I've found something inspiring in this mess of mudslinging - Page 4

Beetree, that thinking and classification of women as attention seeking, emotional, illogical, etc. is what perpetuates the treatment of women as second class citizens and no better than spoiled children.  I am always stunned when women (NOT pointing the finger at you) themselves are ok with perpetuating that myth.

I have done presentations on sexual assault victims, sexually abused victims, sex trafficking (and do NOT call them "sex workers" implying they have a choice), and domestic violence.

Often victims who do report delay doing so for a variety of reasons that are connected to neurobioligical and psychological responses to their assault.  They may struggle with remembering precise details of the assault and fear being ridiculed or disbelieved because of not remembering precisely what occurred or remembering details after the initial interview and deemed not credible.  The way memory works in a trauma is that our minds will try to protect us by hiding memories.  Sometimes very precise details will surface while other times it is murky and vague (read Dr. Allan Schore on trauma and its affects on the brain).  Completing a rape exam is highly invasive and traumatizing itself.  Every single orifice is swabbed, scrapped, examined including a surgical balloon inserted vaginally and anally, then inflated to stretch the tissue to allow examination of tissue in deep to see if there are injuries consistent with rape.  You are photographed every inch including during the orifice exam, your hair is combed, all of it, and the list goes on.  I went to a training for SANE and was taught the evidence collection and exam.  I would not want to go through that after a rape.  Also a police officer must be present to preserve the collection of evidence.  Most departments try to have a woman officer but sometimes it is a male officer is the only available officer and he must be present although the medical staff tries to keep privacy for the woman, the man is still IN THE ROOM. 

Determining whether a rape is "real" involves debunking myths surrounding rape including false beliefs that the woman is a crying wreck and screams when a man approaches.  Most women are in shock and will not exhibit any emotion or will behave as if nothing happened and try to take care of everyone else in the room, some will even try to have sex with an intimate partner to normalize the attack.  There is no set "this is how all raped women act" guideline.  The rape culture excuses rapists as boys will be boys, he was enticed or led on, he doesn't need to rape because he is rich or handsome or an athlete or so on, and of course the myth of "false rape" claims that are over exaggerated. 

Oftentimes, law enforcement training on sexual violence is inadequate and perpetuates misinformation about false reporting and "correct" response of rape victims (the stories I could tell you about comments overheard or directly relayed to me during the conferences or presentations).  Consequently, what may be typical behavior for a sexual assault victim is commonly misperceived as being contrived, inconsistent, or untrue.  These beliefs and biases may explain why the rate of false allegation are often inflated and why many believe false reports are commonplace.  Since 1929, crime data such as rapes and sexual assaults have been VOLUNTARILY submitted by police departments.  The data becomes part of the Uniform Crime Report.  The FBI issues guidelines and definitions related to processing sexual assault cases.  However not all police departments follow these guidelines, they do seek to process and clear cases from their active case log.  There are 3 ways to clear a case:  cleared by arrest, cleared by exception , and unfounded.  Each category has subdivisions.  The unfounded category has 2: false allegations and baseless.   A false allegation is one that is proven beyond any doubt to have not occurred.  False allegations are based in FACT, there is no subjectivity.   Baseless and unfounded are often confused with false because they are similar in idea but not fact.  Baseless includes those cases that law enforcement believes do not meet the criteria for rape, it does not mean that some form of sexual assault may not have occurred, but only that from the legal perspective in that jurisdiction, the case does not meet the legal criteria to be tried, however may be assumed to be true.  Baseless cases are SUBJECTIVE depending on law enforcement and district attorneys.  HUGE differences exist between district attorneys and police departments on what is considered legal rape criteria.  I have had a department that would not vigorously pursue investigation unless the woman exhibited noticeable injuries from a violent attack, forget "date rape". 

Unsubstantiated is not used for Uniformed Crime Report purposes but can be used in regular language and child abuse reporting.  To be unsubstantiated, a report must "provide insufficient evidence to determine whether or not crime has occurred, it is NOT a false allegation (which if you remember must be FACTUALLY proven false). {Archambault, Lonsway, Belknap, Schorre, Kilpatrick, Harrell, RAND, and the list of references is pretty exhaustive}.

So you see, the 2% is pretty dead on for FALSE allegations vs. unfounded, baseless, etc.  It is actually a smaller percentage than falsely reported other crimes such as robbery, non-sexual assault, etc (again false means FACTUALLY proven to have not occurred).

