Ken Clarke on rape

[Obelix]

What on Earth are you talking about? If you can't say anything reasonable, don't bother.

 

Then with due respect I suggest you stop talking. Calling people Hitler's just because you don't like their answers because of their political views - when those views are not at all relevant to the subject in hand is odious and tiresome of you and not at all reasonable.

 

Now if you want to debate the matter at hand in a sensible fashion please fell free, but you are not doing so at the moment.

[Halibut]

I can only imagine myself in those two situations and imagining myself from a woman's point of view is never going to be accurate, but I think I would find date-rape less traumatic than violent rape by an unknown attacker.

 

Now you tell me why one isn't worse than the other?

 

Would you find being raped by a bloke who you considered a mate and you felt comfortable with any more or less awful than being raped by a total stranger?

[tinfoilhat]

Getting grilled tonight on the telly, not about the issue in hand but about what's he said since the initial interview. I thought dimbleby might know better, but no. I want him grilled about lengths of sentencing that are too short, but no it's a stupid witch hunt. I'm turned off.....

[Obelix]

I wasn't sure on the actual wording, however I recall reading that a guy had sex with his 15 years 10 months old girlfriend when he was just turned 16. They are now happily married with 2 kids and he is on the sex offenders list, absolutely bloody stupid.

 

For another interesting one, what happens if a sixteen year old boy and his fifteen year old girlfreind enjoy a bit of rumpy pumpy on the school trip to France...? This happend on a school trip I was on and the staff had a trying time deciding what to do, because the age of consent in France is 15.....

 

So has he committed an offence or not? This is what Clarke means by a grey area. For date rape and violent rape it's serious for sure - and I don;t see that there is anything less "serious" about a date rape for the woman. In fact, I'd suspect it could in ways be worse as she cannot even say that she fought back.

 

For the lower end of the scale as you mention above though there are lots of situations - not common ones to be sure, but enough that you have to say should the law actually get involved at all in this, and wouldn't Social Services be a much better agency to actually resolve matters. I don't know. One thing I'm sure of is that the synthetic indignation that the gutter press are tromping out now is not helping debate one bit. But that's the Wail and Stun for you....

[Mecky]

Getting grilled tonight on the telly, not about the issue in hand but about what's he said since the initial interview. I thought dimbleby might know better, but no. I want him grilled about lengths of sentencing that are too short, but no it's a stupid witch hunt. I'm turned off.....

 

Can you imagine what would have happened if Jack Straw had made the comments? The Tory Bullyboys on here would be wetting themselves with excitement.

[Mecky]

Then with due respect I suggest you stop talking. Calling people Hitler's just because you don't like their answers because of their political views

 

So Hitler wasn't a politician then?

[Obelix]

So Hitler wasn't a politician then?

 

I see you deliberatly cut the relevant part of my quote out - as I said it's odious and tiresome when people do things like that. Since you can't debate properly Mucky[1] I won't waste my time any longer

 

[1] Which I think is fair. Being as I get called a bullyboy for no good reason I think indicating your smearing and distateful nature is eminently reasonable.

[llamatron]

I've put the relevant bit in bold for you. Beside's written text doesn't always the meaning or emphasis.

 

If you ignore most of a comment you are bound to get the context wrong!

 

In fact if we only read the version where you cut the meaningful sentence out you get:

 

"Rape is rape"

"No it isn't"

 

That just doesn't make any sense at all so how can you get offended by it? You need the sentence before and the sentence after it for it to be understandable English. I agree with Tony you need to read longer books. Peter and Jane books will only get you so far!

[Kthebean]

I can only imagine myself in those two situations and imagining myself from a woman's point of view is never going to be accurate, but I think I would find date-rape less traumatic than violent rape by an unknown attacker.

 

Now you tell me why one isn't worse than the other?

 

Maybe, because if you are attacked by someone you care about, trust and love, it could be worse than if you're attacked by someone you can dismiss as a 'random psycho'.

[upinwath]

If as you say the thread was closed because of an accusation of "messing with children" then it's not surprising as you were the first in your opening post to mention it.

 

Yes they did, but the vast majority disagreed with the content of your closed OP, for very good reasons.

 

The stupidity of some forum members is amazing. My OP mentioned a case of under age sex, I didn't accuse any member of messing with kids as at least one did.

The poll suggested the majority agreed with my opinion there are degrees of rape. Pop back to the thread and see the results before you spout lies.