Reasoned response, deserves same.

Wonder of wonders, I stumbled across a Feminist website discussing Paul's 'Jury Nullification' article, and doing it relatively hyperbole-free!

Colour me shocked.

But, as usual, there do seem to be several areas where they 'misunderstand' the intent, or underestimate the effects...

Since commenting has been disabled, I will add my commentary here. Just mentally tack it on...


Jessie Powell:

Jesse initially looks like she's (he's?) in agreement with the concept itself, but disagrees it's needed in this instance. By way of proof, she offers up the National Crime Victimization survey, in which 200,000 rapes were reported in 2008, but 'only' 160,000 men were in jail for the crime in 2006.

Apparently, she doesn't believe innocent men get convicted. There actually ARE a large subset of people out there that believe FRA's involve not much more than 'having to go through being in a line-up'. Maybe Jessie is one of these people?

Problem is, many FRAs result in conviction. Also, wouldn't it make sense to apply the False Accusations to the 'reported rapes'? Given estimates as high as 60% (FAR more likely than the Feminist created 2% stat), if there's 200,000 reports of rape, that would mean only 80,000 are true. Which put up against the 160,000 men in prison for the crime means basically that potentially, 1 of every 2 prisoners serving time for Rape is an innocent man.

But really, that was a piffling part of her argument, so let's move on...

She then goes on to defend the existence of Rape Shield laws by recounting their initial intent...to keep women from being unfairly smeared as 'loose'. Essentially, that Rape Shield laws were enacted to prevent happening to women, precisely what is happening to men. She has no word on whether or not men should be afforded this same protection.

A couple of quotes to show her intent, and a couple responses:

"It may well be that the bias against believing the promiscuous woman compared to the chaste woman in a rape trial is entirely justified and that excluding a woman’s sexual history does indeed deprive the jury of relevant knowledge that they should know."

It's gone way beyond that, including such 'irrelevant' details as a past history of making misleading and false Rape Accusations...even when the last guy killed himself as a result. And maybe, JUST MAYBE, the inherent sexist bias of giving the accuser anonymity, while shining a spotlight on the accused, is a source of a great deal of injustice (including things like, oh, tainting the Jury pool?)...nah, couldn't be.

"Have skepticism about a woman’s accusation. Demand a convincing level of proof that the accusation is true. Punish the woman who makes a false accusation. However, to go to the extreme of jury nullification regardless of the evidence is totally unreasonable and uncalled for by the circumstances of false rape charges today. Ultimately it is man’s highest duty to protect women; the protection of women must come first."

Uh, what? "Protection of women must come first"?

Talk about entitlement...

Oh yeah, and what do you think MRAs have been calling for the Legal system to do? Heck, we can't even get Feminists to agree on a definition of Rape, let alone the Law...how do you even tell a guy what not to do?

Oh yeah...wait for her opinion. I forgot.


Laura:

Well, Laura basically takes the tack that yes, these things are serious and important....and not happening enough to care about it.

"While the number of false accusations appears to be extremely high, Elam does not prove that the number of innocent men convicted is extremely high or represents an “epidemic.” Nor does he prove, by citing instances of procedural wrongdoing and of feminist prosecutors, that the entire system is corrupt and cannot be reformed."

That's a pretty tall order for one small article, wouldn't you say? Given the fact that he writes with an assumption of knowledge on the part of the reader, reinventing the wheel every time you write an article would turn into a pretty damn boring site. Funny thing is, my simple (and admittedly horrible) math above is one small example of how this is most definitely NOT 'rare'.

Thankfully, Feminists can only point to a lack of research in an area as argument against action for so long before someone, you know, studies it....and maybe even honestly, for a change.

Vanessa trots out an interesting version of NAWALT:

"That is a valid point. It might be that most FRA are not brought to trial or result in a “guilty” verdict. The false accusers should be punished, anyway, for damaging the man’s reputation and putting him through such a nightmare.

I’ve read some work done by the Innocence Project (which uses methods, such as DNA evidence, to exonerate the innocent), and that actually seems even more common than FRA. In those cases, men have been put in prison for rape, and the evidence used was faulty (false witness reports, lack of scientific evidence, etc.) In those cases, the accuser is not acting maliciously, but in error."

Except Vanessa misses the point. We are not here to point fingers at women and blame them. Some women are using the system like they would a big, tough, dumb boyfriend....to fight her battles for her and to keep her amused. Some women are 'convinced' by their friends that they've been 'raped'. Some women actually have been, but by someone else.

And sometimes, the Prosecutor railroads innocent men into Prison to please the Female Vote.

Note, in all of these cases, the innocent man is still in Prison. Jury nullification isn't a way to get back at women (even though all the posts here suppose that from the onset). It's a way to destroy a System (that WAS set up to appease women's fears) that exists to 'get convictions', rather than 'mete justice'.

If you want to blame 'women' for that, blame their propensity to vote in ever more intrusive Governments.


And I would add my voice to Stephen:

The Religious Right, and Conservative Politicians, are just as much an enemy of men as Democrats and Feminists are. Seeing as how Feminism is essentially Chivalry 2.0, there's not much difference at all between the two viewpoints, only the means used to get to the end.

The Mens Movement is doing precisely what it needs to. Redefining Masculinity and maleness, on our own terms, without apology. If the PC crowd, Feminists, and Social Reformers won't listen to us....well, I guess they won't hear us coming then.

To coin a Feminist phrase, "The time for debate is over".