is no element to contemporary societies in the Anglo-Saxon diaspora that legitimizes rape. To say that such a thing exists and is pervasive is both offensive and harmful to the actual victims of rape, because it diminishes the atrocity of the actual crime by making it seem as common-place as petty theft and shoplifting. This is not A Clockwork Orange. This is not South Africa or sub-Saharan Africa, wherein rape and sexual assault are used for social correction. If you want to see what Rape Cultures do look like, I suggest you go witness them in the parts of the world where they exist and try to exact some change there. All you do by claiming that the modern West is a Rape Culture is belittle the women and adolescent girls who live in countries where they are stripped, molested, and assaulted to enforce outmoded social norms.

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PostPosted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 2:48 pm 
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TheRiov wrote:
This is one of those cases where if you narrow the definition of rape sufficiently you can get the statistics to say whatever you want.

I think the reverse is more the cause of the discrepancy between official measures and the numbers anti-rape advocates tend to cite. The studies they point to that show such high rates of rape derive most of their eye-popping numbers from sexual encounters that involved some level of diminished capacity to consent (i.e., intoxication), but they don't adequately distinguish between unconscious/incoherent, "really drunk, but willingly participating", and "drunk enough to do something I probably wouldn't have done sober, but willingly participating". I think most people would dispute that those latter two categories constitute rape, and, in fact, in a number of the studies, the majority of people counted as having been raped who fall into those latter two categories do not themselves think they were raped. And yet, anti-rape advocates treat those "drunk but willing" incidents as equivalent to the "completely unconscious" incidents in order to boost the numbers.

Now, having said that...

Khross wrote:
There is no Rape Culture here.

While the term "rape culture" is obvious propaganda designed to short-circuit reasonable debate, there is definitely a problem with the culture surrounding diminished capacity sex in college. The line between "really drunk but willing" and "incoherent" is obviously ambiguous, and far too many guys err on the side of getting laid. Moreover, one has to be a total shitbag to think bare willingness, as opposed to enthusiasm, is all that's required from a moral standpoint. Again, though, far too many guys are more than happy to pressure drunk girls into reluctantly having sex with them. It's not rape, but it's still shitty behavior and runs the risk of crossing the line into actual rape if the woman is more drunk than the guy realizes. More disturbingly, many people in college really do seem to think actually drugging someone isn't really "rape-rape". When the UVA story came out, many in the media found it hard to believe that "Jackie's" friends would discourage her from reporting the alleged incident, but that's actually remarkably common. There are stats and studies to back that up, but speaking anecdotally for a moment, I know two women who I'm close to that were drugged and raped in college, and both of them were told by friends that they shouldn't report it because (i) maybe the guy who had sex with her didn't know she was drugged (even though she was obviously completely out of it), (ii) she was flirting with him before, and she hooks up with a lot of guys, so maybe she was just misremembering, (iii) it'd be impossible to prove, and he's a really nice guy, so lots of people wouldn't believe her and would hate her for trying to ruin this guy's life, (iv) it's not that big a deal, since she wasn't, like, "forced" or hurt or anything, and hey, he's pretty hot anyway, right?, and (v) it's better to just let it go instead of letting it ruin her whole college experience. One of them told her best friend about it the next morning, and her response was literally to make a sympathetic face, pat her on the shoulder, and say, "Yeah, it happens," before suggesting that they go get some breakfast to make her feel better. These are all actual things their "friends" said to them, even though they were drugged without their knowledge or consent and **** by a random acquaintance against their will while incoherently trying to resist. That's both incredibly messed up and disturbingly common, which suggests there really is a problem with the culture surrounding this stuff.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 2:58 pm 
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Khross wrote:
To use the term Rape Culture in America is as abominable as the crimes of sexual assault, sexual abuse, and rape.

Ridiculous hyperbole is ridiculous.

This board in general, and you in particular, are often prone to overstating the seriousness of some problem using the most extreme language possible to highlight a point. (This particular statement from you is a curious example of exactly that.) Regardless of what your stance is, I think we can agree that someone using the phrase "rape culture in America" in no way is equivalent to actually committing a rape.


Last edited by TheRiov on Sun Dec 14, 2014 1:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 11:52 pm 
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RangerDave wrote:
While the term "rape culture" is obvious propaganda designed to short-circuit reasonable debate, there is definitely a problem with the culture surrounding diminished capacity sex in college. The line between "really drunk but willing" and "incoherent" is obviously ambiguous, and far too many guys err on the side of getting laid. Moreover, one has to be a total shitbag to think bare willingness, as opposed to enthusiasm, is all that's required from a moral standpoint. Again, though, far too many guys are more than happy to pressure drunk girls into reluctantly having sex with them. It's not rape, but it's still shitty behavior and runs the risk of crossing the line into actual rape if the woman is more drunk than the guy realizes.


