Rape in marriage not a crime, Indian court rules
- Thread starter GreenFalcon
- Start date
oFFbEAT
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2011
- Messages
- 2,861
- Reaction score
- -33
- Country
- Location
@levina , can you solve this paradox.
If crime against women is ever increasing as I see in all those statistics, then do you think our society was the best in its most primitive form?
But to reduce crime/violence against women, people say that our primitive thought process has to change......
So, which way we should go.....'backward' or 'forward'?
Levina
BANNED
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2013
- Messages
- 15,278
- Reaction score
- 59
- Country
- Location
@Anonymous @he-man @ranjeet @hinduguy
Where's the confusion guys??
The acquittals have shot up from 46% to 75% after the new rape law in 2013.
What does that prove?
That if there were indeed any false claims then the accused men if found innocent were also given honorable acquittals.
Let me show you something else...that while the rape cases steadily increased along with the acquittals...the number of convicted cases almost remained steady.
Infact in 2012 of the 24,923 reported rapes in India in 2012 only 24 per cent resulted in convictions.
The rape cases in 2013 were the highest in last 13years...
Delhi records 1,121 rape cases in 2013, highest in 13 years | NDTV.com
Ask me and I will say its a good sign, earlier reportage of such cases were confined to four walls of the house and victims of rape and sexual assault were asked to keep mum and forget about the incident but with the heightened awareness of the law, more and more women are coming forward to fight for their rights. Good isnt it??
And if anybody lodges a false claim then the court punishes the so called "victim" as in the case below the lady ended up getting 4 years jail term.
False rape charge lands woman in prison for 4 years - Indian Express
Or this one
Delhi woman misuses rape law, held for extortion - News Oneindia
@he-man
About stalking....I did tell you that most of the most acid attack cases happened after steady stalking so circumstances demanded stricter law against the stalkers.
Now I wasnt the one who suggested our authorities to go so ambiguous with the new law...so dont come saber rattling at me.
The alarming rate at which dowry deaths and rapes deaths have increased in past few years led to this new law.
Neither....
Most of India still has a patriarchal society, we still call Lord Sri Ram "prushottam" when he made his wife walk through fire...and left his pregnant wife in a jungle so that wild animals could feast on her.
Risible!!!
Woman never got the right place in the society....and its still a far fetched dream.
Change in the attitude is the need of the hour.
And the crimes may or may not have increased but the reported cases have indeed increased that shows an increased awareness in women and I am glad.
???
Where's the confusion guys??
The acquittals have shot up from 46% to 75% after the new rape law in 2013.
What does that prove?
That if there were indeed any false claims then the accused men if found innocent were also given honorable acquittals.
Let me show you something else...that while the rape cases steadily increased along with the acquittals...the number of convicted cases almost remained steady.
Infact in 2012 of the 24,923 reported rapes in India in 2012 only 24 per cent resulted in convictions.
The rape cases in 2013 were the highest in last 13years...
Delhi records 1,121 rape cases in 2013, highest in 13 years | NDTV.com
Ask me and I will say its a good sign, earlier reportage of such cases were confined to four walls of the house and victims of rape and sexual assault were asked to keep mum and forget about the incident but with the heightened awareness of the law, more and more women are coming forward to fight for their rights. Good isnt it??
And if anybody lodges a false claim then the court punishes the so called "victim" as in the case below the lady ended up getting 4 years jail term.
False rape charge lands woman in prison for 4 years - Indian Express
Or this one
Delhi woman misuses rape law, held for extortion - News Oneindia
@he-man
About stalking....I did tell you that most of the most acid attack cases happened after steady stalking so circumstances demanded stricter law against the stalkers.
Now I wasnt the one who suggested our authorities to go so ambiguous with the new law...so dont come saber rattling at me.
The alarming rate at which dowry deaths and rapes deaths have increased in past few years led to this new law.
Neither....
