I’ve continued to try to understand what the heck is going on in New York City and in France, for that matter. Not because I really have any particular insight into the case itself but because I think it’s fascinating to hear people talk about it as a lens into gender and sexual misconduct.
One interesting theory I heard on the beach yesterday. “DSK actually has a well-documented proclivity for prostitutes dressed up as maids,” a male friend informed me. “President Sarkozy realized DSK would beat him in the next election so he was able to intercept DSK’s request for a prostitute dressed as a maid and managed to call the hotel operator and request a real maid instead. DSK jumped on her thinking he was getting what he paid for when in actuality he was committing rape.”
But the argument that in the end seemed to make the most sense to me is that if DSK had murdered the maid there would be no question about the maid’s background. A murder is a murder. A dead liar, hooker, or otherwise unreliable witness is still a victim of murder. What makes sexual crimes so difficult to prosecute—and frankly get victims, whether male or female, to come forward—is the idea that somehow the crime itself is influenced by the sum total of the accuser’s past actions completely out of the context of the singular event during which they were forced to have sex without consent. Where a murder is a murder a rape is not a rape unless the accuser is credible. Even with an abundance of physical evidence it comes down to the credibility of the accuser vs. the credibility of the accused.
In the end a rape is a rape. But, at least at the present time, the victims of rape have limited recourse to prove it. Unless their credibility is greater than the accused. Think of a felon invading the home of upper-class home, for instance. That makes for a good case. But the reverse, an upper-class rapist and a felon victim, makes for a very poor case.
It turns out, in the DSK instance, both the accused and the accuser have backgrounds that make them less than credible. However, it looks like a tie does not go to the runner, like in baseball, but goes to the accused rapist. As Maureen Dowd wrote today, “When a habitual predator faces off against a habitual liar, the liar will most likely lose, even if it is the rare case when she is telling the truth.”
Silence from the feminist media on Casey Anthony ..
Paris says:
July 5, 2011 at 3:17 am
So, if any act that I commit is “about” sex (rather than “about” power), then the act ,by definition, is therefore not rape?
=
Tristane Banon is prepared to file charges in France against DSK
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/world/europe/05france.html?_r=1&hp
Is that your measure of his guilt and the woman in Americas innocence?
The feminist media is saying the maid is the victim in spite of her proven track record of criminality, lying and prostitution and that DSK is guilty on the strength of mere accusations. False accusations of rape and abuse are rife, from what I’ve they are more common than legitimate claims. A police officer has from Austria has come forward recently saying that 8 out of 10 rape claims are false.
Its blatent sexual hypocrisy and misandry.
So the feminist medias response is to paint this man as a rapist regardless of the pile of evidence that he is not and skirt around the fact that this woman is a prostitute and a con artists with serious criminal connections.
That’s victims blaming right there.
I am sorry to say this Tom, but you are absolutely right. I was raped at age 16, and I reported. The cop that interviewed me asked me questions referring to the man that raped me as a “gentlemen”, and because I was 16 at the time it was assumed that I had “been around the block; so to speak” by the cop. Because of that experience, if I where ever raped again, I would never report. I understand innocent until proved guilty, I think it’s a great thing about our justice system, but I also believe that the victim… Read more »
I am sorry to hear your story Kel.
I think one big problem here is how we deal with prostitution. Is it a “victimless crime”? If so, why are prostitutes treated more harshly than “johns.” I think prostitution is not a “victimless crime.” The victim is any child that could be “accidentally” conceived – and sometimes is. Also, some people want prostitution not to be criminal but to be legalized and regulated. I think this is tricky business. Many sex workers have histories of abuse/neglect in their families and, according to the “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” campaign the average age of first prostitution is 13. No 13… Read more »
Obviously legalizing prostitution will not be legalizing it for peddling 13 year olds.
Proponents of legalization mean that they should allow grown women over 18 or 21 decide. It can also mean regulation, like regular STI testing, drug rehab, anti-pimp/violence, safe & monitored brothels.
That would free up governmental resources for trafficking and underaged girls being pimped to be helped.
If vice squads focused entirely on stopping child exploitation they might be more effective at it.
