(no subject)

[changeyourstars8]

Oy. Attention news media-- a woman is accusing some Duke lacrosse players of rape. Therefore, the entire thing should not be referred to as a sex scandal. "Sex" and "rape" are not interchangeable. I can't believe I even had to type that out. Sheesh.

While I'm on the topic . . . I don't know absolutely everything about the case, but I do know that right now, I believe the woman. Innocent until proven guilty means, in these circumstances, misidentification instead of 'omg she's just lying to get money'. If she wanted to get something out of them, she could've just claimed that a robbery happened and everything probably would've been settled quickly and quietly. But I can see why women would file false rape charges all over the place-- they're treated so wonderfully by the press and the general public; it's not like their characters are dragged through the mud or their every action is second-guessed or they ever receive death threats when their names are revealed. It's just so much fun!

Seeing that in the paper probably wouldn't have ticked me off so much if I hadn't also had to endure a customer earlier who was babbling on about how, "I'm telling you, in any society, the minute you give women any rights that's it. It's over, and there's no going back to how things should be." This was, unsurprisingly, one of the guys who chuckled at the 'what do you tell a woman with two black eyes' joke of several weeks before.

General disclaimer: Sorry, but rape is not a topic where I debate or toss around different points of view. Any comments from anyone bringing up her clothes, her profession, criticizing her, etc. will be deleted without reply. If you'd like to understand more about where I'm coming from with all this, go read this essay. Thanks.

Now, off to go write or watch something cheerful.

Comments

[rosevaughn.livejournal.com]

You'll ge no argument out of me on this topic.

But what really creeps me out is that the third kid indicted...his parents have connections to Congress...and Cheney. I have a bad feeling that at least part of the Bush administration my get involved in this.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

I definitely think she was raped, but the question I have is who did it. If the Duke students have DNA that doesn't match the DNA of the sample from the woman, as far as I'm concerned that partially eliminates them from suspicion. DNA doesn't lie if it's been properly tested, and they repeated the tests with the same result.

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

Problem is, DNA can degrade if mixed. Meanwhile, there's other evidence available.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Yeah, on balance you're probably right. I've been reading up on it here (http://www.aclu.org/privacy/genetic/14995pub20031106.html). They list all the ways DNA evidence can get screwed up. I gather the problem with mixing isn't that it degrades the DNA (DNA doesn't fall apart if you mix two sources of it together), but that it can cause human interpretation errors. The link has a story about a case like that:

Misinterpretation of DNA tests led to the false conviction of Timothy Durham in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Durham was convicted of raping an eleven-year-old girl and sentenced to 3,000 years in prison, despite having produced 11 alibi witnesses who placed him in another state at the time of the crime. The prosecution's case rested almost entirely on a DNA test, which showed that Durham's genotype matched that of the semen donor. Post-conviction DNA testing showed that Durham should have been excluded as a possible suspect, and re-analysis of the initial test showed that the misinterpretation arose from the difficulty of separating mixed samples. The lab had failed to separate completely the male and female DNA from the semen stain, and the combination of alleles from the two sources produced a genotype that could have included Durham's. Durham was released from prison in 1997 after serving 4 years in prison.