Sure. Especially women (which is interesting, isn’t it?). I just don’t think it’s reasonable to view a classmate unbuttoning your shirt during a movie as an “attack.” Many people do view it that way, I see, but I’m not one of them. I’ve known people who were paralyzed with terror when they tried to take public transportation. But IMHO, that’s not reasonable, it’s a maladaptive response to a minimal threat, and it is a problem that that person ought to address.
Where are you getting these supposed assumptions? I don’t have to think that a policy’s going to work 100% of the time to believe it is the best tool we have to fix a problem. Penicillin is a great answer to the problem of strep throat, even though some people are allergic to it and not everyone has prescription drug coverage.
Why don’t you quote the part about how this pattern can be overcome with a learned response? That’s the central point to everything I’m saying.
Brains do all kinds of useless and maladaptive things. If you’re driving and someone swerves into your lane, closing your eyes is a natural brain reaction, but not an acceptable or reasonable one. If you’re going to drive, you need to learn to anticipate that kind of thing and be ready to respond defensively. Same deal, IMHO, if you’re going to live among a bunch of strangers and have a social life. This is just driver’s ed for the human body. There will still be crashes, but a lot fewer than there would be if we just handed over keys with no lessons.
That quote from the article wasn’t aimed at you, Hanna. It was aimed at people who are skeptical that normal human reactions to stress like freezing up are normal human reactions to stress.
It’s a good idea to train women how to resist rape. Unfortunately, telling your daughter not to freeze up is not enough; retraining patterns requires focussed practice. And we should neither blame women who have not had that practice, nor pretend that there is something wrong or unexpected about normal human reactions like freezing up.
IOW, be glad that we can train women to resist rape, but realize that if we don’t train them, some significant percentage will have normal human responses that are maladaptive.
Ultimately it is about teaching people how to avoid rape, but part of me thinks that we have worked so hard to remove obstacles from this generation’s path that many are woefully lacking in street smarts. Everyone has different risk tolerance. The survey’s give false perception, in my opinion, because they reflect behavioral outputs and very little reflection on inputs.
Because, @Hanna, you seem to be assuming (yes, I continue to say you’re assuming this) that such education will be equally available, and that it will take equally well across all recipients. Neither of these seem warranted to me.
Yes, such education would be good. Yes, education would help. No, however, such education will not stop all individuals who are assaulted from freezing up early in the process.
I agree that we shouldn’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. But this subthread started because you expressed some level of incredulity that someone might actually freeze up because someone else started undressing them, and then you asserted it could be solved through education. I argue that this problem could be mitigated, but certainly not solved by such means.
I hope the defintion of sexual assault doesn’t expand into behaviors that aren’t sexual assault.
I think what is listed in the link is ok but lets not get crazy. And calling somebody a name should have a different punishment than nonconsensual penetration.
I want serious misconduct to have serious ramifications. This holding hand idea leading to a sex crime…I am wondering if this example is being used to muddy up the waters. Kind of like gay marriage will eventually lead to men marrying their sheep so we can’t legalize gay marriage.
Who believes holding somebody’s hand on a date should be a crime? When did holding hands become sexual assault? Has anybody ever been prosecuted for holding hands?
@HarvestMoon1, you are a lawyer. Where do lawyers come up with this bs?
I’m assuming that the last paragraph is incomplete. I think most of us here have the intuition that penetration without consent is a much worse offense when the guy threatened her with a knife or held her down despite her repeated refusals than when he didn’t ask for consent and should have realized that she wasn’t cooperating, but didn’t. I’m guessing that the draft classifies as misdemeanors some, but not all, kinds of penetration without consent.
Well membership in the ALI is by “invitation only.” And the cynic in me says “by invitation only” = “hand-picked”= “agrees with a certain agenda.” And even if I am incorrect and these lawyers are independent thinkers the proposed statues have to in the end be negotiated to satisfy different interest groups. So some things that appear in the drafts are mere bargaining chips meant to be given up in return for keeping something else in.
That last paragraph is really concerning to me. But it fits into my belief that at the end of day what we end up with rape law reform and the college tribunal system will benefit men --perhaps even more than women. Re-classifying penetration without consent as a misdemeanor would be quite a blow to the efforts of women regarding reform.
It would be but if rape is defined as coercion or force or drugging where investigation can find evidence then it could be that a situation where one party simply claims they did not agree cannot reach a point of being a felony. I am not a fan of yes means yes simply because I think it is even more impossible to prove. I said no, I said no several times is a stronger statement IMO than I never said yes. No is emphatic, not saying yes could imply indecisiveness.
I can’t imagine where you would get that idea. Did you mean “no means no means if someone continues it means rape”? That I understand. Yes means yes is wishy-washy. No means no right now…stop. People say yes all the time to things that they really want to say no to but they don’t want to offend, or think they are obligated to do something. I see people do that all the time…and then betch afterward how they really don’t want to do whatever. Everyone knows that. Very few people think No means yes and if they do, perhaps they are breaking the law or taking advantage of you…don’t you think?
I really don’t understand why we think we need to change no means no, it makes no sense either from a pragmatic point of view or a legal point of view. Besides, if you say yes and then you want to back out at some point in the process you’ll have to simply say “no” I don’t want to go any further or no I don’t want to do this or I know I said yes, but no, now i don’t want to do this…right…otherwise you’ve said yes and you’re stuck with it. Seems pretty clear to me.
Furthermore if someone has to ask you to do something and you don’t want to say “yes” then you still have to say “no.” No matter how you look at it if you don’t want something you have to say “no” so it’s just mumbo-jumbo to imply that yes means yes means anything. It’s just silly nonsense that will be impossible to legalize in any meaningful way and again just weakens what we have already established.