Most of India still has a patriarchal society, we still call Lord Sri Ram "prushottam" when he made his wife walk through fire...and left his pregnant wife in a jungle so that wild animals could feast on her.
Risible!!!
Woman never got the right place in the society....and its still a far fetched dream.
Change in the attitude is the need of the hour.
And the crimes may or may not have increased but the reported cases have indeed increased that shows an increased awareness in women and I am glad.
???
Levina
BANNED
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2013
- Messages
- 15,278
- Reaction score
- 59
- Country
- Location
Yes I should be sorry that you refuse to see the truth...you refuse to see whats happening around you and how this new rape law came into being. All I was expecting was an iota of common sense ... Was I asking for too much?
he-man
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2013
- Messages
- 11,018
- Reaction score
- -28
- Country
- Location
as usual wasting everyone's time and skirting on the issue again.
don't quote me again on anything,,,i have allergy from people who refuse to see the truth
AHMED85
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2009
- Messages
- 2,562
- Reaction score
- 0
- Country
- Location
Drugged than rape,, out of mind.......
i think both are mental patient or one of them is prostitute......
livingdead
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Oct 25, 2011
- Messages
- 22,952
- Reaction score
- 0
- Country
- Location
@levina for me the moral principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' is worth more than all these fancy charts. Equality is all I seek. You can make all the toughest law you want but am pretty sure the conviction rate will still remain poor unless the system is reformed. Inequal and onsided law will help nobody, both wrong guy and wrong girls will be victims.
About tejpal or whoever, if they found guilty they should face law of the land. The issue is the lynchmob mentality of women (and many men) due to series of ghastly incidents that happened recently. Govt was pressurized to enact 'tough' laws but that will never solve the problem.
Govt needs to spend huge amount of money and modernize police force, their capability to solve crime (now mostly they are a law and order force and do not have specialized detectives)
Have good quality forensic lab in every state. Also make it easy to file a complain and track it.
About tejpal or whoever, if they found guilty they should face law of the land. The issue is the lynchmob mentality of women (and many men) due to series of ghastly incidents that happened recently. Govt was pressurized to enact 'tough' laws but that will never solve the problem.
Govt needs to spend huge amount of money and modernize police force, their capability to solve crime (now mostly they are a law and order force and do not have specialized detectives)
Have good quality forensic lab in every state. Also make it easy to file a complain and track it.
Levina
BANNED
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2013
- Messages
- 15,278
- Reaction score
- 59
- Country
- Location
Dont misunderstand any of my posts to be in favor of victimizing innocent guys.I am against it.
I am not a feminist either...i would use "equalist" (I am not sure if there's such a word in the dictionary or if I have used it correctly)
livingdead
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Oct 25, 2011
- Messages
- 22,952
- Reaction score
- 0
- Country
- Location
feminism is for equality and I think I am feminist.. its not a bad word, people have made it sound bad for some reason best known to them. (just like secularism)
oFFbEAT
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2011
- Messages
- 2,861
- Reaction score
- -33
- Country
- Location
Firstly, I think you're contradicting yourself here.....
If we neither go 'forward' nor 'backward' then we are not changing......
But then you said, we should change our attitude......i.e change our attitude towards women from what it has been for so long right?.....then I guess you're suggesting us to move 'forward'......
Secondly, you say our society is patriarchal and women are not treated equal, but just think of medieval Europe......how much freedom do you think their women enjoyed at that time?.........BUT, now we look up to them regarding freedom of people regardless of men/women and herein lies the MAIN point i.e freedom/privilege for all regardless of sex/caste/creed etc.
In case of India, women were not treated equal in the past and still they are not treated equal, they get more privilege now.....and herein lies the MAIN problem.......
We have laws like 'outraging modesty of a women'-section 354, but we have no such law for men, as if modesty of a man means nothing.....
A woman can make sexual harassment charges against a man but a man cannot(in western countries, a man can too)......
