'Flower Demo' fighting sexual violence in Japan

This country has some seriously flawed laws and “justice” system.

Aw come on, anyone out there who believes that this 40 something year old guy has been groped multiple times by both men and women I got a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.

Judges in the other cases recognized that the sexual acts were nonconsensual, but said the victims had not shown enough resistance

This is the part of the law that most needs to change. When people finally have the courage to speak up and do something about it, the legal system meets them with ridiculous laws such as this. You didn't resist enough? Why can't a simple no offer enough resistance?

@Burning Bush

agreed. it's a senseless comment.

Problem is evidence.

As expressed by men, no one knows what to do when sexually assaulted.

I have thougth about it if it happened to me.

I am not going for a change to law about need to express consent. It is a pandora box and I don't want false accusations.

Help them at all cost by specific phones lines, specific hospital staff and place where to stay for a few days.

And among all, no shame to blame the perpatror IF evidence (immediate revelation, bodily fluids, fresh testimonies of circumstances, etc).

Education on how to defend should also be a priority.

sensei258Today 07:44 am JST

Aw come on, anyone out there who believes that this 40 something year old guy has been groped multiple times by both men and women I got a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.

There were westerners living in Japan that had been groped by Japanese women, so if its happening Western Males its likely to be happening to local guys.

There were westerners living in Japan that had been groped by Japanese women

I've seen claims of that online. Never met any guys in nearly 25 years to whom it actually happened.

I think it's an urban myth. Sure, it might have happened one time...

Judge Judith Sheindlin is famous for saying 'If something doesn't make sense, it's usually not true.'

sensei258Today  02:39 pm JST

Judge Judith Sheindlin is famous for saying 'If something doesn't make sense, it's usually not true.'

Judge Judy said a lot of nonsense.

I personally know several men who’ve been groped on the train by Japanese women. One is my boyfriend, who’s an American, another is an Aussie guy I know from work.

They aren’t lying. I’m not sure what makes you think they are, but I can assure you that men are groped by women and it’s not as uncommon as you might imagine.

You don’t even have to take my word for it. I suggest you check the white paper on crime, or just ask anyone you know who happens to be in law enforcement.

It’s a real problem. And it deserves just as much attention as sexual assault against women.

But ultimately the goal is to have a law similar to Sweden's "Yes Means Yes," where sex without freely-given consent is sexual assault.

And like it or not, I hope we don't get there in Japan. Structurally, this is no different from criminalizing sex as a whole and consent being turned into a justificatory factor, making it a throwback to prudish puritanism.

So long as "violence and intimidation" are viewed as part of the definition of rape, activists say, the law will fail to recognize power dynamics and the "freezing" response that explains why a person may not fight or flee.

I think this is one of the things victims have to eat if the criminal law is to maintain its current protections for defendants as a whole. Could you have sincerely frozen? Sure. Say 30% probability. Heck, I'll even give you 60 percent. Unless you can show that over 90% of females freeze when attacked by males, you are nowhere close to proper criminal law conviction criterion.

@JJ JetplaneToday 09:03 am JST

This is the part of the law that most needs to change. When people finally have the courage to speak up and do something about it, the legal system meets them with ridiculous laws such as this. You didn't resist enough? Why can't a simple no offer enough resistance?

First, procedural. In most cases, realistically you can't prove you have even uttered "no" to an honest beyond reasonable doubt confidence. If you have fought, then marks are there as objective proof (if you go to the hospital fast enough to document them). The lower the resistance that is expected, the harder it is to properly prove. You are left with either low standards of evidence (a perversion of the whole criminal justice system) or rejecting cases for insufficient evidence (who won't make the victims and their supporters very happy).

Second, substantive. If you think your sexual autonomy is worth only a single utterance of "no", how can you convincingly say it is worth 5+ years of someone elses' life? Let's face it, people are strongarmed into doing things all the time in life, and they do them with varying degree of distaste. Those are worth a mere utterance of no are all over the place. There will be very few bosses left if that's the standard they are to be held to.

What do you suggest then, KS, to help victims of rape and sexual assault? Do you think they should focus on getting a judgment on the civil standard, like Ito Shiori did recently?

Kazuaki ShimazakiToday  05:31 pm JST

I think this is one of the things victims have to eat if the criminal law is to maintain its current protections for defendants as a whole. Could you have sincerely frozen? Sure. Say 30% probability. Heck, I'll even give you 60 percent. Unless you can show that over 90% of females freeze when attacked by males, you are nowhere close to proper criminal law conviction criterion.

Actually, that can be shown, and there are numerous studies out there for you to read.

Next time you have a question like that in your mind, I suggest looking it up before confidently making a post in error.

@ girl in Tokyo, be careful not to put words in my mouth so that you can comment on them. I don't doubt that men are occasionally groped. I never said that they were not. Read my post, I'm only talking about this one guy. I doubt that that one man has been groped multiple times by both sexes. And I guess, since you made that comment, that you know more about law and common sense than Judge Judy who has been a practicing judge for more than 30 years.

criterion.

