Women in jeans cannot be raped

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Am I imagining this?

Women in jeans 'cannot be raped'

Edit: I realize its an old article... but did that ruling stay in effect?

 

Before reading:
Wasn't that in italy? IIRC in protest female italian MPs went to their next assembly in jeans.

After reading:
Ah yes so my memory does serve me well

IIRC the case was not subsequently crushed or changed. What a nonsense.
But that's Italy, after Belgium the worst banana republic in the EU.

 

...I can't decide if that's really, really funny, or really, really sickening.

I think I'll go with both.

 

It's certainly odd, I don't know much about rape but i thought a guy holding a knife or a gun to a woman's head could make her undo the jeans?

 

In that case, the guy wasn't holding a knife or gun to her head. The prosecution claimed that he pinned the victim down and removed her tight jeans without using any devices. He didn't give her a debilitating beating, either.

What the feminists made of that court case was that the judge ruled that jeans were immodest and the woman "deserved it" or "invited it". That's a pure nonsense and a display of dishonesty typically characterising feminist movements in such cases. The judge was merely pondering the technical possibility of one man pinning down one woman and removing her tight jeans at the same time, despite her resistance, and raping her and the whole event leaving no traces of combat on either person.

Some of those jeans are so tight that the girl has to lie down to put them on. She would have to find solid support, lift her hips and arche her back for a guy to remove them with both his hands before consensual intercourse, without having to pin her down. So how would a guy do that in combat, without any tools or devices and with her fighting back?

[ June 20, 2005, 22:25: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

I agree with Chev. I used to date a girl whose jeans were so tight they were basically painted on. On more than one occasion I had the pleasure of watching her take them off and put them on . There is no way someone could have gotten them off her without her assistance.

Now that doesn't mean that all jeans are like that. Without a doubt this was a case that was blown out of proportion for political purposes.

 

Regardless of how she's dressed, No means No. The judge that made that ruling should never have tried another case...

 

I think the question is whether or not she did say no, or if she just said so afterward in order to get something. I'm sure the judge was just trying to weigh the likelyhood of both possibilities to decide which one probably happened, but in the end, I doubt justice was served for either party.

EDIT: It's also possible that instead of threatening her with physical harm, he could have threatened to blackball her, and make sure that she never got her driver's license. Coerced sex is still rape in my book.

[ June 21, 2005, 08:19: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

Gnarff, I agree. But the problem is not if she was dressed frivolously or not. The problem is if it was technically possible for the guy to rape her the way the prosecution claimed he did.

I beg to differ. That's still a crime but threatening to fail someone on a course doesn't have to be the same as threatening physically to harm the person. If there's a threat of physical harm, there isn't much decision. But if there's a vague threat of withholding a benefit, then it's some kind of blackmail but hardly on par with a threat of bodily harm. Come on, if a woman had sex in exchange for not being failed in the driving license exam, would she run to the police with it afterwards? If someone agrees to have sex in order not be failed at an exam, it clearly means that the exam is more important than sexual integrity for the person. First she believes that sex is such a no big deal that she gives her body in exchange for a passing mark and then she switches 180 degrees and cries Rape! Rape! because sex suddenly becomes a great deal? Come on... But still, we would need to survey the whole situation to find out the real degree of coercion.

At any rate, if the prosecution claims he pinned her down and removed her jeans by force, it logically excludes the possibility of threat. If he had threatened her, the prosecution would have said that and not that he simply overpowered her.

Of course women wearing tight jeans can be raped. But the judge didn't say they can't. The judge said their tight jeans can't be removed without their assistance. Coerced assistance is still assistance -- not like I even partly blame the victim, but it's assistance: without evaluating it as positive or negative, the activity is called assistance. So if someone sticks a gun to a woman's head and orders her to remove her jeans, the jeans are still removed with her assistance. Therefore, the judge was logically right. All he said was that it wasn't possible to remove those jeans for one person without the other person's help in a one on one encounter. The utter **** that feminists attached to it is a product of their bored sensation-seeking imagination and has nothing to do with what the judge really said.

