Urbandictionary.com says rape is for laughs

I happened to stumble upon this entry on urbandictionary.com today

Just in case you’ve somehow missed this, ‘lol’ is the internet/sms abbreviation of ‘laugh out loud’. So apparently getting laughs is the one good reason to rape.

Where to start with this?? I looked up urban dictionary’s terms of service. The ‘user conduct’ section includes the following

User Conduct

  1. Users may not post Content (as defined below) that:
    1. is unlawful, threatening, libelous or defamatory;
    2. violates any party’s intellectual property; or
    3. is detrimental to the quality or intended spirit of the Website.
  2. Examples of unacceptable Content or behavior on the Website include:
    1. abuse, harassment, threats of violence, flaming, intimidation of any person or organization, or any other threatening behavior;
    2. engaging in or contributing to any illegal activity or activity that violates others’ rights;
(emphasis mine)
Of course the terms of service also include this –
3. The Company has the right, but not the obligation, to limit or revoke the use privileges or editor account of anyone who posts unacceptable Content.
4. At any time, the Company can refuse to allow a posting or remove a posting at its sole discretion. However, Urban Dictionary is not obligated to restrict or monitor submissions in any way, or to block users who submit inappropriate content.

This leaves me wondering what exactly is the point of stipulating user conduct if you then free yourself from any obligation to hold people to that conduct?

Yet, I have given urbandictionary the benefit of the doubt, and emailed them about this entry. I am desperately hoping that they will recognise the extremely serious, destructive and illegal nature of this statement and remove it from their website. Hoping for a positive response from them.

emails can be sent to legal@urbandictionary.com

Wikileaks and Sexual Assault

I’m honestly sick of hearing about Wikileaks. Especially when it makes people forget that Julian Assange has actually been charged with several claims of sexual assault, including one count of sleeping with a woman while she was sleeping.

I don’t know if he did it or not. But neither do all the thousands of people protesting his arrest.

This morning the ABC reported in this article that Assange’s lawyer

told the court the allegations made against his client by two Swedish women should not be taken seriously.

“It was very clear this is not an extremely serious offence. It is arguably not even a rape offence,” Mr Robertson said.

Unbelievable. Sexual assault allegations should not be taken seriously? And sex with a woman who is asleep is not rape? Well I’m glad this guy is a defence lawyer not a prosecutor.

Attitudes like this make it harder for women to come forward about sexual assault. As Melinda points out

It’s hard enough to report assault at all. The fact is the vast majority of sexual assault crimes are never reported. They never see the light of day for a range of reasons. Many women fear being blamed for what happened.

Read the whole article here.

How Not To Rape People: A Handy Guide For Modern Men And Footballers

The Problem:

In my perusings of the modern media landscape, a worrying trend has come to my attention: young men who apparently just can’t stop having non-consensual sex with others. It’s a tricky problem, and one to which there are, clearly, no easy solutions. I mean, it’s all very well to say “No means no”, but as popular ex-footballer/arachnid Peter “Spida” Everitt says, when a girl goes home with a guy at 3am, it’s not for a cup of Milo. So we can see there are two sides to every story: on the one hand, a young lady might feel violated, but on the other hand, why do these women keep going round to strangers’ houses in the hopes of having some Milo? Why don’t they buy their OWN Milo? Young people today, I ask you.

But never fear. Ben has put together THE HANDY GUIDE TO NOT RAPING PEOPLE IN SEVEN EASY STEPS

Well worth a read if you find not raping girls difficult. And if you don’t it’s still worth reading for a different reason.