Meet Wendy Murphy. She seems to be an advocate for women and against Sexual Violence.
The problem for Ms. Murphy is when her Liberalism conflicts with the Law and the realities of live when it comes to violence against women.
It does not get better.
In most states (if I am not mistaken, check your local laws), rape is a forcible felony which can be responded with deadly force. Ms. Murphy is aware of that but at the same time she does not support that women defend themselves from a rapist with a gun. Hell, she does not mention any other defensive tool, not even hand-to-hand.
Where does she come from then if a woman is not allowed to use weapons to defend herself? She is trying to teach those purveyors of masculine toxicity that there is a law that says that they can get killed if they rape a woman. Apparently just waving the law nd tell then, it will make predators stop their sadistic ways and become Pajama Boys. That at the same time she is telling everybody that they cannot exercise the advantage that the law is giving them to defend themselves and thus she is sending the message to the same predators that there is actually a pool of victims available for the taking and with her support. She is basically trying to use the Boogie Man to scare animals that do not scare with prison long prison term and enjoy violence. There are several level of magnitude in the Stupid Scale for that one.
This last screen cap is the one that gives me the final creep.
She does not know or forget one of the several conditions for a legal self-defense claim and somebody has to remind her. I remembered a ProArms podcast where Massad Ayoob and I think Marty Hayes were talking about Self Defense being the red heads step child in Law School and that if the institution was decent, you would have a semester’s worth of instruction, but that many schools did not even took that much time. Add to that those lawyers specializing in criminal law are used to defend only criminals and not the good citizen who was forced to defend him/herself and you have 2.5 strikes against you if you have not prepared yourself for eventualities.
I wonder what would be Ms. Murphy’s position if a woman on a campus that prohibits guns, is attacked by a rapist and she uses a gun to save herself.
I’m actually okay with the bodies of rapists piling up. Anybody who thinks that rapists rape because they are guys who just haven’t been taught that rape is bad is wrong and an idiot. Rapists are predators. they know what they are doing is wrong but they do it anyway.
Thing is, if 100% of rapists got shot, the exceedingly low number of dead rapists would put a lie to the inflated “sexual assault” numbers the lunatics throw around.
(And the number of rape victims would drop as the predators were culled. But actually preventing rape is not the goal of the radicals — their goal is using lies to piss people off and convince them to give them power.)
I sure a shit would not want this excuse of a law school graduate representing me in any legal matter.
The first problem I saw is that she said “right to kill”. That may be correct in a sense, but the proper term is right to use deadly force. Deadly force is the authorized tool; death of the attacker is a permissible outcome but IS NOT THE GOAL. All too many leftists pretend that the purpose of self defense is to kill the attacker. That is flat out wrong, and as has been pointed out, it’s morally offensive to make such a claim.
The second problem is that she has a very hard time figuring out what tool is supposed to be used. At one point she says “no guns”. A few lines later she says “women DO have the right to carry”. Make up your mind, already. (And by the way, does “women have the right to carry” mean that men also do? Or that men do not?)
This is the same thinking that gets women assaulted and killed, because a protective order and the police will protect you when your abusive spouse/boyfriend shows up and breaks into your house. Baseball bats, knives, and “super secret ninja moves” can deter, or even kill a larger stronger male antagonist. However, the average woman has better odds of survival with a gun and some training.
Also, all those non-gun options work only if the defender is reasonably strong and nimble. If you’re in a wheelchair, or use a walker, you’re not going to get anywhere. Or even just a cane: while a cane can be like a baseball bat, if you need a cane to get around you’re unlikely to be nimble enough to be able to use it effectively for self defense.
One other concern comes to mind: in benighted states like MA, a lot of other self-defense means are outlawed too.
As someone who uses a cane for short distances and a wheelchair for longer distances, all I can say is yup. Fortunately I live in a mostly free state and concealed carry isn’t a problem.
I knew a guy in California who was confined to a wheelchair. Could not use his legs at all. He had a blanket over his lap when he was in the chair. Under the blanket was a S&W Model 29 .44 Magnum. Nobody fucked with him. By the way, he was a hell of a nice guy.
…did she perchance go to Yale?
