Are Women Oppressed in the West?

[Lexten]

1) Rape victims undergo a sexual assault nurse examination and evidence such as semen and hair samples are collected. Then all that has to be done is a DNA test or something similar to determine if man X had sexual intercourse with the woman.
2) It's a yes or no question. Pretty simple.
3) I assume if you wanted to stop so much that you then pressed charges you would physically push the person away/shout rather than quietly withdrawing consent.

1) It's not that simple in Real Life. It's not like in CSI. There might not be any DNA. The victim might have showered or cleaned heresl up, destroying or removing any DNA evidence. DNA evidence isn't foolproof either.
2) In real life, there's shades of gray, and there's more to consent than a simple yes or no. Was consent given under duress? Was the person old enough or sober enough to be able to consent?
3) Not always. The person might freeze up, or be too afraid to struggle against the person who disregarded the withdrawal of consent. It happens.

1) There's still DNA from the victim's clothes, where the rape took place, etc. And considering that DNA is different in everybody except identical twins and it has been used as evidence by police for decades, it's pretty foolproof.
2) Anything given under duress is invalid, that's pretty intuitive. If the person is too young to be able to legally give consent then the crime becomes paedophilia not rape. And if you consented verbally and through body language and weren't unconscious then it's drunken sex not rape. Again pretty intuitive.
3) Then withdraw your consent loudly/shout.

[The Intergalactic Universe Corporation]

Women are not oppressed. They just think and work differently from men, and thus their lives have differences. If people say women should be able to get the same pay as a man in the jobs she takes, you have to factor in skill and other factors like experience and background in education. Ask a woman to do heavy manual labour and ask for equal pay. Unless she proves she can perform as well as other men, she will not be paid the same due to the fact that women have naturally weaker physical strength overall. Face it, feminists, women are not oppressed. It is just that men and women are different

[New Edom]

Women are not oppressed. They just think and work differently from men, and thus their lives have differences. If people say women should be able to get the same pay as a man in the jobs she takes, you have to factor in skill and other factors like experience and background in education. Ask a woman to do heavy manual labour and ask for equal pay. Unless she proves she can perform as well as other men, she will not be paid the same due to the fact that women have naturally weaker physical strength overall. Face it, feminists, women are not oppressed. It is just that men and women are different

Sure. Men and women are different in a number of key ways. For instance they even mate differnty--indeed they must. Mating for men requires relatively little of them from pure bioogical necessity, mating requires everything from women in terms of pure biological necessity. (at LEAST 9 months worth potentially) By contrast, the actual approach to mating requires different efforts from men and women. Generally at its most basic a man must demonstrate his capability and personal strength in some manner while a woman must demonstrate her good health and fitness for motherhood. Civilizations wrap all manner of complications around that, but nearly every species which is sexually dimorphic has these contrasts in some manner or other. So really, there is no sexual double stanard in the sense feminists mean--in that it is just socially constructed. It has its origins in the necessities of biology. Modern society of course has the means to challenge that, so really it's the other way around--as necessitis have changed we have found ourselves reexamining what makes relationships work, and stripping away the traditions to do that is a difficult process.

So when you look at how we interact as people, in just a few decades we went from generally having clear roles as men and women to having men and women still wanting intimate relationships but then finding that theya re also competitors for resources more directly than ever and required to cooperate in unforseen ways. Feminism in my opinon has become an ideology that does a poor job of analyzing this.

[The Intergalactic Universe Corporation]

Women are not oppressed. They just think and work differently from men, and thus their lives have differences. If people say women should be able to get the same pay as a man in the jobs she takes, you have to factor in skill and other factors like experience and background in education. Ask a woman to do heavy manual labour and ask for equal pay. Unless she proves she can perform as well as other men, she will not be paid the same due to the fact that women have naturally weaker physical strength overall. Face it, feminists, women are not oppressed. It is just that men and women are different

Sure. Men and women are different in a number of key ways. For instance they even mate differnty--indeed they must. Mating for men requires relatively little of them from pure bioogical necessity, mating requires everything from women in terms of pure biological necessity. (at LEAST 9 months worth potentially) By contrast, the actual approach to mating requires different efforts from men and women. Generally at its most basic a man must demonstrate his capability and personal strength in some manner while a woman must demonstrate her good health and fitness for motherhood. Civilizations wrap all manner of complications around that, but nearly every species which is sexually dimorphic has these contrasts in some manner or other. So really, there is no sexual double stanard in the sense feminists mean--in that it is just socially constructed. It has its origins in the necessities of biology. Modern society of course has the means to challenge that, so really it's the other way around--as necessitis have changed we have found ourselves reexamining what makes relationships work, and stripping away the traditions to do that is a difficult process.

So when you look at how we interact as people, in just a few decades we went from generally having clear roles as men and women to having men and women still wanting intimate relationships but then finding that theya re also competitors for resources more directly than ever and required to cooperate in unforseen ways. Feminism in my opinon has become an ideology that does a poor job of analyzing this.

Excellent statement.

[Jello Biafra]

1) Or you were raped, but not by the specific man being accused of it.
2) Or there was legitimate confusion as to whether or not consent was given.
3) Or consent was given and withdrawn, but he didn't hear the withdrawal.

1) Rape victims undergo a sexual assault nurse examination and evidence such as semen and hair samples are collected. Then all that has to be done is a DNA test or something similar to determine if man X had sexual intercourse with the woman.
2) It's a yes or no question. Pretty simple.
3) I assume if you wanted to stop so much that you then pressed charges you would physically push the person away/shout rather than quietly withdrawing consent.

If there is DNA evidence then the man just has to claim the sex was consensual, which would lead to one of the other explanations.
If there is not DNA evidence then he could simply deny it was him.

[Frenline Delpha]

1) Rape victims undergo a sexual assault nurse examination and evidence such as semen and hair samples are collected. Then all that has to be done is a DNA test or something similar to determine if man X had sexual intercourse with the woman.
2) It's a yes or no question. Pretty simple.
3) I assume if you wanted to stop so much that you then pressed charges you would physically push the person away/shout rather than quietly withdrawing consent.

If there is DNA evidence then the man just has to claim the sex was consensual, which would lead to one of the other explanations.
If there is not DNA evidence then he could simply deny it was him.

Which is why rape is a hard crime to prove. We already knew that.

[Solaas]

A little digression
@Jello Biafra - can you explain such bizarre thing from an article in the link in your signature?
http://www.bristoliww.org.uk/a-womyns-p ... her-union/

My manager was essentially a bully who, having founded and run the organisation for years, acted like its Supreme Leader. I had countless problems with many ridiculously basic work rights, such as having a written contract. I decided to confront this person and submitted a grievance with the support of a fellow worker from my branch. It was an incredibly stressful experience, made even more troubling by the fact that the bully manager was a womyn like myself, and she self-identified as being being politically and socially aware, and a member of oppressed communities. Despite the sleepless nights and the stress, I decided to go ahead with it and kick ass.

And:

Once again, I rejected the patriarchal voices in my head telling me to get back on the right track and be a good girl, and made the conscious decision I would carry on being a Bad Ass.

