From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Aug 08 2002 - 22:24:50 MDT
Today's O.C. Register
<http://www.ocregister.com/local/> carried the story:
"Citing burden on businesses, judge issues injunction
stopping Garden Grove's stiff regulations from taking
effect Friday." by Staff Reporter KATHERINE NGUYEN,
who has been following this as I have noted in my
previous emails. Free speech "prior restraint" issues
were also cited by the Judge regarding Garbage Grove's
(asa (also smelled as) Garden Grove) attempt to make
use of repeated profanity illegal by gamers at the
indoor Cyber Cafes.
YES!
The cover story on this day's Register was also
notable, featuring the two young women who had been
kidnapped and raped last week locally and then told
their story on the "Today Show," which I missed that
morning ($^#$@#$). The gist was that a change of
attitudes toward rape as somehow besmirching the
victim has finally come. Glory Halaluyah!
I note that - together with my appreciation to those
two dynamite young women for speaking out - twice as
many men are raped in the U.S. in prison as all the
women raped throughout the nation. Usually these are
the least criminal of the offenders, incarcerated for
victimless crimes. Most of the victims are not much
older than these two women and suffer much more trauma
and physical damage than the typical woman rape
victim. Perhaps someday we will notice this as a
society.
As a further aside, I feel a certain personal
vindication in the willingness of these women to
refuse victimhood. In the late '70's, at Cal State U.
Long Beach, there was a large, well-publicized
movement spearheaded by the most radical fringe of the
man-haters of the femininst movement the gist of which
was to paint all men as rapists and make rape so
infinity bad that one might as well just commit
suicide if victimized. Various women wrote into the
school paper expressing how "rape is the worst
possible thing that could happen to a woman," and
similar balarney.
Rape is bad, real bad, and the dangers of infection
with HIV or other nasty diseases is very real. Anyone
faced with rape has the perfect right to use deadly
force to defend themselves, and anyone who commits
rape should at minimum be segregated from normal
society while they pay a large sum of restitution to
their victims.
That said, most victims of rape by itself - not
including other psychotic acts such as mutilation or
acid disfigurment, which are really about as rare as
child kidnappings by strangers - would probably agree
that it would be worse to be blinded than to simply be
raped, it would be worse to lose a limb, to be
paralyzed, to be permanently deafened, to be crippled,
etc., all of which people DO survive and often live
happy, altho diminished, lives afterwards. In the
case of simple date rape where there are no major
physical traumas to deal with, the equivalence would
doubtless be set lower.
In fact, by grossly exagerating the impact of rape,
bad as it is, by portraying it as virtually the end of
a woman's life, these women were doing the rapists -
especially the sicko psychotic ones on the really
nasty power trips - a great service. After all, if
you're into pure power, the more hurt you can inflict
or threaten, the better, and the more attractive the
act that puts you in that position.
I suspect that a certain number of additional rapes
occurred because of that campaign. When I wrote a
letter to the "'49er," expressing this position, you
can imagine the response. I was accused, among many
other things, of trying to once more "blame the woman"
for rape, which was not my point at all. Various
implied threats were made toward me personally.
If the women then had taken the practical, hard-nosed,
intelligent approach that these two young women did
this past week, then we all could have probably done
better at dealing with the problem, and much of the
thrill would have been removed for the sickos, and
some of the trauma and stigmatization for the victims
might have been lessened. But, the issue of rape had
gotten all wound up in that same old stupid sexist
man-hating ball of string, and the projection of
personal failure and feelings of worthlessness onto a
convenient target - men - was just too cheap a shot
for the feminist power freaks to pass up.
Vindication. YES.
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