I find the sexism in this commonly held view to be very offensive. Worse yet, it usually comes from other women, who want to struggle very hard to place us in the victim role, as if we are somehow weaker, less responsible, less capable as human beings than men are.

It's true that it is fairly difficult to imagine a woman raping a man, in most cases -- at least, not in a way involving standard vaginal penetration. However, once you introduce the concept of "diminished consent," you've put both sexes on even footing when it comes to rape. Why is it always men taking advantage of drunk women to get laid? Why do the men also being drunk not count? What do women need special protection from the ravages of alcohol that men do not? Are we children? Are we not capable of making good decisions while men are? What the **** is with this idea that "a woman who has overindulged is not capable of consent" crap? Either one is responsible for one's actions when drinking, or one is not. Are you going to give women a free pass on drunk driving? What about drunken murder?

Diminished consent is bullshit. If you choose to do something, you choose to do it. Don't strip my humanity away with some poppycock about alcohol somehow relieving me of my responsibility to make good decisions.

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PostPosted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 1:15 am 
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When you have people of both genders late at night on the same bed, which happens a lot in college, stuff happens. This is probably the vast majority of cases. Nobody is being jumped by a guy from behind a bush.

If you put two adult animals of any species together in a private space, they're sometimes going to breed, even if their minds aren't in 100% alignment. This 'crisis' isn't fixable. Some people really need to gain perspective.


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PostPosted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 12:47 pm 
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TheRiov wrote:
Khross wrote:
To use the term Rape Culture in America is as abominable as the crimes of sexual assault, sexual abuse, and rape.

Ridiculous hyperbole is ridiculous.

This board in general, and you in particular, are often prone to overstating the seriousness of some problem using the most extreme language possible to highlight a point. (This particular statement from you is a curious example of exactly that.) Regardless of what your stance is, I think we can agree that someone using the phrase "rape culture in America" in no way is equivalent to actually committing a rape.

Except you ignore the rest of the post explaining why. Calling the U.S. or the modern West "Rape Cultures" invalidates and marginalizes the victims in those societies where rape and sexual assault/abuse are used as social enforcement. It's harmful in the extreme, precisely because it removes any legitimacy from the term. More to the point, to claim that these societies, where in rape is considered a heinous and often capital crime, as Rape Cultures it to suggest that all it takes for a Rape Culture to exist is the presence of the crime. There's no hyperbole. Calling the West a Rape Culture marginalizes real victims and prevents forward progress in societies where Rape Cultures actually exist.

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PostPosted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 1:44 pm 
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Not ignoring it. I understand why you find the term offensive (and to some degree I agree) BUT to say using the term is just as offensive as actually committing the act is silly beyond belief. This implies you feel the punishment for using the term could be (depending on the culture) death by stoning, life in prison, chemical castration, or other severe penalty for a single use of the term. THAT is hyperbole.


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PostPosted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 2:12 pm 
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TheRiov wrote:
Not ignoring it. I understand why you find the term offensive (and to some degree I agree) BUT to say using the term is just as offensive as actually committing the act is silly beyond belief. This implies you feel the punishment for using the term could be (depending on the culture) death by stoning, life in prison, chemical castration, or other severe penalty for a single use of the term. THAT is hyperbole.
I said abominable. It's morally offensive. You probably shouldn't conflate legal justice with moral disgust.

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PostPosted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 7:34 pm 
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We came up with the term "rape culture" because calling someone insufficiently angry towards white men just doesn't create the same moral outrage.

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 9:32 am 
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Micheal wrote:
As I remember, it was in a closed garage, no one else there. No witnesses.


This is even more suspicious.

Army maintenance is conducted in motor pools. A unit keeps all of its vehicle in one place; generally by company or by battalion depending on the specific unit and the situation. The fact that he "got a Dear John letter" indicates this was probably not in CONUS, but deployed somewhere - depending on the timeframe, that means most likely Germany, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Kuwait.

Even when units are small and have few vehicles, they are still kept in consolidated motor pools. Those motor pools have garage facilities - and all the mechanics work there together. This is to keep the cost and footprint of garages manageable.

