In India, there is a specific exemption in the rape laws that makes it legal for a man to rape his wife, provided she is over the age of consent; if she’s old enough to consent, in other words, her consent )or, rather, the lack thereof) is irrelevant. At the moment an Indian high court is considering getting rid of the exemption. Not so fast, say Indian MRAs, who have been publicly protesting for their continued “right” to rape their wives.
You might think that MRAs in the west would look askance at the actions of their Indian brothers; surely legal marital rape is a bridge too far, even for, say, the regulars in the Men’s RIghts subreddit.
But Men’s Rights Redditors are standing with their Indian counterparts on this issue. When one Men’s RIghts Redditor asked the men of the Men’s RIghts subreddit to denounce the Indian pro-marriage rape rallies, he was greeted with open hostility. “Can we denounce this? ” he asked plaintively. “Men’s rights shouldn’t be used to justify marital rape.”
The response? A big “no.”
“What they are protesting is the probability of the misuse of the laws,” reads the top comment in the thread. “They are not advocating marital rape. That’s a dirty straw man to use.”
That’s a bit of a stretch. Any law could be misused, from laws against littering to laws against murder; should we therefore abolish all laws?
“So you declaring, you are officially against men’s rights now?” responded another commenter.
Still other respondents were deeply upset at the very notion of denouncing fellow MRAs. “Men’s right isn’t obligated to denounce things,” responded an indignant commenter called g1455ofwater.
Pressuring men’s rights to do that is bullying and inequality. It’s a form of control those in power use to control people with less power. They don’t care about what’s right or wrong they just want to demonize men.
So asking men to denounce India’s marital rape exemption is … bullying? Schoolyard bullies the world around need to be notified of this fact; they can expand their repertoire.
One commenter declared that there was nothing to see here, literally.
“Denounce what, exactly?” asked the deliberately obtuse EsraYmssik.
You haven’t posted a link to a story, only YOUR version of a story.
The OP posted a link to a discussion in another subreddit — that linked directly to a news story with a photograph of the protesters. (The same photo I used for the graphic for this post.) . Two clicks, that’s all it takes to get there.
All I can see from the thumbnail is some people holding a large piece of paper.
Could be lottery winners posing with a cheque for all I know.
The photo is actually quite a large one. If you blow it up a little bit you can see exactly what the sign — half of which is in English — says, including the name and phone number of the group standing literally behind it.
Apparently more Indian men have committed suicide over false rape accusations than died in the Holocaust.
I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your research work, there, Indian MRAs.
But it shouldn’t be all that surprising that Men’s Rights Redditors are opposed to India recognizing marital rape as rape. Back when marital rape laws were still an issue in the United States, prominent MRAs warned of the exact same (supposed) danger. In The Myth of Male Power, the 1993 book that gave the modern Men’s Rights movement most of its talking points, Warren Farrell denounced marital rape laws as a deadly weapon in the hands of dastardly false-accusing women.
“Spousal rape legislation gives the woman a nuclear bomb.” he wrote.
Both sexes engage in “mercy sex.” And that’s the difference between having a relationship and not having a relationship — all good relationships require “giving in,” especially when our partner feels strongly. The Ms. [magazine] survey can call it a rape; a relationship counselor will call it a relationship.
Spousal rape legislation is blackmail waiting to happen.
He’s written some similarly lovely things about date rape too.
Sometimes I forget just how horrendously retrograde Warren Farrell really is; I guess I should thank the men of the Men’s Rights subreddit for reminding me.
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I’m more disgusted by the Men’s Rights gang every day, no matter which country they are in.
Didn’t some Christian preacher/misogynist recently proclaim that “if a man can’t rape his wife, who can he rape?” Or am I confusing this dude with a GQP politician?
@ ginger
Bob Wilson apparently.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25739275
As you point out ANY law could be misused so you may as well argue to do away with all laws. They will try and find an excuse but what they are doing is protesting to retain the right to rape their wives.
And people wonder why Mens Rights are treated as a joke.
OT, but this is disturbing me a bit.
One of the channels I get here has movies on much of the time, but the ads on it are weird. It has a lot of medical ads, which seem mostly to be obsessed with something called “a1p”, or something like that — this it has in common with the channel that carries most of the superhero shows, and none of the other channels that tend to have anything of interest to me in the way of shows. But it also carries ads in which the MyPillow guy whines about being “cancelled” because of being a fascist ass. Yeah, so “cancelled” he gets to blab in my ear several times an hour, 24/7, if there’s nothing better on on another channel.
