Talk:Rape/Archive 2

message: :"...It is regarded by many as one of the most grievous crimes, surpassed only by murder and treason."
This seems rather arbitrary (and not to mention POV). Are there statistics showing that more people consider treason worse than rape? Perhaps just replace with something along the lines of: "It is regarded by many as one of the most grievous crimes a person may commit."  — Asbestos | Talk 11:01, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Treason is way worse than rape, which can be evidenced by it being punished with the death penalty. If you want to measure the seriousness w which a crime is taken, measure the penalty. Sam Spade Wants you to vote! 11:11, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: How the state prosecutes something and how people regard it is not the same thing at all (and anyway, the article itself mentions that rape is punishable by death in many countries, and treason, btw, is not punishable by death in most countries. Or were you referring only to the US and the UK?). Absolute measures of the grievousness of different crimes do not exist. I still say that the statement is a point-of-view, and could be replaced by something neutral.  — Asbestos | Talk 11:19, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I would argue that the legal system (and religious law as well) are the best system of measurement of severity of crime which we can here quantify, and ought be mentioned. As far as death for treason, I am pretty sure that is the standard punishment in most parts of the world, but am open to informations to the contrary. "Absolute measures of the grievousness of different crimes do not exist." is your POV, and should stay out of the article. Many feel otherwise, altho I am not taking a stand on that here. I am merely pointing out that state and religious law is a measure, absolute or no. Sam Spade Wants you to vote! 12:02, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: As the article mentions, many other countries do use the death penalty for rape, so that argument is irrelevant. I'd also like a citation from the bible, koran or other religious text claiming that treason is worse than rape, or that argument is also irrelevant. But more importantly, I can't quite follow your reasoning for keeping the statement. Is an article on rape somehow better for saying that treason is worse than rape?  — Asbestos | Talk 12:07, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Treason

message: "Clearly, an environment in which no one is prosecuted for filing false reports is an environment that encourages the filing of false reports."
Regardless of the merit of this claim, it is obviously POV.  It is easy to object to the "logic" that absence of punishment automatically encourages a given act (indeed there are cases in which the converse is true), but even if this was a hard claim to hold wikipedia should not be in the business of making claims like this.  This claim is not fact, it is speculation, and it is speculation being written as though it is the voice of wikipedia itself, given that it is not being attributed to anyone.  And this gets worse:
" Even under these conditions, which would strongly tend to eliminate any false positive "false recantations","
Says who?  Why are we going to assume that given the difficulty and humiliation in pursuing charges and the fact that any woman who does so would live with the fear of facing retribution, that a minor threat of fine or jail time would be "strongly tend" to rule out false positives?  Most women are raped by someone they know, living a life in fear of that person while knowing that the judicial system can do very little to protect them is a very strong motivational factor to retract an allegation.  But again, even if this were not true wikipedia should simply not be inserting such strong bias as this statement indicates, much less doing so without attribution.  More junk:
"In localities where these factors do not apply, it might be expected that false allegations might be made more easily, and thus more often."
Not only pure speculation, but very questionable speculation at that.  All in all there are about three paragraphs in this section which have no justification for existing, and the rest needs to be cleaned up.  Whoever is putting this forward, please step up and explain how this is not POV pushing.  Kev 12:38, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Please review the edit history of the article and the discussion that has taken place on this very page so that you understand why the material is there.  If you think you can write a more neutral version that makes the same points to the degree they need to be made, we'd all like to see that, but since the version of that section that is in place now is just about the least POV-pushing version we've had since the section came into existence, it might be more challenging than you think.  If you still feel up to the challenge, why not work on it on a temp article, like Rape/temp1?  Then if consensus can be reached that it really is less POV and still covers the important points that need making it can go into the article. -- Antaeus Feldspar 19:17, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:   What are these supposedly important points?  That removal of punishment for false allegations will obviously -encourage- false allegations?  That is a load of BS, not an important point.  Or how about the important point of how these conditions would strongly tend to remove false positives, which is total speculation and easy to disagree on?  Or the speculation about how false reporting would be greater in other localities?  This is just a load of BS piled one on top of the other.  You tell me what these supposedly important points are and I will try my best to "save" them while removing all the trash around them.  It is not an excuse to say that this is the "least POV version", when it is in such a bad state, it isn't acceptable to have wikipedia push such bias "while we wait" for consensus.  Kev 00:20, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the paragraphs you noted appear to be POV (even if the facts are true, the sections have been written in a manner that appears to push an agenda). The best way to change them, though, would be to try to re-write them yourself (possibly, as Antaeus Feldspar says, at Rape/temp1).  — Asbestos | Talk 18:58, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:   Done.  Anything not already mentioned here is discussed on the talk page for rape/temp1.  Kev 21:13, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heavy POV in this article? 

