- Although written from a UK perspective, the subject matter
of this article is I am sure, equally relevant to recent developments in
most western societies. So for those readers who are not British, please
`tune out` those aspects and elements which are written with my own country
primarily in mind, and apply the necessary equivalents from your own societies.
Like I have said, it shouldn't be too hard to do, as what is now occurring
in the UK with regard to this subject can be seen to be happening throughout
the west.
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- The American writer Mark Twain once observed that there
were three kinds of untruth: lies, damned lies and official statistics.
Perhaps it is time to add to this list a fourth category:
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- The United Kingdom Home Office Research Study.
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- According to one such specimen published recently, at
least one in every twenty women aged between sixteen and fifty nine years
of age in England and Wales have been raped, and one in ten have experienced
some form of 'sexual victimisation.' The majority of these alleged assaults,
said the study, had been committed not by strangers but by intimates; partners,
former partners and casual acquaintances. If true, this would indeed be
an appalling state of affairs. Such large numbers of women suffering serious
sexual assault would clearly seem to indicate that British women were living
in constant fear of an insufferable level of violence at the hands of men.
Rape is one of the most serious crimes on the statute book, and rightly
so considering the damage it does to a woman, both physically and psychologically.
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- So if the researchers were correct, we would therefore
expect to hear of a voluminous level of female distress and rage being
verbally vented against these male 'intimates.' We would all of us surely
know women friends or relatives who had been raped or sexually assaulted.
But we are not hearing this. Instead, we are shocked and amazed by these
figures. The reason for our incomprehension is quite simple. What the researchers
are telling us is not true. Indeed, this study is a nothing less than a
load of manipulative, malevolent rubbish which calls the very credibility
of the Home Office Research Department seriously into question.
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- The `Satan` here is to be found in the definition. To
most people, rape means sexual penetration against the victim's consent,
which implies of necessity an act of violence or the threat of violence.
The Home Office researchers have I believe, intentionally and willfully
muddied this concept. Instead of using the legal definition of rape as
'penile penetration,' the study now defines it merely as one being 'forced
to have sexual intercourse against one's will.' But the definition of 'forced
against one's will' is highly subjective. It can very easily translate
into 'if you didn't want to,' which can become rendered meaningless. Even
though the study claims that the word 'forced' implies an assault, it does
nothing of the kind.
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- A woman might feel forced to have sex against her will,
if for example, her lover tells her that unless she does, he will leave
here for another woman. Or she might be an unwilling participant because
he is drunk, or hasn't taken a shower for a week, or she no longer loves
him. The crucial point is, that in circumstances such as these, she is
still participating in the sexual act, even though she could choose not
to do so. No one is forcing her. She cannot therefore be termed a victim
of violence. By any just or common-sense definition, this is not rape.
Yet the Home Office researchers appear to have included exactly this kind
of experience in their definition.
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- This already highly questionable exercise, then becomes
positively surreal. Astoundingly, believe it or not, the women who the
researchers allege to have been 'raped,' state in the survey, that they
themselves don't classify what has happened to them as rape. In fact, the
study actually admits that of the women who the researchers said had been
raped, fewer than two thirds themselves described what had happened to
them as rape. And fewer than three quarters of those who the researchers
said had experienced sexual victimisation thought of themselves as victims
of a crime.
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- The reason for the discrepancy is perfectly obvious to
anyone who is not too busy playing the game of sexual politics. These events
were simply not rapes or sexual assaults, and the women concerned knew
this perfectly well. That is because most of these incidents happened within
sexual relationships with intimates, and the women involved appeared to
accept what most people would think, that the issue of consent between
lovers can be highly ambiguous. Yet what these women themselves made of
their experiences seems to be of no consequence to these Whitehall researchers,
who of course know better than the victims what has happened to them. This
makes laughable the insistence by the Home Office that they are about putting
the victim first. They therefore dream up one self-serving reason after
another to explain why sexual experiences, which the women involved did
not consider to be rape, were indeed rape.
