Guest Post by The Zman
The other day, I ran across this story in the sports pages. The sporting news often resembles the police blotter, so this is not a unique news item. I usually skip these stories, but something about it peaked my curiosity. The accused in this case is a college football player charged with “sexual assault” along with some other crimes. Like most people, I hear the word sexual assault and I think rape, but then I remember the mountain of rape hoaxes on the college campus and I’m immediately skeptical.
In this case, the player is charged with two counts of fourth degree sexual assault, crimes resulting from the cops trying to arrest him and underage drinking. Sandbagging is the standard procedure these days so even the smallest crime ends up in a litany of charges. Because cops and prosecutors are mostly incompetent, they use the sheer mass of the system to bludgeon those caught up in the system. The idea is to bully the accused into taking a deal, which makes life easier for the cops and prosecutors.
Of course, the charge that will ruin the kid’s life is the sexual assault charge. Looking at the news story from when it happened, you get to see the absurdity of the charges. In Michigan, fourth degree sexual assault is basically aggressive touching, at least when it is between adults. It is always leveled at males, who get into some sort of beef with a female. Two fully clothed people on a city street are not engaging in anything sexual, but that does not matter. It is the go-to charge against young males in an altercation with a female.
Common law defined rape as unlawful intercourse by a man against a woman who is not his wife by force or threat and against her will. These days, rape is legally defined as unlawful intercourse against the will of the victim. In other words, the sex of the parties and the use of force are no longer relevant. Attempted rape, of course, is a failed attempt to commit rape. These are concepts that everyone understands, with deep roots in western legal tradition. They don’t require further explanation as the definitions are clear.
Assault is a bit different. Most people think of assault as physical contact where one person causes bodily harm to another. That’s not the legal definition of assault. In the law, assault is an intentional act by one person that creates an apprehension in another of an imminent harmful or offensive contact. Put another way, assault is when one person does something to cause another to think they are under threat of harm. What most people think of as assault, the law defines as battery, which is why you hear the phrase “assault and battery” in crime stories.
The point here is the law has had, for a very long time, a definition for forcible sex, assault and battery. A reasonable person, particularly someone on a jury, could review the facts and testimony and render a judgement. That should have been enough to cover what happened in this Michigan case and all others like it. Maybe the accused was threatening the woman and she had a reasonable concern for her safety. That’s assault. It is patently absurd to attach sex to it, raising the specter of rape in the minds of the public and a potential jury.
But that is where we find ourselves in the modern age. We have expanded the definition of a sex crime to include anything that may give a woman the blues. The lunatics in charge encourage young women on the college campus to scream “fourth degree sexual assault” whenever they feel bad about a random hookup, which they are encouraged to do by the same lunatics. Inevitably, these cases end up dismissed, but you still have the waste of money and the ruination of reputations.
The fact is, there is no such thing as a sexual assault. The law often conjures terms, from commonly understood words, that have meanings well outside of the component words. It is almost always a hangover from the past. In the case of “sexual assault” it is a modern attempt to alter the relationship between the sexes. When was the last time you heard a woman charged with sexual assault or a man charged when the victim is another man? The answer is most likely never as it almost rarely happens.
It is yet another example of how the Left carves out authoritarian safe spaces, so it can run wild against its enemies. The war on men would not get very far in a fair fight, because as Hitler said, there’s too much fraternizing with the enemy. The expansive use of the phrase “sexual assault” in the laws allows every deranged co-ed in America a free shot at a male that vexes them. It’s how the mentally unbalanced young woman at Columbia was indulged well past the point where it was clear she needed psychiatric help.
Rape is a very serious crime, which is why we send rapists away for long stretches in nasty prisons. Attempted rape should be similarly punished as we know that sex criminals can never be rehabilitated. This is where penal colonies make a lot of sense. Sexual assault, on the other hand, is a made up crime that is entirely political. It is a weapon used by deranged feminists and lazy cops to bludgeon young men for the crime of having a penis. It’s also why these cases have such a startling low conviction rate. It’s also why so many young women put themselves in dangerous situations.
That last bit is the worst result of the expansive use of sex crimes in the war between the sexes. Young women are led to believe the law is a force field around them, insulating them from their idiotic decisions. That leads young women to going out, getting knee-walking drunk with strange men and then waking up with regrets, if they are lucky. You can bet that some portion of the “rape” problem in Europe has something to do with unattached young woman staggering around wasted at all hours of the night.