Furthermore, regular lower-enlisted and junior-NCO mechanics - the type that would usually be found underneath HMMWVs - like other soldiers, have NCOs that supervise them. They don't work alone in motor pools, for all sorts of reasons - they need supervision because they're less experienced and more junior in rank, it's against safety rules, and most important of all - that's where the other mechanics have to be anyhow. Mechanics are generally not found in the motor pools after hours working either because A) mechanics are just like every other soldier and need their time off. In fact, they tend to have very hard jobs and have to get up even earlier B) Some motor pools are secured after hours, if physically practical C) it's unsafe, and no NCO wants to have on their record that their soldier was injured because they allowed the soldier to work after hours without supervision or even a partner.

However, there is something that pretty frequently goes on in motor pools after hours - at least, those that are unsecured - and that's people sneaking down there to ****. It used to be that if you went down to the motor pool after hours at the National Training Center during turn-in week, if you started opening up HEMTT and HMWVVs you'd be guaranteed to find at least 7 or 8 couples across the entire brigade. After a couple days, the Sergeant Major and the First Sergeants would usually start walking the motor pool at least once a night just because of this.

Now, officers are certainly not immune to this sort of thing, and officers should not be having sex with enlisted personnel regardless. I was obviously not there and did not see what happened. That said, this incident as you related it is not plausible, and for much the same reasons as the UVA story isn't plausible - it relies on a number of highly unusual circumstances existing to begin with, not to mention the "stranger danger" aspect of it - a major gets a dear John letter, so.. the first thing he does is run off to the motor pool, in search of a female to rape? At a time of day when no one else was there? How'd he know SHE was there?

It's possible your friend was raped by this major, but if so it almost certainly wasn't in the circumstances described. What's more likely, though, is that she and this major were **** and then for some reason or other, she decides to call it rape. I can think of several reasons why someone would do that, a lot of them related to how being the right sort of "victim", politically, can be very convenient for you in the military, especially if your own conduct wasn't above-board to begin with.

Therefore, she comes up with this story where she's the victim of a brutal attack, out of the blue - but which conveniently happens when no one is around. The problem is that the same circumstances that would give him the opportunity to attack here - motor pool with no one around - make it highly implausible that she would be there in the first place, and even more implausible that he would go there with it in mind to rape someone.. because no one should be there.

This kind of story is why so many rape victims "aren't believed" - because they tell a version of events that not only would be unbelievably easy to create reasonable doubt of in court, but aren't even plausible to a casual examination. It's quite sad to say, too, that the military sexual harassment and sexual assault reporting system have been massively weighted in favor of females using the system to their advantage for years, and are only getting more so. This is to the detriment of everyone - other females, males in general, the commanders that have to deal with it, and the military itself. Your friend got shuffled off to another unit most likely because there was only her word that anything had happened, and the word she was giving is very difficult to believe.

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 10:50 am 
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RangerDave wrote:
TheRiov wrote:
This is one of those cases where if you narrow the definition of rape sufficiently you can get the statistics to say whatever you want.

I think the reverse is more the cause of the discrepancy between official measures and the numbers anti-rape advocates tend to cite. The studies they point to that show such high rates of rape derive most of their eye-popping numbers from sexual encounters that involved some level of diminished capacity to consent (i.e., intoxication), but they don't adequately distinguish between unconscious/incoherent, "really drunk, but willingly participating", and "drunk enough to do something I probably wouldn't have done sober, but willingly participating". I think most people would dispute that those latter two categories constitute rape, and, in fact, in a number of the studies, the majority of people counted as having been raped who fall into those latter two categories do not themselves think they were raped. And yet, anti-rape advocates treat those "drunk but willing" incidents as equivalent to the "completely unconscious" incidents in order to boost the numbers.


I don't disagree with this - although I would add to it that rape is a top-tier felony. It's generally considered one step below murder in severity. It should have a very narrow definition, much like murder does, and have numerous lesser-included offenses. In point of fact, it actually does; for example in Ohio you have Sexual Battery Aggravated Sexual Imposition, and Sexual Imposition - just to name a couple, much like murder comes in degrees and has various degrees of manslaughter below it.

Unfortunately, rape victim advocacy has a strong tendency to try to roll all of this under "rape" by using that term and "sexual assault" interchangeably. What's worse is that while the law recognizes nonverbal consent, it tends to regard nonverbal means of asking for consent as possibly assault. For example, if you're kissing some girl for the first time and she seems really into it and you go for a feel - and don't tell me you stop and ask every girl you kiss "may I touch your breast" - and she pushes your hand away, even if you respect that and don't make another move, the law could regard that as sexual assault and the rape industry definitely would. However, if she was ok with it, it legally wouldn't be - although some rape advocates would still try to claim it was because she didn't want it enough.