I prefer other channels when possible both to avoid the fascist’s whiny whining and because it tends to heavily bowdlerize everything, even late at night, and it tends to be worse than most when it comes to butchering end credits and cutting off the music the composer went to so much trouble to create.
I may now have another reason: there’s a new ad in rotation there as of today, one I’ve not seen on any other channel, that begs for donations to feed poor starving Jews … then shifts partway through to say that the donations will support Israel, and that a test of a true Christian believer is their support for Israel.
So, would a donation there actually go to feed the poor? (With religious discrimination — I assume Palestinians and others don’t get so much as the skin off a grape.) Or would it go to the state instead? The apartheid, and in the past few years overtly fascist, state? To be spent on arms and barbed wire fences and brutalization and “settlements” and God only knows what else, not just welfare programs of some sort?
Another creepy aspect is that Christians-must-support-Israel thing. That sounds like what those dominionist types say, who “support” Israel only because they think that doing so will help bring about the apocalypse, and/or because of its function as America’s big, funny-shaped aircraft carrier in the Gulf that helps keep the OPEC nations in line. (Good job! Seen the gas prices lately?) So would a donor be funding poor Jews? Or wealthy settlers and apartheid oppression? Or the Kochs and other wealthy Texas oil sheiks and assorted similar climate-wreckers and oligarchs? Or the goddamn end of the world? All of the above, even?
Maybe it’s actually an innocuous plea on behalf of actual poor people who will actually receive the lion’s share of the donated funds … maybe. But for some reason, this ad creeps me out big-time. I think particularly because it seems to conflate the people it purports to want to help and a territorial nation-state whose current and recent history is of the sort of extreme right-wing governance that is generally terrible for the poor.
Those medical ads are themselves all sorts of weird. Most channels carry nothing like them, but the other two seem to have more of those ads than of ads for any other products. Some don’t even say what condition the drug they’re advertising is for, just the name of the drug and “ask your doctor about blahblah”. Which means you, the viewer, don’t even know whether or not you’re in the target market for the thing! They always seem to have a terrifying list of side effects, too, usually including “uncontrollable movements, which may be permanent” and “severe reactions and infections which may be life-threatening”. Sounds like they’re worse than the disease, unless the disease is the big C. Ironically, lately one of them has been advertising a drug to cure the uncontrollable-movements thing the other ones can cause. The list of side effects for that drug included … “uncontrollable movements, which may be permanent”. What does it do, then, toggle that condition on or off depending on whether you had it already?! And that “a1p” thing isn’t something I’ve heard mentioned in any other context, medical ones included, except these ads on just two channels out of the 1500 or so here.
Surplus, the feeding starving elders and kids in Israel adverts are old enough I remember them on the local tv stations when I was an elementary school kid. Not a new phenomenon, at all. Decades.
You’d have to look up the organization to know what they’re actually up to.
On the medical ads, any chance you’re mishearing A1C?
A1C levels are one of the primary labs for diabetics (type 1 and 2) in order to monitor average blood glucose levels. Stabilizing A1C levels can be critical for diabetics to avoid neuropathy and other ills.
If you aren’t diabetic, chill, the ads are not for you. I agree that medical ads can be predatory, though. Generics are way cheaper, and not all advertised meds are right for a particular patient. Work with a doc, double check with a pharmacist.
I always thought those, “ask your doctor about…” ads were weird. I don’t have a medical degree. Shouldn’t my doctor be the one telling me what medications I need?
Strange. When I was that age, the closest things I saw were incessant ads for feeding starving kids in Africa. “WorldVision” was the most common one. All were overtly Christian, and I wondered even then if there were ideological strings attached. Like, they’d preach at the kids as well as bring them food or something, to try to convert them. And I was like “you should feed the poor because they’re people in need, not to score pious-morality points in your god’s naughty-and-nice list”. I think I was even thinking that maybe changes should be made so people don’t get or stay poor — teach-to-fish-vs.-give-a-fish. Some of the organizations did promise that sort of thing: wells, schools, infrastructure aid. Of course the schools would probably have been religiously-denominational instead of secular, and of course in more recent times Boko Haram has been terrorizing students and teachers in Africa to oppose teaching anything to girls. (I think the name even means “books are bad!” or something close to that.) Two steps forward, one step back … or maybe it’s the other way around. May end up not mattering since there might soon be no civilization anywhere except sub-Saharan Africa. No more aid, but also no more colonialist interference or foreign backing of domestic terror groups. Maybe they’ll be able to bootstrap themselves in that region once all that outside meddling is gone, and humanity will get a second chance.
