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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!gatech!gitpyr!owens
From: owens@gitpyr.UUCP (Gerald Owens)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: rape and violence
Message-ID: <276@gitpyr.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Oct-84 19:05:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.276
Posted: Thu Oct 18 19:05:35 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Oct-84 13:36:14 EDT
References: <3029@hlexa.UUCP> <10400010@acf4.UUCP> <385@pucc-k> <1733@sun.uucp>
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 42

> > 
> > How do you go about proving "psychological" rape? What the hell is
> > "psychological" rape?!!! 
> > Andy Banta			{decvax!allegra!inhp4}!pucc-k!agz
> > Alcohol Design and Application Corp. --- Serving people over 21 years.
>
> you've missed the point!
> 
> You espouse the "protect the criminal, to hell with the victim" philosophy
> usually applied by the (usually) male justice system to the crime of rape.
> the point is not how you prove shit is shit in court, but to pay attention
> to the fact that there IS shit laying all around you, whether the courts
> know about it or not!.  MY WHOLE POINT was that there IS a psychological
> form of rape, and that you and the courts haven't got the foggiest idea of
> how to deal with it!.
> -- 
> {ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4}!sun!sunny (Sunny :-> Kirsten of Sun Microsystems Inc.)

	I say "protect the victim AND the criminal".  It's not either/or.
The problem is: if psychological rape is wrong and is to be outlawed, how
can we JUSTLY determine it has happened and who did it??  I can hear it
now: "I SAY he did it, and that's proof enough!"

	To be sure, the rules of evidence must be fair and realistic.
In the Law of Moses, a person was NEVER convicted of a capital crime on
the word of ONE witness.  If I recall correctly (muslims please correct
if I'm wrong) it takes *5* witnesses (men unfortunately :-( ) to convict
a woman of adultry.  To say that a woman's word is good enough is to
be reverse sexist (Women ALWAYS tell the truth while men MIGHT not.), just
as sexist as to say that it is NEVER good enough (Islamic law concerning
witnesses says that it takes >1 woman testifying to the truth of X to
equal the veracity of 1 man.)  The truth of the matter is that it's
TOUGH to determine mental harm OBJECTIVELY.  All we have is the word
of the victim.  I find it difficult to accept *just* that on the same level as:
"His fingerprints were all over the place, we found the goods in the
car he was driving, and he stopped for us only when his car hit the
telephone pole at 90 MPH."


				For a TRULY just society,
				Gerald Owens
				Owens@Gatech