Quickies

Quickies: Judge says rapist is not a “classic rapist”, male clinic escorts, and a field experiment on gender stereotypes and video game interactions

  • Judge says man who raped a sleeping woman is not a “classic rapist” – ““This was a case where you just lost control of normal restraint,” Judge Michael Mettyear continued in his assessment of Setford. ”She was a pretty girl who you fancied. You simply could not resist. You had sex with her.”” From Sarah.
  • What it’s really like outside an abortion clinic – An interview with two male clinic escorts. From Alyssa.
  • A field experiment on gender stereotypes and video game interactions – The study, “predicted that male players who behave aggressively would gain more compliance with friend requests, while female players would benefit from behaving submissively.”
  • When feminists are gaslit – “Despite my assertiveness, despite my confidence, despite everything I know about being a woman and a feminist, this one post made me question something I already knew. It made me wonder if the inequality of women in the sciences really had some evolutionary or biological basis rather than the blatantly obvious factors associated with gender bias and discrimination.”

Amanda

Amanda works in healthcare, is a loudmouthed feminist, and proud supporter of the Oxford comma.

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14 Comments

  1. The gaslighting article is weird. Why does she mind the fact that a video made her question her previously-held beliefs? Would she prefer to be someone who can’t absorb new information that contradicts what she thought she knew? As it happened the video was bullshit, and it was only because she was tired that she couldn’t see it as such. So she is someone who, by default, is willing to entertain new ideas, but also someone who is informed enough to be able eventually to reject unfounded statements. She sounds like a decent skeptic.

    1. She wasn’t concerned about a video challenging her beliefs, she was concerned that a post a SA was so spuriously researched and then vigorously defended, and that if she could be taken in by it that others may too.

      This is a good example of why broad use of evo-psych is so bad, all kinds of assertions that seem to “make sense” get put forward without the necessary evidence to back them up and are expected to be accepted.

      Plus the author was gaslighting the commenters that were pointing out what he got wrong in his own comments. I was starting to get a bit meta honestly.

      1. The bigger problem is that it’s not even, how do you test one way or the other?

        One big problem is, evo psych isn’t right; it isn’t even wrong! Actual mechanisms to go from DNA to behavior would be nice. As would more than just-so stories. Honestly, when I hear evo psych, my first thought is “WIIIIIIIILMAAAAAAA!”

  2. I’m not sure male clinic escorts are a good idea. It’s too easy for the anti-choicers to spin it as bullying and intimidating the mostly-female protestors (even though that isn’t true).

    1. Our protesters vary up their gender dynamics…sometimes they are mostly or all men. Sometimes the reverse is true. Varies. As for ‘bullying’, they make that accusation to our mostly female escorting staff anyway, so not really an issue. They think we ALL intimidate them…in order to tug on the heartstrings of the entire Supreme Court.

  3. David Lisak (you can wikipedia him or search for his overview paper ‘Understanding the Predatory Nature of Sexual Violence’) found and interviewed a substantial body of unindicted college age men who admitted to behavior that qualifies as rape.

    The outlook of these men, their misogyny, their propensity for violence, their status as repeat offenders, their involvement in many other crimes, their driving hatred and desire to control women. WERE NOT SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT from ‘classic’ ski-mask, stranger in the parking garage rapists. The latter had been studied far more because they were more likely to be convicted and imprisoned where they could be interviewed.

    Lisak is worth reading. One of his biggest objections is the reduction of rape investigation to interviews with victim/perp/witnesses, which tend to produce ambivalent, hard to prosecute, results. Lisak insists that a fuller investigation of the accused’s past behavior, and the effect of the crime on the victim, will eliminate the ‘he said/she said’ paralysis that seems to strike so many prosecutors and police departments.

    1. It is worth taking a look at the original article. After reciting all the possible points in the defendant’s favor, he then gave a rather longer list of points against and gave a five year sentence. So its not quite like the cases we see in the US where a clueless judge lets the guy off completely.

      The judge was giving the reasons for the sentence which have to stand up against the sentencing manual: http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/p_to_r/rape_and_sexual_offences/sentencing/

      For the sentence to stand up on appeal the judge has to show that he has considered all the circumstances. So he lists all the things that might be considered in mitigation then obviously dismissed them because he gave him a five year sentence which is the starting point for a single offense by a single offender. To discourage frivolous appeals against sentences the norm seems to be that a judge gives a sentence a little more lenient than the manual would require. The offender then knows that if they make an appeal they are almost certain to see it raised by the appeals court. So five years is a bit more than he might have got otherwise.

      The sentence can go up to life though depending on the aggravating factors which are set out in the manual but it is hard to see how the factors listed would apply here. The alcohol factor might apply but that is usually considered to be for when the attacker gets the victim drunk so as to rape them or spikes their drink. The case where the victim is already drunk is not considered an aggravating factor. In particular the manual states:

      “The court must firstly consider if the defendant is dangerous within the meaning of section 225(1)(b); The court must then first consider whether life imprisonment is justified (section 225(2)) and if it is, it must impose life. This is the only mandatory part of the sentencing regime that remains. It must always be considered, as rape carries a discretionary life sentence;”

      So basically the judge was saying that the guy did not appear to require a life sentence which is a mandatory consideration. He did suggest that he would have allowed the standard 33% discount for a guilty plea which would have taken it down to 40 months instead of 60.

      As I said, read the original report not the article looking at only one part of the sentencing.

  4. Hypothetically speaking, what would happen if two groups turned up at an abortion clinic, one anti-choice and the other pro-abortion? And yes I mean pro abortion as in ‘ladies have you considered an abortion?’ posters, “ABORT EARLY, ABORT OFTEN’ etc.

    Now it would seem to me that as a matter of public safety, the police would need to separate the two groups! Just like they make sure the Phelps folk don’t get sent home with their signs stuck up em. And that this would be entirely constitutional because it was purely a matter of public safety. So the anti-choice crowd would have to stand on one side of the entrance and the pro-abortion crowd on the other. Naturally there would be no opportunity to harass women who chose to approach by way of the pro-abortion demonstration.

    Naturally such a situation would make it impossible for the anti-choice crowd to block or blockade anything because they would be in their ‘free speech zone’ which the supremes had no problem with at all when it was protests at the RNC convention in NYC.

    1. There’s actually something going on shortly that kinda answers your question. Currently, the group ‘Stop Patriarchy’, an anti-sex worker, anti-pornography, racially insensitive group that tends not to work well with other abortion activist groups is promoting their “Freedom Ride” to Texas…something Texas activists had asked them not to do. Their rhetoric and tactics are abrasive, and they’re fundraising can be seen as funneling money and resources away from the actual clinics that are in desperate need in Texas. Despite repeatedly being told about their problematic choice of names, their tactics and their siphoning of money by the locals, they’ve ignored criticisms or gotten very defensive. Inviting counter-protests mean inviting every kind of counter-protester…a headache that is already being felt by the activists on the ground in Texas.

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