I thought consumer ads for prescription meds are illegal in Canada, or just about every country other than the USA. Perhaps it makes sense that some obscure US-based channel wouldn’t bother to adjust their ads for marginal foreign audiences, and keeps getting away with it. Also makes sense that a channel that sells ads to MykePillow would also sell ads to some evangelical zionist grifters.
I hear that if you watch TV in the US then basically every ad break is this bizarro show Surplus complains about. The typical thing I hear about is that you’re supposed to recognize the drug brand name and listen through a disclaimer of any possible side effects, and then if you get good vibes from the ad you can go research what the drug is for.
That’s because Men’s Rights Redditors are pro-rape — if the rapist is male and the one being raped is female. Like their MRA counterparts in India, being pro-rape is very much on brand for them.
Well, if that’s critical to a good relationship, who am I — a person without any sort of PhD — to argue.
Honestly, they just want the “right” to commit marital rape back in this country.
India is one of the worst countries in the world for women’s rights. They take a few tiny steps forward, like “Hey, maybe don’t rape or beat your wife”, and all the shitlords lose it. I’m sure the Men’s Rape Advocates would love it if they could make the US (and other countries) much the same.
Nope. Unless one is blissfully unaware of MRA’s as a concept. This is exactly up their alley. I recall seeing a lot of memes from a group calling itself Masculinist India a few years back, making equally ridiculous (though more grammatically incorrect) claims, though I don’t recall what exactly they were up in arms about back then.
OK, India is a big country with a big population, so I guess that could be true if rape accusations were a common thing going all the way back to when the Aryan People supposedly conquered the place (Hindu creation myth, and where the word Aryan comes from). But I’d still very much doubt it.
A pretty good example of MRA doctrine, that. At least of the aggrieved entitlement that permeates it.
Sorry to go O/T, but this may be of assistance to Brit Mammotheers
Further to my post a while back about the statutory ‘breathing space’ for debts, I’ve just learned of another scheme that they don’t tell anyone about.
It’s called ‘Fuel Vouchers’.
Basically, if you’re struggling with utility bills you can get an emergency £49 voucher to use towards your bills. You don’t have to pay it back; and you can apply up to 3 times in a year.
You need a referral, but that can be from a debt advisor, local authority, or even your GP.
Some more on that and other help here..
https://www.fuelbankfoundation.org
@Alan that is definitely something everyone should know about, thank you for posting it. I will try and pass that on a bit.
I am frequently disappointed at just how many men would rather be paranoid about false accusations than accept that sexual assault is a significant and serious issue for women. If this comment sounds a bit out of the blue it’s because I’ve just come from some recent conversations where once again men were asked to believe women and they replied “No because if it’s false then a man’s life is horribly horribly ruined* and we MUST follow innocent until proven guilty IN EVERYTHING or society itself will crumble.”
Never occurs that if it’s not false then a rapist goes on to traumatise more people in ways that exceed what a false accusation can do.
*The “supporting example” I was given to show how awful false accusations are was Brett Kavanaugh. Yes, THAT Brett Kavanaugh. Apparently it’s utterly terrible and life ruining that a bunch of Americans he’ll never meet think he’s a rapist.
@ sunnysombrera
Not to be glib, but considering that to certain types false accusation is a Serious Crime, shouldn’t you assume innocent until proven guilty about that too? It could really ruin a life to be falsely accused of falsely accusing.
@Masse
Good point, but these guys tend to say “I won’t assume anything until I see evidence” which always works out in practice as “He is innocent and I’ll treat the accusation as untrue until proven otherwise (and even then I might question the evidence because I like this guy).”
Silence is siding with the oppressor, as you know.
AFAIK it’s rather rare for anyone to be convicted of false accusation of any crime (whatever the formal term for such an offense might be). Far more often esp. in rape trials the case remains unsolved (or doesn’t even go to trial), which technically means the defendant might still be guilty (just not beyond reasonable doubt), or someone else might be the perpetrator, or the crime might be fabricated. Obviously, the pro rape lobby prefers to interpret “not guilty” as “innocent and falsely accused”, which isn’t remotely the same thing.
