So, you think there really is "rape hysteria"? I wonder how you would identify this? Do you mean, the education received by women in self-defense classes, which often reinforce the idea that the most important, essential part of the woman which must be protected at all costs is her sex? Do you mean perhaps the notion that putting up blue lights is the most important way to protect against sexual assault on campus, where the vast majority of rapes will take place in a residence area, and the assailant is an acquaintance? Or maybe you mean the oft-heard refrain from men who are hysterical about the possibility of false accusations of rape, as if most women could succeed with a rape charge without any supporting evidence?
>It is a natural development from the underlying assumption in much
>feminist literature first that the barrier to women's emancipation
>is men (or 'patriarchy') and second that men are inherently
>violent.
Your underlying assumption about "much feminist literature" is the problem here, not that literature itself. It is embarrassing that you characterize it in this way, for it shows the limitations of your experience with the subject, and it reveals your acceptance of traditional and exclusionary definitions of what constitutes feminist literature in the first place. Do you suppose, for example, that Angela Davis is not politically concerned about rape? And do you suppose she is not a writer of feminist literature? Or that she thinks the problem is patriarchy? Men inherently violent?
>You will say no doubt that this is anecdotal evidence (sorry to
>introduce real world events)
By all means do, because the description of Katie Roiphe hardly bears any resemblance to real world events so far.
>the women's group then campaigned for the same goals as those described in
>Roiphe's book: lighting, chaperones etc.
I cannot judge your claims about the women's group persecuting a professor without further evidence, but at least I do not see the relevance of this incident to your broad-brush assertions about "rape hysteria". I also cannot see why you interpret "desire for lighting" and "chaperones" as the result of despicable "rape hysteria". And insight about why lights are bad? Maybe they are an ineffective deployment of resources, but maybe that was the only concession they could get from an administration which probably recognized the need to protect women with well-lit walkways, if not understanding the most likely sources of assault on campus.
I also find your string of ill-supported claims agains "sex-negative" feminists to be absurd. What makes you suppose that women who are "rape-negative" or "harassment-negative" are therefore also "sex- negative"? And what, pray tell, is your evidence for saying that Social Services in the northeast is breaking up families on false charges of abuse, at the lead of sex-negative feminists?
Here is an example of a story which upsets you, and I cannot for the life of me find the "problem" in this tale: Paraphrased: the domestic violence group at UNL prompts an increase in the number of rape cases which are prosecuted. Perhaps you are not aware that an enormous number of rape cases in the US are not prosecuted, not because of lack of evidence, but because the DA does not respect the important of the cases, because the DA's office believes that a jury will--due to ill-formed notions about what constitutes a "good" rape victim--never accept the victim's story? In many ways, an increase in the number of prosecutions would be a good thing, even if convictions did not result whenever justified. We can dream, I suppose.
You then say:
>Juries continued to insist that the charges should be believable
... without recognizing that what a jury considers "believable" is
shaped by myths surrounding rape. For example, if you are a Black
woman in the US who has ever had a drug conviction (particularly if
drugs or alcohol were involved in the rape), good luck trying to
convince a DA, much less the police or a Jury, that your story is
"believable". What is "believable" to you, I warrant, is radically
different from what seems "believable" to me. After all, you seem
to have trouble believing that a boy can rape. Do tell, what is the
magic age at which they acquire this capacity?
You say that the:
>strategy of the UNL team is to lower the standard of evidence in
>rape cases.
But the only support you give for this claim is that:
>Already the law has been changed so that boys of eleven here can
>be tried for rape - leading to one grotesque case where the defendants were
>given crayons and colouring books to keep > their attention in court.
Do you have any concern over whether these boys of eleven actually committed a rape? Or just over the presence of the crayons? Yes, it is a tragedy that boys as young as 11 can sexually assault someone. But so far you have told us nothing of the "evidence", just that you're disconcerted by the colouring books in the courtroom.
Is it really a surprise, that someone who bandies about ill-informed claims about rape hysteria and "evidence" and the prosecution of rape finds a warm and comfortable nest in Ms. Roiphe's work? You seem to share her taste for assertions made without support, broad characterizations and dismissals of decades of work which hardly presents a consistent or unified view of rape, and a singular understanding of what constitutes "evidence" or "believability".
You claim feminism has now become a movement of "repressive legislation". The most recent widespread changes to rape law have involved, for example, making provision that a husband can indeed be convicted of raping his wife, that an assault which involves anything else but a man and woman (e.g. two men) can be prosecuted at the same degree as rape, that an assault need not consist of penile penetration of a vagina in order to qualify as a rape, etc. In many states, even these minimal legislative reforms have not been adopted. Do you consider this repressive?
No, the big problem is that you clearly know very little about this issue, but you still feel qualified to make absurd and universal assertions about it. Check yourself before you shame yourself even further in public.
Jane G.
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