All good points. I think I would agree to it if the age of legality was 23 or 24. I imagine this can seem old to people, but the brain is not fully grown until then. Also, there would need to be some means for dealing with pregnancy – I think sex workers and/or the customers – would have to consent to some kind of foolproof birth control. I am sick of dealing with Christian right freaks who can use the abortion issue to paralyze our country, distract people from productivity and peace and hold women back. Abortions are at… Read more »
Emily
“Another way to skin this cat is now that paternity can be proven genetically, customers who sire pregnancies would bear responsibility for providing 50% of the money and 50% of the unpaid work of raising the child (meeting abuse/neglect issues in doing so)”
There is a issue here of consent, women shouldn’t be given a gun to put to our heads.. There are already all manner of pregnancy related frauds and women that make unilateral decisions to give birth to the children if un-consenting men. If anything , we should be educating women about consent to fatherhood.
The consent to fatherhood occurs when the man has sex without using a condom or having vasectomy, no?
What? No answer to my question?
Emily
Yes that’s the standard of consent to fatherhood, it extends to coercive reproduction and accidental pregnancies in the context of relationships where the couple have agreed that they don’t want children.
Were there system in place where a father had to consent to father hood. We would no longer have many of the social problems that we do now.
Teaching women not to have children with unwilling, unknown, duped and unsuitable men – situations where is no consent to fatherhood would be good for society.
You see Emily.
Your suggestion is violent. It would give women committing reproductive fraud an invisible gun to point at the head of their victims. The victim would have to pay, or men in costumes with guns would come to punish him.
Women would less incentive to use birth control because they would know that men in costumes with guns will put any man that does not comply, in a steel cage.
I think if the man does not want to have a child he has means within his own control (vasectomy being the best) to prevent pregnancy. I suggest men focus on that rather than trying to punish women after the fact for their own mistakes and failure to manage their own sexuality.
So men are focusing on “trying to punish women after the fact for their own mistakes and failure to manage their own sexuality.” Emily? You despicable bigot – if that’s how you view men. Go somewhere else. Most of the men that post here have had enough of the misandrists that populate the area. Also, your response reeks of sexual double standards, you are the one calling for violet punishment for reproductive mistakes and irresponsibility. I think that its far more reasonable to call for educating women on the concept of real consent to fatherhood than it is for bigots… Read more »
No.
interesting about the sex crimes unit being a woman who left when DA Vance took the case away. Did not know that.
Yes, I don’t know if she was involved at the beginning, i.e. at the arrest, arraignment, etc., or was one of the prosecutors crowing so loudly to the press at that time. I also don’t know if the two non-sex crime prosecutors that Cyrus Vance assigned the case to were men; I have a hunch they were.
Meaning what, that justice would be served by having women run this case, since they’d have no trouble with a sole witness who is, at the very least, a liar and a bagwoman for dope dealers?
The claim that “the average age of first prostitution is 13” is nonsense. It isn’t even true if you ignore the majority of prostitutes who work indoors and only examine street prostitution. The statistic comes from a study* of under 18s, with no legal adults included in the survey. It’s obvious that this will provide a much lower average age than if adult prostitutes were included too. Take a closer look at most of the statistics thrown around by these propaganda campaigns and you’ll find they’re similarly inaccurate or disingenuously misused, especially when they start talking about human trafficking. *Richard… Read more »
I didn’t say that murder and rape shouldn’t be treated differently. I do think that it is possible for a prostitute to be raped, as Maureen Dowd points out, or for a felon to be falsely accused. I also believe that sexual crime is an area of the law in this country which is massively under-reported and prosecuted. What I find most fascinating is the way we take one crime where none of us really knows what happened inside the four walls of that hotel room and where both accused and accuser lack credibility for different reasons, and pretty much… Read more »
First off, it’s important that the problem with her credibility is that she’s lied under oath- committed perjury. About whether she was raped previously. And used the statement she was raped in order to gain entrance to the US.
Rape or not, lying under oath is directly relevant to the case. If this were murder, DSK would have been acquitted already.