Quote:
Khross wrote:
There is no Rape Culture here.

While the term "rape culture" is obvious propaganda designed to short-circuit reasonable debate, there is definitely a problem with the culture surrounding diminished capacity sex in college. The line between "really drunk but willing" and "incoherent" is obviously ambiguous, and far too many guys err on the side of getting laid. Moreover, one has to be a total shitbag to think bare willingness, as opposed to enthusiasm, is all that's required from a moral standpoint. Again, though, far too many guys are more than happy to pressure drunk girls into reluctantly having sex with them. It's not rape, but it's still shitty behavior and runs the risk of crossing the line into actual rape if the woman is more drunk than the guy realizes.


First, while I agree with you on the moral standpoint - and regarding the culture surrounding diminished capacity, although that's really a problem of drinking culture in college generally, not specifically about diminished capacity - , and I frankly wonder what kind of person wants to have sex with someone that isn't really that interested - I mean, sex with an unenthusiastic partner pretty much totally sucks - I also really don't care about the moral standpoint as far as purposes of discussing how prevalent rape is. We should legislate against assault, not against being a douchewagon. I also don't care for the term enthusiasm, as it tends to create the impression that there's a dichotomy of "I'm really not into this but whatever" and "YES YES YES!" when in fact there's a large middle ground in which what we call "seduction" happens, and quite a few people of both sexes want to be seduced.

Second, as to the "Drunk girl" issue, where this becomes problematic is that A) people who are drunk do not always appear drunk. Alcohol affects each person differently, and it's possible for some people to be so drunk that they don't remember anything the following day - but at the time, they didn't actually appear all that drunk. On top of that, they tend to be around other drunk people, who may themselves be in no condition to determine how inebriated another person is. Finally, being drunk does not absolve one of one's actions, so if a person consents while drunk and they would appear able to understand what is happening to a reasonable observer then.. they consented.

To illustrate this, let's turn the entire thing around. When young men get drunk and get in bed with young girls who appear to be consenting, why are we placing all the responsibility for this on the male? "Beer goggles" is a term for a reason; lots of young men make attempts to get laid that they wouldn't if they were sober, and afterwards they do often feel a sense of shame or remorse, and they get shamed by their peers for it, but we don't worry about the moral standards of the young woman who decided it was a good idea to accept the advances of an obviously inebriated person. Instead, we give her an out. She gets to claim she was "pressured" into sex for some reason, and claim it was rape afterwards, even though the male may have been just as inebriated or even more so than her. In both cases, it's simply a matter of lowered inhibitions, but we don't apply the same standards to both sexes - rape advocates don't because victimhood is a source of power, and men don't because men want to be the "good guy" that "doesn't treat women like that", and no one wants to be the ******* that appears to be "making excuses for rape", or worse, have it suggested that one is a rapist. I mean, "how can you even suggest that girl who got drunk was legitimately consenting to that frat boy *******. Maybe you think it's ok to lure women into bed too?"

Or, to look at it another way, what if this is a same-sex couple? There's a reason rape advocacy is always trying to sweep these incidents under the rug - because rape needs to be a male-on-female problem for this paradigm to work. When both partners are the same sex, all of a sudden it's really easy to see that both parties are equally responsible for getting drunk and being foolish, and it's much easier to determine if force or coercion is actually applied or not, because the assumptions about how each gender behaves are suddenly irrelevant.

Quote:
More disturbingly, many people in college really do seem to think actually drugging someone isn't really "rape-rape". When the UVA story came out, many in the media found it hard to believe that "Jackie's" friends would discourage her from reporting the alleged incident, but that's actually remarkably common.

Is it? Jackie's friends seem to dispute this account of their actions. I don't believe this actually is terribly common.

Quote:
There are stats and studies to back that up


such as?

Quote:
but speaking anecdotally for a moment, I know two women who I'm close to that were drugged and raped in college, and both of them were told by friends that they shouldn't report it because (i) maybe the guy who had sex with her didn't know she was drugged (even though she was obviously completely out of it), (ii) she was flirting with him before, and she hooks up with a lot of guys, so maybe she was just misremembering, (iii) it'd be impossible to prove, and he's a really nice guy, so lots of people wouldn't believe her and would hate her for trying to ruin this guy's life, (iv) it's not that big a deal, since she wasn't, like, "forced" or hurt or anything, and hey, he's pretty hot anyway, right?, and (v) it's better to just let it go instead of letting it ruin her whole college experience.