 

 

 

Hundmutter, so sorry you experienced all that.  You are so right in taking so much time to report each and every sexual assault.  This just illustrates how prevalent the crime is and how society dismisses it.  The sheer number of women and some men who have experienced sexual assault is mindblowing.  Check out #sexualassault on Twitter to get an inkling of the scope of the problem from women being grouped to outright raped.

If someone doesn't want to vote for Clinton or Trump that's their right. If they don't like one or both that's their right. When it comes to Clinton obviously some of the criticism is justified and some is baseless. The thing is, when you listen to the anti-Hillary rhetoric it's pretty clear that the tone of it is shaped by the fact she is a woman. When Trump says, "nasty woman," that is an attack on her as a woman and not as a person or candidate. Somehow she is not behaving as a "proper" woman should. Bringing up what her husband may or may not have done is an attack on her as a woman/wife. I've heard of sins of the father but never sins of the husband. She isn't an independent entity but part of her husband. Trump is called a genius for finding tax loopholes and using bankruptcy and lawsuits to his advantage. Hillary is referred to as conniving. She is scheming and hungry for power. Really? Because none of the men who have ever run for political office wanted power? Trump wants power and has never shied away from that. He wants to project the image of a powerful man, a political strong man. He is the one who mentions stamina. Hillary is portrayed as a Shakespearean character, a Lady Macbeth. She is Catherine de' Medici. She sleeps with a copy of Machiavelli's The Prince under her pillow.

Noitsyou, absolutely. It is all in the language ! Men - and unfortunately some women - use terms like 'conniving', or 'scheming', & 'nasty woman', re Hillary, with the baggage those terms bring with them, rather than the descriptions regularly used for men like Trump. This is 'connived' at by the various media, who not only report those descriptions as though they were perfectly innocent and even-handed, but use them themselves to perpetuate the double-standard. Even when Trump ( or other 'pale, stale, male' politicians etc) are referred to by less congratulatory terms than 'genius', it is often a straight description: 'criminal' or 'power seeking'.

Thank you Noitsyou, that is true, she is not fitting the "proper Christian woman" mold.  People forget, her husband IS NOT RUNNING FOR OFFICE.  And in that case, Melania LIED about her college education and degrees...........

Mindhunt - Thanks; but I did say I DIDN'T report these assaults. Because I knew even 40 years ago that what you describe is exactly what would happen if I did. I did not wish to put myself through all that. Older now and a little wiser, I would probably recommend that anyone who told me they had had any one of those things happen to them that they should report it. Not that I have any illusions that they would find it easy or comfortable, (although some of the ways rape and other assaults are dealt with has got a little better, in some places, than it was) but because at the time I thought more of how I was coping with the initial traumas, and how I didn't want to pile any more on my plate, than I did about the possible knock-on effect of allowing any of those men to continue unchallenged. Now I think I would have greater concern for other women who might have the same things happen to them. But I knew darn well at the time there was not much chance of the guys involved being either caught or convicted, so my reports would 99% likely not have changed anything for anyone else, sadly.

@Mindhunt, I am not going to argue your expertise. I am just going to argue that the type of sexual assault that Trump is bragging about, namely stealing kisses and groping is not on the same trauma level of a violent and bloody rape. No where near the violation of being drugged unconscious and raped. Or even forced fellatio. His bravado filled statement in the leaked video was about the power bestowed because of his wealth, and how that appeal made women more inclined to tolerate his liberties.

My point is, there are women who will put up with a ton of crap if they intend to also get something out of it. Trump clearly found plenty of those, and maybe a dozen or less, who now say they didn't. I really don't buy the giant crocodile tears summoned for the camera about this common every day abuse WE ALL can claim to have suffered. Yes, you said it, the statistics prove it, WE ALL have been sexually assaulted at some level and we aren't going to be clogging up the courts with those lesser events, are we? That would be absurd. The old way was to slap the offenders' faces, good and hard.

Unless of course, there might be vengeful politics driving those crocodile tears?