AFAIK it’s fairly common for the police to not even record rape reports if they seem fake. IDK if there’s possibly some sort of penalty for a false report in these cases. Obviously then no one is ever officially named as a suspect, much less arrested. Undoubtedly some false reports slip through this initial screening, while some (or many, depending on culture) real cases are rejected. If there’s serious evidence of fabrication during the trial, a separate prosecution might be initiated for that.
Since the standard of evidence is much lower for recording/investigating a crime than actually punishing someone for it, it’s possible that the official outcome of a rape investigation/trial is “A rape did happen, only one person could plausibly have done it and that person was found not guilty”.
(Alan et al. please correct any misunderstandings here)
@ lumipuna
No misunderstandings there; you’re spot on.
It might though be helpful to set out a primer on rape as a criminal offence. To give people ammunition if they’re ever up against someone arguing ‘acquittal = false allegation’.
Which as a matter of law is certainly not the case.
As this is going to be a bit of a polemic, and might be uncomfortable for some folks, I’ll stick it behind a spoiler tab.
Actus reus describes the act itself.
Mens rea is the state of mind of the defendant whilst they commit the act.
In order to convict, the prosecution must prove *BOTH* elements to the requisite standard.
The standard is ‘so that you are sure’ or ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ (as they say on TV and in the US)
The actus reus for rape is sex with someone who is not consenting.
But there’s also the mens rea element.
That varies a bit between jurisdictions. But it’s usually something like either knowing the victim is not consenting, or being reckless or indifferent as to whether they are.
So in a criminal case it might well not even be in dispute that the victim hadn’t consented.
But that’s not enough to convict.
The prosecution have to also show that the defendant *knew* that there was no consent, or at least didn’t care whether there was or not.
But in criminal cases there’s that very high standard of proof.
So even if a jury thinks the defendant *almost* certainly knew or didn’t care; that’s still not enough to convict. They have to be *SURE* they knew or didn’t care.
If there’s even the *slightest* possibility the defendant’s account of their state of mind might be true, a properly directed jury *HAS* to return a verdict of not guilty.
So you can see why it’s so hard to get a conviction.
We’re not psychic; we can’t see into someone’s mind. So how can we definitively know what the defendant might have been thinking at the time?
It’s almost impossible short of an explicit admission by the defendant that they knew there was no consent.
So you can get an acquittal even if everyone, including the defence, accepts the victim was not consenting.
And that’s why so few cases even get to court.
Before bringing a case the prosecution have to apply a two limb test.
Again the exact wording varies between jurisdictions. But generally you have to tick two boxes:
First, there is a ‘realistic prospect of a conviction’. That’s usually ‘more likely than not’ a jury would convict.
But when applying that test the prosecution must consider any defence the defendant may raise. (Unlike a ‘prima facie’ case which takes the prosecution case at its highest and doesn’t look at what the defence may say.)
The second limb is that it must be ‘in the public interest’ to prosecute.
(With sexual offences that tends to always be the case; unless there’s something unusual about the defendant, say a lack of capacity.)
But hopefully that explains:
(a) why so few rape cases make it to trial
(b) why it’s so hard to convict.
(c) why an acquittal doesn’t mean the victim wasn’t telling the truth.
I must admit, due to the fucked up way our society treats rape, when I hear the word “defendant” in the context of a rape trial, there’s a moment when I have to remind myself which party that is. I served on a jury in a rape trial, and it certainly felt like the victim was on trial as much as the perp. (Fortunately, after some “12 angry men”-style persuasion in the jury room, we unanimously found the guy guilty, and I hope that helped the woman a little).
Oh boo hoo, MRAs worldwide might have to face consequences for their actions.
All *actually* good relationships require backing the hell off and controlling your baser urges when asked to.
@Moggie: Good for you. I managed to nope out when in the jury pool for a rape case, because the story of it exactly matched what had happened to a friend of mine and both the judge and the slimeball’s lawyer figured I wasn’t objective. I went off and listened to some chamber music and looked at art afterwards to mellow out. I have never told my friend, because now she’s happy, married, kid, etc.
Ok, this is completely off topic, but I just got some news today that I can’t quite share with people in my life and I’m just about ready to burst. So I’ve been applying for jobs for ages and 2 companies have told me that they will be sending me official offers in the next week!
@bumblebug: Congratulations! And best of luck.
@ bumblebug
(You might have to modify the lyric a bit, but heartfelt sentiment. You deserve this!)