 

Chev,
I very much disagree with your point. That it might be 'technically' difficult to execute molesting on a jeans clad woman doesn't mean it is (a) impossible and (b) it didn't happen.

That undressing may neccessarily include 'assistance' sais nothing about the case. When it was 'coerced assistance' that means it wasn't assistance based on agreement. As Gnarff said, a 'no' is a 'no'.
The element of coercion changes everything and makes the point of assistance moot as it would not be an act of free will. Especially you as a lawyer should be aware of that.

When being logically right, that judge forgot what his job was about: Not sophistic logic but judgement.

According to his twisted 'logic' a robbery wouldn't be a robbery but a mere 'willing giveaway of goods after a cost-benefit analysis by the victim'.

Errr. The law isn't that neutral. There is another important element in the crime of 'robbery' that this point of view doesn't reflect. Try to guess.

Adding insult to injury, the judge simply assumed that lady must have had consensual sex - because she wore jeans, and because removing them required assistance.

To practically equal coerced assistance with willing assistance, and by that to imply there is no difference, or worse: That the woman must have wanted it that way, that judge made a misjudgement. An impertinent one. There is a difference, a fundamental difference, and he must have pointed that out - but he didn't.

It doesn't take imagination to see the point of feminist critique, it's blatantly obvious.

So I don't think it's just an occupation of bored sensation-seeking imaginative feminists to take offense on that judgement. But maybe it's the occupation of wanna-be conservative reactionaries to think so

[ June 22, 2005, 18:01: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

You, as a lawyer, should be aware that when the prosecution claims there was no assistance, it logically excludes coerced assistance. They claim he removed her jeans. They don't claim her forced her to. Forcing someone to undress does not equate undressing the person. Don't let us be more creative than the prosecution in a claim-based criminal trial.

Wrong. A proper parallel would be opening a safe. If the robber put a gun to a bank worker's head and ordered him to open the safe, it would still be bank robbery. However, the robber wouldn't have opened the safe. He would have forced the worker to open the safe. Therefore, the sentence "he broke the safe open" would be untrue. So if the prosecution claimed that the guy broke the safe open but the defence proved it was impossible to open the safe without a worker's help, then the guy would have to be acquitted, basing on the falsehood of the prosecution's claim.

Similarly, if the guy had forced her to remove her jeans, the whole question if it was possible for him to remove them forcibly wouldn't arise. It would be said that he forced her to undress, not that he undressed her. The defence claims that he overpowered and undressed her during the struggle, which seems impossible. It's the same as if you claimed aggravated assault by an old lady with arthritis.

You seem oblivious to the presumption of innocence and benefit of the doubt resting with the accused. He doesn't have to prove anything, while the prosecution has to prove everything.

No. The judge concluded that it was impossible for him to remove the jeans forcibly when struggling with the young woman, as the prosecution claimed. When prosecution's claims prove to be rubbish, something is obviously wrong.

No, he did his job right. The claim was that he removed her jeans, not that he forced her to. Rape by threat is different from rape by direct force. Rape by direct force was claimed. That claim was absurd. The judge ruled that and he ruled well.

The fact that it's possible to force a woman to undress has no relevance in the trial of a guy accused of raping one by direct force and undressing her himself in the process.

The logic you are using suggests that if they accused you of raping a wrestling championess by pinning her down, you should be ruled guilty because it was possible to force her into obedience with a gun that you didn't even have.

No, feminists claim that the judge ruled that wearing jeans constituted consent to sex with the first male that pops up. That's an obvious twist of the ruling and a display of the usual level of feminist's and other's intellectual honesty, which means next to non-existence.

Let's face it: the judge didn't rule that "Women in jeans cannot be raped". He ruled that it wasn't possible to remove tight jeans from a woman without her assistance -- voluntary or not.

 

It is a fallacy to conclude from that, that she then must have acted consensual.

I probably didn't make my point clear: That was what my robbery example was aimed on - of course it is robbery in my example. The part making it a criminal offense is the reprehensibleness of coercion in this context. When a victim does what a criminal offender wants it to do, that means nothing, and certainly not agreement.

