Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-22-2010

[andrewducker]

• Peptides found which trigger gluten immune reaction in Coeliac Disease
  (tags: health science coeliac)
• UK Gay and lesbian television portrayals criticised
  (tags: tv lgbt society)
• Shapechanging robots to show you how your clothes will fit.
  (tags: fashion body design robot)
• The chairman of the Bar Council is right to say we should consider decriminalising drugs
  (tags: drugs law)
• Porn star Lorelei Lee talks obscenity
  (tags: obscenity freespeech porn)
• Comparing the BBFC and the MPAA, and How Antichrist Illustrates The Differences
  (tags: art censorship uk usa)
• A comic debunking The Moon Hoax
  (tags: comic conspiracy moon)
• Why you shouldn't let a graphic designer decide, well, anything.
  (tags: funny design cat)
• Palestinian Man Is Convicted Of Rape After Lying About Being A Jew
  (tags: rape israel law)
• Ratings Agencies: Don't Use Our Ratings
  (tags: finance law usa)
• Standards produced to allow movement of "bought" video on demand to move transparently between platforms.
  (tags: movies video vod technology)

Comments

[innerbrat]

Why did I read the freaking comments?

Seriously, ladies, this doesn't 'disrespect' other people's experiences of rape, because that is their experience.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Does it not dilute the experience, or the perception of the experience, though?

[innerbrat]

I very much think no, it doesn't. My experiences of being raped are in no way 'diluted' by another woman's experiences. (Opinions on this particular case aside.) I don't see how it could be.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Lemme think of a parallel...

Some chavvy kids broke into the communal stairwell of a flat I lvied in. As I 'escorted' them out, one of them spat at me (and missed).

A friend was beaten up and his wallet taken.

Both are assault. But they're very different kinds of assault. At no point did I think I was going to die, there were no injuries, and all I had to show for it was a bit of adrenaline. At the end of the year, when the police tot up their assault statistics, they're grouping my piddling confrontation in with a mugging.

[innerbrat]

Yes.

And what you went through was assault.

And your friend isn't granted some special right to tell you that you weren't 'really' assaulted, or to claim you're insulting or demeaning him by reporting your assault to the police.

Because your experience and your friend's experience are two different experiences.

[broin.livejournal.com]

I think I see what you mean. How about this?

I know the words are stretchy, but if I described 'that time someone touched my behind in a club' as rape...? Or being shouted as as assault? Where's the border?

[innerbrat]

Then you're delusioned and self important and don't understand the words 'rape' and 'assault' very well.

It still has no effect on the experiences of people who have been raped or assaulted.

But we're indulging in Slippery Slope arguments here. Even if I conceded that 'touched my arse = rape' insulted me, would I then have to concede that claiming anything other than a direct mirror of my experiences was also insulting? Because I get rather sick of the "what she experienced wasn't real rape" arguments, being applied to anything from sex-with-coercion to marital rape.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I think a lot of the arguments here happen in the interface between "We shouldn't tell people that their experiences of X are invalid" and "We should charge people with the crime of X", where people think that if you do (a) you have to follow it up with (b).

[innerbrat]

Yep.

I have a strong disconnect between the two, and I sometimes run into difficulty when I forget that some people think I consider them the same.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Then you've answered my question below nicely. =)

[andrewducker]

Yeah - I think part of that comes from different implications. I'm generalising somewhat here, but to a man "X is rape" means "I could be charged with rape for doing X", because that's the context in which men and rape tend to be associated. When they hear people opening up new things they hadn't realised they could be charged with rape for, it tends to then trigger a negative reaction.

[innerbrat]

Without wishing to conflate legality with morality again, I don't recommend lying for sex in any case.

I appreciate you're male, and I assume Joe is from the spelling of hir name, but I'm not particularly interested in a conversation about rape from the point of view of people who might be accused of it. My original comment was about victims' experiences.

[andrewducker]

I wouldn't recommend lying to get sex either. I've had it happen to me, and it wasn't pleasant, and didn't end well.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Very true - that's a typical context. Misrepresenting yourself is such a broad thing - if I fib about my salary, does that matter? If I exaggerate my height online, will that be held against me?

[broin.livejournal.com]

I don't want us to talk past each other, but I'm having trouble fitting the first and second portion of your argument together.

Would it be fair to say I'm talking about rape as it's represented publically, and you're talking more about internal experiences? I absolutely have no problem with different people reacting to an event in different ways - we all have different reactions to violence, grief, loss, etc. My reaction to the spitting was trivial, but another person might have been deeply psychologically affected.

But, while this is just a one-off story, if every man and woman who lied to their partner was now defined as a rapist, I'd have a hard time taking stories of rape seriously. That is, I'd have a hard time knowing that, say, increasing sexual assault statistics included a woman saying 'I'll still love you in the morning' or a man saying 'I'm 28' when he's 30. And while I might have every sympathy for an individual and their personal experience however they define it, I'd become somewhat more cynical or distrustful overall. If the boundaries of 'assault' include harsh language or when 'racial hatred' includes Andy telling me a joke about the Irish, I get pretty cynical.

I know what you mean about slippery slope arguments, but for me some terms are only so elastic, and then snap.

[innerbrat]

I'm glad I answered this above. :D

Don't forget, we're also talking about a situation that's not in our country, and while I'm in no way supporting or ignoring the very strong racila element in this one story, if there is precedent that lying=rape, then there's precedent.

If it helps to clarify my opinion on this one case:

- Because laws are country-specific, the legality of any one action depends on where it takes place.

- Lying to get sex is immoral.

- Rape is sex without the consent of any or all of the parties involved. If that consent is conditional on a lie, than the definition gets blurry. Personally, I think it depends on the lie.

- "He told me he was Jewish!" is a racist argument and one that I find abhorent. I am not, however, a citzen of Israel.

- regardless of your personal opinion of whether act 'X' is rape or not, the attitude "calling it rape is offensive to real victims of rape!" will make me headdesk.

Um, does that help?

[broin.livejournal.com]

Much clearer!

I'd not really thought about how consent (part of the definition of rape) isn't a simple binary, and should actually be _informed consent_.

[innerbrat]

Hence statutory rape existing, of course.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised it's taken this long for the Bar Chairman's remarks to be noted - he made them in his column in Counsel magazine last month!

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

Regarding the BBFC vs MPAA article, a point was brought up that actually I think extends well beyond movies. In the US we're trained to treat sex and nudity in the media (and in life, arguably) as dangerous and screen people from them, whereas violence is not considered nearly as great a threat. In the UK it's the other way around, and violence is considered more adult whereas sex is not such a big deal.

Frankly I think the UK view is far wiser.

[matgb]

Exactly. Although it's only fairly recently that films with sex in started getting lower certificates than 18.

I think the real difference is that because they wouldn't pass big budget blockbusters except as 18s for violence reasons, studios and cinemas still wanted to show them, so an 18 doesn't kill a movie, to an extent it can help--it shows it's for adults, bit like having an R rating is needed for some films in the US.

But because mainstream big budget films are 18s, there's no stigma, so we can get what we want with just an 18 slapped on it.