sharkfin there are aspects of this which are very grey. I don't consider the circumstances where others entered the room at all appropriate. If there is an issue about consent it would seem to be in that space but I don't think the details which have been made public are sufficient to judge. That would seem to be the time when those already in the room if they were bothered should have asked them to leave but not having been there it's difficult to make a fair call about how that all played out.

There is a bunch of other stuff about this which is distastefull but there are plenty of other activities which I find distastful which I recognise is the business of the adults involved.

Fractelle I've just spotted your post which highlighted the point about others entering the room. Excellent points.

SJF the complexities around peoples choices and others actions get very messy. There is a mix between our own choices and the choices of others who make a poor decision much worse. In this instance if there was reason to believe that Clair's expressed wishes were being ignored then she would be a victim regardless of the wisdom of going back to a motel with a couple of footballers.

I'm bothered by the title and premise of the article, apart from my earlier comments it seems to imply that "victims" don't need to make different choices. Put into another context it's pretty obvious to most of us that the Nigerian "make lots of money" emails are scams. There has been plenty of publicity about them yet according to news reports plenty of people get taken in by them. Those who get fleeced are victims but they still made choices which made them vunerable. They are a different class of victim to someone who is assaulted in a public place which would normally be considered safe. Whilst the title of the article might make an effective bumper sticker or sound byte the truth is a lot messier.

R0bert

Fractelle:"I am disappointed that a number of OLO posters see women only as predators on men who can't help themselves when offered sex, to the point where any consideration for the "predatory" women, who apparently should know that if they choose to sleep with a sportsman that includes the entire team"

Are you disppointed the tooth fairy doesn't exist, as well?

Do yourself a favour and stop creating these dumb strawman statements. It's not clever, it's not illuminating, it's not constructive and it demeans your own contribution to the discussion.

Fractelle:"She is to blame for male behaviour."

No, she is responsible for her own behaviour, just as the men are responsible for their own behaviour. You seem to be advocating for men to be responcible for her as well as themselves, which may be all well and good but should she not have a similar responsibility to be responsible for them?

IOW, it cuts both ways, which is what most of the men here have been arguing.

SJF, I'm truly amazed; I agree wholeheartedly with most of your post. However, I don't agree with your claim that having no control over circumstances that eventuate once an endeavour commences provides any claim to victimhood. Using that logic every failed business, storm-wrecked sailor, fallen climber and so on would have a claim to victimhood, despite these being known risks for those ventures.

That doesn't mean the people involved shouldn't be able to access the emotions you describe, just that objectively they are not victims of anything but bad luck or bad judgement in taking on a risky venture.

Ginx and SJF, I am not sure if I can articulate or phrases this 'CORRECTLY'(italics)?

It would seem from what you have said, is that the only form of acceptable discussion to you, is the type of discussion that agrees with your point of view, supports your point of view,

Any discussion that seeks to challange or try to put forward an alternative point of view is unacceptable.

So basically what you are asking for, is for posters to support your points of view.

Now here on OLO we have to rely on the written word and phrasing, there are a couple of problems with this, firstly the vast majority of human communication is non-verbal, secondly how one person reads a phrase or word can be totally different from another. so meanings and intrepretation can change.

A phrase that has appeared a little bit recently is "She was asking for it!"

Asking for what?

A cup of coffee?

A new dress?

A new car?

Virtually every individual will have a different interpretation of what "Asking for it!" means.

Now I am going to jump from the frying pan and into the fire.

Virtually all heterosexual men, want to have sex with women.

Now to best of my knowledge, most if not all heterosexual women are not overt about their willingness to be sexually available, so therefore tend to send out covert signals, either consciously or subconsciously to signal their willingness or availability or lack there of.

In a blog a another bloke posted that if he didn't try, sex did not happen. I would say that this is the experience of the vast majority of males. If they sat back and wait for the female to take the initiative, nothing will happen. Therefore if it is the natural state of things, the vast majority of us would have never been born, had our fathers waited for our mothers to be sexually assertive.

So we already have a recipe for disaster in the making.

Add to this mixture the potent mixture of alcohol and drugs.

Wasting a post. Feeling lousy. Going in for obs. Hopefully o/night.

Will answer when.

LET’S DO A HYPOTHETICAL HERE. change the victim from a woman to a man and surprise ourselves with our involuntary different reaction to the situation.

You have two attractive women who are good friends with a group of homosexual men who live in the same block of units as they do.

Out for what they see as just a bit of fun, the two girls agree to lure a poor unsuspecting hetrosexual male back to their unit have a few drinks with him and lure him into getting undressed to have sex. Whilst one girl keeps him busy the other lets the group of homosexual men into the room and they rape him.

His fault of course, he should have known better than to put himself in that situation shouldn’t he. Drinking in a room with two women he knows little about. How stupid! he obviously asked for it. At no stage did he say no as he was afraid of getting belted or hurt. Another sign of guilt on his part.

Women of Australia. Wake up! Men of Australia realise that men looking at this and realizing how much the woman was blamed and the men allowed off the hook, that it puts your daughters that much more in danger of being set up like this.

Why would this woman choose to be publicly humiliated like this if she consented to it? she obviously has strong feelings of a wrong being done to her.

Since the Johns incident, there has been more scrutiny of Claire's behaviour than that of the footballers. Matthew Johns has cleverly kept his head down. Other players have not been foolish enough to come foward. By contrast, Claire has been given the status of 'victim'. Many of us find this tactic by feminists so immoral and ill-considered that we feel compelled to speak-up.
It is a massive over simplification to only be able to see participants as either villans or victims. Just because we might make criticisms of Claire doesn't mean that we are unable to see the wrongdoing of others. This victim mentality also positions women as pathetic creatures, unable to solve their own problems. Thirdly, people don't like helping those who will-not help themselves. Women need to take the first step.
This self-esteem crap didn't help either. No wonder self-esteen failed, it was going to magically fix all sorts of complex problems. People with high self-esteem take dangerous risks. Arrogant women are also more vulnerable to sleazy men, as they assume that he is more serious about them than he really is. These women are also more at home on the high pedestal on which pick-up artists place their quarry. This obsession with self-esteem also means that we tend to over-protect women by telling them what they want to hear. Hence rape victims keep quiet because they can't stand the thought that someone might question their behaviour.
All people like Danielle had to do was to be more ethical than the footballers and acknowledge that Claire has her faults too and discussion of this issue would focus on the footballers. They failed.