The lack of resistance and the practical or alleged difficulty of undressing a tight jeans mean nothing. It could still have been a rape.

In rape cases the coercion can well be implicit, a point you seem to be oblivious to. There are levels to coercion, it doesn't need a knife at the throat for that. Being delivered to a man fumbling her in a car somewhere in the middle of nowhere may well have such an implicit coercive effect on a woman. And what about physical superiority?
Imagine a victim passive by fear (if I resist he'll only hurt me) and the rapist undresses her to rape her without resistance. Impossible? Absurd? Consent even? Gimme a break.

It isn't about doing injustice to the accused. Had the judge dismissed the case for 'lack of evidence' for a rape - and then acted according the 'presumption of innocence' that would have been one thing.

But this judge went much further:

He didn't even come to the question of the presumption of innoncence, he, boldly, to say the least, claimed the alleged crime was *technically impossible*.

How can he *know*, I wonder. Did he try himself and fail? Wouldn't that require him to try out all jeans and all woman under all possible circumstances?
Enlighted by Justitia, this judge just *knew* it. And because he knew it, the woman could not possibly have been raped. Publicity seeking bitch. Amen.

No matter how tight a jeans is, the fact that it *is* entirely possible for a rapist to undress even a woman clad in tight jeans by himself when she offers no resistance has very much relevance in the trial of a guy accused of rape.

But the judge flatly denied it.

With certainty, he decreed that in a rape case taking place in a car and involving a woman clad in a tight jeans a rape is impossible, just as if the laws of physics say so.

His smugness is the impertinent part.

 

Rape isn't about sex, it's about POWER. In this case, the woman was raped twice - once by the attacker, once by the judge.

Let's not do it to her a third time, shall we?

 

Rally, why do you assume that she was indeed raped, in the very first place? What makes her claim more credible than the man's claim? The fact that she's a girl claiming to have been raped?

Come on, rape is a horrible crime and I believe rapists should be castrated. But this doesn't mean that all accused men are guilty. Compassion for the allegedly assaulted should never lead us to condemn the people they point out as assailants. What about presumption of innocence?

Also, while rape is definitely about power, it's not true that it isn't about sex. It's not technically possible for a man to have sex without arousal. You have to get erection somehow and while you can get off on completely idle fantasies, you still need to get off somehow and the whole thing is about satisfying an urge. A deviated urge but a sexual one in nature. Therefore, rape is definitely about sex as well as power and domination. Also, there are kinds and instances of rape which are much more about sex than about domination, such as date rape or drinking someone into oblivion before raping. Also, when the rapist demands a specific sexual activity to be performed, he obviously has a weird fetish to satisfy rather than a pure desire to humiliate the victim. I understand the noble motive behind telling victims that rape is not sex but assault, but rape is, I repeat, most definitely about sex.

Rags, did you read what I wrote? The judge said that IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE TIGHT JEANS WITHOUT ASSISTANCE. He did NOT say that it was impossible to force the victim to undress. THE PROSECUTION DIDN'T CLAIM THAT THE WOMAN WAS FORCED TO UNDRESS BUT THAT THE MAN UNDRESSED HER HIMSELF BY FORCE.

We already have to give the accused the benefit of the doubt if we aren't sure if the prosecution is right. So how much more if the prosecution is telling utter rubbish!

The offender is responsible only for his actions, not for the alleged victim's impressions. He may be responsible for purposefully inspiring such impressions but I'm not aware of any jurisdiction in which you could commit rape by negligence (i.e. by not making sure the consent is 100% free and informed).

Also, the prosecution claims he overpowered her in a physical struggle. You don't struggle if you're intimidated into submission. Why is there no mention of any threats in the prosecution's claim? Why does the prosecution NOT claim that he intimidated her into submission? The prosecution claims he overpowered her. That part looks close to impossible to achieve and so the case is at least doubtful.

There are two elements of a crime:

- objectively unlawful action
- subjectively condemnable behaviour

The victim's subjective feelings have no bearing on the offender's guilt unless he willingly inspired those feelings or was aware and made use of them. Being big and ugly doesn't make you a rapist if a girl thinks you're going to hurt her for refusing.

