CurlyElectra

If we are thinking of the same SVU ep, that girl was 14 and had run away from home. Her pimp also started beating her. I don't really think you can compare the two, unless you are referencing a diff ep.

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- AmberBrown

*Marah*

Furthermore.. there is a big difference in a 14 year old school aged child and a 19 year old grown woman working as an intern that is about to get married.

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Saria

ALL OF THIS. TIMES A MILLION. I can't possibly know if what happened to this woman was rape. What I and I think a lot of others here are saying is that those brushing it off and putting blame of this woman can't know either and are using typical rape-denying arguments. People question the accuser and find fault to discredit the victim. An eleven-year-old gets gang-raped and you get commentary about how she went around in makeup and clothes looking older than she was. A woman is raped by a police officer and deemed too drunk to accurately remember, but not too drunk to consent apparently. Comments about how a possibly "innocent" person has to live with being labeled a rapist forever instead of you know, the person who got raped having to live with that forever and their rapist getting away with it.
It happens every time and it really needs to stop.

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*Marah*

It's a two way street...as many comments as their are about the how a possible innoccent person has to live with this for the rest of their life..there are just as many comments about how an accuser has to live with their victimization for the rest of their life. And in a lot of these case.. the fact of the matter is the public just doesn't know what REALLY went on. They just go with how their gut feels about the situation or side with whatever issue makes the most sense to them regardless of what evidence is brought forth or what the accused or accuser says. (For instance in this case.. Mimi Alford details and affair..not a rape. Yet people are still saying they aren't sure if she was raped or not as if she's can't define what happened with her and another invidivual). So if one extreme needs to stop..then the other extreme needs to stop as well.

Saria, No disrespect at all to you personally. I respect your right to your views.

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wild~hair

Marah, did you read what Saria wrote? All of it? Honestly, given your response, I don't think you actually did.

wild~hair

Just because this woman doesn't categorize it as rape doesn't mean it wasn't rape in the general or legal sense. It just means it wasn't rape to her.

In the context of this conversation, that point is quite relevant.

Disclaimer: the above commentary is not meant to be taken as an endorsement of the view this particular situation was rape or was not. Some of us are talking about the views on rape in our society using this situation as a starting point. Thank you.

*Marah*

Yes.. I don't comment on anything where I don't read all of what was written. Whether how I perceived what the person said is an accurate account of how they meant it.. is another story. But I guess that's up to Saria to explain. But I read what she posted. So perhaps you just don't agree with my view of what she stated..and that's fine. Opinions vary.

Sorry for any grammatical errors and typos. I know the English grammar policy folks are about to fall off a ledge right now.

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*Marah*

Yeah but wild_hair with all due respect.. I think this is part of the problem. How is rape relevant to this when Mimi doesn't say she was raped..she details an affair. And I think for me..that's the issue when these threads come up about rape. Certain people want to act like only THEY can decide if something was rape or not and others that think otherwise..suddenly they hate rape victims and are blaming the victim. And that's not fair at all. That was my point.. BOTH extremes should stop if one has to...

I hope that was clear..sorry if it's not. I tried.

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Happycurls

I think there is a danger in making an adult woman's "yes" now mean "no." It seems to be infantilizing her by saying "well even though you wanted to have sex at the time, and you still say 50 years you wanted to have the sex, your consent was invalid because you were young, he was powerful, etc"

I fully respect a woman's right to say no, but along with that, I fully respect her right to say yes. And this woman said yes. The idea that she couldn't have possibly meant what she said (YES) seems extremely degrading to her specifically, but to all women as a whole. It seems to be feeding into that idea of "good girls don't" and she was just a sweet girl who got tricked into sex. Then came back for it over and over again for 18 months...

thelio

THIS!!!

the argument for it being rape is she was young and he was powerful. If that's the case young women can never are a fling with older men, when let's face it. it happens all the time. those young ladies have all apparently been raped.

A close friend once had an affair with her older boss. She was 19-20. She wasn't raped. She had no problem telling him no. She wanted it as much as he did. She invited him to her apartment. When she was done with it, she broke it off. They were both wrong for carrying on the affair, but no one was raped.

scrills

So let me get this straight, remove ignorance (you don't know your rights/definition of rape) and remove denial (you deny you were raped as a way to cope), some of you believe that if you if woman doesn't feel she was raped, you can override that and say that she was?

I thought the very basis of rape was consent. Am I missing something?

Eilonwy

While there is that danger, there's nothing wrong with considering the historical circumstances. Was this rape by 1960s standards? Maybe yes, maybe no. Was this rape by modern standards? Again, maybe yes, maybe no.

There's the very real question of whether consent can be meaningful under a given set of circumstances.

Eilonwy

I can't define another person's experiences for them. But I can say if a situation sounds like rape to me. And anyway, I'm not saying that this thing with JFK was definitely or most likely rape. I just think it's a real possibility. Frankly, even if we conclusively knew this was rape, it wouldn't change my opinion of JFK. Powerful men with a sense of entitlement are powerful men with a sense of entitlement.

The issue of what constitutes consent is tricky. And please don't turn this into some strawman or a fortiori argument. I'm not saying that consent is impossible. I just think it's a complex and nuanced issue. Since we can't read minds, it's hard to judge whether someone has truly and meaningfully consented to anything, whether it's sex, a medical procedure, etc. This is a real problem without a simple solution.

scrills

I'm not trying to create a strawman, I'm just confused how if this woman says it wasn't someone else can say that it was.

frau

i don't even know what a strawman is.
i just know that eilonwy and saria had the opinion that i was blaming the victim.

BekkaPoo

This could also be a case of "if I knew then what I know now".. as a 19 yr old young woman she may not have had the sophistication to understand what she was getting involved in beyond an affair with the pres (and being passed off to another of his buddies too..ew).

Now yes, she still calls it an affair in her book, but given what we consider to be a "possible rape" these days it could be construed to have been one, if not a violent beat-the-crap-out of you rape, but a rape nonetheless.

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iroc

I'm with scrills. This comment makes NO sense to me at all.

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Eilonwy

I wasn't accusing anyone of making a strawman. I was trying to stave a strawman off.

Well in this particular case, I can't say whether this was rape. I just feel that I can't rule out that possibility.

Speaking more generally, it's very common for people to be raped, and then feel upset or uneasy about the encounter without realizing that they were raped. If someone says, "I was passed out drunk at a party and I found out later that Rick had sex with me while I was unconscious. But it was my fault because I shouldn't have gotten drunk." Well, in that situation, I know that the scenario being described is rape.

Nallia

I've been thinking a lot about it since it was first said because it didn't make much sense to me either at first. I pulled it out of the context of this particular situation and tried to think of it in a general sense, and now I think I get it. I think it's the same way a woman can be considered to have been abused by a partner, regardless of the fact that she may deny such treatment was abuse at all and defends her partner's actions. We see such things happen all the time, even on this board.

When looked at that way, it makes more sense. To me, anyway.

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iroc

But that analogy isn't going to work because there is a consentual form of rape, which is sex. You can willingly have sex with someone - you can't willingly be physically abused by someone. There isn't a consentual form of being beaten by your partner.

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