For just about forever, humans understood that boys and girls were different, requiring different rules for both. Women need to take care to protect themselves from men and men need to take care of their women, so they are not assaulted by strange men. That is biological reality and the only way our species survives. The abuse of sexual assault is just one of many examples of what happens when the Assemblywomen becomes a law book, rather than a comedy.
Especially appreciate the definitions; assault was a good one. Maybe it should be called ‘pre-assault’, like pre-crime in Minority Report.
AFAIK, since the days William the Conqueror instituted common law, assault has always been the threat of attack and battery the actual attack. Some various jurisdictions have always included the battery in defining term “assault” and some have not to allow for separate charges and different elements for each action.
IMO,, which carries absolutely no legal influence outside of a jury I may end up being on, the term “sexual assault” should carry an element of illegal sexual battery along with it to be valid.
Keep that in mind if you end up on a jury, you make the final decision in legal matters whether you realize it or not.
Afaletes are promised white pussy if they run and dribble good. Mud sharks think it is like on TV and not like in Dindustan. When it gets like the ghetto the hos don’t like it.
Speaking as a rational woman, and from past experience, here’s what I can say:
In my younger days (under 25) of course I went out with my friends and sometimes drank too much. Who didn’t at that age? But, I always found people looked out for each other. In other words, my friends, and even other bar patrons (men) would be on the lookout for shady behavior of would-be rapists who thought they could lure me (or my friends) into their car for a little joy ride somewhere. If we, in our idiot drunkeness, decided to go home with some whacko, our friends would step up and say NO WAY and bundle us out the door and home. I believe the term for this is “cock block”. And while it’s a derogatory term coming from the would-be perpetrator, it served a purpose to keep our group safe.
Being outside, smoking a cigarette in the parking lot of the bar, yes, some idiots got handsy. All we had to do was yell and other men would step up and the moron would be shoved away, punched, and/or escorted off the premises. End of story. Now, if any well-meaning other men (or women for that matter) attempted the same thing, the cops would be called and THEY would go to jail for trying to stop this.
I have seen many a local fool banned for life from local drinking establishments for bad behavior including unwanted touching and vulgar talk to female patrons. Everyone knows who they are, and everyone knows to avoid them like the plague.
No one uses common sense anymore. And the amount of binge-drinking on college campuses and local bars is astounding. Watch HBO’s documentary “Risky Drinking”. There’s an episode about a young lady who thinks she drinks 5-6 drinks a night when in reality it’s more like 19. NINETEEN drinks. This is during some kind of party event in the city (Chicago I think) and the streets are crazy with tons of people. It does show her friends escorting her to a cab after a crying jag, but what if they didn’t see her leave? Would some metro-sexual, neutered male even give a rat’s ass if he saw her being bum rushed into someone’s car or into an alley? Doubtful.
My ex, who is 50, and is from Georgia, always had an eye out when we were in the city. I walked on the inside of the sidewalk, him on the outside. He always watched the interactions of the younger men and women, and often would just say “hey, is this guy bothering you?” or “Do you know him?”. Most of the time it was fine, but sometimes the woman would be grateful for the intervention. And the idiot who was bothering her would just mysteriously fade off.
Why is it that so many people are so adverse to just asking a question? Sometimes just watching a group, and them knowing your watching, is enough to prevent stupidity.
But of course, in today’s sue-happy world, no good deed goes unpunished.
A nice comment. Good points.
Men have become adverse to helping because they can’t know whether they will wind up being blamed for the woman’s poor decisions if they stick their nose in business that isn’t their own.
If you intercede in a fight you are more likely to be charged than you are to be thanked. Those changes were of course made in the interest of “protecting women”.
This elephant in the room is getting so big its starting to get talked about here. Its not only other men being scared of being blamed for helping. Its also them not thinking the women are worth white knight helping. Chivalry was a 2 way street, now its a state mandate with education campaigns designed to shame men. Im seeing not only a lot of old divorced guys thinking western women are not worth the effort or risk of false accusations to try with, but now many young guys too. They travel to countries where women cant call talking to them sexual assault or a hate crime as in some places now. Also, the women are slim, feminine and dont engage in all these things. These laws will only make more men more wary of women, now not just for settling down with, but also even playing around with. Good time to buy catfood shares, as native birthrate take another step down.