Allow me to make a reservation here, though: Proceeding in spite of refusal (even a simple no) is enough of a proof of unlawful intent. Still, mistaken belief of having convinced the alleged victim can chime in. Remember, we aren't punishing a man for the fact that a woman was raped but for the fact that he committed rape. We wouldn't punish a psychward patient the same as a sane man, so we shouldn't punish a guy who believed he made the alleged victim reconsider her refusal the same as we would punish the "ideal" rapist.

Let's take an example:

A couple has sex on a daily basis but on one day she tells him "I don't want to have sex today". He keeps undressing her and telling her sweet things (in his opinion) to convince her. At the same time, she pretends to be convinced and cooperates. Afterwards, she files a claim. Rape?

A 7' tall guy with a two foot wide bicep asks a girl how about some sex. She is afraid he will go on no matter if she agrees or not, so she cooperates. When he leaves, she files a rape claim. Rape?

In their minds, both women were raped. They may well have all symptoms characteristic of post rape trauma. But this doesn't make the guys rapists. Dick-brained morons maybe. But not rapists.

I will concede one thing: the judge could have added something about no proof of threat or other intentional coercion on the guy's part. Perhaps I would frame it like this:

In the contradictorial trial where the judge can't proceed ex officio:

"The court, being convinced that the act as described by the prosecution is physically impossible, is coerced to dismiss the claim."

In the inquisitorial mode where the judge is obligated to investigate all the circumstances ex officio:

"The court is convinced that the act as described as the prosecution is impossible. In the absence of evidence pointing towards the application of any other form of coercion by the accused, the court dimisses the claim."

Come on, if the prosecution claims she was overpowered and NOT threatened into submission, let's not try to convince it that maybe she was threatened. Okay? If the trial is inquisitorial, they'd better investigate all the circumstances, but it's still the prosecution's job to prove guilt, not the defence's to prove innocence. The accused doesn't have to prove anything. Proving that intercourse indeed took place doesn't automatically mean that it wasn't consensual. It's the prosecution's job to prove that it was.

Of course, if the judge really had ruled that coerced assistance was consent, it would mean he needed to revise a bit.

[ June 22, 2005, 21:00: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Chev,
you're insufferable, and that doesn't make you right, and you jump, somewhat reflexive, on the wrong problems.

And did you read my reply? It was:

On that you replied

You overlook that from a psychological point of view a woman offering no resistance during a rape follows an effective survival strategy.
To interpret that lack of resistance as consent, and willing assistance, or a mitigating circumstance for an offender, is something that qualifies for a well deserved punch in the face.

Except probably in porn and male wet dreams it is afaik pretty unusual for a driving instructor to drive or direct the car to some lonely place to have sex with his student. But that is purely circumstantial.

But in the end that doesn't matter. As it doesn't even matter if she was forced or not.

My point is, and read this carefully, Chev:
How the can this judge say that it was impossible to remove the jeans without assistance? Why such a certainty? Did he make this woman wear that particular jeans and try out himself, in that particular car?

Well, I can imagine such a rape happening, and actually I do know of cases like the one I described.

That judge could have ended the case due to 'lack of evidence' but he didn't.

He preferred to call her a liar, by declaring her allegations *impossible*. What he did was to give that lady a slap in the face, nothing less - that was what I meant with adding insult to injury, and that's what Rally meant with the lady being raped twice.

You're little excurse into how criminal law works is as irrelevant as beside the point, Chev. No one here except you is discussing the guilt of that poor and oh-so persecuted man you're trying to defend from feminist and pc overreaction. It isn't about his credibility compared to that of the woman. Wrong windmill, paladin. We're talking about what the judge did.

I don't say the accused was guilty. It is well possible, and I personally believe it, but that's my personal opinion and unimportant.

What I do say is this

• that it is entirely possible he might have been guilty, and
• that the claim of the judge that it was impossible to commit a rape under the described circumstances is *factually false*, not only sleazy, ludicrous, and impertinent.

It *is* possible, and by ruling otherwise the judge made an as outrageous as false claim in his verdict.

