Re: Bad idea: Punishing false accusers

"Rich" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[...]

> And thinking about it, there is an alarming tendency to assign
> a motive to anyone accused of rape, and this assignment includes
> both intent and violence as a necessary element (just ask JJ, he
> cannot tell the difference between rape and violence for all his
> dictionaries).

I have said that rape is an act of violence. It is. Where you are
misrepresenting me is by implying that I said all rapes involve *physical*
violence. We've been through it all before of course.

>
> Let's look at an example. Geez, I'd forgotten Karen. But this is
> dogma, found at every rape prevention site or shelter. The date
> only illustrates just how long it's been dogma.
>
>   From: Karen Gordon ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
>   Subject: 'Excuses' for the rapist?
>   Newsgroups: talk.rape
>   Date: 1994-04-25 12:40:50 PST
>
>   There has been a steady flow of messages on such topics as:
>   - women having an orgasm during the rape act
>   - women criticizing other women for behaviour after a rape
>   - lesbian women writing pornography
>   - women having 'rape fantasies'
>
>   Are the male posters of these topics trying to infer that a woman being
>   raped is not a very serious thing, considering the above?
>
>   Rape is an act of VIOLENCE and POWER control - nothing less.  And NO
action
>   by the victim, no thoughts by the victim, no 'remote and involuntary'
>   feelings by the victim during the rape, can ever be construed as
>   mitigating reasons for the act of rape.
>
>   The real problem to be discussed is not with the female victim, but with
>   the attacker.....
>   - WHY does he need to be the controller and the victimizer?
>   - what in his background drove him to the violence of the rape act?
>   - why does he hate the female so much that he needs to subjugate her?
>   - how many times in his life will he victimize before he is stopped?
>   - who are the potential rapists and how can they be recognized?
>
>   Time to stop studying the victim and start studying the rapist....the
court
>   rooms have disallowed any 'history' on the victim from being introduced
in
>   the court to discredit her.  Maybe it's time the male posters to this
forum
>   did too.

You've introduced Karen without context here. As the only two surviving
posters from that period, you and I both know that she represented an
extreme feminist viewpoint which was supported on t.r. only by Nikki Craft,
who was a militant feminist activist and friend to Andrea Dworkin. Other
feminist regulars on the group at the time, such as Yojimbo and Avedon
Carol, vehemently disagreed with Karen (when she wasn't simply re-posting
boilerplate as she did most of the time). It is not at all reasonable to
represent this as a 'mainstream' feminist viewpoint.

That said, I would agree with certain of her points - rape *is* always an
act of 'violence', but not necessarily always 'control'. And there is no
mitigation for a rapist based upon the behaviour of the victim - certainly
not because of flirting or intoxication. On most of the rest I part company
with her - as I did at the time.

I look forward to more of your mischaracterisations of my opinions though,
Richard. It's like old times...

[...]

John James (JJ)