NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/talk/abortion/48966

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-20 | 3.8 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Robert Hartman)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,soc.men,soc.women,alt.politics.homosexuality
Subject: Re: Sexual Harassment (was Re: Simon you're no ...
Keywords: You expect me to mark my deletions?  Dream on...
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 21 Nov 92 02:43:10 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Jim Kalb) writes:
>
>There was a recent case in which a dentist was arrested for rape who
>had sexual relations with women whom he had anaesthetized in the
>course of treating them.  Most of them didn't even know it had
>happened.  There have also been recent discussions of college men
>doing things like getting women drunk and having sexual relations with
>them while they were not sober enough to consent.
>
>The "violence and intimidation" in such acts is not obvious to me
>unless "violence" means something different from what it usually means
>when we talk of crimes of violence.

Well, if someone were to anesthetize you and steal your Rolex, would
it  be robbery or grand theft?  If we define violence as an act of
bodily damage, then it's grand theft--but that's still a felony.  If we
look at violence as an act intended to prevent a person from defending
her/or himself, then it would be robbery.  Hmmm.  Isn't false
imprisonment considered a violent crime?  So if we view the application
of the anasthetic under false pretenses as false imprisonment, which it
is, then the theft of the Rolex accompanied by that form of violence
would also make it a robbery.  Wouldn't it?

In any event, it ain't good.  All three are felonies most places.

If the charges are true, the dentist is certainly guilty of false
imprisonment.  Sex without consent is, at a minimum, sexual
battery--just as anyone touching you without your permission is guilty
of battery.  So combining false imprisonment with sexual battery and
yes, I think you could call it rape.

> ... Should such acts be treated as
>rape and their perpetrators punished more severely than (say) a
>dentist or a college student who takes an unconscious woman's
>temperature with an oral fever thermometer without her consent, and
>without any justification relating to medical treatment, but only
>because of idle curiosity?  It seems to me they should, but I'm not
>sure you would agree.

Well, it's a matter of degree.  Taking someone's temperature is
considered less of an invasion than having sex.  To my mind it is still
a form battery, although probably a misdemeanor at worst.  But if you
used a contaminated thermometer, that might increase the gravity of the
situation.  Sexual contact is generally considered to be pretty
important, and can therefore be construed as much more serious of an offense
to the woman.  But the thermometer thing is still an offense.

>  I find the insistence that rape has no sexual motivation odd.

>Why is this point so important to people?  What is at stake?  What bad
>things will happen if it is accepted that rape includes an essential
>sexual element?

I think that the reason people decided to emphasize the violence aspect
and deny the sexual aspect is that the courts and society were doing
the opposite--denying the violence aspect.  Women were being raped and
then raked over the coals when they tried to prosecute because the
perps were saying, and judges were believing, that just by being
sexually attractive, the women were "asking for it."

How you can "ask for it" when you've been anesthetized is beyond me.

-r