[ June 22, 2005, 23:04: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

The verb is "raped" and the accent is on the possibility or impossibility of removing the jeans without her help. This suggest that there's no question of threat or anything. I am not saying that the judge was 100% right on that he couldn't physically achieve that. I know I probably couldn't if I tried. The guy was 45, so not exactly peak form. Maybe he was athletic and agile, but more likely he was a balding guy with a big belly.

If you still want to stick to your coerced assitance scenario, why didn't the prosecution claim that he forced her into assistance? I don't say he couldn't have. Maybe he did. But the claim that he overpowered her without even coerced assitance (and that's the vibe from the article) is highly doubtful. It's strange that the prosecution doesn't bring up such a possibility. Heck, but things happen. I would still go for lack of proof rather than call it a physical impossibility. The thing is, you don't need to be certain that the guy is innocent. You only need to be less than certain that he's guilty and he has to be acquitted.

"The victim must have consented" kind of talk sounds very insensitive, I will grant that, and I wouldn't use such a wording, but I would probably still acquit the guy on the grounds of insufficient proof.

You still overlook the fact that rape relies on breaking through resistance or rendering resistance futile. In some cases, it will be clear there was no consent and the victim was trying to survive, but in some others, there will have been a mistaken belief of consent. For rape, you need an offender willingly raping, not a victim thinking she's being raped.

My problem is that feminists make a farce of it, claiming that in the light of that verdict, wearing jeans constitutes consent to random sex. As in, women should only wear dresses or skirts kind of talk.

Depends how reasonable the fear is and what the guy's intent is. If you stopped a woman on the street, told her you wanted to have sex with her and she let you do it because she thought you would otherwise stalk her or something, it would hardly be rape. For rape, you need a conscious threat preceding such non-resistance (e.g. a gun, a threat of killing a relative etc), or an offender proceding in spite of refusal.

The refusal must be a clear no, not an ambiguous expression, unless you have a clear coercive intent on the offender's part. If, after a weak initial refusal and in the absence of intentional threat, the passive resistance turns into pretended cooperation, it may be a mitigating circumstance. Just don't make me come up with sickening case studies, okay?

The controversial quote from the ruling is:

That doesn't a claim that the absence of struggling with all might means the absence of rape. There's too much reading into these words, I believe. If you're looking for some real stupidity in the verdict, they questionned why she waited several hours before telling her parents. They guy also got a ridiculously low sentence for rape in the first instance court. Right now, in Poland, you can get 5-25 years for rape after years of ridiculously short terms when it was 1-10 and rapists got away even with suspended sentences. Here is, however, a bit of left talk about the verdict:

Or calling it a "mediaeval ruling". What they are all claiming is that the idea is that wearing jeans makes consent to sex. Or that the court is making it women's responsibility to protect themselves rather than men's responsibility to control themselves. And that's downright wrong. It's not about denim or modesty or being backward or wearing chastity belts. It's about clothes being too tight. Perhaps the judges were wrong. Perhaps it was actually possible even in those circumstances for the guy to overpower her and forcibly remove her jeans and rape her. I will even concede that it if the judges meant all kind of jeans whatsoever, it was a bad idea to give a precedent like that. It surely sounds a bit like the judges discounted the other possibilities like coercion or fear-induced paralysis or whatever when making a general statement -- even though we're talking about a very specific case in which the question of coercion rather than overwhelming force didn't appear. Okay. But my beef is with what the left is doing out of that. There was nothing about jeans being wrong for women to wear and there was no claim like rape can't be committed using a threat or on a paralysed victim. I'm pretty sure the Italian penal code covers such instances as well and the judges are aware of it.

[ June 23, 2005, 00:47: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

See Chev,
I am absolutely aware of the situation, especially in rape cases, that the usually male accused is in an extremely poor position, as the major witness is the potential victim. Classically that leads indeed to a practical reversion of the assumption of innocence, but only practical.
In such cases men are indeed in peril to get sentenced to jail based on a lie of the woman.