A woman can make domestic violence charges but not a man(while there are cases of domestic violence against men as well).......one might think, how can a woman beat up a man as the man is more stronger, while reality is, she can........with the help of the very law that is intended to protect them.......I know of a case where a husband is beaten up by the wife and her family but he couldn't do anything in the fear that they will file a complaint of 'domestic violence' against him......
A woman can file a case of rape against a man with whom she is in a relationship if the man leaves, BUT a man cannot......if the woman leaves, he has to just accept it.....
There are many more bizarre Indian laws such as these.......which doesn't solve the problem but aggravates it......'cause, as you can see, today men feel they are discriminated against......and it somehow dissipates the feeling of sympathy towards women who are actual victims of violence and discrimination......
This shouldn't have been the case, had the laws been made more carefully and without bias..........the thing is, safety of women cannot be guaranteed by making more and more strict laws, it can be guaranteed by improving the general law and order situation.........in a lawless situation, a man is as vulnerable as a woman.......
In the Delhi 'Nirbhaya' case, I've heard that the culprits before raping the woman, robbed a man........and the man went to a police patrol team but they turned him away saying that it is a petty issue........had they taken action then and there, the rape would have been avoided.........
so you see, the general law and order situation has to be improved, then the safety of women will automatically improve.....NOT the other way round.
I suggest, you see the film 'Aitraaz'
Last edited:
Kurama
BANNED
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2013
- Messages
- 709
- Reaction score
- -8
- Country
- Location
those who are saying men root of all problem for women and .....women never hurt men...
1. Men face domestic violence against women
2. men too are raped..
3. men are harassed and discriminated in society in sexual terms.
More than 40% of domestic violence victims are male, report reveals
Campaign group Parity claims assaults by wives and girlfriends are often ignored by police and media
Assaults on men represent more than 40% of domestic violence in the UK. Photograph: Sakki/Rex Features/Sakki/rex
About two in five of all victims of domestic violence are men, contradicting the widespread impression that it is almost always women who are left battered and bruised, a new report claims.
Men assaulted by their partners are often ignored by police, see their attacker go free and have far fewer refuges to flee to than women, says a study by the men's rights campaign group Parity.
The charity's analysis of statistics on domestic violence shows the number of men attacked by wives or girlfriends is much higher than thought. Its report, Domestic Violence: The Male Perspective, states: "Domestic violence is often seen as a female victim/male perpetrator problem, but the evidence demonstrates that this is a false picture."
Data from Home Office statistical bulletins and the British Crime Survey show that men made up about 40% of domestic violence victims each year between 2004-05 and 2008-09, the last year for which figures are available. In 2006-07 men made up 43.4% of all those who had suffered partner abuse in the previous year, which rose to 45.5% in 2007-08 but fell to 37.7% in 2008-09.
Similar or slightly larger numbers of men were subjected to severe force in an incident with their partner, according to the same documents. The figure stood at 48.6% in 2006-07, 48.3% the next year and 37.5% in 2008-09, Home Office statistics show.
The 2008-09 bulletin states: "More than one in four women (28%) and around one in six men (16%) had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16. These figures are equivalent to an estimated 4.5 million female victims of domestic abuse and 2.6 million male victims."
In addition, "6% of women and 4% of men reported having experienced domestic abuse in the past year, equivalent to an estimated one million female victims of domestic abuse and 600,000 male victims".
Campaigners claim that men are often treated as "second-class victims" and that many police forces and councils do not take them seriously. "Male victims are almost invisible to the authorities such as the police, who rarely can be prevailed upon to take the man's side," said John Mays of Parity. "Their plight is largely overlooked by the media, in official reports and in government policy, for example in the provision of refuge places – 7,500 for females in England and Wales but only 60 for men."
The official figures underestimate the true number of male victims, Mays said. "Culturally it's difficult for men to bring these incidents to the attention of the authorities. Men are reluctant to say that they've been abused by women, because it's seen as unmanly and weak."