Frankly, that seems to me a collection of buzzwords unrelated to the event: this has a lot to do with capitalism but almost nothing to do with patriarchy and Feminism: worth noting that the bully manager was a womyn, too. Worth noting that when it comes to challenging employers then the "stay quiet" attitude is a kind pressure felt by all low-level (and even middle-level) workers under a capitalistic system, regardless their sex, gender and sexual orientation - so hardly that's related to patriarchy - worth noting that patriarchy is different from capitalism and it predates it.
I personally find really silly and harmful this confusion between Feminism and trade unionism, that's hurting, because when it come to fighting for the rights of workers then sex, gender and sexual orientation shouldn't play a role, there's the real and very huge risk of creating division among fellow workers.

[Jello Biafra]

They have one spot at the university for which there is a test. A woman scores 20, I score 18. They deduct 5 points from her score because she is a woman and give me the spot. Sexism against women?

Now change the genders, sexism against men?

Yes, in both instances there is sexism.
How about a scenario where both test scores are 20? Picking the woman in the name of diversity is not the same as sexism against men, as the woman is as qualified and could've been picked as the result of a coin flip.

Only if men and women are the same. It is 100% scientifically proven that men and women have different hormones in their bodies. There is strong scientific evidence of gendered behavior in babies and monkeys.

Do you think that babies & monkeys have been taught patriarchal gender norms?

Babies are taught gender constructs and stereotyped pretty much from birth, such as this.
As far as monkeys go, I'm not sure which species of monkey you're talking about. It does appear that various species of monkeys and apes have cultures, and thus can have gendered behavior play out in one culture and not another.

Yes, but less likely. There are two parts to the gender norm:
- Women are allowed to ask for help more than men
- Men are obliged to help women more than women have to help women and women have to help men

The first part makes it more likely for women to ask for help in general. The second part makes it more likely for women to expect/demand help from men and for men to be more willingly to help women than men.

Do you have a source that says that this in particular is a gender norm?

Not when the selection method selects that trait away. I think that a reasonable argument can be made that CEOs are selected for ideas that other CEOs think improves the bottom line. More worker rights or more part-time work doesn't seem to be part of that set of ideas.

Perhaps not, but in cases where employees trade off relaxing their work schedules instead of getting raises, it isn't necessary to discriminate based on gender when deciding if this is okay or not.

The problem with this reasoning is that we have actual counterexamples where the opposite is true.

Take abortion. Your logic would suggest that women are more likely to have heard of women who benefited from abortion, so they would support it more than men. Yet actual surveys show the opposite: more women oppose abortion than men.

I simply don't believe the link between an experience and political positions about those experiences is that strong. I've known plenty of women with tough attitudes about quickly getting back to work and plenty of men who wanted to give a woman plenty of time to recover.

I'd say abortion is different because women thinking of aborting rarely talk about it with all of the other women around them, whereas pregnant women will hear the childbirth stories of other women completely unsolicited.

Why do you think it is that men are more likely to be okay with abortion than women?

If she does reduce her work hours to care, while the man works more hours; then we are basically back at the same initial scenario. The man sacrificing time spent on care to spend more time on providing and the woman doing the opposite. Then she misses out on work opportunities and he misses out on child-bonding opportunities.

It wouldn't be so much as reducing her work hours as her not having the option of finding a second job (or taking an internship), should she want one, because she already has one at home.

That depends on how you define 'feminist movement.' I don't know and don't particularly care about the entire group of people who answer 'yes' to 'do you consider yourself a feminist.'

I do care about the feminists who get in the media, make laws, lobby, run feminist organizations & do advocacy work, etc. The latter group is IMO clearly dominated by certain kinds of feminists, who share 99% disagreement with people like Young and Sommers.

I suppose I see your point, though it reminds me of someone who says they like the Beatles and Nirvana but don't like rock music because they don't like the bands that are popular today.

You can say "I believe that something terrible was done to you" and also "I believe that [Man X] is innocent until proven guilty, and that there must be some other explanation".

Both statements have assumptions that harm your objectivity. It's psychologically hard to walk back a statement, so once you make such a statement, you automatically condemn yourself to some subconscious tunnel vision.

The police should not fall victim to this, but rather focus on asking about the facts. Telling an accuser what (might have) happened is the opposite of good police work. It leads to a situation where alleged victims get steered into a confession that matches prejudice of the police officer. Note that it's very unfortunate that feminists have been teaching women that normal police questions like 'what were you wearing' should be interpreted as an accusation. Because of this, women become less able to give good testimony and thus the chance increases for an rapist to not get convicted.

If the alleged victim needs mental support, this needs to be done in such a way to preserve the quality of her testimony as much as possible and thus with no judgments either way.

We know that police officers sometimes are skeptical of the claims of women who report rape even at the outset of an investigation. Even a neutral 'I don't know what happened, so I will reserve judgment until I investigate further' would be an improvement over this.
More importantly, those of us in society don't need to assign guilt or innocence in order to get rape victims help. That's the job of the courts. We can get rape victims counseling and other social support without outwordly condemning the particular person who is accused.
Keep in mind that in this thread we have people who are upset that people don't believe men when they say that they were raped by women. So should we maintain this skeptical attitude towards men as well, or is it that only men are to be believed?

[Jello Biafra]

I'm not sure that there'd be a difference in ethics between how one behaves with men and how one behaves with women.

Of course you don't, because you are pro-feminist and see it as so good that no real criticism can stick to it, as far as I can see. So it seems more useful to just decide that you have your point of view, I have mine, and ultimately we'll see which is stronger.

What do you want me to say? "You're right, of course there should be sexist differences in ethical interactions."?

[Jello Biafra]

Sure, but we're talking about a hypothetical future where the Duluth model isn't used.

The justice system would still be biased regardless of whether or not the Duluth model isn't used.

Not in this particular way; if men are not automatically assumed to be the aggressor this itself would be an important step forward.

Or alternatively, they will both be the victims and nothing will be done, even though one of them has a much higher likelihood of killing the other.

Or alternatively, society recognizes it as an issue that affects both sexes and that governments begin to actually address why domestic violence happens and provide support for victims regardless of the genitalia they have.

Why do you think domestic violence happens?

Yes, and this is a problem.

You haven't answered the question. I asked "what is a man supposed to do when a woman hits him".

I don't have an answer. Sometimes men benefit from social support.
Ideally there'd be more than this.

Sure, because the patriar- excuse me, the men who make the laws won't make laws to build them, and because the patriar- excuse me, the men who have the vast majority if the money won't donate to charities to build them.

Because feminists oppose the construction of men's shelters. Because feminists don't want government resources directed towards people that they don't acknowledge as victims. And as women in some places constitute the largest voting demographics, it is their voices who are heard the most.

This doesn't explain why feminists would be so powerful, since most women are not feminists. This also wouldn't explain why feminists would be able to make policy at the national level.

Do you personally believe people when they say they were raped?

If the evidence supports it? Sure.

What about if you don't have access to the evidence?

I ask because doing a google search for 'Does Society Believe Rape Victims?' (without quotes) leads to a bunch of sources saying no, society doesn't believe rape victims.

Interesting that this was the fourth item listed. But looking through, I see a bunch of sources that say no. But a lot of these sources are also feminist sources. So there is a lot of bias in this.

