It's actually not that hard (no pun intended)

Disclaimer: there's some graphic imagery used here so if you're a delicate thing who doesn't like to have honest discussions of sex and rape, then don't read. Similarly, if you're under the age of 18, read only with your parents' consent. This post is for grown-ups. 

My friend Mary asked my opinion on this disturbing story, in which "[a] California appeals court overturned the rape conviction of a man accused of pretending to be a woman's boyfriend when he snuck into her bedroom and had sex with her, concluding that the law doesn't protect unmarried women in such cases."

The court found that the law from 1872 only addressed women who have sex with someone impersonating their husbands, not boyfriends or other non-married partners.

The case will be retried, but I am overall disgusted with this case.  First, if the linked story's video telling of the story is accurate, there are two additional reasons this episode constitutes sex.  The first is he had sex with a sleeping woman!  She "woke up to the sensation of having sex."  So she didn't consent. You can't consent if you're asleep.  That's part of the whole consent thing. You have to be conscious and able to make a decision.

This is the theory that will be retried now that the original conviction has been overturned.

But even without this theory, the story says that at some point, the victim started fighting with the man and he continued to have sex with her.  That's rape.  A woman has a right to withdraw her consent.  A guy doesn't get to "finish up" just because a woman started to fool around or even have sex with him. Once she says no, she says no. Everything after that is against her will and is forced.

And this brings me to one of my favorite ranty subjects: the apparent need of the GOP to continually treat women as less than human beings.   Tennessee state legislator Douglas Henry reportedly once said:

"Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse."

Thank you Senator Henry for encompassing all that is wrong with the GOP's understanding of rape in a single sentence!

First, did a 21st Century legislator in the US actually use the phrase "chaste woman"?  Cause I think the Egyptian military, the Iraqi judiciary, and certain Afghan governors are recruiting if you'd like to join them in their hunt for all non-virgins ripe for the raping. Er, I mean, sexing because apparently you can't rape a non-virgin, right Senator?

I do have to wonder if the Senator could tell us when a lesbian stops being chaste?  I mean, if chasteness is all about whether one's hymen is in tact, and one can presumably be fingered and engage in lots of other types of sexual contact without breaking the hymen, does this mean lesbians, unlike their heterosexual partners, have more leeway for sex with their non-married (thanks to people like you) partner while still retaining their chaste-ness?  On the other hand, a 14 year old girl whose hymen is broken on a bicycle or while horseback riding can presumably be attacked by any guy on the street and it's totally fine? 

And does this mean that heterosexual women have to stick to oral sex in advance of marriage just to stay chastey enough to not be rape-worthy?

Second, apparently rape only happens to women?  Senator, you're an idiot. This doesn't deserve espousing, other than to point to Jerry Sandusky and say that what he did was rape. It was also gross sexual imposition of a minor and child abuse. But it was also rape.

And third, apparently you can't rape a spouse under the Douglas Henry / Phyllis Schlafly idea that marrying someone is an automatic consent for them to put whatever they want from their body into or on whatever they want in your body regardless of what occurred in the time immediately before or during.  Found out your husband was cheating on you and contracted HIV/AIDS? Oh well. You married the a$$hole, so you consented to the sex he then forces on you. Your husband beat you immediately before having sex with you and you said no? Well, that's kind of your fault because 20 years before you said "I do." Found out your husband had a whole second family in another city? Doesn't matter - he wants sex and you've consented to it. Found out your husband is actually a super secret spy sent from the future to destroy America and you're trying to escape for your life? Well, you can but only after he's finished sexing you all he wants.

The only thing missing from Henry's declaration is a suggestion that certain types of women deserve to be raped because of how they dress or how much alcohol they have.

Okay, now that the sarcasm is out of my system... Rape is actually not that complicated of a concept. It's having sex with someone without their consent.  Legislators sometimes want to make it more complicated than that - and sometimes they need to make it more complicated so that judges and juries understand that, actually, it is rape even if it's not a penis that's inserted, and an unconscious person can't consent, and your wife isn't a cattle, and, oh yeah, it's not consent if you're impersonating the person they would consent to have sex with.