You can believe that rape is underreported and underprosecuted, but what precisely are you basing that on? And would you really want important decisions to be made on your gut feelings without evidence? I’d hope not.
This ‘gender insanity’ is, arguably, Katha Pollitt, Maureen Dowd and others finding a topic that will help them meet a deadline.
What I find most fascinating is the way we take one crime where none of us really knows what happened inside the four walls of that hotel room and where both accused and accuser lack credibility for different reasons, and pretty much gender insanity breaks out as a result. That has more to do with political views than the judicial system. The judicial system presumes that a person accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty, which in turn requires the state and the accuser to prove guilt. In any other case the state would not put on a… Read more »
Actually, Jacobtk, the state does have an option, and it’s going to exercise it imminently in the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Just as lots of cases proceed with the star witness being a scumbucket who took a plea deal. Scumbuckets who are readily believed by juries who wouldn’t believe a woman accusing a man of rape if it turned out she stumbled on what color lipstick she wore. Strauss-Kahn just happened to luck into an accuser who lied about the very thing she accused him of doing, which quite rightfully sends her credibility on this particular matter down the drain.
I can’t agree on this one, Tom. In American jurisprudence, a tie goes to the accused, even if the accusation is rape. We presume innocence; the burden of proof is on the prosecution. Blackstone wrote in 1760, “better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” The NY DA’s office did the right thing–they made the arrest. They discovered the accuser was not credible. The climate in the US was to try the guy and find him guilty in the press. People were sure a rich and powerful man was a beast. People came forward to report they… Read more »
I was making a statement of fact Perry not judgement. You assume that I think DSK, or other such accused, should be found guilty. That is not what I am saying. I am making the point that rape is a crime that is under-reported and where the credibility of the accuser becomes the issue at hand thus discouraging true victims who might have shady lives completely unrelated to the crime committed against them. That doesn’t mean I think that we should presume guilt. It does mean that it seems to be me wrong that if a woman or man is… Read more »
If that woman or man indeed did lie about being a victim of rape before, it’s hardly “unrelated past”.
It’s not entirely unrelated, though. She told investigators that she listed a gang-rape in her native land on her application for asylum; turned out she listed no such incident and admitted it wasn’t true, but that another such incident had transpired. In other words, she lied about—being raped. Mind you, I believe her protestations that she felt she wouldn’t be believed about the real reason for seeking asylum, but it’s incontestable she lied about exactly the sort of thing she’s now filed a criminal complaint about. Of course the past becomes the litmus test here.
You really can’t determine why there are differences with regard to how rape and murder must and should be prosecuted? There is no voluntary version of being murdered, but people have sex all the time. It’s usually rather trivial to prove a murder happened (you find the body), but verifying a rape happened at all can be inconclusive with modern forensic science. Most cases of rape are one person saying it happened, then the other person saying it didn’t, with ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER EVIDENCE. A small but significant number of rape accusations are false, made for the purposes of revenge… Read more »
Sex is not a voluntary form of rape because rape is not about sex, it is about power. I think you are trying to argue for a continuum argument, which is fine, but just because you can pour Draino into a glass doesn’t make it cocktail. But to continue the murder parallel, why are we comfortable risking false accusations of murder (which can even land an innocent man on death row), but suddenly oh so concerned about having every single piece of evidence unambiguously ordered before pursuing a rape accusation? Contrary to what your TV shows have lead you to… Read more »
really an apt photo ..
and it is good to say, “i don’t know what went on there so i cannot yet presume to judge”>\.
the photo suggests sex, which is the topic of this piece…
These comments confuse me. Why would this be sexualized? Tom it disappoints me that with a 17 yr old daughter you would sexualize an innocent pose such as this. I mean it is these attitudes from men that perpetuate the “She asked for it” belief in men. The woman/ or girl in this picture is not doing anything “sexy” or “Sexual”. The only thing I see that could be misconstrued is she has a bare midrif and her bra is showing. So until men quit making something out of nothing then we women will have problems being believed when we… Read more »
The money sticking out of her waistband indicates she is likely a stripper. Which is sexual.
Totally missed that……then again it could be something else like a lack of pockets 🙂