hxe@rayssd.UUCP (Heather Emanuel) (06/23/85)
Just to clear a few things up... First - thanks, Ross, for being nice. What a refreshing change for net.women! Secondly, to answer this point (about the Big Dan's rape case, in which a women was gang raped by Portuguese men in a largely Portuguese community and then the community marched in support of the rapists because they felt the rapists were being dis- criminated against (how's that for conciseness?) ): > Just one more thought, though: You seem to feel that the jury, being > primarily Portugeese, might have been lenient with the rapists. No, I must not have made myself clear here. I feel that that fact that the jury was Portuguese should have immediately *negated* any claims by the community that the rapists were being discriminated against; after all, it was a jury of their peers. I think the jury was fair and just. I think the judge bowed to community pressure during the sentencing. In a somewhat related vein, I am amazed and horrified, but not surprised, at the number of women on the net who have mentioned that they have been raped. I am sure there are many more on the net who have been raped and not said it 'out loud'. Given that the net is a pretty small sample of the population, I think it's a fairly easy exercise to extrapolate the incidences of rape to the population at large. Yes, men-on-the-net, every one of you, at least one (and probably more than one) woman that you know *personally* has been raped. Does this *finally* make rape a more personal - as opposed to philosophical - matter? Yes, philosophy and objectivity are important in any discussion, but let's all remember that it's affected someone we know and discuss it with the same sensitivity that we would if we were in personal conversation with them. Oh, by the way, me too - age sixteen - my very first time. -- --Heather Emanuel {allegra, decvax!brunix, linus, ccice5} rayssd!hxe -------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't think my company *has* an opinion, so the ones in this article are obviously my own. -------------------------------------------------------------------- "Ain't life a brook... Sometimes I feel just like a polished stone" -Ferron