But ultimately, rape isn't complicated. Did both parties to a sexual encounter consent? If yes, then it's not rape. If no, then it is rape.

That pretty much covers it.

Please note that I did not say "sex" but a "sexual encounter" because it can be rape if it's oral, anal or vaginal, with a penis or a hand or a pencil or a stick.  (This suddenly feels like a really graphic Dr. Seuss book for me. I suddenly want to say things like "It can happen in a car, it can happen at a bar." Both of which are true, but still...)  It's all rape.

So again, did they consent?  If someone can't consent, they didn't consent. This covers drunk women (if they can't sign a legally binding contract; they can't agree to have sex with you), unconscious women, sleeping women, minors, and those for whom a mental or physical disability means they cannot express valid consent.

Consent is a person specific thing.  Just like in contract law, if I agree to purchase 100 widgets from Fred Smith, that doesn't mean I'm bound to purchase 100 widgets from every Fred Smith or from every widget seller.  If a woman (or man) is consenting, it's about entering into an agreement between her (or him) and the specific people they are consenting to have sex with.

If a woman consents to have sex with someone else, that's not consent for you. This covers the whole "chaste" woman issue, but also the "pretending to be your boyfriend" issue.

And no, the theory that it would have been their wish if they were conscious is never a defense, village idiot from Steubenville.

Quite frankly, I don't understand any one who thinks there's some other standard or defense or that some women 'are asking for it." Let alone that that "asking for it" can be found in someone's drunkenness.

By suggesting any other standard, you are saying women do not have the same right as men to act as adults. As an adult, I have a right to drink. I'm over both 18 and 21, the drinking ages in the UK or US. I am entitled to go to a bar with as many men as I want and drink as often as I want and as much as I want.

How do I know this?  Because my male counterparts get to do it.

If they stumble down on the way home and get robbed, no one says they were "asking for it."  They might not be surprised by the depravity of humankind towards one another, but the perpetrator will be arrested and prosecuted and the victim will be entitled to compensation.

If they want to drink until they can't say a single coherent word, their friends are expected to take them home and put them to bed. Without forcing their penis in the drunk guy's mouth or anus.

As a grown-up, I'm entitled to the same respect. Anything less and you are saying that women are inherently unequal from their male counterparts. And I don't mean biologically different; I mean you think women are essentially mentally incompetent to the point of being no different from an animal.

Because I get why we don't prosecute bulls for having sex with cows without their consent. For starters, we can't understand either the bulls or the cows to know whether or not they consent. And we're not really convinced that they understand each other or understand the concept of consent. We don't know if they can consent, much less how they would communicate that consent both to the bull and to us so we could take measures to stop it or prosecute it. Oh, and we're eventually going to kill the bull and/or cow anyhow (sorry Rachel), so prosecuting the bull seems like a waste of time and money.  (And where are we going to put them? They're already kept in fenced-in areas!) 

I, on the other hand, am not a cow.  I am a human being.  I have the capacity to give consent and the capacity to be understood by other human beings as to whether I give consent or not.  Even in countries where I don't speak the language, I have the capacity to give or not give consent.  When the taxi driver in Istanbul ended our 10-15 minute ride with "you, me, hotel" and a rubbing together of his index fingers, I was able to say no.  And get out of the car.  I also could have said yes.  But I didn't.

And he was never confused by whether I was consenting or not. I laughed at him, shook my head, said no and got out of the car. While he looked disappointed, he never seemed to think my "no" was actually "yes."  He never thought my laughing at him meant "I'm actually meaning yes when I say no."  And when I got out of his car, he didn't feel entitled to chase me into public and have sex with me anyhow.  Because he understood that I wasn't consenting even though we could only speak about 60 common words.

