Michael Gira rape allegation

[Bellyheart]

This is surprising. I never know how to handle these situations.

This seemed to intersect with Psalm Zero, who stayed at my place, and the accused guy was a real piece of work. I'm not surprised how the other member handle it. He seemed like a real liability.

[SPACERITUAL]

This seemed to intersect with Psalm Zero, who stayed at my place, and the accused guy was a real piece of work. I'm not surprised how the other member handle it. He seemed like a real liability.

Thats pretty much what i heard.

[aens_wife]

http://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/file ... ence_0.pdf

Apologies. False reporting accounts for between 2-10% of allegations.

That is still a lot of men we know and love who are rapists and abusers.

I have been sick and have had three kids on break from school, so I haven't been on here much to discuss anything at all, let alone have this very emotional topic. Lots of women I love have been raped or assaulted, including my mother - by someone she played music with when she was 20.

It is a conversation that needs to be had, without making women out to be crazy or out for blood. We need to be able to come forward when something happens, even if it is years later, so that things start to change for the better. It may not make sense to outsiders, but lots of victims have personal reasons for disclosing at certain times. Her coming forward earlier wouldn't have changed much in this case. It would still be her word against his. He would still be in a position of power, career-wise.

I am not really up for more accusations against me personally for defending a woman who says she is a victim. I never said everyone here is an asshole, but there are a few of you who most definitely are and have been every time an issue pertaining to women comes up. You'll have to excuse me if my patience for that runs thin.

[Eivind August]

the fact we're having shots fired and making this a shitty, personal quarrel over a fucking rape allegation case is a little ridiculous to me.

Same. This is a very sensitive subject though.

As has been stated, at the end of the day we'll probably not know what actually happened. Statistics are fine and all, especially for a meta-discussion, but relying on statistics in a particular case can be a slippery slope. One of them might be lying, or it can be a case of Rashomon (I'm sure there's a more technical term for this, but I love the movie) where individuals can experience the same event in very different ways. There's not much use in picking sides, though I do get that people with personal ties to the people involved or personal experiences with similar cases will be likely to stand up for one "side".

In short, rape is horrible.

[bigchiefbc]

http://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/file ... ence_0.pdf

Apologies. False reporting accounts for between 2-10% of allegations.

That is still a lot of men we know and love who are rapists and abusers.

I have been sick and have had three kids on break from school, so I haven't been on here much to discuss anything at all, let alone have this very emotional topic. Lots of women I love have been raped or assaulted, including my mother - by someone she played music with when she was 20.

It is a conversation that needs to be had, without making women out to be crazy or out for blood. We need to be able to come forward when something happens, even if it is years later, so that things start to change for the better. It may not make sense to outsiders, but lots of victims have personal reasons for disclosing at certain times. Her coming forward earlier wouldn't have changed much in this case. It would still be her word against his. He would still be in a position of power, career-wise.

I am not really up for more accusations against me personally for defending a woman who says she is a victim. I never said everyone here is an asshole, but there are a few of you who most definitely are and have been every time an issue pertaining to women comes up. You'll have to excuse me if my patience for that runs thin.

I appreciate that you came back to clarify your position. This is a very heated and emotional subject, and most of us probably know people affected by it. I personally know people who have been affected on both sides of this issue. One of my ex-girlfriends was violently raped as a teenager. One of my close friends was falsely accused of several horrific things by his ex-wife (including rape, domestic violence and abusing their child) in order to gain advantage in a divorce. Anecdotes and personal experience aren't data, but it doesn't mean they aren't important. Often, they form the basis for our world-view.

I followed the link you provided, and the very first thing it says is a repeating of the "1-in-5 women will be raped in their lifetime" statistic that comes from the 2011 NIPSVS survey. I'm familiar with this survey because when I first heard that number, I was simultaneously aghast and befuddled. Rape numbers like that usually only occur in war-torn areas like the Congo and Rwanda. So I did some more digging into those results and found the majority of that 20% number comes from the section of the survey which involves "alcohol- or drug-facilitated sexual violence". Then I went and read the actual questionnaire and I found that the introduction to that section misleadingly implies that if you were drunk or high and engaged in sex acts, you are a victim of sexual violence. I agree wholeheartedly that someone who has sex with a passed-out or drunk-to-the-point-of-blacked-out partner is a rapist and it is awful and disgusting and criminal. But I have a big problem with the idea that seems to be very prevalent in liberal thought nowadays that any level of inebriation changes sex to assault. I wish we could separate out those numbers so we can get a real idea of how bad the sexual assault problem is, but it doesn't seem like either side is very interested in getting good data using precise definitions.

And as for the rate of false accusations, again, it's impossible to know, because definite proof one way or the other is almost never found in the great majority of these cases. The lower range of those numbers only includes when we have proof that the accusation is false, and the higher range just involves guesstimating. I don't like either approach personally, because we know the lower range is too conservative, and we have no idea how good of an estimate the upper range is.

I agree that there has historically been a large societal stigma attached to sexual assault victims, and that unquestionably causes reporting rates to be lower than any other type of crime. That is horrible and awful and we need to remedy it, without completely throwing due process out with the bathwater. I think that the best remedy is simply one of numbers, and I think the situation is definitely getting better. The stigma is far, far FAR less than it was even 20 years ago, and now with social media and the Internet, there is an absolutely huge swath of the public that provides support to victims verbally and legally. Rape reporting numbers are increasing and I think we are on the right track.