Were they? RD, how do you know that these women were actually drugged and raped? In fact, let's put it another way - how do they know they were drugged? Leave the rape out of it. "Rape drugs" are not new, but neither is the placebo affect and it is a very human tendency after doing something we're ashamed of to invent a reason it wasn't really our responsibility. "Oh, I must have been drunk.. I would never have done that otherwise".

Of course, women do get drugged and raped, so maybe that did happen, but we should not just take a victim's word for it. This is how the entire UVA problem started - just taking what a "victim" said as gospel truth. In these cases these people are your friends so you might very much want to believe them and you might take umbrage at the idea that they might lie - or even that they might just be wrong - but that's part of the problem with the current debate; umbrage at the idea that any given rape claim is not 100% factual is being substituted for evidence that it actually is. This is how we ended up with this case, and the Duke case before it - excessive credulity to claims of rape that we do not give to any other crime.

Quote:
One of them told her best friend about it the next morning, and her response was literally to make a sympathetic face, pat her on the shoulder, and say, "Yeah, it happens," before suggesting that they go get some breakfast to make her feel better. These are all actual things their "friends" said to them, even though they were drugged without their knowledge or consent and **** by a random acquaintance against their will while incoherently trying to resist. That's both incredibly messed up and disturbingly common, which suggests there really is a problem with the culture surrounding this stuff.


Maybe. You and I were not there for these incidents. There is also a disturbingly common phenomenon of women who get drunk and horny, go to bed with someone, then decide they were "raped" later.. but don't want to report it because that might expose their story to factual scrutiny.

Since we're on anecdotes - I've dealt with a case like this - a girl comes into a hotel, wanting to tell the manager that she was raped there by 3 guys the previous night when they came back to the room and she was already having sex consensually with another guy.,

The reaction of the hotel was, "Ok, let's call the police. This sounds like a serious crime." The girl did not want to talk to the police, and it became clear why not really quick. It turned out that what had really happened was that she thought it would be fun to gang-bang this guy's 3 friends. When she was bragging about it to her friend yesterday, her friend told her, essentially "you're a slut." At that point it became "oh, you misunderstood me, I was raped!" The friend wanted to take her to the police, she insisted that they should report it to the hotel - because the police would quickly dismantle this bullshit, which she knew, and which was exactly what happened.

The simple fact is that accusations of a sexual offense are a weapon, and they get used that way. There's nothing wrong with "believing a victim" in the sense that we should not leap to the conclusion she's lying, but we should not regard scrutiny of the incident as some sort of defense of rapists.

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Last edited by Diamondeye on Tue Dec 16, 2014 7:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 10:54 am 
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TheRiov wrote:
Not ignoring it. I understand why you find the term offensive (and to some degree I agree) BUT to say using the term is just as offensive as actually committing the act is silly beyond belief. This implies you feel the punishment for using the term could be (depending on the culture) death by stoning, life in prison, chemical castration, or other severe penalty for a single use of the term. THAT is hyperbole.


At the risk of engaging in the silly attempts at moral calculus that utilitarians engage in, I should point out that creating an image of a "rape culture" that implicates all men, and possibly even a lot of women, for the crimes of a few people, and then to attempt to alter the justice system and societal standards to match this narrative IS just as abominable, possibly, worse, than rape. Rape is inflicted on one person, and has lesser ancillary consequences for those around them. Trying to alter our fundamental approach to justice affects everyone, and doing so based on indefensible social ideas does so to everyone's detriment.

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 4:45 pm 
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Diamondeye wrote:
This is even more suspicious.

Army maintenance is conducted in motor pools. A unit keeps all of its vehicle in one place; generally by company or by battalion depending on the specific unit and the situation. The fact that he "got a Dear John letter" indicates this was probably not in CONUS, but deployed somewhere - depending on the timeframe, that means most likely Germany, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Kuwait.

Even when units are small and have few vehicles, they are still kept in consolidated motor pools. Those motor pools have garage facilities - and all the mechanics work there together. This is to keep the cost and footprint of garages manageable.