1( +1 / -0 )

Kazuaki ShimazakiToday  05:39 pm JST

If you think your sexual autonomy is worth only a single utterance of "no", how can you convincingly say it is worth 5+ years of someone elses' life? Let's face it, people are strongarmed into doing things all the time in life, and they do them with varying degree of distaste. Those are worth a mere utterance of no are all over the place. There will be very few bosses left if that's the standard they are to be held to

Being raped is on a completely different level than getting roped into an MLM scheme.

One single “no” is enough for a decent man to stop. In fact, a decent man will stop if the woman merely seems uncomfortable, or says “not right now” or “I’m not sure.”

An empathetic man, a man who truly cares about not being a rapist, makes it his business to listen to womens’ stories so that he is fully cognisant of the myriad of signal that women send, both non-verbal and verbal, and he gets consent every step of the way.

There’s this amazing new series on Netflix called “Sex Education” that you should watch. One character, whose mom is a sex therapist, demonstrates perfectly what getting consent should look like: and it beautiful.

If all men would do that, rape would disappear completely.

And really? It’s not all that difficult to do. Not doing it is an act of will. In other words, not doing it means the man doesn’t care if he is a rapist.

a decent man to stop. In fact, a decent man will stop if the woman merely seems uncomfortable,

If she isn’t into you, you already know.

I was tagged once by a really young girl...I definitely felt she was a perv. It was really strange.

@girl_in_tokyo Mar. 9 08:13 pm JST

You know, if you want to do that, you might want to present at least one study. Otherwise, what happens next is entirely at the discretion of your opponent.

Since I'm a fair man, I did go dig up something. Here it is:

https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/aogs.13174#http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aogs.13174/full%20

According to it, 70% of females reported some degree of freezing and 48% reported a high degree of freezing. In other words, we can expect 52% to at least put up some resistance (which they apparently did not). I must also point out that no one objectively measured any of this - it is all based on self-reporting by female victims on a questionnaire with questions that have a pretty clear answer.

I don't think I see any "control questions" (questions phrased so you might trap yourself if you just focus on ticking as many Yeses as possible). If I am going to be a rape accuser and I know I didn't fight back much, and the questionnaire says whether I felt frozen, what do you think my answer's going to be regardless of whether I really was all that frozen?

If this is any indication, I don't think I was grossly unfair in guessing the actual probability at 30-60%. Certainly, it is not 90% or more, which is what you need before you can begin to claim beyond reasonable doubt.

girl_in_tokyoMar. 9 08:23 pm JST

One single “no” is enough for a decent man to stop.

Perhaps, but that's not the question we are answering. Not stopping after a single No might make him not a decent man, but there is a huge gap between "not decent" and "5 years minimum prison sentence".

Kazuaki ShimazakiToday  12:58 pm JST

@girl_in_tokyo Mar. 9 08:13 pm JST

You know, if you want to do that, you might want to present at least one study. Otherwise, what happens next is entirely at the discretion of your opponent.

I wasn’t aware I had an opponent. I’m also not obligated to google anything for you. A person who wants to know the truth of the matter will check things for themselves. A person who only cares about arguing won’t.

According to it, 70% of females reported some degree of freezing and 48% reported a high degree of freezing.

That seems to say that most women freeze.

what do you think my answer's going to be regardless of whether I really was all that frozen?

You seem quite sure that women will lie,

Perhaps, but that's not the question we are answering. Not stopping after a single No might make him not a decent man, but there is a huge gap between "not decent" and "5 years minimum prison sentence".

It’s the only question that matters.

The gap is between “sexual predator” and “not a sexual predator.”

A man who isn’t a sexual predator and who cares about the women he is intimate with will actively get consent at every step.

The rest are active sexual predators.

A man who isn’t a sexual predator and who cares about the women he is intimate with will actively get consent at every step.

Blanket statement. I don't get "actively get consent at every step" from my wife. She let's me know along the way, if I started asking 'is this ok' every time I touched her she'd get pretty turned off.

StrangerlandToday 01:54 pm JST

Blanket statement. I don't get "actively get consent at every step" from my wife. She let's me know along the way, if I started asking 'is this ok' every time I touched her she'd get pretty turned off.

This is a situation in which there is ongoing, active, consent between regular partners, which makes consent safe to assume.

Clearly, the current discussion is in regard to situations where consent cannot be assumed.

I think this is one of the things victims have to eat if the criminal law is to maintain its current protections for defendants as a whole. Could you have sincerely frozen? Sure. Say 30% probability. Heck, I'll even give you 60 percent. Unless you can show that over 90% of females freeze when attacked by males, you are nowhere close to proper criminal law conviction criterion.

Freezing is a perfectly natural response to a situation like this. The ‘freeze’ is usually caused by perceived threats. ‘This guy is trying to assault me, but if I resist, what if he has a knife? What if resisting makes him angry and he strangled me or beats me? What if resisting could cost me my life?” These and a million or their reasons could be going through someone’s head as they are being assaulted.

What’s more, removing the requirement to resist and the requirement of violence and intimidation doesn’t just cover women and men who freeze. It covers people who have been incapacitated physically or in other ways. There was a recent case in Spain where a group of men was acquitted of rape because the woman failed to resist. She failed to resist because she had been drugged into unconsciousness. So because they drugged the woman, they were able to avoid the harsher penalty of rape and were convicted of the much lesser charge of sexual abuse.