The number of women prosecuted for domestic violence rose from 1,575 in 2004-05 to 4,266 in 2008-09. "Both men and women can be victims and we know that men feel under immense pressure to keep up the pretence that everything is OK," said Alex Neil, the housing and communities minister in the Scottish parliament. "Domestic abuse against a man is just as abhorrent as when a woman is the victim."
'Male victims are almost invisible to the authorities,' says John Mays of Parity. Photograph: Guardian
Mark Brooks of the Mankind Initiative, a helpline for victims, said: "It's a scandal that in 2010 all domestic violence victims are still not being treated equally. We reject the gendered analysis that so many in the domestic violence establishment still pursue, that the primary focus should be female victims. Each victim should be seen as an individual and helped accordingly."
CASE STUDY
Ian McNicholl, 47, has painful memories to remind him of the terror he endured when he found himself a male victim of domestic violence.
His then fiancee, Michelle Williamson, punched him in the face several times, stubbed out cigarettes on his body, lashed him with a vacuum cleaner tube, hit him with a metal bar and a hammer and even poured boiling water on to his lap. That at 6ft he was almost a foot taller than her made no difference. He still has burn marks on his left shoulder from when she used steam from an iron on him. Williamson, 35, is now serving a seven-year jail sentence for causing both actual and grievous bodily harm.
During the trial last year McNicholl told the court that, during more than a year of attacks and intimidation, he had lost his job, home and self-respect. He had been too scared to go to the police and had considered suicide. She was only arrested after two neighbours saw her punch him.
Sentencing her at Grimsby crown court last year, judge John Reddihough told Williamson: "Over the period of time you were with him you destroyed him mentally and seriously harmed him physically, leaving him with both physical and mental scars."
When Men Are Raped
35.4k
2.5k
1.4k
A new study reveals that men are often the victims of sexual assault, and women are often the perpetrators.
By Hanna Rosin
For some kinds of sexual victimization, men and women have roughly equal experiences
Photo by Thomas Northcut/Thinkstock
Last year the National Crime Victimization Survey turned up a remarkable statistic. In asking 40,000 households about rape and sexual violence, the survey uncovered that 38 percent of incidents were against men. The number seemed so high that it prompted researcher Lara Stemple to call the Bureau of Justice Statistics to see if it maybe it had made a mistake, or changed its terminology. After all, in years past men had accounted for somewhere between 5 and 14 percent of rape and sexual violence victims. But no, it wasn’t a mistake, officials told her, although they couldn’t explain the rise beyond guessing that maybe it had something to do with the publicity surrounding former football coach Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State sex abuse scandal.
Hanna Rosin
Hanna Rosin is the founder of DoubleX and a writer for the Atlantic. She is also the author of The End of Men. Follow her on Twitter.
Stemple, who works with the Health and Human Rights Project at UCLA, had often wondered whether incidents of sexual violence against men were under-reported. She had once worked on prison reform and knew that jail is a place where sexual violence against men is routine but not counted in the general national statistics. Stemple began digging through existing surveys and discovered that her hunch was correct. The experience of men and women is “a lot closer than any of us would expect,” she says. For some kinds of victimization, men and women have roughly equal experiences. Stemple concluded that we need to “completely rethink our assumptions about sexual victimization,” and especially our fallback model that men are always the perpetrators and women the victims.
Sexual assault is a term that gets refracted through the culture wars, as Slate’s own Emily Bazelon explained in a story about the terminology of rape. Feminists claimed the more legalistic term of sexual assault to put it squarely in the camp of violent crime. Bazelon argues in her story for reclaiming the term rape because of its harsh unflinching sound and its nonlegalistic shock value. But she also allows that rape does not help us grasp crimes outside our limited imagination, particularly crimes against men. She quotes a painful passage from screenwriter and novelist Rafael Yglesias, which is precisely the kind of crime Stemple worries is too foreign and uncomfortable to contemplate.