So why do we still treat women as if they don't have that capacity? As if they can't consent or can't communicate that consent in a way that is understood by the listener?

And tell me Tennessee, how friggin hard is it to stop voting for someone who treats your daughters like cattle?  Because it's guys like this that feed into the culture that says what happened in Steubenville is okay.

On Steubenville

Because I'm not based in the US, I didn't realize that as I was posting yesterday on the false he-said / she-said discourse surrounding rape cases that Anonymous was leaking disturbing video in the "Steubenville rape case." Actually, I didn't even know there was a Steubenville rape case, despite the NYTimes profile on it last month.  But, now I'm unfortunately all caught up.

Now, quick explanation of Ohio for my non-Ohio friends. Ohio friends can skip it.

Yes, this is in Ohio. Yes, it's even in NE Ohio. But google maps tells me it's a 2 hour 13 minute drive if you take the toll road. Ohio is large and vast and has a lot of different types of cities and towns to it, and Steubenville is nothing like my hometown. Steubenville's that little red dot on the map. To get to my home, go to the top right hand corner of the state, and then go in two counties (the non-square things delineated by the lines), and then keep going a little bit more.

It's in the tri-state area of Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. According to google maps, within 12 minutes you can drive from Ohio through West Virginia and into Pennsylvania; it's closer to a large city in Pennsylvania than it is to any of the large cities in Ohio.

To my recollection, I've never been to Steubenville. I don't know the people involved.

That said, Steubenville is in the Ohio Valley, which I'm very familiar with.  And it comes across as essentially the exact kind of town you hear about all across Ohio. And unfortunately, the very disturbing rape that occurred there - and even the shocking responses of others present - could have happened in almost any city in Ohio, just like it could happen in France, India, or the UK.

As was noted yesterday, rape is global.  And so is the rush of defenders to say that a woman was asking for it.

That's what Walter Madison, the alleged rapists's defense counsel, is doing. Now, I don't blame Mr. Madison for what he is doing; it's his job and the only way justice works is if you have robust, trained advocates on both sides of a case. But, I found this statement in the NYTimes post pretty disgusting:

He said that online photographs and posts could ultimately be “a gift” for his client’s case because the girl, before that night in August, had posted provocative comments and photographs on her Twitter page over time. He added that those online posts demonstrated that she was sexually active and showed that she was “clearly engaged in at-risk behavior.”

Ahhhhh.  That "at-risk behavior" we women are so fond of demonstrating. Like drinking or flirting or even engaging in consensual sex.

Now, here's the thing.  It sounds like Mr. Madison, who complains about the case being tried in the media, is actually attempting to try this case in the media.

Or he's watched one too many Law & Order episodes and is going to attempt to skirt the rules of evidence, and risk contempt of court, by introducing a line of questioning for which he will be repeatedly objected to and sustained (if the prosecutor and judge are worth their salt).

Since I don't know Mr. Madison, but he went to a good law school, has been licensed since 1999, practices in the same area as my brother, and has a coherent, professional looking website, I'm gonna guess it's not the latter. He's trying this in the media.

Here's a quick Ohio law lesson for the non-lawyers:* the Ohio Revised Code prohibits the introduction of evidence regarding a rape victim's sexual history. This is actually what it says:

Evidence of specific instances of the victim’s sexual activity, opinion evidence of the victim’s sexual activity, and reputation evidence of the victim’s sexual activity shall not be admitted under this section unless it involves evidence of the origin of semen, pregnancy, or disease, or the victim’s past sexual activity with the offender, and only to the extent that the court finds that the evidence is material to a fact at issue in the case and that its inflammatory or prejudicial nature does not outweigh its probative value.

...

Prior to taking testimony or receiving evidence of any sexual activity of the victim or the defendant in a proceeding under this section, the court shall resolve the admissibility of the proposed evidence in a hearing in chambers...

