Slut shaming in the Buffalo News?

OK.

This is nothing for anyone to get a twist in their knickers about. Yes, with some frequency, women know for all intents and purposes that they were raped. Said no. Violence. The whole shebang. But "believes" is proper here, because it is the actor's intent that I care about. The accuser, even at 99.9999 percent certainty, is still interpreting.

 

A fact is something that can be known, regardless of the party.

 

Which part of my or Creosote's posts indicated a twisting of knickers ?

 

No question that the woman in your No. 2 example knows she was raped. That Dick Whitman, defendant's rights advocate, cares only about the "actor's intent" has no bearing on that simple fact.

 

2. Woman believes she was raped. Man believes he committed a rape.

 

Nope. They both know what happened.

How judicial systems ultimately decide cases doesn't matter. They get these things wrong all the time.

 

What does "intent" have to do with a rape ?

A person was raped or was not.

That's a point of fact.

"Intent" comes into play in cases where there's a question of murder vs manslaughter vs negligent homicide... Pick your charge in your particular state.

 

There are degrees of rape and sexual assault, as well.

 

Actually, under New York law it doesn't matter what the man believes with regard to consent, but what a reasonable person would have understood.

Section 130.05(d)(2) of the New York Penal Code provides that lack of consent, where the charge is rape in the third degree, lack of consent results from
"in addition to forcible compulsion, circumstances under which, at the time
of the act of intercourse, oral sexual conduct or anal sexual conduct,
the victim clearly expressed that he or she did not consent to engage in
such act, and a reasonable person in the actor's situation would have
understood such person's words and acts as an expression of lack of
consent to such act under all the circumstances." (emphasis added)

The statute also explicitly provides that consent is determined "at the time of the act," not when the person was nice to the actor in a bar, or when the person flirted with the actor in a bar, even if the person was aggressive with the actor in the bar or willingly went with the actor to the actor's home. None of that is relevant in determining whether the person gave consent at the time of the sexual conduct under New York law.

 

Of course actions at the bar do not equal consent or negate non-consent, and I have never remotely said that they do.

 

Amy, I'm not sure what you're correcting. I said the only time it's not rape is when the accused reasonably believes he had consent.

As for "believes" instead of "knows," the idea is that in all instances, the woman is convinced she was raped. It's the difference in the man's state of mind I was attempting to illustrate.

 

That's exactly the point I was correcting. Under New York law, in determining consent (other than in a case of forcible compulsion) the man's state of mind is not relevant. The standard is the "reasonable person" standard.

I'm not going to go back through all your posts on this thread, but you said on several occasions that the woman's behavior in the bar, which I recall you described in one post as "aggressive," as relevant to the question of consent. You cited the attorney's statements about her behavior in support of its relevance. It is relevant, not to consent, but to playing to the stereotypes and biases that underlie slut-shaming - and, therefore, relevant to the question you posed in the thread title.