Bill Clinton found that his power also enabled him to find women who would willingly engage with him in adultery. Hillary put up with this in her marriage because she hadn't yet got to realize her half of their politcal career deal, the one  they made with the Devil. The one she waited 30 years for, to take her turn as promised by Obama, when she lost to him. Why else are they campaigning so hard for her? It was part of the deal!  Bill is brought up because he is the illustration to the fact that a double standard exists and is being ignored by the Dem machine, only because Trump is the enemy and Bill is not.

Dem's love those kind of promises. Do it like this for me, and then we'll do it like that for you, next. The problem becomes though, that secretly taking away everyone else's free choice is collusion. Damn those wikileaks!

@Poor Hundmutter. I will now give her the Post of Substance and Honesty Award. Lord knows how she found herself in those circumstances, and it isn't my business to know, but what the heck! Where you a run-a-way? An orphaned gypsy? How horrible for you!

@All the Rest LOL The only reason Hillary is getting such rabid, blind support is because she is a woman!

Her character faults, and penchent for gaming political systems, including illegalities and cronyism, have been glossed over and ignored in a remarkable, scripted, and coordinated standard, such has never before been seen.

No Bee, perfectly 'normal' childhood otherwise, although the product of a broken marriage and some poverty. Just unlucky, I guess, that I experienced a multiple succession of nasties over the years; often you hear women say they had to put up with one or two of these abyssmal male behaviours, but they don't always have such a long list of them. And yes, some are a greater shock to the system than others; a close friend was raped when some guys broke into her flat, they kept her quiet by threatening to be really vicious with her flatmate ( a boyfriend of mine). Left them both pretty distressed, and for a long while. It also contributed to her becoming an alchoholic, and dying too young. So I am glad none of what I endured was quite as shocking; does not mean it wasn't any problem for me though. Even though one could argue for instance that the second event I listed was 'consensual' - I really liked the guy, even though he was older than my parents, and the father of two small children. So I didn't really look on it (at the time) as him exploiting me ... but when you are a 15 year-old virgin who has already experienced child abuse, not sure you're the greatest judge of what is 'right' !

But whatever the degree of trauma for the sufferer, that shouldn't ever be a 'measure' for determining how 'wrong' the adult male behaves. Men should just NOT abuse women and girls,
right ?

Beetree, I agree with you that men use their power and status (and money) to get willing women to compromise their principles (if they have any) to allow grouping and kissing.  Is this on par with violent sexual assault? Degrees.  Is rape with blood or contusions worse than rape without any violence, just the implied power?  No, sometimes the implied power/power differential makes it worse because these women are not believed.  As for slapping the offenders' faces good and hard, I know of quite a few men that would knock that woman to the ground and stomp the crap out of her.  So many men (the kind that feel it is their God given right to grope women, demand they smile or be nice) think nothing of cat calls, telling women to smile, feeling them up, and would kick the crap out of a woman for daring to resist. 

I don't think the problems you mentioned are the sole behaviors of Democrats, plenty of Republicans behave the same way or worse.  It is a people in power who have lost their reality of the real world that behave that way. 

As for Hillary support, I was a pro-Bernie fan.  I support Hillary because I agree with more of her ideas than I do Trump's, I don't find much I agree on with Trump.  I also think it is time for a change.  Men have run this country for so long and look at the mess we are in.  History has proven over and over again, matriarchal societies are the most healthy, prosperous, well educated, and peaceful societies out there.  I say let women run it for a decade and see what we get............

One could easily say that given Trump's base his blind and rabid support is due to him being a white man.

Maybe Obama is campaigning hard for Hillary because he doesn't like Trump. I don't know, maybe the whole birther thing bothered him.

The real double standard is not Bill Clinton getting a pass but rather Hillary being held accountable for Bill's actions while Trump does not want to be held for his own actions. In other words, Hillary can't be president because of what her husband did but Trump can be president in spite of what he did. Trump cheated on Ivana with Marla, he even got Marla pregnant before they were married, but that's OK. Besides, it was in the past just like what he was recorded saying with Billy Bush was in the past and now he's a different man. We must forgive him. Hillary did not cheat on Bill as far as we know. She didn't sexually assault anyone and no one has accused her of speaking about men in the same way Trump speaks about women. And all of that which happened with Bill is also in the past so by Trump rules he should be forgiven. But still, somehow, Hillary is held to some different standard and shouldn't be president. That's the double standard: a man can escape his past but a woman is the prisoner of her husband's past.

There are also plenty of men who will put up with a ton of crap to get what they want. But that is considered paying your dues.