police violence and rape culture: 2 sides of the same coin?

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Ever notice how the standard defenses used for police violence, are disturbingly similar to ones used for rapists?

Lawyers defending police violence: "He had been drinking, and his body language was aggressive. He had a gun in his pocket, so he was basically asking for it."

Lawyers defending rapists: "She had been drinking, and her body language was suggestive. She had a condom in her purse, so she was basically asking for it."

Obviously these are terrible, horrible, disgusting and dehumanizing defenses. But they're used all the time in courts of law, and they usually work; this is a problem in itself.

Both crimes are based on structures of masculine power and white privilege in our society, so the parallels are only natural. It's worth mentioning, of course; that the majority of fatal police shootings, just like the majority of rapes; are committed by men.

Lawyers also use "character assassination" to win their cases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_assassination

I was in a court case, where the insurance company brought up the fact that plaintiff was known in her neighborhood as "Marijuana Mary". Why or what that has to do with anything? The lawyer never said.

I don't believe our culture is a rape culture.

Mhm. Often in rape cases, you see similar tactics used where the defense will claim that the victim had a reputation for being promiscuous.

"Rape Culture is an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture. Rape culture is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women’s bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women’s rights and safety.
Examples of Rape Culture:
Blaming the victim (“She asked for it!”)
Trivializing sexual assault (“Boys will be boys!”)
Sexually explicit jokes
Tolerance of sexual harassment
Inflating false rape report statistics
Publicly scrutinizing a victim’s dress, mental state, motives, and history
Gratuitous gendered violence in movies and television
Defining “manhood” as dominant and sexually aggressive
Defining “womanhood” as submissive and sexually passive
Pressure on men to “score”
Pressure on women to not appear “cold”
Assuming only promiscuous women get raped
Assuming that men don’t get raped or that only “weak” men get raped
Refusing to take rape accusations seriously
Teaching women to avoid getting raped instead of teaching men not to rape"
(from http://www.marshall.edu/wcenter/sexual- ... e-culture/ )

If the shoe fits...I guess the part that could be reasonably argued is the "prevalent". Let's check the stats:

"Sexual Assault in the United States:
- Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes.
- National surveys of adults suggest that between 9-32% of women and 5-10% of men (link is external) report that they were victims of sexual abuse and/or assault during their childhood.
- 22% of victims were younger than age 12 when they were first raped, and 32% were between the ages of 12 and 17.
- The majority of male and female rape victims knew their perpetrator.
- Of surveyed college women, about 90% of rape and sexual assault victims knew their attacker prior to the assault.

Sexual Assault within Underserved Populations
- 43% of lesbian and bisexual women, and 30% of gay and bisexual men, reported having experienced at least one form of sexual assault victimization during their lifetimes.
- 34% of Native American and Alaskan Native women reported experiencing an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime, compared with 19% of African American women, 18% of white women, and 7% of Asian American women.
- Among adults who are developmentally disabled, as many as 83% of the females and 32% of the males are the victims of sexual assault.
- Women with disabilities are raped and abused at a rate at least twice that of the general population of women.
- A 2007 study found that 5% (or 60,500) of the more than 1.3 million inmates held in federal and state prisons had been sexually abused in the previous year alone."
(from: http://www.wcsap.org/how-often-does-it-happen )

A bit of a stretch Barchan, as low as my opinion is of modern law enforcement, I do not think most police violence is carried out for fun, pleasure or personal gain. It is mostly driven by fear of violence directed towards themselves, a real threat to officers in rougher parts.

I can see the link you make about so called "victim blaming" but this defence is not about whether the crime was desired or deserved by the victim, it is about the mindset of the alleged criminal. Did the officer have genuine reason to believe his life was in danger? If he did, then it wasn't a crime, even if it can be proved the victim had no hostile intentions.

Let's say you are home alone, one day I come to your door holding an 8 inch meat cleaver wearing an apron spattered with a few smears of blood. I'm a fairly big white guy, permeating an intangible aura of racism, white male privilege and raperface. I bang on your door hard and call your name in a booming voice, three times, the walls tremble.
Now, we've had some spats in the past, noise complaints, dogs messing in each others gardens, parking where one should not, the police have been called more than once due to neighbourly arguments. You believe that time has finally come, Mikah has finally lost his marbles and has come to rape and murder you. Panicked, you shoot me through your front door Oscar Pistorius style and kill me.
A few months later in court it transpires that I had actually been chopping meat in my kitchen and had come over to invite you to a barbecue as a peace offering, not to engage in a Barchan-murderfest.

An absurd example, but it could be established that you feared for your life and well-being, so morally whatever else it was, it wasn't murder. Hopefully that would be echoed in the imperfect law courts and you would be cleared on grounds of self-defence even though I had no evil intent.

The rape side of things becomes a little more grey, mainly because the case often boils down to one person's word against another's, but there is a good reason to analyse the actions of the victim to determine whether a reasonable person would assume consent had been given and sustained and importantly that is in question in many rape cases brought before the courts these days.

Things have taken a crazy turn in recent years away from justice towards witch hunts and show trials, to a world where explicit verbal consent is required (which rarely happens in the moment and can't be proved after the fact unless it is recorded), where any level of intoxication automatically nullifies any consent (only if you are a woman) and there are increasing calls for dropping the legal presumption of innocence to make these cases "easier" to prosecute.

Lawyers argue in courts. That's what they do.

You'll need to show that "they usually work". The things you list won't get someone off murder/manslaughter or rape, as laws are statuary/codified.

"White privilege" is identity politics and outside of the scope of criminal law where people are treated equally for the most part (black, blue or yellow, the same standards apply). Men commit a large portion of violent crimes due to biological differences.

I just don't believe that rape is normalized in this culture.

