Responding to the news that the Netherlands’ House of Representatives has voted to amend the Sexual Offences Act by introducing a consent-based definition of rape, Dagmar Oudshoorn, Director of Amnesty International Netherlands, said: “By amending our outdated law and recognizing that sex without consent is rape, the Netherlands has taken an important step towards combatting […]
I think this is a myopic view. The law in Netherlands used to require penetration to be considered rape, a definition that excludes the majority of male rape victims. It’s a genuine concern that laws be gender neutral.
My view was with regards to the intent behind the initial comment. As the person I replied to asked.
Right, you assumed bad faith intentions based on zero context and made some pretty specific accusations. There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about gender neutral rape laws, especially in Europe.
Nobody says there aren’t.
You’re saying that the other poster was not invoking any of those legitimate reasons. And you base that on… what exactly? His five other comments on Lemmy?
Jumping straight to the most uncharitable interpretation of someone’s intent is a bad habit.
A guess based on experience with similar toned poster’s across social media. Don’t pretend a majority of dudes talking like that aren’t just out for some sort of women-hating catharsis. Weeding them out isn’t my job, it’s the poster’s to be aware of the reality of online human rights discussion before all-lives’ing their point of view. However annoyed my tone was their initial post was also in bad faith.
No that’s pretty much exactly what you’re saying.
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All because I want the law to be gender neutral? Wow.
Heaven forbid anyone care about real world injustices that rape victims have suffered because the law doesn’t recognise them.
I think you should take a good hard look at yourself and reflect on your statement, to be honest.
I agree that my tone was off, and for that I apologise. I assumed a bad faith argument based on what feels like an endless string of self-proclaimed men’s rights warriors, brought up with a warped sense of equality, people who can’t seem to wrap their heads around the collosal gap in the size of the problem that women face and try to equivocate to distract from that, so they can “have their say”. Your initial comment still reeks of that type of mentality however I look at it. The problem the article points to is overwhelmingly more important for women’s health, according to rainn.org 90% of reported rape cases are against women. Saying “what about men!” every time rape is mentioned without acknowledging this gap seems disingenuous. I will also add this edit to my initial comment. I hope this logic may help you understand why what you said was perceived as problematic.
But … isn’t that what the original poster did? They could have simply looked up whether it was gender neutral or write about why they think it is great that it is gender neutral. Instead they already doubted that it was, assuming bad faith from the start.
Also, why is that a special problem in Europe? Or to what are you referring? In some countries, like UK, while it is not called rape sexual assault has the same maximum penalty (which is life in prison).