I used to say, when some part of me was still ashamed of what had been done to me, that I was “molested” because the man who played skillfully with my 8-year-old penis, who put it in his mouth, who put his lips on mine and tried to push his tongue in as deep as it would go, did not anally rape me. … Instead of delineating what he had done, I chose “molestation” hoping that would convey what had happened to me.
1. Men face domestic violence against women
2. men too are raped..
3. men are harassed and discriminated in society in sexual terms.
More than 40% of domestic violence victims are male, report reveals
Campaign group Parity claims assaults by wives and girlfriends are often ignored by police and media
Assaults on men represent more than 40% of domestic violence in the UK. Photograph: Sakki/Rex Features/Sakki/rex
About two in five of all victims of domestic violence are men, contradicting the widespread impression that it is almost always women who are left battered and bruised, a new report claims.
Men assaulted by their partners are often ignored by police, see their attacker go free and have far fewer refuges to flee to than women, says a study by the men's rights campaign group Parity.
The charity's analysis of statistics on domestic violence shows the number of men attacked by wives or girlfriends is much higher than thought. Its report, Domestic Violence: The Male Perspective, states: "Domestic violence is often seen as a female victim/male perpetrator problem, but the evidence demonstrates that this is a false picture."
Data from Home Office statistical bulletins and the British Crime Survey show that men made up about 40% of domestic violence victims each year between 2004-05 and 2008-09, the last year for which figures are available. In 2006-07 men made up 43.4% of all those who had suffered partner abuse in the previous year, which rose to 45.5% in 2007-08 but fell to 37.7% in 2008-09.
Similar or slightly larger numbers of men were subjected to severe force in an incident with their partner, according to the same documents. The figure stood at 48.6% in 2006-07, 48.3% the next year and 37.5% in 2008-09, Home Office statistics show.
The 2008-09 bulletin states: "More than one in four women (28%) and around one in six men (16%) had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16. These figures are equivalent to an estimated 4.5 million female victims of domestic abuse and 2.6 million male victims."
In addition, "6% of women and 4% of men reported having experienced domestic abuse in the past year, equivalent to an estimated one million female victims of domestic abuse and 600,000 male victims".
Campaigners claim that men are often treated as "second-class victims" and that many police forces and councils do not take them seriously. "Male victims are almost invisible to the authorities such as the police, who rarely can be prevailed upon to take the man's side," said John Mays of Parity. "Their plight is largely overlooked by the media, in official reports and in government policy, for example in the provision of refuge places – 7,500 for females in England and Wales but only 60 for men."
The official figures underestimate the true number of male victims, Mays said. "Culturally it's difficult for men to bring these incidents to the attention of the authorities. Men are reluctant to say that they've been abused by women, because it's seen as unmanly and weak."
The number of women prosecuted for domestic violence rose from 1,575 in 2004-05 to 4,266 in 2008-09. "Both men and women can be victims and we know that men feel under immense pressure to keep up the pretence that everything is OK," said Alex Neil, the housing and communities minister in the Scottish parliament. "Domestic abuse against a man is just as abhorrent as when a woman is the victim."
Mark Brooks of the Mankind Initiative, a helpline for victims, said: "It's a scandal that in 2010 all domestic violence victims are still not being treated equally. We reject the gendered analysis that so many in the domestic violence establishment still pursue, that the primary focus should be female victims. Each victim should be seen as an individual and helped accordingly."
CASE STUDY
Ian McNicholl, 47, has painful memories to remind him of the terror he endured when he found himself a male victim of domestic violence.
His then fiancee, Michelle Williamson, punched him in the face several times, stubbed out cigarettes on his body, lashed him with a vacuum cleaner tube, hit him with a metal bar and a hammer and even poured boiling water on to his lap. That at 6ft he was almost a foot taller than her made no difference. He still has burn marks on his left shoulder from when she used steam from an iron on him. Williamson, 35, is now serving a seven-year jail sentence for causing both actual and grievous bodily harm.