Of course there's bias. Do non-feminists care if rape victims are believed? (If they're female rape victims, that is.)

It does matter to me, and there are other individual feminists who also care about the issue.

No. Your lack of actual concern as demonstrated in your snarky remark about resources for male victims of domestic violence, and your downplaying of society's belief that only one sex can ever be considered victims of rape says more than you could ever hope to achieve with written words.

If this is what constitutes "liberal" feminism then I am glad only a minority of women are feminists.

My remark about resources for male victims of domestic violence was hardly snarky; it is a fact that men make up the vast majority of elected officials and control the vast majority of wealth. It is their decisions that determine whether or not resources are given to male victims of domestic violence.

[Jello Biafra]

A little digression
@Jello Biafra - can you explain such bizarre thing from an article in the link in your signature?
http://www.bristoliww.org.uk/a-womyns-p ... her-union/

My manager was essentially a bully who, having founded and run the organisation for years, acted like its Supreme Leader. I had countless problems with many ridiculously basic work rights, such as having a written contract. I decided to confront this person and submitted a grievance with the support of a fellow worker from my branch. It was an incredibly stressful experience, made even more troubling by the fact that the bully manager was a womyn like myself, and she self-identified as being being politically and socially aware, and a member of oppressed communities. Despite the sleepless nights and the stress, I decided to go ahead with it and kick ass.

And:

Once again, I rejected the patriarchal voices in my head telling me to get back on the right track and be a good girl, and made the conscious decision I would carry on being a Bad Ass.

Frankly, that seems to me a collection of buzzwords unrelated to the event: this has a lot to do with capitalism but almost nothing to do with patriarchy and Feminism: worth noting that the bully manager was a womyn, too. Worth noting that when it comes to challenging employers then the "stay quiet" attitude is a kind pressure felt by all low-level (and even middle-level) workers under a capitalistic system, regardless their sex, gender and sexual orientation - so hardly that's related to patriarchy - worth noting that patriarchy is different from capitalism and it predates it.
I personally find really silly and harmful this confusion between Feminism and trade unionism, that's hurting, because when it come to fighting for the rights of workers then sex, gender and sexual orientation shouldn't play a role, there's the real and very huge risk of creating division among fellow workers.

Capitalism is different from patriarchy, however it is the economic form in which patriarchy currently asserts itself. Getting rid of patriarchy would by definition mean getting rid of capitalism.

[Frenline Delpha]

A little digression
@Jello Biafra - can you explain such bizarre thing from an article in the link in your signature?
http://www.bristoliww.org.uk/a-womyns-p ... her-union/



And:


Frankly, that seems to me a collection of buzzwords unrelated to the event: this has a lot to do with capitalism but almost nothing to do with patriarchy and Feminism: worth noting that the bully manager was a womyn, too. Worth noting that when it comes to challenging employers then the "stay quiet" attitude is a kind pressure felt by all low-level (and even middle-level) workers under a capitalistic system, regardless their sex, gender and sexual orientation - so hardly that's related to patriarchy - worth noting that patriarchy is different from capitalism and it predates it.
I personally find really silly and harmful this confusion between Feminism and trade unionism, that's hurting, because when it come to fighting for the rights of workers then sex, gender and sexual orientation shouldn't play a role, there's the real and very huge risk of creating division among fellow workers.

Capitalism is different from patriarchy, however it is the economic form in which patriarchy currently asserts itself. Getting rid of patriarchy would by definition mean getting rid of capitalism.

Patriarchy, yet a woman has a chance of becoming president. Yep, your logic is sound.

[Jello Biafra]

Patriarchy, yet a woman has a chance of becoming president. Yep, your logic is sound.

Patriarchy is a system in which males hold the vast majority of political power; holding 100% of it isn't necessary.

[Solaas]

Capitalism is different from patriarchy, however it is the economic form in which patriarchy currently asserts itself. Getting rid of patriarchy would by definition mean getting rid of capitalism.

Ancient Greece, societies with economy based on slavery, Song's mercantilist China, XV-XVII century mercantilism in Europe and even Soviet communism had been patriarchies - getting rid of such economic forms didn't result in getting rid of patriarchy.
If you wish to getting rid of capitalism why do you agree with quotas for women in corporate boards? It's proved that with more women within the corporate boards the corporations are more efficient: that means making capitalism more efficient.

[Gravlen]

1) It's not that simple in Real Life. It's not like in CSI. There might not be any DNA. The victim might have showered or cleaned heresl up, destroying or removing any DNA evidence. DNA evidence isn't foolproof either.
2) In real life, there's shades of gray, and there's more to consent than a simple yes or no. Was consent given under duress? Was the person old enough or sober enough to be able to consent?
3) Not always. The person might freeze up, or be too afraid to struggle against the person who disregarded the withdrawal of consent. It happens.

1) There's still DNA from the victim's clothes, where the rape took place, etc. And considering that DNA is different in everybody except identical twins and it has been used as evidence by police for decades, it's pretty foolproof.

1) DNA from the victim's clothes?
Also, here's an example on how the supposedly foolproof evidence led to miscarriages of justice and innocent men being convicted of rape
Important bit of general information:

DNA analysis has risen above all other forensic techniques for good reason: “No [other] forensic method has been rigorously shown able to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source,” the National Research Council wrote in an influential 2009 report calling out inadequate methods and stating the need for stricter standards throughout the forensic sciences.

The problem, as a growing number of academics see it, is that science is only as reliable as the manner in which we use it—and in the case of DNA, the manner in which we use it is evolving rapidly. Consider the following hypothetical scenario: Detectives find a pool of blood on the floor of an apartment where a man has just been murdered. A technician, following proper anticontamination protocol, takes the blood to the local crime lab for processing. Blood-typing shows that the sample did not come from the victim; most likely, it belongs to the perpetrator. A day later, the detectives arrest a suspect. The suspect agrees to provide blood for testing. A pair of well-trained crime-lab analysts, double-checking each other’s work, establish a match between the two samples. The detectives can now place the suspect at the scene of the crime.

When Alec Jeffreys devised his DNA-typing technique, in the mid-1980s, this was as far as the science extended: side-by-side comparison tests. Sizable sample against sizable sample. The state of technology at the time mandated it—you couldn’t test the DNA unless you had plenty of biological material (blood, semen, mucus) to work with.

But today, most large labs have access to cutting-edge extraction kits capable of obtaining usable DNA from the smallest of samples, like so-called touch DNA (a smeared thumbprint on a window or a speck of spit invisible to the eye), and of identifying individual DNA profiles in complex mixtures, which include genetic material from multiple contributors, as was the case with the vaginal swab in the Sutton case.

These advances have greatly expanded the universe of forensic evidence. But they’ve also made the forensic analyst’s job more difficult. To understand how complex mixtures are analyzed—and how easily those analyses can go wrong—it may be helpful to recall a little bit of high-school biology: We share 99.9 percent of our genes with every other human on the planet. However, in specific locations along each strand of our DNA, the genetic code repeats itself in ways that vary from one individual to the next. Each of those variations, or alleles, is shared with a relatively small portion of the global population. The best way to determine whether a drop of blood belongs to a serial killer or to the president of the United States is to compare alleles at as many locations as possible.

