Double standard in press

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Recently, I came across an article on the Dutch-language website of a relatively popular newspaper. It was about a woman in Germany who had, supposedly, locked several men up in her house and raped them for hours. In itself, the story seems rather bizarre, and considering the details might very well be a complete hoax, but this is about the tone in which it was written and the way in which people commented on the article.

I'll try to write an accurate translation of the article, leaving in place the odd wording.

Noteworthy about this article:

* Although the story is probably a hoax, it is not presented as such, but still written in an amused tone.
* The word 'rape' is not mentioned once in the entire article.
* The article does not say whether or not she has been arrested, but it seems to indicate that she has not been arrested, as the police is now supposedly 'warning men'.
* This is a newspaper whose commenters usually call for summary executions for these things. Here, however, these were the main comments:



The same newspaper issued an article two days earlier. It was about a man who had raped a 24-year-old woman.
They caught a suspect - no conviction whatsoever. The article said:



Much more professionally-written, and it shows much more willingness from police. Noteworthy about this article:

* Although being roughly equal in size to the other article, the word 'rape' is mentioned four times, with a synonym adding it up to five.
* It is described as violent, and contains plenty of language which, in the Dutch language, has an emotional undertone.
* The comments were at the other end of the spectrum (or comparable, as they took, sex-wise, the same side):



Now, can anyone explain to me what the inherent difference is between the reactions to these two hearsay stories?
For those of you who can read Dutch (or have Google Translate - should be sufficient for the basics), have fun.

http://www.spitsnieuws.nl/archives/raar ... oor-liefde
http://www.spitsnieuws.nl/archives/crim ... ijk-gepakt

It's from the Spits, what do you expect?
The Spits is a free newspaper and far from a quality newspaper.
It's publisher is the Telegraaf Media Group, which publishes De Telegraaf - a populist, sensation newspaper. It's popularity makes it a big influence factor.

But zooming in on your point of using the word 'rape' or not. The first article wasn't assault as the second article was. Both men in the first article weren't abducted and knew they where getting chances for sex, the girl in the second article was abducted and raped.
Thus the first article was a case sexual expectations gone wrong, the second article spoke about sexual assault.

But the issue of male raped by female, involuntary sex from the male perspective is still a issue that has it's double standards.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spits_(newspaper)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraaf_Media_Groep
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Telegraaf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_ge ... by_females

The basic issue: in the first story, these men were not allowed to leave or call for help and forced to have sex with her. That's a very good definition of rape. Interestingly, in response to the first story, the victims were blamed, called gay, called cheaters, told they couldn't be aroused if it was rape, and generally ridiculed. In the second story, general consensus was that the person who supposedly did it (apparently guilty until proven innocent) should be hanged.

What I must say, though, is that Spits is a pathetic excuse for a newspaper, and people who read it too much should be protected from themselves.
Generally, I stick to de Volkskrant, NRC and, when in public transport or public buildings, Metro.

The story appears to be true. I've found two short articles on the website of Focus, a large and fairly reputable German news magazine that can be trusted to properly research its material. Both articles avoid the word rape and instead use the legal term sexual coercion, which sounds quite harmless in German (sexuelle Nötigung; "nötigen" means as much as "to compel someone", which doesn't necessarily suggest force. We use the same trivializing term for sexual assault btw. But it's already an improvement over the older legal term for rape, "Notzucht", which can mean both "forced breeding" and "breeding out of desperation". Gotta love the German language )

Translated from
http://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/mann- ... 36503.html

The second case happened only 18 days later, so apparently she was let off easily after the first assault (the second article mentions that she spent a short time in psychiatric care). Translated from
http://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/nymph ... 45153.html


I have to agree with HisDivineMajesty, that doesn't read like news articles about a rape case. The tone is rather light-hearted, almost humorous, and I don't see how the punishment fits the crime.

Imagine the gender roles were reversed. A man picks up a woman, has sex with her, and imprisons her in his apartment when she attempts to leave. He forces her to have sex with him several more times. When she manages to call the police, he flirts with (or even gropes) a female police officer But instead of being sentenced to jail, he only spends a few days in a mental hospital.

Only three weeks later, the same man does the same to an African woman. Only this time, he holds her hostage for 36 hours and rapes her again and again. She finally escapes and breaks down in the streets, weeping and crying, a nervous, traumatized wreck. There is no telling what the poor woman went through. She must have been mortally afraid that her imprisoner might kill her at some point.

