Paul Elam is in a little rage this morning. He was cancelled on CNN, which I can only hope was because of me doing some dutiful tweeting and emailing yesterday. This morning he’s really butthurt and angry so he decided to call all rape victims liars unless they take it to court.
The title of his butthurt misogynist rage piece is ‘Rape accusations are all lies until proven otherwise.’ I’ll spare you the bulk of the rage post. You can read it at the archive link above.
He’s also angry at Zerlina Maxwell who wrote a great piece on why believing a rape victim was much more important than what the accused might go through. In fact, he told other MRA’s he wants to fuck her but only if she doesn’t talk. Classic misogyny right out of the sewer mouth that is Elam.
What’s hilarious about Elam’s fucknuttery is that he doesn’t even realize how a court of law works. You don’t assume the prosecutor is full of shit, which is what Elam suggests you do. By the time a rape case gets to court there’s pretty good evidence already. Elam is such an idiot.
If you notice the number of male supremacist comments on Maxwell’s article you definitely see a trend. Men are starting to understand that women aren’t going to be quiet about rape anymore and that we’re going to find ways to prosecute that are better for us.
I happen to think that the preponderance standard that colleges are now adopting should be used in criminal court since it’s so damned hard to ‘prove’ a rape charge. Male supremacists and rapists know how hard the criminal evidentiary standard is too and they count on it to continue raping women.
It’s the easy woman-blaming path to say rape victims are liars unless they bring it to court because it’s too damned hard to 1) bring to court and then 2) get a conviction. This is why MRA’s use this kind of ‘I don’t believe women unless they go to court’ rhetoric.
Elam might think this isn’t woman hating because oh the poor dear is relying on the law but the law is man-made and obviously not up to par so Elam and other MRA’s will claim it’s the only way for a woman to be believed.
The comment that stands out to me on AVFM is by the British idiot MRA Mike Buchanan of ‘Women are Whiners’ fame.
I think pieces like this will help turn rape from feminists’ #1 asset to their #1 liability.
To think rape is an asset is loopy in and of itself but it’s curious that he’d use the word liability. It IS a truthful word because what MRA’s want to do is reinforce the difficulty in reporting and convicting. They LOVE the system the way it is because it doesn’t work. This is why any woman trying to get justice isn’t going to get it and rape has been a liability for women all along.
As an extra here’s Dean Esmay claiming Zerlina throws black men under the bus while his own friend and commenter at AVFM claims that the only reason Obama won a Nobel was because he was black. Nothing like Dean Esmay making a fool of himself.
And here’s his racist pal just the other day
Dean is a joke.
Mancheeze 
great work!!! i’m new to activism so i very much appreciated your suggestion to protest elam’s appearance on cnn – often i’m not sure how to voice protest and your recommendations, particularly regarding CAFE, are helpful – thank you so much
Dean crying racism ..I have of screenshot of his fellow employee Janet calling (among others) Black community leaders “victim card players” guess AVFM only “care” about racism if they can weaponize against women’s rights..hypocritical sexist bigots.
Hi, HMQ, you’re a force of nature!
I have been thinking about rape law. You know, rape has historically been a unique crime to prove in the US (similarly, in other advanced countries), because of the three extra evidence requirements/implicit requirements that were tacked on: chastity, resistance, and corroboration. There have also been other special legal issues in rape law: the exception for marital rape and the framing of the crime as a question of consent. Of course, stigma is also an issue but some other crimes do have that issue too.
As I understand it, liberal feminists fought and fought well to bring rape law into compliance with other criminal laws on all the above except the issue of whether it ought to be framed as a matter of consent. The act performed is legal if there is “consent” and illegal if not, which focuses very highly on the individual victim’s consent. As Catharine MacKinnon puts it, “…Assault that is consented to is still assault; rape consented to is intercourse.” That is because in most violent crime you can’t “consent” to being put in fear of violence or being a victim of violence; but you CAN consent to intercourse. Intercourse becomes part of a consent spectrum that causes all sorts of evidentiary problems.
Radical feminists like MacKinnon (who acknowledges that her theories are radical feminist but prefers to call them “unmodified” feminism, have been looking at thes efforts of the past 50 years. She makes the argument that “consent” is the wrong standard. There’s an interesting law review article by Aya Gruber, a Professor of Law at the University of Iowa, which I believe takes a radical feminist position: https://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/175/Gruber_Author%20Copy.pdf?sequence=1
I would describe this law review article as saying that feminism has done all it can with rape law: it has looked at evidence, reporting, prosecution, and penalties, and been instrumental in removing legal impediments like marital rape toleration, lack-of-chastity arguments, lack-of-resistance arguments, and corroboration impediments. The problem now is societal conditioning, tradition, misogyny, and the (as you called it so well) “man-made” liberal framework all this reform has taken place within.
Professor Gruber concludes:
“Feminists, however, have reached the limit of that effort, and the current
criminal law no longer provides a meaningful avenue for transformation.
The lonely voice of women’s empowerment cannot and will not be
heard above the sound and fury of the criminal system’s other
messages—messages that reinforce stereotypes, construct racial and
socio-economic binaries, and unmoor crime from issues of social justice.