Think of it this way: There are many thousands of paintings with blue backgrounds, but fewer with blue backgrounds and yellow flowers, and fewer still with blue backgrounds, yellow flowers, and a mounted knight in the foreground. When a forensic analyst compares alleles at 13 locations—the standard for most labs—the odds of two unrelated people matching at all of them are less than one in 1 billion.

With mixtures, the math gets a lot more complicated: The number of alleles in a sample doubles in the case of two contributors, and triples in the case of three. Now, rather than a painting, the DNA profile is like a stack of transparency films. The analyst must determine how many contributors are involved, and which alleles belong to whom. If the sample is very small or degraded—the two often go hand in hand—alleles might drop out in some locations, or appear to exist where they do not. Suddenly, we are dealing not so much with an objective science as an interpretive art.

A groundbreaking study by Itiel Dror, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, and Greg Hampikian, a biology and criminal-justice professor at Boise State University, illustrates exactly how subjective the reading of complex mixtures can be. In 2010, Dror and Hampikian obtained paperwork from a 2002 Georgia rape trial that hinged on DNA typing: The main evidence implicating the defendant was the accusation of a co-defendant who was testifying in exchange for a reduced sentence. Two forensic scientists had concluded that the defendant could not be excluded as a contributor to the mixture of sperm from inside the victim, meaning his DNA was a possible match; the defendant was found guilty.

Dror and Hampikian gave the DNA evidence to 17 lab technicians for examination, withholding context about the case to ensure unbiased results. All of the techs were experienced, with an average of nine years in the field. Dror and Hampikian asked them to determine whether the mixture included DNA from the defendant.

In 2011, the results of the experiment were made public: Only one of the 17 lab technicians concurred that the defendant could not be excluded as a contributor. Twelve told Dror and Hampikian that the DNA was exclusionary, and four said that it was inconclusive. In other words, had any one of those 16 scientists been responsible for the original DNA analysis, the rape trial could have played out in a radically different way. Toward the end of the study, Dror and Hampikian quote the early DNA-testing pioneer Peter Gill, who once noted, “If you show 10 colleagues a mixture, you will probably end up with 10 different answers” as to the identity of the contributor. (The study findings are now at the center of the defendant’s motion for a new trial.)

“Ironically, you have a technology that was meant to help eliminate subjectivity in forensics,” Erin Murphy, a law professor at NYU, told me recently. “But when you start to drill down deeper into the way crime laboratories operate today, you see that the subjectivity is still there: Standards vary, training levels vary, quality varies.”

Last year, Murphy published a book called Inside the Cell: The Dark Side of Forensic DNA, which recounts dozens of cases of DNA typing gone terribly wrong. Some veer close to farce, such as the 15-year hunt for the Phantom of Heilbronn, whose DNA had been found at more than 40 crime scenes in Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s. The DNA in question turned out to belong not to a serial killer, but to an Austrian factory worker who made testing swabs used by police throughout the region. And some are tragic, like the tale of Dwayne Jackson, an African American teenager who pleaded guilty to robbery in 2003 after being presented with damning DNA evidence, and was exonerated years later, in 2011, after a police department in Nevada admitted that its lab had accidentally swapped Jackson’s DNA with the real culprit’s.

Most troubling, Murphy details how quickly even a trace of DNA can now become the foundation of a case. In 2012, police in California arrested Lukis Anderson, a homeless man with a rap sheet of nonviolent crimes, on charges of murdering the millionaire Raveesh Kumra at his mansion in the foothills outside San Jose. The case against Anderson started when police matched biological matter found under Kumra’s fingernails to Anderson’s DNA in a database. Anderson was held in jail for five months before his lawyer was able to produce records showing that Anderson had been in detox at a local hospital at the time of the killing; it turned out that the same paramedics who responded to the distress call from Kumra’s mansion had treated Anderson earlier that night, and inadvertently transferred his DNA to the crime scene via an oxygen-monitoring device placed on Kumra’s hand.

To Murphy, Anderson’s case demonstrates a formidable problem. Contamination is an obvious hazard when it comes to DNA analysis. But at least contamination can be prevented with care and proper technique. DNA transfer—the migration of cells from person to person, and between people and objects—is inevitable when we touch, speak, do the laundry. A 1996 study showed that sperm cells from a single stain on one item of clothing made their way onto every other item of clothing in the washer. And because we all shed different amounts of cells, the strongest DNA profile on an object doesn’t always correspond to the person who most recently touched it. I could pick up a knife at 10 in the morning, but an analyst testing the handle that day might find a stronger and more complete DNA profile from my wife, who was using it four nights earlier. Or the analyst might find a profile of someone who never touched the knife at all. One recent study asked participants to shake hands with a partner for two minutes and then hold a knife; when the DNA on the knives was analyzed, the partner was identified as a contributor in 85 percent of cases, and in 20 percent as the main or sole contributor.

Given rates of transfer, the mere presence of DNA at a crime scene shouldn’t be enough for a prosecutor to obtain a conviction. Context is needed. What worries experts like Murphy is that advancements in DNA testing are enabling ever more emphasis on ever less substantial evidence. A new technique known as low-copy-number analysis can derive a full DNA profile from as little as 10 trillionths of a gram of genetic material, by copying DNA fragments into a sample large enough for testing. The technique not only carries a higher risk of sample contamination and allele dropout, but could also implicate someone who never came close to the crime scene. Given the growing reliance on the codis database—which allows police to use DNA samples to search for possible suspects, rather than just to verify the involvement of existing suspects—the need to consider exculpatory evidence is greater than ever.

But Bicka Barlow, the San Francisco attorney, argues that the justice system now allows little room for caution. Techs at many state-funded crime labs have cops and prosecutors breathing down their necks for results—cops and prosecutors who may work in the same building. The threat of bias is everywhere. “An analyst might be told, ‘Okay, we have a suspect. Here’s the DNA. Look at the vaginal swab, and compare it to the suspect,’ ” Barlow says. “And they do, but they’re also being told all sorts of totally irrelevant things: The victim was 6 years old, the victim was traumatized, it was a hideous crime.”

Indeed, some analysts are incentivized to produce inculpatory forensic evidence: A recent study in the journal Criminal Justice Ethics notes that in North Carolina, state and local law-enforcement agencies operating crime labs are compensated $600 for DNA analysis that results in a conviction.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to point out that DNA evidence is being used in a system that’s had horrible problems with evidentiary reliability,” Murphy, who worked for several years as a public defender, told me. No dependable estimates exist for how many people have been falsely accused or imprisoned on the basis of faulty DNA evidence. But in Inside the Cell, she hints at the stakes: “The same broken criminal-justice system that created mass incarceration,” she writes, “and that has processed millions through its machinery without catching even egregious instances of wrongful conviction, now has a new and powerful weapon in its arsenal.”

2) Anything given under duress is invalid, that's pretty intuitive.

That's not the question, however. The question is, was it duress? What actually happened? If one party felt coerced, and the other party never intended to coerce - or so they say - was consent given?

If the person is too young to be able to legally give consent then the crime becomes paedophilia not rape.

Paedophilia is not a crime. Statutory rape, or sexual assault of a child, is.

