Op-ed recommendation: “Until we treat rapists as ordinary criminals we won’t stop them”

I think that Humbabella wasn’t arguing with the concept of innocent until proven guilty; I think she was essentially saying that, only in rape is the victim treated with such skepticism that she/he must first “prove” that a crime had even been committed in the first place. (@anon50609448, correct me if I’ve interpreted you incorrectly!)

9 Likes

Agree, it was pretty clear @anon50609448 was saying that proving a crime existed should be the job of law enforcement, not the burden of the accuser, and in no other violent crime other than rape do we require the accuser to prove the crime.

9 Likes

9 posts were merged into an existing topic: Eugenics?

For the record: he.

9 Likes

How do we breed them out when they won’t admit to what they’re doing?

14 Likes

Is that Humbabella’s chosen pronoun, given their selection of a non-binary gender on driver’s license?

https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/humbabellas-coming-out-party/91005

6 Likes

The medical/therapeutic model is pretty thoroughly examined in this article, and conclusively debunked. It’s a convenient way to procrastinate, to kick the can down the block for another generation to deal with, but in terms of helping perps to stop perping, it has no effect at all. Rigorously investigating, trying these cases as crimes of violence, and punishing those found guilty on the other hand, works. It makes rape a less acceptable thing for rapists to think about doing.

Try reading it, it’s a really good article!

4 Likes

Oh, gosh, you’ve got it right! Over time, I’ve mentally registered numerous posts that referenced male privilege, and didn’t realize there was a more complex story there.

Thanks!

11 Likes

p = np

1 Like

I have now learned something, so thank you again!

2 Likes

The more I think about it, the more I think rape needs to fall under the eye-for-an-eye school of justice.

so do most cults?

1 Like

Thanks for the clarification.

1 Like

Because if I tried to read it, I would have agreed with it?

ALL behavior is physiological/medical in nature, without exception. That is no more license for irresponsibility than other health models are. As if being diagnosed with heart disease or cancer were a “convenient excuse” to avoid health and treatment. The article only discusses medical theories of the motivations for rape, and avoids mention of any actual treatment whatsoever. So it is hardly a thorough debunking of a medical model, rather it is a criticism that that model has been applied only superficially, which is a completely different implication they were not interested in addressing.

Meanwhile punishment/reward models of incentive and motivations for behavior are still as crude as they have ever been, and are based upon institutionalized rather than personal violence.

It is not a problem of misplaced sympathy and tolerance, it is a matter of knowing that in the final analysis - all human interactions are biological in nature, and that our institutions need to be as well.

4 Likes

28 Likes

I don’t think that logic holds… gay people can’t procreate but they haven’t died out.

Why would we be able to execute rapists out of existence?

Edit: BTW let’s be clear that I’m in no way shape or form implying gay people are bad, or rapists.

8 Likes

I read a story once where the punishment for rape was to give the victim the status of a divorced spouse. In other words, they got half your stuff. Unfortunately the story didn’t go into detail about how the crime was actually tried…

8 Likes

According to this reddit thread, it’s Storm Warning, by Mercedes Lackey.

… no one in his right mind would ever commit rape. The victim would be granted immediate status as a divorced spouse. Half of the perpetrator’s possessions went to the victim, half of the perpetrator’s wages went to the victim for a period of five years if there was no child, or sixteen years if a child resulted. If the child was a daughter, she received a full daughter’s dowry out of whatever the perpetrator had managed to accumulate, and if the child was a son, the perpetrator paid for his full outfitting when he was conscripted. … if the perpetrator was some shiftless ne’er-do-well, who did not have a position, he would find himself in a labor camp, building the roads and aqueducts, with his pay supplying the needs of the child for which he was responsible. … And if a perpetrator was foolish enough to rape again – then he underwent a series of punishments both physical and magical that would leave him outwardly intact but completely unable to repeat his act."

I’ve never read Lackey. I understand equines are involved?

5 Likes

What comes to mind when you say “medical model” is a deeper understanding of the motivations and ultimately the well being, of the perpetrator. And there’s another political conundrum I see having problems with the medical model, the problem of gun violence.

Whenever there’s a mass shooting, it seems conveniently forgotten that the effects of gun violence are off limits to medical research, the gun lobby has convinced Congress to make such research impossible for government funded agencies to pursue.

So instead of asking ourselves “how we can stop so many children from being gunned down in their schools?” We’re instead asking what makes people turn 'mucker. It makes for great television, but awful public safety.

The problem of rape is being neglected in exactly the same way, according to this.

If you brought up and refuted points made within the article, I’d be more convinced that we’re both having the same conversatiom.

7 Likes

If you mean convicted rapists should be castrated, I agree completely.