During the trial last year McNicholl told the court that, during more than a year of attacks and intimidation, he had lost his job, home and self-respect. He had been too scared to go to the police and had considered suicide. She was only arrested after two neighbours saw her punch him.
Sentencing her at Grimsby crown court last year, judge John Reddihough told Williamson: "Over the period of time you were with him you destroyed him mentally and seriously harmed him physically, leaving him with both physical and mental scars."
When Men Are Raped
35.4k
2.5k
1.4k
A new study reveals that men are often the victims of sexual assault, and women are often the perpetrators.
By Hanna Rosin
For some kinds of sexual victimization, men and women have roughly equal experiences
Photo by Thomas Northcut/Thinkstock
Last year the National Crime Victimization Survey turned up a remarkable statistic. In asking 40,000 households about rape and sexual violence, the survey uncovered that 38 percent of incidents were against men. The number seemed so high that it prompted researcher Lara Stemple to call the Bureau of Justice Statistics to see if it maybe it had made a mistake, or changed its terminology. After all, in years past men had accounted for somewhere between 5 and 14 percent of rape and sexual violence victims. But no, it wasn’t a mistake, officials told her, although they couldn’t explain the rise beyond guessing that maybe it had something to do with the publicity surrounding former football coach Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State sex abuse scandal.
Hanna RosinHanna Rosin is the founder of DoubleX and a writer for the Atlantic. She is also the author of The End of Men. Follow her on Twitter.
Stemple, who works with the Health and Human Rights Project at UCLA, had often wondered whether incidents of sexual violence against men were under-reported. She had once worked on prison reform and knew that jail is a place where sexual violence against men is routine but not counted in the general national statistics. Stemple began digging through existing surveys and discovered that her hunch was correct. The experience of men and women is “a lot closer than any of us would expect,” she says. For some kinds of victimization, men and women have roughly equal experiences. Stemple concluded that we need to “completely rethink our assumptions about sexual victimization,” and especially our fallback model that men are always the perpetrators and women the victims.
Sexual assault is a term that gets refracted through the culture wars, as Slate’s own Emily Bazelon explained in a story about the terminology of rape. Feminists claimed the more legalistic term of sexual assault to put it squarely in the camp of violent crime. Bazelon argues in her story for reclaiming the term rape because of its harsh unflinching sound and its nonlegalistic shock value. But she also allows that rape does not help us grasp crimes outside our limited imagination, particularly crimes against men. She quotes a painful passage from screenwriter and novelist Rafael Yglesias, which is precisely the kind of crime Stemple worries is too foreign and uncomfortable to contemplate.
I used to say, when some part of me was still ashamed of what had been done to me, that I was “molested” because the man who played skillfully with my 8-year-old penis, who put it in his mouth, who put his lips on mine and tried to push his tongue in as deep as it would go, did not anally rape me. … Instead of delineating what he had done, I chose “molestation” hoping that would convey what had happened to me.
Of course it doesn’t. For listeners to appreciate and understand what I had endured, I needed to risk that they will gag or rush out of the room. I needed to be particular and clear as to the details so that when I say I was raped people will understand what I truly mean.
For years, the FBI defined forcible rape, for data collecting purposes, as “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” Eventually localities began to rebel against that limited gender-bound definition; in 2010 Chicago reported 86,767 cases of rape but used its own broader definition, so the FBI left out the Chicago stats. Finally, in 2012, the FBI revised its definition and focused on penetration, with no mention of female (or force).
Data hasn’t been calculated under the new FBI definition yet, but Stemple parses several other national surveys in her new paper, “The Sexual Victimization of Men in America: New Data Challenge Old Assumptions,” co-written with Ilan Meyer and published in the April 17 edition of the American Journal of Public Health. One of those surveys is the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, for which the Centers for Disease Control invented a category of sexual violence called “being made to penetrate.” This definition includes victims who were forced to penetrate someone else with their own body parts, either by physical force or coercion, or when the victim was drunk or high or otherwise unable to consent. When those cases were taken into account, the rates of nonconsensual sexual contact basically equalized, with 1.270 million women and 1.267 million men claiming to be victims of sexual violence.