And if you consented verbally and through body language and weren't unconscious then it's drunken sex not rape. Again pretty intuitive.

Intuitive, maybe, but not black and white. Was the victim unconscious? That can be a difficult question to answer. Did the victim's verbal statement actually constitute consent? Not always clear. How body language is interpreted may also be a difficult question.

Remember Brock Turner? At trial, he claimed that he had asked his victim if she wanted him to "finger" her, to which he claimed she said yes. He claimed she was not unconscious at the time. She could not remember anything herself. Yet he wasn't believed by the courts, so it wasn't just drunken sex, it was rape.

3) Then withdraw your consent loudly/shout.

Do you expect a person who've frozen up or is terrified to just ignore the state they're in? How does that work?

[Roosevetania]

One of the central points that popular modern feminists like to stress is that women are oppressed everywhere, and that this justifies just about any action that feminists choose to take. And to some progressives and liberals, even some conservatives, this is a given. I believed it for many years until I began to question it.

Emma Watson, one of the flag bearers for modern feminism, belongs to UN women and is one of their special envoys to the world. The United Nations describes oppression in this way:
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Now looking through the above, I'm not seeing a single article which states anyuthing atht women are denied inthe way of rights anywhere in the West. Women clearly have the right to pursue any career they want to, have th right to live where they want o, eat what they want to, belong to a religion if they want to, get an education, vote, run for office.

I have heard some talk about the fears women claim to have about harassment, abuse, rape and being belittled. That these fears are corroborated by popular entertainment and ideas. I have hard that unofficially there is proof that women are oppressed in spite of legal rights.

Well, here is an opportunity to prove it. Not with particular cases--history shows us injustice will probably always exist--but in some capacity that is broadly society: are women oppressed in the West?


I would like to ask the following of those who post here:
1. Please follow the rules and be polite. There is no need for discourtesy even if we disagree strongly. Let's focus on facts and thoughts.
2. Please provide a reason for your choice if you voted in the poll.
3, For the information of those posting here: I am an egalitarian but I have a lot of skepticism about how what appears to be the vocal majority of modern feminists conduct their activism and present their ideas and intend to challenge these ideas and activism in their different aspects.

I will not respond to posts that are trying to be accusatory or inflammatory.

Women a lot of times don't get equal pay for equal work.

[Frenline Delpha]

One of the central points that popular modern feminists like to stress is that women are oppressed everywhere, and that this justifies just about any action that feminists choose to take. And to some progressives and liberals, even some conservatives, this is a given. I believed it for many years until I began to question it.

Emma Watson, one of the flag bearers for modern feminism, belongs to UN women and is one of their special envoys to the world. The United Nations describes oppression in this way:
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Now looking through the above, I'm not seeing a single article which states anyuthing atht women are denied inthe way of rights anywhere in the West. Women clearly have the right to pursue any career they want to, have th right to live where they want o, eat what they want to, belong to a religion if they want to, get an education, vote, run for office.

I have heard some talk about the fears women claim to have about harassment, abuse, rape and being belittled. That these fears are corroborated by popular entertainment and ideas. I have hard that unofficially there is proof that women are oppressed in spite of legal rights.

Well, here is an opportunity to prove it. Not with particular cases--history shows us injustice will probably always exist--but in some capacity that is broadly society: are women oppressed in the West?


I would like to ask the following of those who post here:
1. Please follow the rules and be polite. There is no need for discourtesy even if we disagree strongly. Let's focus on facts and thoughts.
2. Please provide a reason for your choice if you voted in the poll.
3, For the information of those posting here: I am an egalitarian but I have a lot of skepticism about how what appears to be the vocal majority of modern feminists conduct their activism and present their ideas and intend to challenge these ideas and activism in their different aspects.

I will not respond to posts that are trying to be accusatory or inflammatory.

Women a lot of times don't get equal pay for equal work.

And my brain cells just died from this drivel.

[Jello Biafra]

Women a lot of times don't get equal pay for equal work.

And my brain cells just died from this drivel.

Ugh, you're not going to make me demonstrate the existence of a wage gap yet again, are you?

[Frenline Delpha]

And my brain cells just died from this drivel.

Ugh, you're not going to make me demonstrate the existence of a wage gap yet again, are you?

The existence of one is undeniable. However, discrimination plays no part in it. This is just another feminist rhetoric used to try and get people to support their cause. It's nothing but propaganda.

[Lexten]

1) There's still DNA from the victim's clothes, where the rape took place, etc. And considering that DNA is different in everybody except identical twins and it has been used as evidence by police for decades, it's pretty foolproof.

1) DNA from the victim's clothes?
Also, here's an example on how the supposedly foolproof evidence led to miscarriages of justice and innocent men being convicted of rape
Important bit of general information:

DNA analysis has risen above all other forensic techniques for good reason: “No [other] forensic method has been rigorously shown able to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source,” the National Research Council wrote in an influential 2009 report calling out inadequate methods and stating the need for stricter standards throughout the forensic sciences.

The problem, as a growing number of academics see it, is that science is only as reliable as the manner in which we use it—and in the case of DNA, the manner in which we use it is evolving rapidly. Consider the following hypothetical scenario: Detectives find a pool of blood on the floor of an apartment where a man has just been murdered. A technician, following proper anticontamination protocol, takes the blood to the local crime lab for processing. Blood-typing shows that the sample did not come from the victim; most likely, it belongs to the perpetrator. A day later, the detectives arrest a suspect. The suspect agrees to provide blood for testing. A pair of well-trained crime-lab analysts, double-checking each other’s work, establish a match between the two samples. The detectives can now place the suspect at the scene of the crime.

When Alec Jeffreys devised his DNA-typing technique, in the mid-1980s, this was as far as the science extended: side-by-side comparison tests. Sizable sample against sizable sample. The state of technology at the time mandated it—you couldn’t test the DNA unless you had plenty of biological material (blood, semen, mucus) to work with.

But today, most large labs have access to cutting-edge extraction kits capable of obtaining usable DNA from the smallest of samples, like so-called touch DNA (a smeared thumbprint on a window or a speck of spit invisible to the eye), and of identifying individual DNA profiles in complex mixtures, which include genetic material from multiple contributors, as was the case with the vaginal swab in the Sutton case.

These advances have greatly expanded the universe of forensic evidence. But they’ve also made the forensic analyst’s job more difficult. To understand how complex mixtures are analyzed—and how easily those analyses can go wrong—it may be helpful to recall a little bit of high-school biology: We share 99.9 percent of our genes with every other human on the planet. However, in specific locations along each strand of our DNA, the genetic code repeats itself in ways that vary from one individual to the next. Each of those variations, or alleles, is shared with a relatively small portion of the global population. The best way to determine whether a drop of blood belongs to a serial killer or to the president of the United States is to compare alleles at as many locations as possible.

Think of it this way: There are many thousands of paintings with blue backgrounds, but fewer with blue backgrounds and yellow flowers, and fewer still with blue backgrounds, yellow flowers, and a mounted knight in the foreground. When a forensic analyst compares alleles at 13 locations—the standard for most labs—the odds of two unrelated people matching at all of them are less than one in 1 billion.