There's lots of insensitivity towards rape victims...true. Absolutely.

But we're still not a "rape culture." The vast vast majority of guys don't go around raping people. They believe it's an abomination, like I believe it's an abomination.

Police Violence:
A tangible and falsifiable concept referring to specific actions by individuals that can be investigated, documented and proven (or disproven). As such, suspicions and allegations of police violence can be subjected to scientific analysis in order to assess the prevalence, nature and scope of the phenomenon.

Rape:
A tangible and falsifiable concept referring to specific actions by individuals that can be investigated, documented and proven (or disproven). As such, suspicions and allegations of rape can be subjected to scientific analysis in order to assess the prevalence, nature and scope of the phenomenon.

Rape Culture:
A buzzword.

Do you think our society has subcultures that are "rape" cultures? I can see how we may be looking at the same aggregate culture but seeing two different parts, like the proverbial elephant being described by blind people.

The victim-blaming is similar when it comes to well-respected people being accused of crimes. Police are generally considered well-respected and if you don't respect police you are a terrible American-hating bigot. If you believe rape allegations against your coworker at work, you are a terrible person for believing such lies.

Similar to rape culture in the military. Nobody is allowed to say a bad word about the military or soldiers. And so rape continues unreported.

I think it mainly comes down to cognitive dissonance. People don't want to believe that "good" people can do bad things. So the untraumatized people get to live in a fantasy bubble while the victims suffer in silence.

If one is a victim of rape, one is a victim of rape. I'm not out to "silence" anybody.

I believe we are a culture which could be violent, the violence especially perpetrated by younger people and people drunk/high. I believe there are too many people who go around raping people--but the actual amount of these people is small, though their impact is obviously great, so great that actual statistics are really not all that meaningful. The fear is enough to create an impression--that of men who are, inevitably, hell bent on raping people.

It's like terrorist attacks--relatively few, but high impact, for obviously understandable reasons. The impact belying the statistics.

We have to be vigilant about rape, just like we have to be vigilant about terrorism.

But it doesn't mean we are a culture of rapists, or or terrorists. Most people just don't do these things. It would be wrong to assume that every man is a potential rapist or terrorist.

As I think about it, there seems to be an "idiot" element in the mindset of a few cops. Racist, and misogynist--especially true when drunk. I've been around these sorts of people, and I find it exceedingly unpleasant.

But, still, they are not the exemplar for a society. In any society, you will find low-class people. It doesn't mean the society is "low-class." You'll find a few rapists; it does not make this a "rape" culture. The impact of rapes, however, far outweigh their quantity.

The impact these creeps, should they fulfill their "talk," have on victims, far outweigh their actual quantity.

Then you have the buddies of these people (who might not be rapists or misogynists themselves), who feel compelled to protect these people, for whatever reason.

But I still don't believe "Western Culture," by and large, is a "rape" culture.

Kraftie, no one here is accusing you of being a rapist. You can relax.

The issue is not wanting to believe that a 'good citizen" can do bad things. When people side with the cops against all evidence, it shows their inherent bias in automatically assuming that the cop is good and the "thug on the street" deserved to get shot.

When people blame rape victims, they simply do not want to acknowledge the fact that this person could do such a thing. This is especially true if it is a person of high standing like an athlete. There is inherent bias towards people of lower status and one study I showed clearly shows that police have this prejudice (even more so than against race). The assumption is people of lower standings are automatically worse people

Absolutely. Many "good citizens" have done bad things; that is well-documented.

There is the sense that cops are held to be "above the law" and believed more than the average citizen.

I believe, even if a woman invites a man to her hotel room, that she has a right not to be raped. The "allure" of the situation isn't enough for there to be justification for the man to force himself upon the woman. If the man feels an impending desire, and the women doesn't want to fulfill it, there's always the bathroom, or a cold shower.

There's way more constructive things a man could do than rape someone. There's no justification for rape, even in situations where, supposedly, the woman "invites" it somehow.

In a practical, sort of cynical sense, a woman who might want to be "ravished" when drunk frequently "changes her mind" once she becomes sober. It doesn't mean she's a bad woman. It just means that her inebriated stated screws up her judgement--just like it screws up a man's judgement sometimes. I've been in exactly that sort of situation. I am glad I got out of it when I did.

"Twelve Angry Men" is an illustration of your third point.

Hi kraftiekortie,

After reading your posts it appears you're ignoring the "gorilla in the room."

Many have said there is a tendency for violence in the American people:
Each day in the U.S. 297 people are shot, causing many to wish to ban guns.

Each day in the U.S. there are 540 rapes committed. Should we ignore them?

Did you consider these statistics Edenthiel provided?:

"Sexual Assault in the United States:
- Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes.
- National surveys of adults suggest that between 9-32% of women and 5-10% of men (link is external) report that they were victims of sexual abuse and/or assault during their childhood.
- 22% of victims were younger than age 12 when they were first raped, and 32% were between the ages of 12 and 17.
- The majority of male and female rape victims knew their perpetrator.
- Of surveyed college women, about 90% of rape and sexual assault victims knew their attacker prior to the assault.

You may not have any type of personal relations that would allow you to personally view the atrocities listed above......But do not ignore them.

If instead of a rape every 2 minutes would you change your mind if the statistic was "every minute" or "every 30 seconds" or even "every 15 seconds"????? Would that make a difference to you??? Would any statistic??? Because I think you may not be viewing these figures as dispassionately as you should. The numbers provide a picture into our culture.

Whether YOU personally feel this is part of your culture or that of people you know is immaterial. The figures are public.

So you, and people you know, do NOT rape on a frequent basis but it's clearly evident SOMEONE is doing hundreds of thousand of rapes in our country every year. It is definitely part of our culture.....but if it's inconceivable for you to cope with this, then please ignore the facts above.