Furthermore, regular lower-enlisted and junior-NCO mechanics - the type that would usually be found underneath HMMWVs - like other soldiers, have NCOs that supervise them. They don't work alone in motor pools, for all sorts of reasons - they need supervision because they're less experienced and more junior in rank, it's against safety rules, and most important of all - that's where the other mechanics have to be anyhow. Mechanics are generally not found in the motor pools after hours working either because A) mechanics are just like every other soldier and need their time off. In fact, they tend to have very hard jobs and have to get up even earlier B) Some motor pools are secured after hours, if physically practical C) it's unsafe, and no NCO wants to have on their record that their soldier was injured because they allowed the soldier to work after hours without supervision or even a partner.

However, there is something that pretty frequently goes on in motor pools after hours - at least, those that are unsecured - and that's people sneaking down there to ****. It used to be that if you went down to the motor pool after hours at the National Training Center during turn-in week, if you started opening up HEMTT and HMWVVs you'd be guaranteed to find at least 7 or 8 couples across the entire brigade. After a couple days, the Sergeant Major and the First Sergeants would usually start walking the motor pool at least once a night just because of this.

Now, officers are certainly not immune to this sort of thing, and officers should not be having sex with enlisted personnel regardless. I was obviously not there and did not see what happened. That said, this incident as you related it is not plausible, and for much the same reasons as the UVA story isn't plausible - it relies on a number of highly unusual circumstances existing to begin with, not to mention the "stranger danger" aspect of it - a major gets a dear John letter, so.. the first thing he does is run off to the motor pool, in search of a female to rape? At a time of day when no one else was there? How'd he know SHE was there?

It's possible your friend was raped by this major, but if so it almost certainly wasn't in the circumstances described. What's more likely, though, is that she and this major were **** and then for some reason or other, she decides to call it rape. I can think of several reasons why someone would do that, a lot of them related to how being the right sort of "victim", politically, can be very convenient for you in the military, especially if your own conduct wasn't above-board to begin with.

Therefore, she comes up with this story where she's the victim of a brutal attack, out of the blue - but which conveniently happens when no one is around. The problem is that the same circumstances that would give him the opportunity to attack here - motor pool with no one around - make it highly implausible that she would be there in the first place, and even more implausible that he would go there with it in mind to rape someone.. because no one should be there.

This kind of story is why so many rape victims "aren't believed" - because they tell a version of events that not only would be unbelievably easy to create reasonable doubt of in court, but aren't even plausible to a casual examination. It's quite sad to say, too, that the military sexual harassment and sexual assault reporting system have been massively weighted in favor of females using the system to their advantage for years, and are only getting more so. This is to the detriment of everyone - other females, males in general, the commanders that have to deal with it, and the military itself. Your friend got shuffled off to another unit most likely because there was only her word that anything had happened, and the word she was giving is very difficult to believe.


As an enlisted man who was left alone in charge of a motor pool as a PFC, you don't know what the **** you're talking about.

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 5:17 pm 
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TheRiov wrote:
Khross wrote:
To use the term Rape Culture in America is as abominable as the crimes of sexual assault, sexual abuse, and rape.

Ridiculous hyperbole is ridiculous.

This board in general, and you in particular, are often prone to overstating the seriousness of some problem using the most extreme language possible to highlight a point. (This particular statement from you is a curious example of exactly that.) Regardless of what your stance is, I think we can agree that someone using the phrase "rape culture in America" in no way is equivalent to actually committing a rape.

That's not what he's said.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 9:52 am 
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Kairtane wrote:
As an enlisted man who was left alone in charge of a motor pool as a PFC, you don't know what the **** you're talking about.


Then your NCO left you unsupervised inexcusably. A motor pool is a dangerous place; a soldier should never be left there alone without at least a battle buddy. When I used to have Officer of the Day duties I had to check the motor pool at night for security by myself and I didn't even feel safe walking through alone checking vehicle locks.

As an enlisted man, whose personal experience is not representative of the way things normally work, you don't know what the **** you're talking about. "It was this way in my old unit!" is not the right way to do things - nor does it represent how things are normally done. In 17 years I've never run across anyone working alone in a motor pool alone - and yes, I've checked plenty of them; in some cases with a loaded pistol when we suspected someone other than the soldiers might be in there at night.

Or by "in charge" were you left to guard the motor pool alone? Even then you shouldn't have been alone. If you WERE alone you should have had a weapon and a means of communication. Even as a cadet at ROTC camp when we got sent to guard the motor pool we went in pairs, and we each got an axe handle to club someone with if we got attacked.

The fact that your unit did not take proper care of you as a PFC does not mean I somehow don't know what the **** goes on or what is supposed to go on in a motor pool after 17 years.

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It is evidence however that your attack on her story is less credible. You're basing it off of your experiences and you now state those experiences on which you based your attack do vary.