These standards are similar in the federal courts as well.  So unless the victim has facebook posts or tweets saying "Omg, I love it when someone sexually assaults me when I'm unconscious!" or "I consent to all future sexual activity, regardless of where it comes from!" or "I can't wait until tonight's party when I'm planning to have lots and lots of sex with these two football players!" I don't really see how her online activity will be relevant and admissible.

It disturbs me that still today we have to have discussions of whether a woman's otherwise promiscuous behavior - if the online evidence even suggests she was - somehow constitutes consent. And it disturbs me that Mr. Madison would suggest this in public, in a newspaper interview. He should know better. Not just because he probably took the law of evidence and criminal law in school (both are at least now required courses at his alma mater),** but because he's clearly a well educated, intelligent, and accomplished lawyer.

The more I read on this tragic situation, the more disturbed I am by the actions of the others - the non-accused - in this story.  It starts with Mr. Madison, who is trying to slut shame a girl who was drunk and apparently repeatedly rape. A victim who found out she was raped by reading a newspaper. A victim who then had to be subjected to seeing what happened to her via instagram and tweets. I'm disturbed because you can mount a defense to rape without blaming the victim (and if you can't, your defendant is guilty).

I'm also disturbed by other people in this story, but my disgust with them has been pretty well outlined in the stories I linked above. Still, a few thoughts:

Reno Saccoccia, the football coach, reportedly didn't bench players because, according to the NYT, "they did not think they had done anything wrong." What?? Since when do we allow 17 year old boys to decide whether they should suffer consequences?  When did we stop teaching them morality? And he told the grandmother of one of the accused that the guy was "just in the wrong place at the wrong time"? What does that even mean?  Did he mean to do it a half hour earlier when she simply couldn't consent but wasn't resembling a corpse? Did he accidentally slip his penis into an unconscious woman's vagina?  That "wrong place wrong time" crap only works if the theories some are espousing - that this is a systematic practice and involves a large number of perpetrators from the football team - is actually true.  Then, you could say, "Well, he did actually rape someone, but the only reason he's accused instead of someone else is because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

And then there's one of his nineteen coaches (for high school football?!), Nate Hubbard, who seemed to suggest this was a mass conspiracy of people trying to ruin football for the city.  Because, you know, clearly the girl must be lying. She'd have to explain away her behavior and obviously the only way to do that is to claim rape??

Seriously, with the attitudes of these two men, the actions of their charges - and former charges - becomes slightly more understandable. If the men around you don't act like men - if they aren't grown ups who understand things like laws and consequences and how to respect other human beings - it's not a wonder that the children they are responsible for educating get a warped sense of both women and their own entitlement.

If nothing else, this story made me want to go home and hug every high school administrator and coach in my hometown. Yes, they wanted our athletes to do well; yes, they cared about encouraging and protecting them from having their lives ruined. But they would never have attempted this. There were consequences for screwing up.

And then, of course, there's perhaps the biggest a--hole in the entire story:  Michael Nodianos, the guy who was named as the one in the video. The one who jokes continuously about how dead and raped the victim was.  I know, how is it that the biggest a--hole in a story about rape is not the alleged rapists themselves?  But, Nodianos, unlike potentially the other guys in the video, is actually a legal adult. He should've been a leader here. He should've been a man.  But he wasn't.  He was the most juvenile person in the video - and instead, apparently, was left to receive lectures about how to treat women by guys younger than him. And more importantly, how disturbingly psychopathic does he sound in that video?  Clearly he had no empathy, but he also didn't have any remorse when he was called out.

Now, this is not to excuse the actions of the other guys in the video, but at least they were still minors. We don't expect them to be men yet, and I can imagine it would've been a weird situation for them. They should've manned up - hell, a five year old knows to stand up for people who are being wrongly treated - but at least they weren't engaged in the mocking that Nodianos was. I seriously hope OSU reviews this and kicks him out; I also hopes the Ohio Attorney General looks into filing charges of aiding and abetting rape and kidnapping.

