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From: ciaraldi@rochester.UUCP (Mike Ciaraldi)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: violence
Message-ID: <2692@rochester.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Oct-84 22:52:05 EST
Article-I.D.: rocheste.2692
Posted: Mon Oct 29 22:52:05 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Nov-84 02:48:21 EST
References: <328@mako.UUCP> <597@gloria.UUCP> <2484@rochester.UUCP> <1759@sun.uucp>
Organization: U. of Rochester, CS Dept.
Lines: 55

> > As a further continuation, there are occasional drives
> > to castrate rapists.  If rape is a crime motivated by
> > violence rather than sexual desire, what good will this
> > do?
> 
> It's motivated by both

That's what I had thought, but there has been a tendency, when
someone accused of rape says "Well, she was asking for it, dressed
like that, acting that way, etc.", to say
"That doesn't matter, becausde rape is a crime of violence,
not a crime of sexual desire",
rather than saying, "That doesn't matter, because
sexual desire is no excuse for raping someone."

The second seems to me to be a stronger and more defensible
position.  It clearly contrasts someone's desire for a non-essential
with someone else's right to have one's own body under one's
own control.

Trying to distort the nature of something in order to bolster
one's argument is slef-defeating because it only works with
those willing to accept the distortion.

I am sensitive to this because of my expeience back in high
school on the debate team.  In debate you try to define your
terms in a manner advantageous to your side, because then you
force your opponents to argue on your terms.  However, there
is only so far you can push the definitions from those
generally accepted, or the judge will allow the other team
to throw yours out.

A recent example of this is the campaign to ban pornography as
degrading to women, then defining porno as any erotica that
degrades women.

Someone replied to me via private E-mail. saying that
some rape victims, when asked whether they felt castration or hormone
therapy was sufficient punishment for their attackers, had
said they did not consider this sufficient punishmemt.
The Biblical directive of "an eye for an eye" espouses the principle
that the offender should suffer a lost equal to that of the offended.
Others maintain that any sort of punishment must be worse
than the offense to be effective, either as punishment or deterrent.

I don't know the answer to this, but it makes me think of the
recent ad for Time-Life Books' series on the Old West,
which pointed out that John Wesley Harding killed X-number of
men, "including one for snoring too loud."
HE obviously thought the punishment appropriate to the offense,
but I hope some married woman don't find out about this! 
:-|)    (that's a smile with a moustache!)

Mike Ciaraldi
seismo!rochester!ciaraldi