Pericles:"Just be assured that it has nothing to do with women per se."

What it has to do with women is that there is a massive industry that has evolved to service the interests of women and that industry is not much concerned with whether those interests are worth servicing. ISTM that if Legal aid is going to fund a civil matter, it must examine the prima facie evidence before making the decision. That they funded my ex-wife's matter suggests that no such examination took place and why would it? They have pots of money to hand out. Criminal defence is an altogether different kettle of fish and should be automatically funded if requested, at least up to the committal date.

rstuart:"Unfortunately, he then seems to lay the blame for his fate at the feet of those girls whose noble intentions made the money available."

Yes, I do, because if those people make no effort to validate claims made then they risk funding fraud at the expense of those people who genuinely need help.

ATSIC was abolished on those very grounds. Why is it any different if the perpetrators are white women instead of black men

rstuart; <" blah blah blah and ...But as far as I can tell, your vision of how the would should be doesn't match how the majority of our society behaves...">

Well you're the one saying that rape is excusable because men are social morons who can't navigate the complexities of YES or NO. By what you're saying, all men are rapists. I am saying that there are too many men who manage relationships quite successfully (like my "oppressor") to excuse the remainder who rape.

Therefore, the notion that people obtain a clear YES rather than assume that they are entitled to touch someone else's body, is, apparently, how the majority of our society behaves.

As to your ideas about obtaining justice in court being some sort of revenge so that the victim is *still* blamewothy for being nasty enough to hurt back: the logic of your argument then would extend to all crime wouldn't it. Burgled; mugged; shot; diddled out of one's life savings - the victims are all just nasty revenge seeking... As a society should we just forget about crime and so on altogether?
What repercussions do you see?

Houellebecq: <"See guys, it's all about penetration. As soon as women start to think of themselves as engulfing men rather than being penetrated, then there will be a lot less people feeling they were raped.">

You're right of course; I was just trying to get you to relate to what it's like for someone whose bodily integrity has been invaded regardless of their wishes. As you say, it's not all about penetration - it's also about having unwelcome others masturbate; defaecate or urinate on you; put you into humiliating positions... and endless other variations of making a male or female, child or adult, feel that they are a despicable something other than human.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25246326-5018069,00.html

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25374298-2702,00.html

However, the next time you're "engulfing" your proctologist, I do hope you'll give a little thought to our discussions here ... do reflect on which of you feels vulnerable and which one is likely to feel most in contol during the process.

pynchme:"Well you're the one saying that rape is excusable because men are social morons who can't navigate the complexities of YES or NO."

You really must try to understand what you read before running off at the mouth. There was a simple comparison made between the way in which women's emotional responses are taken to be vitally important to the point that a man must subsume his own responses (which are therefore presumably less important) in order to satisfy hers and achieve some mutuality of outcome (albeit an emotionally impoverished one for him and an emotionally enriched one for her).

Tell me, why are your female emotions less able to be subsumed in the interest of getting along than my male ones are? Are you simply less capable of taking control of yourself?

Please do answer those questions Pynchme, because they go to the heart of this topic, I think.

On the matter of proctology versus sex - last I looked, the vagina was perfectly wll-adapted to the insertion of a penis and has quite a lot of specialised plumbing to do useful things with the result. I've not checked my anal sphincter recently, but past experience tells me it does rather well at getting things OUT of the body and that the plumbing goes nowhere that sperm might find welcoming.

Perhaps a better analogy might be proctology and gynaecology. Personally, I've never used a speculum during sex (or oterwise, it should be said), but your experience may differ, of course.

"the notion that people obtain a clear YES"

conversely people could also be held responsible for not giving a CLEAR NO!

Antiseptic

‘Please do answer those questions Pynchme, because they go to the heart of this topic, I think.’

What they go to the heart of, Antiseptic, is your bombastic need to control others and to be at the centre of attention by demanding answers to a lot of useless questions. I’m sure Pynch is happy to do so, or she wouldn’t still be here, but it gets up my nose that you won’t rest until you have totally quibbled her either into a submission or an exit.

The ‘heart of this topic’ – as you put it – is that men (and women) like you cannot accept any kind of cultural practice that actually puts a woman’s integrity at centre stage, instead of men’s. Until the early 1980s, the rape laws of the Western world put men’s integrity before women’s in every rape trial. The rape law reforms reversed that practice (or at least equalised it) and people like you will never rest until it goes back the other way again.