With mixtures, the math gets a lot more complicated: The number of alleles in a sample doubles in the case of two contributors, and triples in the case of three. Now, rather than a painting, the DNA profile is like a stack of transparency films. The analyst must determine how many contributors are involved, and which alleles belong to whom. If the sample is very small or degraded—the two often go hand in hand—alleles might drop out in some locations, or appear to exist where they do not. Suddenly, we are dealing not so much with an objective science as an interpretive art.

A groundbreaking study by Itiel Dror, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, and Greg Hampikian, a biology and criminal-justice professor at Boise State University, illustrates exactly how subjective the reading of complex mixtures can be. In 2010, Dror and Hampikian obtained paperwork from a 2002 Georgia rape trial that hinged on DNA typing: The main evidence implicating the defendant was the accusation of a co-defendant who was testifying in exchange for a reduced sentence. Two forensic scientists had concluded that the defendant could not be excluded as a contributor to the mixture of sperm from inside the victim, meaning his DNA was a possible match; the defendant was found guilty.

Dror and Hampikian gave the DNA evidence to 17 lab technicians for examination, withholding context about the case to ensure unbiased results. All of the techs were experienced, with an average of nine years in the field. Dror and Hampikian asked them to determine whether the mixture included DNA from the defendant.

In 2011, the results of the experiment were made public: Only one of the 17 lab technicians concurred that the defendant could not be excluded as a contributor. Twelve told Dror and Hampikian that the DNA was exclusionary, and four said that it was inconclusive. In other words, had any one of those 16 scientists been responsible for the original DNA analysis, the rape trial could have played out in a radically different way. Toward the end of the study, Dror and Hampikian quote the early DNA-testing pioneer Peter Gill, who once noted, “If you show 10 colleagues a mixture, you will probably end up with 10 different answers” as to the identity of the contributor. (The study findings are now at the center of the defendant’s motion for a new trial.)

“Ironically, you have a technology that was meant to help eliminate subjectivity in forensics,” Erin Murphy, a law professor at NYU, told me recently. “But when you start to drill down deeper into the way crime laboratories operate today, you see that the subjectivity is still there: Standards vary, training levels vary, quality varies.”

Last year, Murphy published a book called Inside the Cell: The Dark Side of Forensic DNA, which recounts dozens of cases of DNA typing gone terribly wrong. Some veer close to farce, such as the 15-year hunt for the Phantom of Heilbronn, whose DNA had been found at more than 40 crime scenes in Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s. The DNA in question turned out to belong not to a serial killer, but to an Austrian factory worker who made testing swabs used by police throughout the region. And some are tragic, like the tale of Dwayne Jackson, an African American teenager who pleaded guilty to robbery in 2003 after being presented with damning DNA evidence, and was exonerated years later, in 2011, after a police department in Nevada admitted that its lab had accidentally swapped Jackson’s DNA with the real culprit’s.

Most troubling, Murphy details how quickly even a trace of DNA can now become the foundation of a case. In 2012, police in California arrested Lukis Anderson, a homeless man with a rap sheet of nonviolent crimes, on charges of murdering the millionaire Raveesh Kumra at his mansion in the foothills outside San Jose. The case against Anderson started when police matched biological matter found under Kumra’s fingernails to Anderson’s DNA in a database. Anderson was held in jail for five months before his lawyer was able to produce records showing that Anderson had been in detox at a local hospital at the time of the killing; it turned out that the same paramedics who responded to the distress call from Kumra’s mansion had treated Anderson earlier that night, and inadvertently transferred his DNA to the crime scene via an oxygen-monitoring device placed on Kumra’s hand.

To Murphy, Anderson’s case demonstrates a formidable problem. Contamination is an obvious hazard when it comes to DNA analysis. But at least contamination can be prevented with care and proper technique. DNA transfer—the migration of cells from person to person, and between people and objects—is inevitable when we touch, speak, do the laundry. A 1996 study showed that sperm cells from a single stain on one item of clothing made their way onto every other item of clothing in the washer. And because we all shed different amounts of cells, the strongest DNA profile on an object doesn’t always correspond to the person who most recently touched it. I could pick up a knife at 10 in the morning, but an analyst testing the handle that day might find a stronger and more complete DNA profile from my wife, who was using it four nights earlier. Or the analyst might find a profile of someone who never touched the knife at all. One recent study asked participants to shake hands with a partner for two minutes and then hold a knife; when the DNA on the knives was analyzed, the partner was identified as a contributor in 85 percent of cases, and in 20 percent as the main or sole contributor.

Given rates of transfer, the mere presence of DNA at a crime scene shouldn’t be enough for a prosecutor to obtain a conviction. Context is needed. What worries experts like Murphy is that advancements in DNA testing are enabling ever more emphasis on ever less substantial evidence. A new technique known as low-copy-number analysis can derive a full DNA profile from as little as 10 trillionths of a gram of genetic material, by copying DNA fragments into a sample large enough for testing. The technique not only carries a higher risk of sample contamination and allele dropout, but could also implicate someone who never came close to the crime scene. Given the growing reliance on the codis database—which allows police to use DNA samples to search for possible suspects, rather than just to verify the involvement of existing suspects—the need to consider exculpatory evidence is greater than ever.

But Bicka Barlow, the San Francisco attorney, argues that the justice system now allows little room for caution. Techs at many state-funded crime labs have cops and prosecutors breathing down their necks for results—cops and prosecutors who may work in the same building. The threat of bias is everywhere. “An analyst might be told, ‘Okay, we have a suspect. Here’s the DNA. Look at the vaginal swab, and compare it to the suspect,’ ” Barlow says. “And they do, but they’re also being told all sorts of totally irrelevant things: The victim was 6 years old, the victim was traumatized, it was a hideous crime.”

Indeed, some analysts are incentivized to produce inculpatory forensic evidence: A recent study in the journal Criminal Justice Ethics notes that in North Carolina, state and local law-enforcement agencies operating crime labs are compensated $600 for DNA analysis that results in a conviction.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to point out that DNA evidence is being used in a system that’s had horrible problems with evidentiary reliability,” Murphy, who worked for several years as a public defender, told me. No dependable estimates exist for how many people have been falsely accused or imprisoned on the basis of faulty DNA evidence. But in Inside the Cell, she hints at the stakes: “The same broken criminal-justice system that created mass incarceration,” she writes, “and that has processed millions through its machinery without catching even egregious instances of wrongful conviction, now has a new and powerful weapon in its arsenal.”

2) Anything given under duress is invalid, that's pretty intuitive.

That's not the question, however. The question is, was it duress? What actually happened? If one party felt coerced, and the other party never intended to coerce - or so they say - was consent given?

If the person is too young to be able to legally give consent then the crime becomes paedophilia not rape.

Paedophilia is not a crime. Statutory rape, or sexual assault of a child, is.

And if you consented verbally and through body language and weren't unconscious then it's drunken sex not rape. Again pretty intuitive.

Intuitive, maybe, but not black and white. Was the victim unconscious? That can be a difficult question to answer. Did the victim's verbal statement actually constitute consent? Not always clear. How body language is interpreted may also be a difficult question.

Remember Brock Turner? At trial, he claimed that he had asked his victim if she wanted him to "finger" her, to which he claimed she said yes. He claimed she was not unconscious at the time. She could not remember anything herself. Yet he wasn't believed by the courts, so it wasn't just drunken sex, it was rape.