Which brings me to the final people I'm disappointed in: the Ohio Attorney General's office, who are prosecuting the crime. Yes, these are two 16 year olds and I generally think we shouldn't prosecute 16 year olds as adults. But, I also think this crime was particularly horrific - even moreso than a 17 year old kid getting scared while robbing a liquor store and shooting the owner. Perhaps more relevant, though, is that it feels like these guys are getting a different treatment than they would if they weren't football stars or if they weren't from a small town like Steubenville. 

So to the Ohio Attorney General's office, I have to ask: if these were were basketball players from any high school in inner-city Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, or from a school like Euclid or Garfield Heights, would you still be trying them as minors?  I seriously doubt it.

Let's treat these boys like the average criminals they are. If they were 16 and from an urban area, if they were part of a gang instead of a football team, these guys would likely be tried as an adult. So unless someone from the OAG can pony up a good reason for why these kids are different, then I think it's shameful that they dropped the adult charges in favor of juvenile ones.


*Disclaimer: This is a discussion and commentary. It is not legal advice. I am not a criminal lawyer and do not practice criminal law. Nothing in this blog or this blogpost should be construed as legal advice. Nothing associated with this post or the blog creates an attorney-client relationship and (this should be obvious) nothing you share on or through this blog is protected by attorney-client privilege. If you need legal advice, seek a lawyer.

** My brother and I just had a debate via email as to whether evidence and criminal law would cover the "rape shield" standard. I know we did in my fed rules of evidence - it resulted in one of my more embarrassing stories from law school. I may choose to share that story at some point in the future, but that will wait.

---

UPDATE:  I actually forgot someone I wanted to call out by name. In the Cleveland Plain Dealer article on this case, Rachel Dissell cites the school's superintendent Mike McVey as saying, he "plans to address the current allegations and the way the students responded only 'if it interferes with the learning process.' When told of the taunting surrounding the case on social media, he said that technology is a 'gray area.' But the kids should know 'what’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong. . .. We’re not going to be witch-hunting everyone down,' he said."

Seriously??  What is wrong with the adults in this town??  How can you be responsible for the safety of all your students - including all your female students - and say, "Oh, our kids should know not to rape and taunt people, so even though it's happening and we know about it, we're just not going to talk about it."  Talk about an ostrich! 

Once again, thank you to my home town administrators for not being complete and utter wastes of space. You actually did better than that - but sadly, Mike McVey and the others in Steubenville are worse than wastes of space. They are horrific examples for their students as both citizens and human beings. 

So to the my hometown administrators: thank you that when specific complaints were made about our students' behavior in public, you addressed in. You told us about it. And you made sure we understood the consequences, both in school and in society.  It's probably why all the other suburbs were kicked out of a certain high-end establishment while we continued to enjoy our prom there.

Rape, Women and the False "He-Said, She-Said" Connundrum of Justice

Quick disclaimer: Scientific words are used for body parts here. 

If you're not grown-up enough to have this conversation, then go somewhere else.  

Part of what I love about my life is the large number of strong feminists in it, including many male feminists. (I know there's a discussion as to whether men can be feminists. I'm just asserting here without analysis that they can be. Deal with it.) And I love men.  Not just the men I've never hooked up with. Men in general.  But particularly feminist men. 

If you are a man (or a woman), you should join my amazing brother by doing your local Walk A Mile in Her Shoes, which raises money to combat rape, sexual violence, and the gender-based violence. My brother and my 13 month old nephew are walking - shoes, I've been told, will be decided later but I'm hoping my nephew busts something like these out (dear bro, you can buy them here).  

I appreciate that my brother and sister-in-law - one of the coolest sets of feminist parents I could imagine - are starting early in raising my nephew as a feminist. I love that he will grow up doing this walk with his father, whose previous career life involved prosecuting domestic violence and rape cases. I love that his mother and aunts all have jobs that keep them active in the community and ensure that my nephew will never grow up thinking a woman's job can only be a small subset of the world. I won't have to worry that my nephew will think having a female professor or boss is President is "insanity" or unbiblical. I won't have to worry that he'll think it's acceptable to hit a woman because she pissed him off, she broke a golf club, she got into a car accident, or she cheated on him.