We might assume that if a man has an erection he must want sex. But imagine if the same were said about women.
“Made to penetrate” is an awkward phrase that hasn’t gotten any traction. It’s also something we instinctively don’t associate with sexual assault. But is it possible our instincts are all wrong here? We might assume, for example, that if a man has an erection he must want sex, especially because we assume men are sexually insatiable. But imagine if the same were said about women. The mere presence of physiological symptoms associated with arousal does not in fact indicate actual arousal, much less willing participation. And the high degree of depression and dysfunction among male victims of sexual abuse backs this up. At the very least, the phrase remedies an obvious injustice. Under the old FBI definition, what happened to Rafael Yglesias would only have counted as rape if he’d been an 8-year-old girl. Accepting the term “made to penetrate” helps us understand that trauma comes in all forms.
So why are men suddenly showing up as victims? Every comedian has a prison rape joke and prosecutions of sexual crimes against men are still rare. But gender norms are shaking loose in a way that allows men to identify themselves—if the survey is sensitive and specific enough—as vulnerable. A recent analysis of BJS data, for example, turned up that 46 percent of male victims reported a female perpetrator.
The final outrage in Stemple and Meyer’s paper involves inmates, who aren’t counted in the general statistics at all. In the last few years, the BJS did two studies in adult prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities. The surveys were excellent because they afforded lots of privacy and asked questions using very specific, informal, and graphic language. (“Did another inmate use physical force to make you give or receive a blow job?”) Those surveys turned up the opposite of what we generally think is true. Women were more likely to be abused by fellow female inmates, and men by guards, and many of those guards were female. For example, of juveniles reporting staff sexual misconduct, 89 percent were boys reporting abuse by a female staff member. In total, inmates reported an astronomical 900,000 incidents of sexual abuse.
Now the question is, in a climate when politicians and the media are finally paying attention to military and campus sexual assault, should these new findings alter our national conversation about rape? Stemple is a longtime feminist who fully understands that men have historically used sexual violence to subjugate women and that in most countries they still do. As she sees it, feminism has fought long and hard to fight rape myths—that if a woman gets raped it’s somehow her fault, that she welcomed it in some way. But the same conversation needs to happen for men. By portraying sexual violence against men as aberrant, we prevent justice and compound the shame. And the conversation about men doesn’t need to shut down the one about women. “Compassion,” she says, “is not a finite resource.”
For years, the FBI defined forcible rape, for data collecting purposes, as “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” Eventually localities began to rebel against that limited gender-bound definition; in 2010 Chicago reported 86,767 cases of rape but used its own broader definition, so the FBI left out the Chicago stats. Finally, in 2012, the FBI revised its definition and focused on penetration, with no mention of female (or force).
Data hasn’t been calculated under the new FBI definition yet, but Stemple parses several other national surveys in her new paper, “The Sexual Victimization of Men in America: New Data Challenge Old Assumptions,” co-written with Ilan Meyer and published in the April 17 edition of the American Journal of Public Health. One of those surveys is the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, for which the Centers for Disease Control invented a category of sexual violence called “being made to penetrate.” This definition includes victims who were forced to penetrate someone else with their own body parts, either by physical force or coercion, or when the victim was drunk or high or otherwise unable to consent. When those cases were taken into account, the rates of nonconsensual sexual contact basically equalized, with 1.270 million women and 1.267 million men claiming to be victims of sexual violence.
We might assume that if a man has an erection he must want sex. But imagine if the same were said about women.