3) Then withdraw your consent loudly/shout.

Do you expect a person who've frozen up or is terrified to just ignore the state they're in? How does that work?

1) That is what happens when you report a rape. DNA from clothes is used.

https://www.rainn.org/articles/rape-kit
https://www.rainn.org/articles/importan ... ault-cases

And DNA, in addition to statements from eyewitnesses, the alleged perpetrator, alleged victim, alibis etc. make it very unlikely that you have somehow got the wrong person (the original point being that the wrong person could be accused)

2) It's very obvious if you're being compelled to do something under duress. You're explicitly threatened. It's very obvious when someone is unconscious - they're not moving or making any noises. It's also rather obvious if someone has verbally given consent. Body language can be ambiguous, but that's why body language by itself doesn't count as consent, that's why I said verbal consent and body language.

In the Brock Turner case there were inconsistencies in his statement and two eyewitnesses who watched as he fingered an unconscious woman who was on the floor behind a freaking dumpster. Would you have believed him?

3) So if you've given consent (which was in the original point) and then haven't withdrawn it - how is that rape?

[Lexten]

1) Rape victims undergo a sexual assault nurse examination and evidence such as semen and hair samples are collected. Then all that has to be done is a DNA test or something similar to determine if man X had sexual intercourse with the woman.
2) It's a yes or no question. Pretty simple.
3) I assume if you wanted to stop so much that you then pressed charges you would physically push the person away/shout rather than quietly withdrawing consent.

If there is DNA evidence then the man just has to claim the sex was consensual, which would lead to one of the other explanations.
If there is not DNA evidence then he could simply deny it was him.

I never said that DNA analysis proves that you have been raped, just that it negates the possibility of your first scenario where someone is raped but not by the person facing the accusation.

[Jello Biafra]

Ugh, you're not going to make me demonstrate the existence of a wage gap yet again, are you?

The existence of one is undeniable. However, discrimination plays no part in it. This is just another feminist rhetoric used to try and get people to support their cause. It's nothing but propaganda.

Discrimination plays no part in it despite evidence of discrimination?

[Gravlen]

1) DNA from the victim's clothes?
Also, here's an example on how the supposedly foolproof evidence led to miscarriages of justice and innocent men being convicted of rape
Important bit of general information:

DNA analysis has risen above all other forensic techniques for good reason: “No [other] forensic method has been rigorously shown able to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source,” the National Research Council wrote in an influential 2009 report calling out inadequate methods and stating the need for stricter standards throughout the forensic sciences.

The problem, as a growing number of academics see it, is that science is only as reliable as the manner in which we use it—and in the case of DNA, the manner in which we use it is evolving rapidly. Consider the following hypothetical scenario: Detectives find a pool of blood on the floor of an apartment where a man has just been murdered. A technician, following proper anticontamination protocol, takes the blood to the local crime lab for processing. Blood-typing shows that the sample did not come from the victim; most likely, it belongs to the perpetrator. A day later, the detectives arrest a suspect. The suspect agrees to provide blood for testing. A pair of well-trained crime-lab analysts, double-checking each other’s work, establish a match between the two samples. The detectives can now place the suspect at the scene of the crime.

When Alec Jeffreys devised his DNA-typing technique, in the mid-1980s, this was as far as the science extended: side-by-side comparison tests. Sizable sample against sizable sample. The state of technology at the time mandated it—you couldn’t test the DNA unless you had plenty of biological material (blood, semen, mucus) to work with.

But today, most large labs have access to cutting-edge extraction kits capable of obtaining usable DNA from the smallest of samples, like so-called touch DNA (a smeared thumbprint on a window or a speck of spit invisible to the eye), and of identifying individual DNA profiles in complex mixtures, which include genetic material from multiple contributors, as was the case with the vaginal swab in the Sutton case.

These advances have greatly expanded the universe of forensic evidence. But they’ve also made the forensic analyst’s job more difficult. To understand how complex mixtures are analyzed—and how easily those analyses can go wrong—it may be helpful to recall a little bit of high-school biology: We share 99.9 percent of our genes with every other human on the planet. However, in specific locations along each strand of our DNA, the genetic code repeats itself in ways that vary from one individual to the next. Each of those variations, or alleles, is shared with a relatively small portion of the global population. The best way to determine whether a drop of blood belongs to a serial killer or to the president of the United States is to compare alleles at as many locations as possible.

Think of it this way: There are many thousands of paintings with blue backgrounds, but fewer with blue backgrounds and yellow flowers, and fewer still with blue backgrounds, yellow flowers, and a mounted knight in the foreground. When a forensic analyst compares alleles at 13 locations—the standard for most labs—the odds of two unrelated people matching at all of them are less than one in 1 billion.

With mixtures, the math gets a lot more complicated: The number of alleles in a sample doubles in the case of two contributors, and triples in the case of three. Now, rather than a painting, the DNA profile is like a stack of transparency films. The analyst must determine how many contributors are involved, and which alleles belong to whom. If the sample is very small or degraded—the two often go hand in hand—alleles might drop out in some locations, or appear to exist where they do not. Suddenly, we are dealing not so much with an objective science as an interpretive art.

A groundbreaking study by Itiel Dror, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, and Greg Hampikian, a biology and criminal-justice professor at Boise State University, illustrates exactly how subjective the reading of complex mixtures can be. In 2010, Dror and Hampikian obtained paperwork from a 2002 Georgia rape trial that hinged on DNA typing: The main evidence implicating the defendant was the accusation of a co-defendant who was testifying in exchange for a reduced sentence. Two forensic scientists had concluded that the defendant could not be excluded as a contributor to the mixture of sperm from inside the victim, meaning his DNA was a possible match; the defendant was found guilty.

Dror and Hampikian gave the DNA evidence to 17 lab technicians for examination, withholding context about the case to ensure unbiased results. All of the techs were experienced, with an average of nine years in the field. Dror and Hampikian asked them to determine whether the mixture included DNA from the defendant.

In 2011, the results of the experiment were made public: Only one of the 17 lab technicians concurred that the defendant could not be excluded as a contributor. Twelve told Dror and Hampikian that the DNA was exclusionary, and four said that it was inconclusive. In other words, had any one of those 16 scientists been responsible for the original DNA analysis, the rape trial could have played out in a radically different way. Toward the end of the study, Dror and Hampikian quote the early DNA-testing pioneer Peter Gill, who once noted, “If you show 10 colleagues a mixture, you will probably end up with 10 different answers” as to the identity of the contributor. (The study findings are now at the center of the defendant’s motion for a new trial.)

“Ironically, you have a technology that was meant to help eliminate subjectivity in forensics,” Erin Murphy, a law professor at NYU, told me recently. “But when you start to drill down deeper into the way crime laboratories operate today, you see that the subjectivity is still there: Standards vary, training levels vary, quality varies.”