Now is the time for us to step back, change directions, and reclaim the
feminist movement from the hands of mainstream power and
conservative ideology. It is time for feminists to leave the halls of
criminal power and return to the streets where violence occurs, roll up
our sleeves, and begin the process of formulating the next wave of
feminist intervention. ”
Elam’s call for all rape accusations to be considered false at the outset is just laughable and ignorant reactionary politicking. He’s not serious. It’s just a subjective, emotional rant. No crime report is ever considered false at the outset (speaking again only as to advanced countries).
But I also don’t think we can call for a different standard of evidence in rape cases as in other criminal cases. The usual standard for criminal cases is beyond a reasonable doubt, and for civil cases (where one’s liberty is at stake), a preponderance of the evidence as you seem to suggest. I would be afraid, if a preponderance standard were adopted, that rape as a crime would start to look more like a civil matter, putting criminal enforcement in jeopardy.
My response to Elam is simply to look at war rapes of women as part of the process of genocide of entire groups, including the men, and also to look at male rape of men in prisons, a dreadful scourge that he continues to ignore and which puts all his ranting in perspective as such. Really? A young male prisoner’s charge of rape should be treated as false from the outset? How hostile to men’s rights can you get?
soory, “where one’s liberty is NOT at stake”.
I think we need to establish our own courts to punish these crimes. That, of course, is not something that could be discussed publicly – or even privately online. But, it is something to consider. In the past, sex crimes were often punished with death outside the courts – it’s just nobody ever talked about it because you can’t talk about that, obviously.
Again, men can’t be raped. They can only be sodomized. They don’t have vaginas. And, there is no problem with men being believed about such crimes – only women and girls.
The court system was designed by men to protect men and their property. We are still regarded as their property. Up until the 1990s in my state, it was perfectly legal for a man to rape his wife. In de facto terms, it still is. Been there, done that – there is no way to prove or prosecute a rapist in your own home. There wouldn’t even be a point in trying and the way the system is set up, the victim is always the one who loses in the end if it goes anywhere, at all.
My neighborhood wife-beater was sentenced yesterday. He entered a plea of guilty. They fined him $100, plus a $10 fee to be paid to a victim’s fund that victims will probably never see a cent of and they sent him back to beat a woman – one who has no escape, no vehicle, no money, etc. – back to live with his victim. Oh, he’s also been placed on probation for, at least, the 3rd time this year. Apparently, this is completely meaningless, as well.
And while the sheriff’s deputies were taking the reports on this case of a woman who was found unconscious on another neighbor’s porch, HE blamed her. He said she wasn’t doing enough to assist them. But, it’s only a misdemeanor to knock a woman unconscious if she lives under the same roof with you – or probably if you ever had coffee with the guy somewhere – it gets the euphemism DV slapped on and there is a completely different set of laws and criteria of evidence required. The standard of proof is much higher.
This is because men control the law. The laws were written for them. They can only be reformed so far.
No woman in her right mind with any other option would involved law enforcement in a violent crime against herself – any kind of crime. Right now, in my state, if the wife-beater gets into my house and harms me, I would not press charges. You know why? Because they are going to publish my name and address and plaster it all over the internet, so more men can find me to commit violent crimes against me. Again, the laws were written by men for men. There’s no way to change that.
We need our own laws, or own courts, our own judges and our own system of executing justice.
Sorry, WOOW, I agree that “sodomy” is the correct word for the example I gave of a male prisoner above. I’ll try to do better.
V.,
No need to apologize!
This is just how THEIR language gets into our heads.
You are so right.
imo, the more publicity Paul Elam gets the better. Expose him and his demented ideas to the world. Show him for the fuckwit he is.
This is a clear example of the hatred of women and the law’s tolerance of it that also infects rape law enforcement: https://archive.today/MD61l
I think radical feminists must renew ourselves by going beyond the everyday details and looking at overarching oppression, i.e., male control of women in every area, including law. globally.
This attacker of women was allowed to go free because of male hegemony. We must not be drawn into details, we must look at the pattern.
The truth is that male law will never stop the oppression of women. Lip service may be paid but the suffering will go on. We must disassociate ourselve from reformist legal work, I think.
Thinking some more about rape victims, I read this article about the effects of testosterone. http://www.new-gallery-of-art.com/pdf/antioch/humsex/StraightMale/Testosterone.pdf
The conclusion I come to is that biology is a huge factor in rape.
Is the libfem idea that rape is merely a power play correct?
The solution? Well, I have suggested in jest logical conclusions which others have not accepted.They had to do with corn, haha!
V.,
You may have seen this before. Someone posted it at my blog during a discussion about what men know about themselves that they hide from women.
LOL! He’s going to hack off one of his toes every time he hears, “We must believe the victim.” Let’s start chanting:
We must believe the victim!
We must believe the victim!
We must believe the victim!
We must believe the victim!
We must believe the victim!
We must believe the victim!
We must believe the victim!
We must believe the victim!
We must believe the victim!
We must believe the victim!
There went 10 toes.
What do we have to say to get him to stick a hot fireplace poker up his own ass?
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