“Made to penetrate” is an awkward phrase that hasn’t gotten any traction. It’s also something we instinctively don’t associate with sexual assault. But is it possible our instincts are all wrong here? We might assume, for example, that if a man has an erection he must want sex, especially because we assume men are sexually insatiable. But imagine if the same were said about women. The mere presence of physiological symptoms associated with arousal does not in fact indicate actual arousal, much less willing participation. And the high degree of depression and dysfunction among male victims of sexual abuse backs this up. At the very least, the phrase remedies an obvious injustice. Under the old FBI definition, what happened to Rafael Yglesias would only have counted as rape if he’d been an 8-year-old girl. Accepting the term “made to penetrate” helps us understand that trauma comes in all forms.
So why are men suddenly showing up as victims? Every comedian has a prison rape joke and prosecutions of sexual crimes against men are still rare. But gender norms are shaking loose in a way that allows men to identify themselves—if the survey is sensitive and specific enough—as vulnerable. A recent analysis of BJS data, for example, turned up that 46 percent of male victims reported a female perpetrator.
The final outrage in Stemple and Meyer’s paper involves inmates, who aren’t counted in the general statistics at all. In the last few years, the BJS did two studies in adult prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities. The surveys were excellent because they afforded lots of privacy and asked questions using very specific, informal, and graphic language. (“Did another inmate use physical force to make you give or receive a blow job?”) Those surveys turned up the opposite of what we generally think is true. Women were more likely to be abused by fellow female inmates, and men by guards, and many of those guards were female. For example, of juveniles reporting staff sexual misconduct, 89 percent were boys reporting abuse by a female staff member. In total, inmates reported an astronomical 900,000 incidents of sexual abuse.
Now the question is, in a climate when politicians and the media are finally paying attention to military and campus sexual assault, should these new findings alter our national conversation about rape? Stemple is a longtime feminist who fully understands that men have historically used sexual violence to subjugate women and that in most countries they still do. As she sees it, feminism has fought long and hard to fight rape myths—that if a woman gets raped it’s somehow her fault, that she welcomed it in some way. But the same conversation needs to happen for men. By portraying sexual violence against men as aberrant, we prevent justice and compound the shame. And the conversation about men doesn’t need to shut down the one about women. “Compassion,” she says, “is not a finite resource.”
Levina
BANNED
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2013
- Messages
- 15,278
- Reaction score
- 59
- Country
- Location
I guess so you knew the answer to the question you had asked me,so why did you ask me the question at all sir?
To me "backward" meant going back to a by gone era where sati/child marriages were practised and when women didnt have much say in the society.At the same time "forward"meant the recent few years when women have been given pseudo powers and rights.And thats exactly the reason why I said "neither".
Enough of the putative women empowerment. But then here I would like to add that the situation is improving but we still have a long way to go.
I think you should take your argument to the lawmakers of India.oFFbEAT said:
I am against any kinda victimization of innocents be it men or women,and I have stated this already more than once on this thread.But then I guess ppl have been misconstruing my posts.
The violent crimes against women have only increased, and the numbers are so high that it over shadows the figures which show crimes against men by women.
But frankly its no rocket science to understand why it would be so.Women being physically weaker can be intimidated easily.
I have seen that movie.oFFbEAT said:
cyphercide
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- May 18, 2011
- Messages
- 2,197
- Reaction score
- 0
- Country
- Location
Even without the concept of marriage, the most common defense of rape from the stated perpetrator is of consensual sex. How does a wedding license muddy waters any further?
Shabash beta. When I did fear all hope was lost with Indian members, your comments came as a beacon of morality.
This is a country where reporting a rape is taken as an assassination of the character of the woman. A country where brides are set on fire for not being bribed for(dowry) on time.
But somehow, the same people now fear women cooking up stories to string them up in bogus cases. Cuz you know...that happens all the time!!!
Last edited:
Indrani
BANNED
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2014
- Messages
- 3,379
- Reaction score
- -13
- Country
- Location
Glad to see men fighting back and not accepting things put forward by airhead feminists at face value.