Element of that problem is that no one has much sympathy for an alleged rapist, and so police sometimes not really focuses on gathering all, including disculping, evidence but perhaps reather focus on ‘getting’ him. The potential for abuse is evident. But sadly, that’s inherent in the situation.

Gender stereotype only recognises as rape the assault of a violent perpetrator on a respectable woman.

In all other cases the credibility or honesty of the woman is in question, and the question of at least partial guilt or consent of the woman is asked, and becomes focus of the police investigation and the trial in court, because, as I said, in rape cases there rarely are other withnesses at hand. This is exactly what happened here.

I hope that you’re aware that these police and legal procedures are suitable to victimise a raped woman enough, for the second time, just like Rally hinted on, to teach her to never again seek legal protection after a rape, if she knows what’s good for her.


In Germany’s § 177 I Nr.3 StGB the coercion element of a rape can be, roughly translated, the mere ‚exploitation of a situation where one person is at the accused’s mercy’.

As I tried to line out earlier, being alone in the car with the driving instructor in the middle of nowhere, perhap unable to drive away on her own, perhaps disoriented, probably physically inferior, could well be understood as such a situation of being defenseless against the accused, physically or psychically.
In such a situation it’s beside the point wether the having sex required assistance in removing a tight jeans.

That was what I meant with ‘coercion implicit in the situation’.

It would ask a little too much of a woman to, please, show at least some token resistance in order to provoke the perpetrator into hurting her, in order to provide the prosecutor and judge with some unambiguous and bulletproof forensic evidence for a rape – and to prove her decency.

Well, our particular judge merrily asks just that much of the woman.

The logical and consequent application of the judge’s ruling unavoidably leads to the conclusion that, if with a tight jeans rape is impossible, sex must then have been consensual. As I said, that’s simply impertinent.

Your soft wording aside, I am glad that point isn't cpompletely lost on you.

I disagree. With such a precedent one can only advice weman no longer to wear tight jeans in Italy, because in case of their rape that could lead to the culprit getting away, invoking that precedent in court. So ladies, skirts please, and if possible get beat somewhat – to ease the job of your rapist’s judge and speed up prosecution.

That gives an entirely new dimension to the issue of 'cooperation with law enforcement'.

[ June 26, 2005, 17:16: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

In the Polish code, rape is by "force, threat or fraud". There is a separate crime of abuse of subordination, so there would be some problem allocating the state of being on someone's mercy.

IMHO, rape is not only on a decent woman per se, but circumstances matter. When you get a generic indecent woman, it's a tad bit harder to give her the same credit when it comes to her participation in leading to the situation resulting in rape and her behaviour before it. This is mostly the problem with word vs word cases involving alcohol.

I'd rather avoid forming generalisations, but in individual cases different from a violent attacker assaulting a decent woman or a stranger, we have the possibility of a couple of mitigating circumstances. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of mitigating circumstances in rape, but we can't punish all offenders the same.

I'd rather say there are no mitigating circumstances for rape but not all acts are clearly rape. For example, a teacher who fails students who don't sleep with him is most probably a rapist. But if he only gives A's to those who sleep with him, well... I don't think so, except maybe if the student desperately needs an A. Anyway, the point is: not every illegal convenience/inconvenience alternative counts as threat or coercion. Same way, not every fear in the supposed victim corresponds with a coercive intent in the supposed offender.

 

Well, your 'ass for'n A' example is a different case altogether. There is no indication in our case something like that happened.

In case of a teacher, as with a driving instructor, it involves abuse of power, exploitation of a position of authority. That's actually making it worse for my taste.

The teacher is normally paid by his school, and the driving instructor receives money for his services. In your 'ass for'n A' example, the teacher or driving instructor would offer an illegimimate service, an undeserved A he is able to offer thanks to his position, in exchange for an illegitimate return, sex.

That would tone it down from rape to sexual coercion which is still a criminal offense.

And then, I think it is somewhat bold to think that weman might consider it a cheap bargain to trade 'ass for'n A', despite the overpublished 'slut sues billionaire' stories. That is the exception.

Weman, too, deserve the presumption of innocence.

 

Two lawyers arguing...arghh...gimme a gun !

Sorry, I couldn't resist... ...