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- Thus, they suggest that the women might not want to admit
they have been raped because this is degrading and stigmatising; or they
may not want to acknowledge that someone they like or love is a rapist.
The idea that they knew perfectly well that the person they liked or loved
was not a rapist does not occur to these researchers. The women are simply
wrong. This astonishing display of contempt arises because nothing as inconvenient
as a few facts can get in the way of the assumption behind this study:
that women are being raped, and men are getting away with it.
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- The ideological bias that is clearly the driving force
behind this research is underlined by a crucial omission. The study says
that most sexual violence is committed by partners. But, and this is highly
significant; it omits to make any distinction between partners and spouses.
It therefore does not tell us whether women suffer as much sexual assault
from husbands as from boyfriends or cohabitants. Yet all the available
research suggests that the risk of sexual violence is negligible within
marriage, and is hugely increased among cohabitants or more casual sexual
partners. Marriage is actually the best physical protection against sexual
violence.
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- Instead, this study states that home life not safe. It
is here we get to the rotten core of this whole misleading exercise. For
the underlying purpose is to demonize men and write them out of the domestic
script altogether. It is this agenda of marriage-busting, man-hating feminism
which has now got the Home Office well and truly in its clutches. Ever
since New Labour came to power, it has been spouting a torrent of distorted
information about domestic violence.
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- It has been exaggerating its incidence, omitting a vast
amount of international evidence that women are equally as aggressive as
men and again can be seen to be refusing to acknowledge the key fact that
most domestic violence takes place between cohabiting and other unmarried
couples.
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- The fact is that sexual mores have dramatically changed.
Women now initiate casual sex; they carry condoms in their bags and drink,
smoke, swear and often parody the worst caricature of macho culture. As
a result, the rules of the mating game have totally altered. The room for
ambiguous signals has hugely expanded. That's why the courts are ever more
reluctant to convict men accused of rape.
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- But Whitehall's feminists cannot allow a little thing
like injustice to interrupt their agenda. So the government is now hell
bent on rigging the justice system itself to get men convicted of rape,
by hook or by crook. To justify this, men have to be shown as perpetrating
an intolerable level of violence upon women. The result of this lie is
not only to commit a calumny upon the male sex. It will also trivialise
real rape when it occurs, make it harder to convict the guilty and betray
the true needs of women to be protected against violence.
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- Once again, the House of Lords has ridden to the rescue
of elementary justice, fairness and common-sense. Once again, the government
has announced that it is determined to prevent their Lordships from carrying
out this service to the nation. Earlier this week, peers voted in an amendment
to the Sexual Offences Bill that the names of defendants in rape cases
should be kept secret. The government promptly announced it would overturn
this decision when the bill returned to the Commons.
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- The Home Office minister Lord Falconer told the Lords
the criminal justice system had to remain open and transparent. But women
who bring rape charges against men are granted anonymity. So why does Lord
Falconer believe the criminal justice system can justifiably suspend its
important transparency for women accusers but not for the men they accuse?
The reasons given for this discrimination are utterly preposterous. The
radical barrister Baroness Kennedy said anonymity for women was essential
because otherwise they would not bring their accusations forward on account
of the 'stigma' attached to making such claims.
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- Now, no-one should minimise the ordeal for a woman in
not only having to face her attacker in court and having to give evidence
of a highly distasteful kind, but in facing cross-examination which inevitably
calls into question her own character and morals. But what about the stigma
that attaches to men who are unjustly charged? For the concern that women
won't bring charges if they are identified totally ignores the fact that
a steady stream of men who are thus accused are subsequently shown to be
innocent. Yet their reputations and careers have nevertheless been ruined.
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- Last year, for example, the Australian snooker player
Quinten Hann was cleared of raping a student. He said he felt that he was
the victim after a nine-month investigation and six-day trial in which
he consistently claimed that his accuser had been a willing partner. Then
there was the case of the rugby player Hywel Jenkins, cleared of rape in
just five minutes after the Crown Prosecution Service said there was not
enough evidence to put him on trial. Afterwards, he said that he had endured
'seven weeks of hell' after being accused by a 28-year-old woman of raping
her during a party.