message: This article is currently overflowing with unattributed speculation and POV pushing that needs to be either removed or justified.  Here is more:
"Some people even attribute all incidents of false reporting, no matter how well-documented the falsity, to victim blaming."
First, this statement currently implies that these "well-docmented" cases were false.  No matter how well documented the case or how convinced we are as wiki editors, wikipedia is not here to declare the cases false, the reader can do that on their own.  Perhaps more importantly, there is no attribution.  Who are these people who attribute all incidents of false reporting to victim blaming?  Quote them and this junk can stand.
"Clearly, this is an extreme position, to believe that men can regularly make the criminal decision to commit the act of rape, but that no woman could ever make a false accusation."
Clearly, some wiki editor likes to use the word clearly as a warning sign for the rest of us that the voice of wikipedia is now being used to push his/her POV speculation.
"A commonly held belief is that even entertaining the possibility that even the most suspicious accusations of rape could be false would be an automatic deterrent to the low reporting rate for sexual assault"
Evidence?  Is there a representative poll here, some survey amongst a particular group of people we are drawing this from?
"here are no other crimes for which it is argued that the policy of investigating to determine the truth of the charges would result in fewer true reports being brought."
This talk page already includes other instances in which this is the case, so it is already demonstrably false, and thus needs removal.  Step up, step up, cause this junk is going away very soon otherwise.  Kev 01:08, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I see you haven't taken the suggestion to do your research, otherwise you'd already know the answer to some of the questions you're asking rhetorically.  I must say the confrontational manner in which you're approaching this certainly doesn't argue well for your ability to deliver on your promise of a more balanced, more NPOV section. -- Antaeus Feldspar 03:46, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:   You seem to be missing the point.  Regardless of the validity of the claims being made, their presentation here is totally unacceptable.  I have asked you to list the points you think are essential, please feel free to do so before I remove the blatant POV.  Kev 06:28, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Victim Blaming 

message: I made substantial edits to the page, and would be interested in hearing comments. One area that clearly needs improvement is the discussion of FBI statistics on false reporting, and a discussion of the controversial statistics applied to rape (like the "1 in four women have been raped", which altho commonly used, I have heard debunked). Concepts like 0% - 100% of rapes are false reports need to be cited or removed, they don't give us much credibility. Also we should seriously consider if the concept that False reporting is "impossible", and particularly the quote by carol wallace, have a legitimate place here. I happen to know that false reporting is quite common, not only of rape, but of a whole host of disturbing crimes. The psychological motivations are complex, but not impossible to understand. Some men (perhaps many) do everything possible short of rape to have sex, and then immediately lose all interest in their partner, sometimes imediately after sexual intercourse. This can be very hurtful. Also there is the factor of alchohol, w many young people drinking heavilly and doing things (often sexual) which they later regret (indeed, the previously mentioned "1 in 4" figure is based on including both consensual sex under the influence of drugs or alcohol, AND consensual sex which is later regretted, as "rape"). This is clearly a very delicate subject, but it also needs to be expressed a bit better. Thank you for your time, Sam Spade Wants you to vote! 11:46, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  My edits 

message: Figures vary wildly on the issue of false reporting, with no apparent consensus. There is even widespread disagreement on what the published FBI statistics of false reporting of rape are, though this is a matter of public record: lawyer Alan Dershowitz has claimed that the FBI statistics show rape to be the most frequently falsely reported crime, at a rate of 8.6 percent; yet in numerous places one can find it listed as a "myth" that rape is falsely reported with any frequency, and claims that FBI statistics show it to be falsely reported at 2%, no more often than any other violent crime, or even less often.
:what are the real statistics? We shouldn't be talking about how often they are misrepresented if we don't even know what they are... Sam Spade Wants you to vote! 23:51, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The real statistics are unknown, just as they are for incidence of rape in the first place. Any study can be easily skewed one way or the other, or simply subject to outside factors. Likewise, do you count only those who recanted their story, or those whose accusations were found to be groundless, or those who simply lost their court battle? Either way, it's a very real occurance and I believe it deserves its own wikipedia entry, just for false accusation rape (and perhaps domestic violence), including reasons that women false accuse, impact of accusation and so on. To make a detailed section on the rape page itself would probably piss feminists off no end, and it doesn't really belong as rape and false accusation are hardly the same thing (but both serious crimes in their own right). User:Merrick (sig added by  18:46, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We largely agree, altho I could give a flip about what facts might annoy PC feminazi's.  18:46, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  FBI stats on false reporting 

message: Because of this Slashdot post, it looks like we're going to get a flood of run-in editors who have not been following the talk page discussion and who don't understand NPOV but think that they should come here and remove the link to Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse because they heard half the story and thought they heard all.  I don't think we want to set a precedent for run-in editors suddenly rushing in to ignore the ongoing discussion and edit according to their political agenda (since, of course, Rd syringe was kind enough to omit several important details for why his link-removal was opposed -- like the wording he keeps referencing even now having changed -- and instead characterize it as "politically motivated" "hardcore guys with an agenda" who opposed him.  Thanks, Rd.)  I'd suggest that short-term page protection might even be in order. -- Antaeus Feldspar 18:37, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please protect against run-in edits 

message: This article needs to include a discussion about the causes as well as the effects of rape.  It is by knowing the unbiased truth about such causes that we have a chance of preventing rape.  To see absurd statements like 'rape is a crime of power but not of sex' shows me that the cause of rape is being used as a political weapon.  We need to study the science of rape here and use evidence to back up claims.
Susan Brownmiller's ideas on rape have been challenged by feminists and others and seem to have no basis in fact.
128.111.95.55 00:00, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Causes of Rape