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How things should be done (whether or not you know what you're talking about) is irrelevant. If we based our assumptions on what should be done, we wouldn't have to go beyond "folks shouldn't rape other folks".

In order to dismiss this incident, and worse assume nefarious action by the victim, you have to make so many assumptions it's ridiculous. Here's a brief list of what you have to assume:

1) She was working on the vehicle in a motor pool.
2) Your understanding of how a motor pool should run is correct.
3) The motor pool was run per your understanding, at the time of the incident.
4) Her major did not influence how the motor pool was run to give himself an opportunity.
5) She was having an affair with the guy.
6) She was then somehow scorned by the guy and had a complete lack of character.

It's a bit beyond what I would consider reasonable.


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 2:07 pm 
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Elmarnieh wrote:
It is evidence however that your attack on her story is less credible. You're basing it off of your experiences and you now state those experiences on which you based your attack do vary.


I'm also basing it off Army policy, standard procedures regarding safety, and a much wider variety of experience, all of which I'm in a position to have. "I was a PFC in a motor pool" is not the same thing. Moreover, being "left in charge" of a motor pool as Kairtaine stated is still more plausible than being there working on vehicles alone. It should be obvious why working underneath a vehicle when no one else is around is a very bad idea and should never be done without me needing to explain it nor why it would deviate from standard safety practices. In point of fact, almost nothing is done in the Army alone; the idea of "have your battle buddy with you at all times" is even practiced by Generals, who tend to take their Sergeant Major with them everywhere they go.

I did not say that the story Michael related was impossible - just that it was not plausible. Pointing out that "but the things you describe don't ALWAYS hold true!" doesn't change that. It just makes the story implausible. I explicitly stated that I don't know for sure, but the story simply relies on entirely too many coincidences to work. I'm not going to reiterate them because you want to misunderstand the difference between "this is implausible" and "this is unlikely" just to have something to argue with.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 3:23 pm 
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Arathain Kelvar wrote:
How things should be done (whether or not you know what you're talking about) is irrelevant. If we based our assumptions on what should be done, we wouldn't have to go beyond "folks shouldn't rape other folks".

In order to dismiss this incident, and worse assume nefarious action by the victim, you have to make so many assumptions it's ridiculous. Here's a brief list of what you have to assume:


Quote:
1) She was working on the vehicle in a motor pool.


Michael stipulated that this was the case, so any problems you have with that, take up with him.

Quote:
2) Your understanding of how a motor pool should run is correct.
3) The motor pool was run per your understanding, at the time of the incident.


Army Safety Center

I am not going to entertain this idea that it's an assumption that I know how an Army motor pool customarily is handled - it's pretty standard practice across all of them, and anywhere that it isn't standard practice is asking for trouble - and this is not new. The Army has been emphasizing safety for years because accidents are a significant annual cost in dollars, human life and health, and combat power. I don't assume that you understand <engineering principle relevant to your job here>; you don't need to assume that I understand how Army motor pools work.

Quote:
4) Her major did not influence how the motor pool was run to give himself an opportunity.


Army command structures do not work this way. There are too many layers between a field-grade officer and an individual mechanic to make this actually workable. If command structures were set up in such a way as to make something like this do-able, that would result in majors in general being customarily swamped with work trying to micro-manage things.

An officer trying to circumvent normal command structures to the degree necessary to cause a situation like this to exist might as well carry a sign around saying "I am interfering with how this individual soldier is doing her job for no apparent reason." This idea is even more implausible than the rape story itself.

If you want to understand why this is, I suggest looking up the relevant doctrinal publications on MTOEs, command structure, Army command philosophy and related topics. However, I would tell you that a field-grade officer like a major would not normally concern himself at all with what one individual mechanic was doing, or even who was directly supervising them in a motor pool. Pretty much anything you've ever seen about Army organizational structure in the media is, at a minimum, vastly oversimplified and most of it is outright wrong.

Quote:
5) She was having an affair with the guy.
6) She was then somehow scorned by the guy and had a complete lack of character.


These are fair criticisms, but I was not saying "that is what must have happened", only that it's more plausible than that this woman was working in a motor pool when suddenly rape! That's because this sort of thing actually does happen, Moreover, it doesn't rely on her having poor character, just being scared or embarrassed. She might have felt that she would be held responsible for some reason, even though the major, clearly of much higher rank, would be the one with the responsibility if they were having an affair - it is very common indeed for lower enlisted soldiers to simply not understand how good order and discipline works, and get their ideas from barracks-room lawyers. There is also the fact that if they were having an affair and the major were married - which he appears to have been from Michael's story - then both parties were committing adultery under Article 134 of the UCMJ.