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- Giving women the protection of anonymity means it is
more likely that women will make such false accusations. But then, the
monstrous presumption beneath this bill is that all women are truthful
and all men who are accused of rape are guilty. The reason for the bill
is that the government believes there are not enough convictions for rape.
It thinks too many men are getting acquitted of rape who are actually guilty.
It is simply astonishing that people who purport to understand the rule
of law and care about the presumption of innocence can say that not enough
people are being convicted. On whose say-so? By what criteria?
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- Do they have any reason for thinking that any of these
acquitted men is guilty of rape? Of course not. How can they possibly do
so? It is merely their prejudice - a pathological belief in male sexual
guilt. It is not even the case that rape convictions are particularly low.
Convictions for murder, for example, are running at 40 per cent while convictions
for rape at 41 per cent. But no-one suggests that 'not enough' people are
being convicted for murder.
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- There may be a variety of reasons for the low number
of rape convictions, just as there are for other crimes. The incompetence
of the Crown Prosecution Service is undoubtedly a factor in not properly
assessing the evidence in cases that fail to convince the jury. But one
of the most likely reasons why convictions have fallen is that rape claims
have become highly ambiguous through the dramatic changes in sexual mores.
While the number of rapes by complete strangers has gone down, the frequency
of casual sexual encounters has caused a steep rise in claims of 'date
rape'.
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- This is clearly far less straightforward than a case
where a woman claims she has been pounced upon in a dark alley. A sexual
encounter freely entered into but where at some point the woman may have
changed her mind, or where one or both partners were drunk, poses very
tricky problems of judgement for juries. So not surprisingly, they are
reluctant to convict - especially for a crime which can result in life
imprisonment.
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- But such an obvious explanation is dismissed out of hand
because it assumes that women may not always be victims - indeed, that
they may even be partly responsible for what has happened to them but are
not prepared to take any responsibility for it. And this contravenes the
cardinal tenet of extreme feminism - the assumption that men are intrinsically
rapists, wife-beaters, child abusers and generally violent individuals,
that women are their prey and that society additionally loads the dice
against the female sex.
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- Lady Kennedy actually said in the Lords: 'To treat as
equal those who are unequal creates further injustice.' So women are to
be given a protection denied to men, despite the proven injustice of innocent
men having their reputations ruined by women - because women are supposed
to be the victims of society!
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- To paraphrase George Orwell, all animals have equal rights
- but women have more equal rights than others.
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- No-one should be surprised that the government, unabashed
by the eloquent arguments mounted in the Lords against this proposed injustice,
is refusing to admit that it was wrong. For it has been captured by an
ultra-feminist agenda promoted by pressure groups which have put down deep
roots within government - in the Home Office in particular. So determined
are ministers to pursue this anti-man vendetta that the new Sexual Offences
Bill loads the court dice drastically against male defendants.
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- Until now, a man accused of rape could use the defence
that he honestly believed the woman had given her consent. The bill not
only removes that defence, but reverses the burden of proof. Now, the man
will have to prove that no reasonable person could have doubted that the
woman gave her consent to sex. The inclusion of that objective 'reasonable'
test, the Lords heard, means that even if the defendant honestly believes
the woman had consented, he might still be convicted. In other words, the
test he will have to meet to be acquitted is now being set impossibly high.
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- Civil libertarians like Lady Kennedy, who would die in
the last ditch to defend the presumption of innocence, normally pronounce
that ten guilty people should go free rather than one innocent person be
convicted. They ruthlessly use the Human Rights Act to pursue such principles
through the courts. Yet they suddenly put all that into screaming reverse
when it comes to fighting the sex war. Rigging the justice system in this
way is based on sheer malicious, vicious prejudice against men - mostly
driven through, ironically, by male politicians, in thrall to a feminist
agenda they are too cowardly to confront.
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