Date Rape, Statutory Rape, Sexual Harassment
I've just written a piece titled Clothes and Social Stuff that is defacto a compendium of links to multiple pieces by me about all the ways sexual encounters can go wrong in the consent department which is a key defining detail of rape.
That piece doesn't include links from this site like:
That last relates sort of to a piece elsewhere titled The So-called Male Gaze.
Also on this site is a piece titled Paternity which closes with:
Women's lib has a big problem because no one really wants to grapple with how freedom for women changes things we kind of had handled when women weren't granted rights like a human being.No one seems prepared to admit those laws imply our "conservative" ancestors whored their wives out to their weirdo predilections and then as long as you supported the wife and resulting children and kept it quiet, no one really cared.Women aren't supposed to enjoy sex or want sex for their own pleasure and aren't supposed to have sex for money and women's lib seems to mostly concern itself with the right to earn a paycheck like a man.And we seem BAFFLED globally that this is proving wholly insufficient to birth a new world order that actually works for men, women and children.
If you are dealing with a rape case, some issues include:
1. Society views rape as something shameful for the victim, possibly as a left-handed means to acknowledge that rape can leave you medically "dirty" and in older cultures with no means to effectively address that, other people were best off trying to just not have sex or children with victims of rape.
2. Society inundates women from birth with the idea that good girls don't and actively discourages women from exploring their sexuality, figuring out what they like sexually, initiating, etc. Therefore, most rape victims wonder if they were asking for it.
Rapists engage in DARVO which is a set of practices for blaming the victim and claiming they themselves did nothing wrong. They will cite how she was dressed or any attempts to diplomatically turn him away as signals she was sending that she wanted him.
In my experience, if you are a woman and choose to pursue your interests and choose to try to pursue a career and attend public meetings rooted in that, your decision to be there in spite of knowing he is likely to also be there will be interpreted by rapey bastards as openness to his unwanted advances and la la la not listening to your constant refrain that you aren't interested and please stop.
Men will engage in underhanded pushy tactics like make inappropriate comments at team meetings you are both required to attend which is extremely difficult to effectively shut down.
When I had a corporate job, a much younger male teammate was giving me compliments. I was super sick and just showing up for work was all I could do. Trying to be friendly was too much to ask and he wasn't much older than my kids, so I would gush "Why thank you very much!" hoping people would hate me less.
When I decided to tone that down, a story told elsewhere, he didn't take it well. He felt entitled to be pushed at and said something inappropriate in a team meeting where I couldn't avoid him.
I knew I was taking a chance to email him and our two bosses because most people would see this as an overreaction. I also knew if I said nothing the first time, it would gradually escalate and I would be dismissed as a loon for complaining after months of such "innocent, friendly" remarks.
I explained my reasons to HR, as documented in the above link, and I infer he was likely sent to some kind of sensitivity training. I then bent over backwards to not be disrespectful or impolite to him to any degree.
He eventually got over it and began taking a page from my book and being coolly professional when fat, ugly middle aged women in this Pink Collar Ghetto gushed at him expecting to emotionally feel him up as a good-looking young Black man in an overwhelmingly White female department who had no choice but to report to their cubicle for job related reasons.
That went as well as it did in part because he was young and I felt he was teachable. In another case, I defacto got myself quietly transferred to another team, in part because he was older so should have known better and probably not going to change. That tale is told here.
Men typically initiate. They know what they want. Men usually don't drop it entirely and completely after the first rebuff.
Women typically don't initiate and may not know what they want to the point that if they ever thought something like "He's kind of cute." and he rapes her, no matter how ugly the details of the incident, she may wonder if she somehow "asked" for it or "lead him on."
The waters are very, very muddy.
A 16 year old may have intentionally mislead an adult they wished to sleep with and even if it's a state where 16 is the legal age of consent so this is not actually statutory rape even if the adult initiatemd, the adult thought they were older and the minor initiated, it's a potential smear campaign against the adult who may have done absolutely nothing wrong.
Women caught having an illicit affair may scream rape. This is the backstory of one the Black prisoners in the movie The Green Mile who goes home with a chick he had no idea was married, wakes up to her husband coming home and suddenly he's "a rapist."
If she's White and he's not, maybe dig a little deeper and read Cyberia as food for thought.
I don't envy law enforcement trying to figure out justice in this mess. I've spent decades just trying to figure out how to TALK online in hopes of casting light on a few things in forums and on blogs about this giant pile of manure without everyone wanting my head on platter.