Last year, Murphy published a book called Inside the Cell: The Dark Side of Forensic DNA, which recounts dozens of cases of DNA typing gone terribly wrong. Some veer close to farce, such as the 15-year hunt for the Phantom of Heilbronn, whose DNA had been found at more than 40 crime scenes in Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s. The DNA in question turned out to belong not to a serial killer, but to an Austrian factory worker who made testing swabs used by police throughout the region. And some are tragic, like the tale of Dwayne Jackson, an African American teenager who pleaded guilty to robbery in 2003 after being presented with damning DNA evidence, and was exonerated years later, in 2011, after a police department in Nevada admitted that its lab had accidentally swapped Jackson’s DNA with the real culprit’s.

Most troubling, Murphy details how quickly even a trace of DNA can now become the foundation of a case. In 2012, police in California arrested Lukis Anderson, a homeless man with a rap sheet of nonviolent crimes, on charges of murdering the millionaire Raveesh Kumra at his mansion in the foothills outside San Jose. The case against Anderson started when police matched biological matter found under Kumra’s fingernails to Anderson’s DNA in a database. Anderson was held in jail for five months before his lawyer was able to produce records showing that Anderson had been in detox at a local hospital at the time of the killing; it turned out that the same paramedics who responded to the distress call from Kumra’s mansion had treated Anderson earlier that night, and inadvertently transferred his DNA to the crime scene via an oxygen-monitoring device placed on Kumra’s hand.

To Murphy, Anderson’s case demonstrates a formidable problem. Contamination is an obvious hazard when it comes to DNA analysis. But at least contamination can be prevented with care and proper technique. DNA transfer—the migration of cells from person to person, and between people and objects—is inevitable when we touch, speak, do the laundry. A 1996 study showed that sperm cells from a single stain on one item of clothing made their way onto every other item of clothing in the washer. And because we all shed different amounts of cells, the strongest DNA profile on an object doesn’t always correspond to the person who most recently touched it. I could pick up a knife at 10 in the morning, but an analyst testing the handle that day might find a stronger and more complete DNA profile from my wife, who was using it four nights earlier. Or the analyst might find a profile of someone who never touched the knife at all. One recent study asked participants to shake hands with a partner for two minutes and then hold a knife; when the DNA on the knives was analyzed, the partner was identified as a contributor in 85 percent of cases, and in 20 percent as the main or sole contributor.

Given rates of transfer, the mere presence of DNA at a crime scene shouldn’t be enough for a prosecutor to obtain a conviction. Context is needed. What worries experts like Murphy is that advancements in DNA testing are enabling ever more emphasis on ever less substantial evidence. A new technique known as low-copy-number analysis can derive a full DNA profile from as little as 10 trillionths of a gram of genetic material, by copying DNA fragments into a sample large enough for testing. The technique not only carries a higher risk of sample contamination and allele dropout, but could also implicate someone who never came close to the crime scene. Given the growing reliance on the codis database—which allows police to use DNA samples to search for possible suspects, rather than just to verify the involvement of existing suspects—the need to consider exculpatory evidence is greater than ever.

But Bicka Barlow, the San Francisco attorney, argues that the justice system now allows little room for caution. Techs at many state-funded crime labs have cops and prosecutors breathing down their necks for results—cops and prosecutors who may work in the same building. The threat of bias is everywhere. “An analyst might be told, ‘Okay, we have a suspect. Here’s the DNA. Look at the vaginal swab, and compare it to the suspect,’ ” Barlow says. “And they do, but they’re also being told all sorts of totally irrelevant things: The victim was 6 years old, the victim was traumatized, it was a hideous crime.”

Indeed, some analysts are incentivized to produce inculpatory forensic evidence: A recent study in the journal Criminal Justice Ethics notes that in North Carolina, state and local law-enforcement agencies operating crime labs are compensated $600 for DNA analysis that results in a conviction.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to point out that DNA evidence is being used in a system that’s had horrible problems with evidentiary reliability,” Murphy, who worked for several years as a public defender, told me. No dependable estimates exist for how many people have been falsely accused or imprisoned on the basis of faulty DNA evidence. But in Inside the Cell, she hints at the stakes: “The same broken criminal-justice system that created mass incarceration,” she writes, “and that has processed millions through its machinery without catching even egregious instances of wrongful conviction, now has a new and powerful weapon in its arsenal.”

That's not the question, however. The question is, was it duress? What actually happened? If one party felt coerced, and the other party never intended to coerce - or so they say - was consent given?


Paedophilia is not a crime. Statutory rape, or sexual assault of a child, is.


Intuitive, maybe, but not black and white. Was the victim unconscious? That can be a difficult question to answer. Did the victim's verbal statement actually constitute consent? Not always clear. How body language is interpreted may also be a difficult question.

Remember Brock Turner? At trial, he claimed that he had asked his victim if she wanted him to "finger" her, to which he claimed she said yes. He claimed she was not unconscious at the time. She could not remember anything herself. Yet he wasn't believed by the courts, so it wasn't just drunken sex, it was rape.


Do you expect a person who've frozen up or is terrified to just ignore the state they're in? How does that work?

1) That is what happens when you report a rape. DNA from clothes is used.

https://www.rainn.org/articles/rape-kit
https://www.rainn.org/articles/importan ... ault-cases

And DNA, in addition to statements from eyewitnesses, the alleged perpetrator, alleged victim, alibis etc. make it very unlikely that you have somehow got the wrong person (the original point being that the wrong person could be accused)

The original point remains. Even with all of those things, miscarriages of justice do happen. If you had bothered to read the article I linked to, you'd see an example of that where they had DNA evidence (which was mishandled) witness testimony (which got it wrong) and alibis (which were ignored).

2) It's very obvious if you're being compelled to do something under duress. You're explicitly threatened.

It's not always obvious. The threats may be subtle.

It's very obvious when someone is unconscious - they're not moving or making any noises.

It's not always obvious. They may be passive in bed.

It's also rather obvious if someone has verbally given consent.

It's not always obvious, for the above-mentioned reasons.

Body language can be ambiguous, but that's why body language by itself doesn't count as consent, that's why I said verbal consent and body language.

Body language may count as consent, depending on the circumstances. A mute person is able to consent, for example.

In the Brock Turner case there were inconsistencies in his statement and two eyewitnesses who watched as he fingered an unconscious woman who was on the floor behind a freaking dumpster. Would you have believed him?

The point is that we needed all of the facts. It's not simply black and white, especially since it was his word against... well, nothing, since the victim couldn't remember anything.

3) So if you've given consent (which was in the original point) and then haven't withdrawn it - how is that rape?

You have withdrawn it, but the person you're with continues (because he didn't hear, was the original statement). You require that the person physically push the other person away or shout - none of which negates the fact that consent has been withdrawn.

[Jello Biafra]

If there is DNA evidence then the man just has to claim the sex was consensual, which would lead to one of the other explanations.
If there is not DNA evidence then he could simply deny it was him.

I never said that DNA analysis proves that you have been raped, just that it negates the possibility of your first scenario where someone is raped but not by the person facing the accusation.

It is possible for someone to have consensual and nonconsensual sex on the same night.
Also, there could be massive prosecutorial misconduct.

[Jamzmania]

The existence of one is undeniable. However, discrimination plays no part in it. This is just another feminist rhetoric used to try and get people to support their cause. It's nothing but propaganda.

Discrimination plays no part in it despite evidence of discrimination?

On the contrary there is considerable evidence against discrimination.