Rape Apologist Bingo and a surprising (to me) verdict

Rape Apologist Bingo

I feel like I should have written about the whole Matthew Johns thing earlier but I saw this picture at sexismandthecity and it pretty much sums up how I feel about a lot of the commentary I read. Like I might as well have been checking off boxes to collect all the typical responses.

Then I read this today and I could scream… the utter not knowing where to being with this… except thank the goddess the bastard was found guilty of the rape charges, but why wasn’t he convicted on the trespassing?

As I have stated previously the shaming of kinky women’s sexuality leaves them open to abuse, and this case provides an example of that. In this case what this man did was use his victim’s sexuality against her in an effort to discredit her testimony. It didn’t work and this man will now be spending time at Yatala.

But I would argue that this case is refreshingly unusal in its outcome given that, as this paper from the Australian Institute of Criminology argues:

juror judgements in rape trials are influenced more by the attitudes, beliefs and biases about rape which jurors bring with them into the courtroom than by the objective facts presented, and that stereotypical beliefs about rape and victims of it still exist within the community. As jurors are members of the community and are randomly drawn in order to be representative of it, the two studies together indicate that successful prosecutions of sexual assault will remain low until we acknowledge that jurors interpret what they see in light of their own beliefs, experience and expectations.

And defence lawyers and accused rapists will continue to exploit those beliefs, experiences and expectations for as long as our culture holds them. I don’t know where I’m going with this thought right now I’m very tired…