The police arrives at his door, and he again hits on a female officer But they don't even bother to arrest the sick bastard. Instead, they deliver him straight to the psychiatry ward this time. I mean, he's obviously mentally disturbed, right? The poor man. Let's get him the medical care he needs. Wow. Just.... wow

Aside from the tone of the news articles, the different legal treatment of the rapist, and the reaction of the readers (including my own initial reaction, I have to admit; my first thought was "damn, I have to visit Munich sometimes"), there is yet another difference between a male and a female rapist. If a woman was held hostage and sexually assaulted by a man, she would be well within her rights to employ whatever force necessary to put him down and make sure that he doesn't stand up anymore for a while (or not at all anymore).

But imagine if one of the two male victims had done the same in this case. What if they had used physical force to incapacitate their female imprisoner, or at least to fight her off while they kicked down the door or called the police? I believe it would have been laughably easy for the female abuser to turn this around and present herself as the victim. I doubt that the police would have believed the victim's version of the story.

You know what's been said "If a woman undresses in the window and a man sees her, he's a voyeur, if a man undresses in the window he's a flasher".

Women have certain advantages, in the legal system women tend to get less time for equivalent crimes, get the death penalty less frequently and generally do not get punched in the face for acting like total as*holes.

People are biased. Look at Aston Kutcher

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1684381/ashton-kutcher-brownface-chip-ad.jhtml

Yet look at Sacha Baron Cohen portraying Middle Easterners.

And the movie White Chicks?

Their is a doube standard in everything.

It wasnt that long ago that women were routinely blamed for being raped. Blamed because of wearing short skirts or whatever. Many folks dismissed the very existence of rape saying that "you cant thread a moving needle". When I was a teen I even read a medical textbook that spoke about rape in a tone that you would expect a science textbook to speak about UFO's- doubting its existence-but admitting "reports of rape under anethesea might be true".

So where's your double standard?
Were lucky that even men-raping-women is taken seriously.

Okay nowadays men raping women in the wide world- and men rapping other men in prisons are now taken seriously as problems.
But women rapping men is still not taken seriously.

When it gets to be as big a problem as the other way around Ill start to worry about it, but even then there would be good reasons for the double standard.
A women cant knock up a man for one thing.

A woman also can't shoot a pregnant man, but I don't think that would be a good reason for a double standard in murder trials.

A man cant shoot a pregnant man either, but either gender can shoot a pregnant woman to death.

You can rape a man all you want and it will not cause him to reproduce against his will regardless of the gender of the perp.

The consequences of the act of shooting a pregnant woman are the same regardless of the gender of the perp.

My point is that a person who shoots a man should not receive a lesser sentence than a person who shoots a pregnant woman, without knowing that she is pregnant. For the same reason, a person who rapes a man should not receive a lesser sentence than a man who rapes a woman and impregnates her, all other factors (like use of force, threats or blackmail) being equal.

This does not change the difference in response. It was denied by people who had only read three paragraphs about the story that this could have been rape, as these men were 'clearly aroused'. Meanwhile, those people were commenting on another article saying a man who had raped a woman should be hanged by the testicles or murdered in prison. See, if you deny or downplay the existence of one problem because there is another problem, there is no war as there is drug addiction, but there should be no drug addiction as there is war. That's the spirit - that kept mankind down for thousands of years. I salute you.



I'm glad you confirmed the double standard by differentiating. The double standard is that one type of rape is met with anger and violence, while the other is met with laughing and ridicule for victims. Today, I announced in a Skype room that rape was finally funny, and I was nearly booted as they assumed I meant male-on-female rape. I calmed everyone down by specifying it to be female-on-male rape. That's the double standard - one is widely regarded as being a heinous crime that should always be punished by death, and one is perceived as being quite humorous and victims shouldn't complain.

By the way, I couldn't imagine a comedy movie to have a large black man rape a smaller white woman in a prison shower.
There must be plenty around where the smaller white woman is replaced by a smaller white man, and it's a common form of humour.



Here's one inherent issue with that. Where do you draw the line? Plenty of men are raped each day in nearly each country in the world, so I'd imagine it to be a 'big' problem. Poverty in the world is much worse than male-on-female rape in the world. Why not prioritize on helping children in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan who have to deconstruct asbestos-ridden ships for us and generally die before age 40 instead of focusing on one much-smaller domestic issue? The existence of a slightly-larger problem does not justify completely ignoring or ridiculing another problem, and keeping a double standard to that.

A woman can't knock a man up, but she can get knocked up. Or she can claim she was the one who was raped, and if there is any evidence of sexual intercourse, people would generally believe her.
See, the man who was arrested in Arnhem, the man people want to murder, was arrested because "he'd clearly had intercourse with a woman and she reported him for rape."