But the idea behind the "if someone reports a rape, believe them immediately and cast the accused out of society" approach turns my skin. The time I spent in law school cries out that we need to be more nuanced than that. I know that "innocent until proven guilty" is only required in the courtroom, but it isn't just a legal doctrine, it's one of the bases of our society. There was an article that Ezra Klein wrote on Vox that basically said that this approach will result in more and more innocent people being accused and punished for something they didn't do, and he was OK with that. His argument was that men have had it too easy for too long, and that the rape problem will only go away when men are just as scared of false accusations as women are of rape, and if a bunch of innocent people have to go to prison or be expelled from school (and polite society) in order for that to happen, it was cost he was willing to pay. I was utterly disgusted by this argument. I consider myself a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, but if that's the proposed solution to this problem, count me out. Here's that column: http://www.vox.com/2014/10/13/6966847/y ... support-it

[rustywire]

Found an archive of the above vox link, because I refuse to give clickbait scandal rags traffic http://archive.is/e8pOA
Buzz(off)feed and salon get similar treatment. Have they ever published anything which can be considered "journalism" or just virtue-signaling, op-ed fallacy & falsehoods by bigoted ideologues?

Anyway...

[psychic vampire.]

Maybe semi-important to remind people that the 1-in-5 number might be (though I doubt it) inflated as a whole, but among certain sections of the population, informed by many factors, those numbers are pretty accurate, or can be even higher. I have no love for identity politics, observational evidence can say the majority of gay people and gender nonconforming and trans people I meet have been victims of sexual violence. Male or male assigned victims of sexual violence are likely to never report anything. Even just relying on things said in this thread, the false accusations are 2-10% off the reported ones, and people here know victims who never reported a thing.

Sorry, just listened to a podcast about rape revenge genre films yesterday and it has me T H I N K I N G.

[DarkAxel]

The reason why I initially said I hope it's not true is that I don't know how to cope if it is or might very well be. I haven't really had to deal with my favourite artists being cunts so this is a little unprecedented.

So right now I am thinking about selling my Swans records actually I'm not gonna come out and be all dramatic about it but... I'm just not sure how I feel about the whole thing

[aens_wife]

Maybe semi-important to remind people that the 1-in-5 number might be (though I doubt it) inflated as a whole, but among certain sections of the population, informed by many factors, those numbers are pretty accurate, or can be even higher. I have no love for identity politics, observational evidence can say the majority of gay people and gender nonconforming and trans people I meet have been victims of sexual violence. Male or male assigned victims of sexual violence are likely to never report anything. Even just relying on things said in this thread, the false accusations are 2-10% off the reported ones, and people here know victims who never reported a thing.

Sorry, just listened to a podcast about rape revenge genre films yesterday and it has me T H I N K I N G.

I am glad you could gather your thoughts enough to say this, because I tried several times to write something coherent and I was just so frustrated that I could not.

[psychic vampire.]

Thank you.

Also just want to say that having spent a lot of time in subcultural milieus that take rape accusations very seriously in different ways, I feel like more and more peers (and myself) have recognized that exiling the accused is something that needs to be reserved for particular cases, but it is also important to understand that this tendency and the tendency of believing the survivor are very direct responses to wider society that we live in; one which still does a VERY poor job actually treating rape seriously. And I think that the grey areas addressed in BC's response to those studies could be just that: Grey Areas. What does and does not get considered rape is incredibly loosely defined. Up until 1975 Marital Rape was completely Legal in the United States, while Consensual Gay Sex was illegal in many states within the last 15 years. Post-Victorian values still greatly influence our understanding of sex and rape, which in turn informs our responses to it. I have no fucking clue what the heart of this Michael Gira situation is, but it seems (correct me if I am wrong here) that they both acknowledge that a drunken encounter occurred, and she is saying that prior to this encounter she made it clear that she did not want that. Sounds like (a form of) rape. Not a comfortable thing to say or acknowledge, I get it, but if that is what happened, that is how I would react. Also though, this is a hard subject to discuss on the internet. Like everything important.

[sylnau]

The reason why I initially said I hope it's not true is that I don't know how to cope if it is or might very well be. I haven't really had to deal with my favourite artists being cunts so this is a little unprecedented.

So right now I am thinking about selling my Swans records actually I'm not gonna come out and be all dramatic about it but... I'm just not sure how I feel about the whole thing

If that rape thing is true... it's horrible, but It doesn't change the music.
Per example: Noir Desire is one of the best french rock band... they are still even if the signer is a complete asshole. I lost respect for the guy, but the music is still great.

[frodog]

I'm not gonna get into this argument except to say rape is among the most abhorrent of crimes and I would gladly cause a rapist to die or be mutilated.

As for music made by assholes; there is so much awesome/unfairly neglected music in the world to choose from, so why support a piece of shit/abuser in any way? I'm not for putting anyone on a pedestal because of their art, and I can't really separate the two if I'm to have a personal connection with the music, especially a singer. That's how I feel. Probably not very eloquent, but yeah... a topic like this is difficult to be level-headed about.

[Chankgeez]

I'm not gonna get into this argument except to say rape is among the most abhorrent of crimes and I would gladly cause a rapist to die or be mutilated.

So, torture's OK?

[frodog]

Yeah, after I wrote that I kinda... cringed. I'm a bit drunk. Not saying I wanna kill Gira or anyone. It's just ridiculous how many people get away with rape, or get less prison time than like, a drug dealer.

Rapists should just kill themselves, ideally.

[sylnau]

We don't even know if it's true.