This simple fact - that "Rape" is an excuse for adultery - is a moral hazard in the current UCMJ. Exploitation of the victim advocacy system is a widespread problem, but one the military cannot effectively address because of the hysteria over victims and the chronic fear of bad press.

Quote:
It's a bit beyond what I would consider reasonable.


Again, I suggest reading a little on how the Army is organized and standard practices. I'm more than happy to answer questions on any of it you don't understand.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 5:12 pm 
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Diamondeye wrote:
Arathain Kelvar wrote:
How things should be done (whether or not you know what you're talking about) is irrelevant. If we based our assumptions on what should be done, we wouldn't have to go beyond "folks shouldn't rape other folks".

In order to dismiss this incident, and worse assume nefarious action by the victim, you have to make so many assumptions it's ridiculous. Here's a brief list of what you have to assume:


Quote:
1) She was working on the vehicle in a motor pool.


Michael stipulated that this was the case, so any problems you have with that, take up with him.


He stated she was working on a vehicle in a closed garage. Probably? But we don't know the details.

Quote:
Quote:
2) Your understanding of how a motor pool should run is correct.
3) The motor pool was run per your understanding, at the time of the incident.


Army Safety Center

I am not going to entertain this idea that it's an assumption that I know how an Army motor pool customarily is handled - it's pretty standard practice across all of them, and anywhere that it isn't standard practice is asking for trouble - and this is not new. The Army has been emphasizing safety for years because accidents are a significant annual cost in dollars, human life and health, and combat power. I don't assume that you understand <engineering principle relevant to your job here>; you don't need to assume that I understand how Army motor pools work.


I either need to research it and learn how they are run, and compare it to your description, or it requires assumption that you are correct.

Quote:
Quote:
5) She was having an affair with the guy.
6) She was then somehow scorned by the guy and had a complete lack of character.


These are fair criticisms, but I was not saying "that is what must have happened", only that it's more plausible than that this woman was working in a motor pool when suddenly rape! That's because this sort of thing actually does happen, Moreover, it doesn't rely on her having poor character, just being scared or embarrassed. She might have felt that she would be held responsible for some reason, even though the major, clearly of much higher rank, would be the one with the responsibility if they were having an affair - it is very common indeed for lower enlisted soldiers to simply not understand how good order and discipline works, and get their ideas from barracks-room lawyers. There is also the fact that if they were having an affair and the major were married - which he appears to have been from Michael's story - then both parties were committing adultery under Article 134 of the UCMJ.

This simple fact - that "Rape" is an excuse for adultery - is a moral hazard in the current UCMJ. Exploitation of the victim advocacy system is a widespread problem, but one the military cannot effectively address because of the hysteria over victims and the chronic fear of bad press.


No, the better assumption is that Michael's friend was telling the truth, because we have no evidence otherwise. Only assumptions and conjecture.


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 5:23 pm 
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Arathain Kelvar wrote:
No, the better assumption is that Michael's friend was telling the truth, because we have no evidence otherwise. Only assumptions and conjecture.


This was exactly my point.

None of us was there, we don't know whether her unit was following Army Regulations or even local SOP. We don't know if she was underneath a vehicle or changing windshield wipers.

Michael related a story that was told to him by someone he knows and has reason to believe, but some of us on the interwebs seem to know better and dismiss the story out of hand as "that just doesn't happen" (paraphrased).

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 5:56 pm 
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Kairtane wrote:
Arathain Kelvar wrote:
No, the better assumption is that Michael's friend was telling the truth, because we have no evidence otherwise. Only assumptions and conjecture.


This was exactly my point.

None of us was there, we don't know whether her unit was following Army Regulations or even local SOP. We don't know if she was underneath a vehicle or changing windshield wipers.

Michael related a story that was told to him by someone he knows and has reason to believe, but some of us on the interwebs seem to know better and dismiss the story out of hand as "that just doesn't happen" (paraphrased).


No one dismissed it as "that doesn't happen." What was pointed out was "the way that is alleged to have happened relies on too many coincidences and departures from the norm all happening together." There are a lot of much more plausible ways a rape in the Army could happen - this is one of the more absurd stories.

Furthermore, it is not a "better assumption that Michael's friend is telling the truth." Making just that sort of assumption is exactly how Rolling Stone got themselves into trouble.

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