Those offenders are NOT going to kill their victims. And those victims are NOT going to use "lethal force" to defend themselves against the assault. Period. No matter how rich the fantasy life of those drooling over women shooting up bad guys to defend their virtue. Real women act according to their own needs and priorities and constraints, not gunhead scenarios.
I do not regard killing someone in apprehension of anything less than serious physical injury or death, or when an alternative to doing so is available, to be tolerable in a civilized society. And in civilized societies, it is not tolerated.
Even in uncivilized societies where capital punishment is practised, it is not applied for lesser crimes than homicide. I mean, except in really really uncivilized societies that really aren't part of this discussion.
Sexual assault is not punishable by death. I see absolutely no reason why killing to defend against a sexual assault -- where there are no reasonable grounds to apprehend serious physical injury or death -- should be tolerated.
Those offenders are NOT going to kill their victims.
Trust the felon.
I do not regard killing someone in apprehension of anything less than serious physical injury or death, or when an alternative to doing so is available, to be tolerable in a civilized society. And in civilized societies, it is not tolerated.
Rape is very serious, at least according to the women who've confided in me, and is intolerable in a civilized society. In addition to the serious violation, it subjects the victim to any diseases the rapist may be carrying and to a possible sentence of carrying the perpetrators child. (Some women have moral strictures that forbid abortion and even the morning after pill. You may despise their convictions and the foundations on which they rest, but to them choice ends at conception. Do their rights count?)
Civilized society supports women who don't trust in the goodwill of felonious assailants and defend themselves as necessary against the guy that would rape them but would never dream of otherwise injuring them (and of course passed his recent Aids, hepatitis, drug resistant syphilis and gonorrhea, ... tests too).
Sexual assault is an assault. It is a particularly vicious kind of assault, and it is tolerated by a society for very particular reasons.
It should never be tolerated. One way it is tolerated is by classing it separately from "
serious physical injury or death." Lethal diseases and the trustworthiness of felons aside, there is such a thing as serious mental injury. If we could trace the ripples through society, we would certainly find that many deaths and serious physical traumas result from mental trauma--and not just to the immediate victim. So for multiple reasons, physical and mental, civilized societies allow lethal force in defense against rape.
Encouraging women to kill men attempting to assault them sexually does nothing to address the many serious problems women have in such societies.
Self-defense--lethal or otherwise--against a would-be rapist will not improve a woman's body image, her feeling incomplete without a man, her posture, her education, or her earning power. But then it's not intended to. It's intended to stop the rape. "It's a nice car, but it won't shine my shoes. I guess I'll leave it on the lot." Yeah, that's it.
And the plain fact is that the men crying crocodile tears for women who are victims of sexual assault and urging all women everywhere to shoot the bastards know perfectly well that the overwhelming majority of women, the overwhelming majority of whose abusers and attackers are people known to them, are not going to do that.
So you know what I see? I see a nice little victim-blaming scenario being set up.
All women have to do is pack heat, and pull trigger, and that whole rape thing will just go away. Women don't want to do that? Well damn, whose fault is it when they are abused and assaulted then, eh?
I see a bitter, clueless woman who lacks the imagination to understand decent men--and so condemns what she doesn't understand. I see a woman who doesn't understand the depth of some men's conviction. For example, were I to lose my mind and attempt to rape a woman, any woman, she would be fully justified to kill me if necessary--according to me. (I hate to use myself as an example. It opens me up to particularly virulent and stupid abuse--apparently within the rules--but I trust readers can discern the truth. And I can't think of an example closer to home.)
No one thinks that guns will solve rape categorically. And yes, some women will never use lethal force, even to protect their innocent children. Some women will know that their "men" have raped their children and will still be concerned about whether he "loves" them. That certainly doesn't mean that a civilized society won't support--through laws and through moral support--women who use lethal force, be it a knife, a bat, a 2 x 4 or a gun, to protect themselves or their children.
Here is an example of "civilized" laws:
Ms. Deng explained that she used a fruit knife in self-defense when the men attempted to sexually assault her. The original police report said that the men asked for "special services," which is popular euphemism for sex. Later reports claimed that the men only asked for "bathing service," which is a legitimate service offered at hotels like the one Deng worked at.
In any case, Ms. Deng repeatedly told the men that she was a waitress and did not work in the bathhouse section of the hotel. The official report omits the fact that Deng Guida, the decedent, is accused of beating the victim after being refused sex, calling her a prostitute and threatening to kill her. Finally, the most recent report, released a few days before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, downplayed Deng Yujiao's "guilt" and seemed calibrated to appease the growing numbers of Chinese clamoring for justice.
Even when releasing Ms. Deng, the court claimed that her self-defense was "excessive." That claim seems incorrect. Article 20, Clause 3 of the Chinese Criminal Law states:
Where a defence is conducted to an immediate violent crime of committing physical assault, committing homicide, robbery, rape, kidnapping, and other crimes seriously endangering the security of a person, and it causes bodily injury or death to the unlawful infringer, such an act shall not be defence that exceeds the limits of necessity, and criminal responsibility shall not be borne for such an act.
Nevertheless, the court pointed to two grounds in favor of releasing her. First, she had reported the incident to the police. Second, she supposedly had diminished responsibility because she is manic-depressive. Her former lawyers, however, dispute the manic-depressive assertion. Some commentators believe the mental health allegation, initially made at the outset of the investigation, was originally fabricated to discredit her; later, it became a handy tool to have her released without the government needing to openly account for the Communist Party officials' crimes.
Source:
http://volokh.com/Were those men actually going to hurt her? Did she show sufficient concern for their well being? They were such gentlemen--they only wanted a nice quiet rape. They showed goodwill. Her self-defense was clearly "excessive":
See! The death threat was clearly a joke. The men were harmless. (And of course men who frequent prostitutes are know not to have Aids. No threat of serious bodily harm--just a sure death sentence to a poor Chinese woman who couldn't afford drug cocktails.) The court was right to be gravely concerned about those gentlemen's well being.
If that's civilization, I am glad America is barbaric.
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