And I don't have to worry that my nephew will think "some girls rape easy."

He will be raised to understand that unless a girl says yes, she hasn't consented. He'll know that a girl being drunk isn't an excuse, and neither is the fact that her shoulder, or stomach, or even her breasts and vagina are showing. He'll know that the fact she walks outside in public alone doesn't mean she wants his hand, his eyes or his penis on her. I expect my nephew will know to stand up to other men who say and do these things, even if it means losing friends and even it means that sometimes the conversations get awkward or uncomfortable.

Because that's what it means to be an upstanding man.

I know he will know this because I know his father and mother, his aunts, his uncle, and his grandparents all know this and will reinforce it for him. Again and again and again. The thing about young boys is they grow up to be young men, so if you let them know early and often the expectations of them as men, they will generally embrace those expectations and live up to them. 

The other thing I know my nephew will know that is too often our general society gets wrong:  

Simply because there is no external eye-witness to a rape, it doesn't mean rape comes down to "he-said, she-said."

A facebook conversation prompted this post, so a little background. There's a brilliant commentary by Owen Jones at the Independent reminding Europeans that while their outrage over the Delhi rape case is justified, the problem isn't Indian, or even developing state / patriarchal society specific. The problem of how women are treated in India is replicated in Europe and the US: 

Take a look at France, that prosperous bastion of European civilisation. In 1999, two then-teenagers – named only as Nina and Stephanie – were raped almost every day for six months. Young men would queue up to rape them, patiently waiting for their friends to finish in secluded basements. After a three-week trial this year, 10 of the 14 accused left the courtroom as free men; the other four were granted lenient sentences of one year at most. 

...

All rape is violence by definition, but particularly horrifying incidents take place here, too. Exactly a year ago, one woman was raped by 21-year-old Mustafa Yussuf in central Manchester; shortly afterwards a passer-by – who the rape survivor thought was coming to help – raped her again as she lay on the floor. Or take 63-year-old Marie Reid, raped and savagely murdered earlier this year by an 18-year-old boy she had treated like a “grandson”. 

It’s important to clarify that most rapes – in India or elsewhere – are not carried out by strangers waiting in alleys to pounce on women. It is mostly by people known to the rape survivor or victim; often someone they trust. It is a concept that the law itself took a long time to recognise, which is why – until 1991 – it was legal to rape your wife.

It was the first story - of France - that prompted a quick discourse on the constraints of justice in prosecuting rape. A male friend noted that (in French) that in that case the rape wasn't sufficiently proven and that the interests of justice require the burden be placed on the prosecution and witness to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the rape occurred. 

This is the common explanation trotted out whenever a particularly horrific rape case catches the media's attention and the judge or jury subsequently acquits the accused. There just "wasn't enough evidence." They "couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt." It's just "sometime's a matter of he-said / she-said and a jury can't go on that alone."

My first reaction to this line is "bullshit." But I've promised my mother to swear less in public - and on facebook - and I don't think "bullshit" is a sufficiently established argument to justify my position.  So let me clarify a little further.

First, we allow eye-witness testimony in cases involving murder and robbery as well as rape. Sometimes, this witness identification is the only testimony available and it results in a conviction. When this happens no one dismisses the testimony as a matter of "he said / (s)he said."  We accept it and filter it and the issue of the credibility of the witnesses is assessed by both how they tell the story and their own general credibility. (But no one attempts to argue a shop keeper is not a credible eyewitness because the shop keeper was once robbed before, or once sold beer to someone who looked like the guy who later robbed him.) 

Yet, eye-witness accounts in situations of armed robbery or murder are probably less likely to be accurate than those involving sexual assault. Since rape predominantly involves cases where the victim and perpetrator know each other, the impact of trauma on the ability of a witness to identify the perpetrators is reduced. The same is true for other social biases that can affect eyewitness testimony.

