Great question Showqueen. The following is from my recollection of what happens in Porgy and Bess, or at least as presented in this production:
Once the boat leaves and Bess is alone on the island with Crown with no safe place to retreat, she submits to forcibly compelled sex.
Obviously many women alone with stronger men with no means of egress might feel that they have no choice but to submit to a sexual advance. But having manifested their agreement, the issue would remain whether the man would then be guilty of rape. Certainly if the man did NOT orchestrate the operative reality of no means of retreat, and the woman ultimately agrees, then it would not be rape. (the same, of course would apply if the two parties were both men).
What distinguishes this scenario is that Crown, against Bess's will, has forced her to stay with him, alone, on the island. That's very different than someone consensually putting her or himself in a situation where she or he is alone with someone else with no ability to leave (or at least when neither party has conceded to the inability to leave the scene - here Crown did much more than concede to the inability to leave the scene, he manipulated it), and then has sex with that person. This distinction - that Crown, with the intent of having sex with Bess, whether she agrees or not, places her against her will in a situation where she is alone with him with no means of retreat, makes it rape. As well as false imprisonment and kidnapping.
Women, or men for that matter, certainly can change their minds having said no to a sexual advance. Having done so, the sex would be consensual. However, when a person is trapped against her or his will by the person making the sexual advance with no means of retreating, and that person intends to, if no consent is acquired, force himself on his victim, that's rape. And when what would otherwise be apparent "consent" - that is, an ultimate "yes" - is acquired only because the victim feels she has no choice but to do so (given that she has no means of escape and the man is clearly intent, no matter what, on having sex with her - as concluded either by her, subjectively, or to any reasonable person in her situation; what the precise standard would be would be a further legal issue - this is not the typical sexual assualt situation so it would be difficult to predict what the standard would be).
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"You're not answering my question. Someone cited the correct statistic that only 7-9% of rape reports are falsified in some way. So please explain to me why we should penalize, blame, and shame 91% of honest victims who have been through something traumatic because of that small of a margin of "error"? Who wins by doing that? Anecdotal evidence is not enough to punish millions of women who have been through any kind of sexual assault."
I'm not clear on this. Who is punishing women who complain of sexual assault? It is not punishing women to state that there are indeed fabrications of sexual assault - as there are fabrications of all types of crimes. And the statistic you refer to only acknowledges that 7-9% of rape complaints are indisputably fabricated; it in no way answers the question how many are in fact fabricated; we have no way of knowing that. We only have the imperfect but necessary criminal justice system.
But the fact remains that there are fabricated complaints of rape (the Scottsboro Boys, for one instance), as well as wrongful convictions because although a rape quite clearly occurred, the wrong people were convicted (the Central Park rape case - and, if you were in New York then, you would know that the public at large condemned the defendants as guilty long before the wrongful conviction came down; only decades later is it indisputably known that they were not the rapists).
No one should be punished for accusing someone of rape. It is not punishing complainants to submit their accusations to proof, as all accusations are submitted in court, and to consider the possibility that the accusation may in fact be false, a consideration that generally applies in all accusations of all crimes.
The criminal justice system has a horrible record of rebrutalizing complainants in rape cases. This and societal attitudes toward rape victims have thankfully for the most part been corrected. However, one still hears idiotic things (such as the Fox reporter - female by the way - who when addressing rape complaints by female soldiers, stated "What did they expect?" thereby insulting not only these women but male soldiers as well, by implying that male soldiers should not be expected to not rape women because that's what men, given the chance and under sexually limited conditions, do - force themselves on unwilling victims - does she also believe that rape in prison is justifiable????).
Uncertainty is not punishment. Putting facts to the test is not punishment. All we have is the criminal justice system, in which witnesses for the prosecution and the defense, not infrequently, do lie. The point is that the system should treat complainants with respect and the accused with the presumption of innocence. And that the public at large should ideally have the intelligence and understanding of history and its mistakes to keep an open mind, treating everyone involved fairly as well.
Updated On: 6/12/12 at 01:42 PM