We don't dismiss eye-witness accounts all together because we recognize that it can have validity and we simply need to use it better. We continue to develop and advocate for rules that allow us to balance the interests of justice so that judges and juries understand the factors that can affect eye-witness accounts. But again, though, these issues of the doubtfulness of eye-witness accounts aren't major considerations in most rape cases. If a friend I know rapes me, the distance, lighting, and his race are unlikely to impact the accuracy of my identification. 

This doesn't mean that even in rape cases, eye-witness testimony becomes fool-proof. We do need to be careful about its use. I recognize that. In my home state of Ohio, Clarence Elkins was once convicted for rape and murder based principally on the eyewitness testimony of his six year old niece. Now, that eye-witness testimony ended up being wrong (a fact the amazing faculty and students associated with the Ohio Innocence Project - including several of my friends - helped bring to light), but a lot of that relates to how the eye-witness testimony was collected and the age of the witness.

So, yes, eye-witness testimony has its limits. Yes, that includes in cases of rape. Yes, there needs to be reform to the use of eye-witness testimony.  BUT, we would never argue that when the guy who runs the local 7-11 says he was robbed by that guy and indicates to the defendant, and the defendant says "it wasn't me"* that it's just a matter of "he said / he said."  We evaluate the testimony. We hear experts who explain how testimony can be effected by trauma. And finally, we assess the credibility of the witnesses.

The difference between eye-witness testimony in rape and armed robberies is, actually, a matter of social bias against the victims. We are taught - through movies, TV shows, and yes, sometimes real cases - that women "make up" rape to "punish" men who have spurned them or hurt them or whatever. We are taught that women sometimes change their minds afterwards and claim rape, or do it when they end up pregnant at an inconvenient time. 

We are taught women are emotional and therefore unreliable when it comes to issues of their sexuality and sexual health. And finally, we're that that if they aren't virgins, they must be whores. If they've had sex once, they probably wanted it. 

If they don't want it, women shouldn't dress provocatively, walk alone, go to clubs, or do any number of other things that some guy once decided meant a woman "wants it" and actually wants it from anybody any time. That apparently includes getting married. If a woman fails to take these steps, they're probably at fault. They should've known better.

This is what our society tells us. Regularly.

On the other hand, our boys will be boys attitude suggests men should and do consistently pursue sex and that shouldn't cost them their lives or freedom. We are taught to sympathize with the rapist because they look like sweet young boys we probably knew back home. Do we really want to ruin their lives because of a little confusion as to whether her "no" was "no" or "oh, baby, no, no, no, yes, yes, yes!" 

This brings me back to Roger Rivard's assertion that "some girls rape easy." This is reflective of the idea that men should be pursuing sex but sometimes it just get a little confusing for them as to what a woman wants. It is, once again, the assumption that the woman is at fault. It's not just that she's promiscuous but that she's emotional and unclear about what she wants from her partner. She wants to be a good girl, but she also doesn't want to be. She therefore must've gotten herself into a situation where she is unclear for the guy and he just accidentally ends up raping her.  And isn't it just terrible that his life would be ruined like that?

Most of consciously reject some or all of these proposition to an extent, but their social prominence unconsciously gnaws at us when we consider how to prove rape. It's why we don't give sufficient credence to eye-witness testimony in rape cases. It's why psychological testimony regarding the way trauma affects the giving of evidence is rarely fully introduced at trial.  

And it's why we distinguish between the viability of sole eye-witness testimony in the armed robbery of a grocery store versus the continuous rape of 2 girls by 14 boys.

Because when it's rape, someone pointing the finger isn't sufficient. Particularly when it's just some emotional girl who didn't do enough to protect herself or fight back.

In that case, it's just "he said / she said" and how in the world could we ever have justice if we convicted on that basis alone?