[…] This goes back to Miguel’s post Most Lawyers do not understand Self Defense. […]
She confuses the RIGHT of self defense with the ABILITY. One can have the right to do something, but once the state has removed the tool that makes it possible, the point is rather moot.
Wendy Murphy, an adjunct professor of sexual violence law at New England Law-Boston, is recommending that women should kill their rapists, but public interest law professor John Banzhaf says she and those women might follow her legal advice would be wrong most of the time because most campus so-called “date rapes” aren’t really rapes, so women cannot lawfully use deadly force in defense.
In a tweet, Murphy said: “In many states, it is considered self-defense to kill a rapist. Women don’t know this about their rights. They need to be educated & trained. If campus victims knew they had a right to kill, schools would FINALLY do a good job preventing rape, to avoid all the dead bodies.”
When it was suggested to her that “that schools are broadening the definition of rape/sexual assault to include things that are widely considered acceptable forms of romantic advancement (i.e. reading body language and trying to kiss someone),” Murphy doubled down.
In response to this observation she claimed “self-defense laws apply on campus bc crimes on campus are prosecutable in real world. Crimes are also ‘student misconduct’ offenses under civil rights laws on campus under #TitleIV & #TitleIX So you might get expelled for killing in self-defense, but you won’t go to jail.”
Banzhaf, a champion of women’s rights whose suggestion for dealing with campus rapes has been featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education, U.S. News, Washington Examiner, National Public Radio, CNN, New York Times, Inside Higher Ed, and in other respected media outlets, and singled out for praise by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy Devos, says that although there is a germ of truth in Murphy’s suggestion, in most cases women claiming to be raped on campus would go to prison (not jail). Here’s why.
It is true that, in many states, a person may use force, up to and including deadly force, if it appears to be reasonably necessary to prevent a forcible rape. In other words, a woman in many states may in fact legally kill a man trying to forcibly rape her if it is reasonably necessary to do so.
For example, Article 35.15 of the New York Penal Law provides that “2. A person may not use deadly physical force upon another person under circumstances specified in subdivision one unless: (b) He or she REASONABLY BELIEVES that such other person is committing or attempting to commit a kidnapping, FORCIBLE RAPE, forcible criminal sexual act or robbery; [emphasis added]
The important qualification or limitation to Murphy’s claims is that the sexual act must reasonably appear to be a forcible rape under the criminal laws of the relevant state, not just under whatever definitions and regulations a college might adopt, notes Banzhaf.
The fact that a college or university may consider it a rape – and indeed may have told students that it constitutes rape – if the sex is committed without a woman’s consent, and/or in violation of its “yes-means-yes” rules, is irrelevant, he says.
Indeed, in most states, consent is irrelevant. Having sexual intercourse with a woman who has not given her consent, or even after she clearly says “NO,” doesn’t necessary constitute rape.
More precisely, in the majority of states, the crime of rape in most cases of an adult who is not unconscious (not just inebriated) requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant used force or the threat of force.
In other words, the mere fact that the complainant did not “consent” (by whatever definition is used) is not enough, says Banzhaf.
Indeed, if force or the threat of force was not used, even the fact that the complainant said “No!” or “Don’t!” or “I Don’t Consent” doesn’t make it rape in the absence of the use of force or the threat of force. And that’s not just the opinion of a fully tenured professor of law at a top-ranked law school contrasted with the views of adjunct professor at an unranked law school.
For example, law professor Deborah Tuerkheimer, who teaches at Northwestern and strongly opposes rape, wrote the following in an article entitled “We Preach ‘No Means No’ for Sex, but That’s Not What the Law Says”:
“Over half the states have a ‘use of force’ requirement in order to prove rape. . . .The first-year law students I teach – smart, insightful, idealistic – have come of age hearing that “no means no” when it comes to sex. They are almost always stunned to learn that, in most states, the legal definition of rape still requires the use of physical force. In other words, a verbal “no” isn’t always enough.”
Even the liberal New York Times was forced to admit what many lawyers have known for a long time – most campus rapes reported by women are not rapes at all.
Whatever standard colleges may adopt to define consent in rape cases is completely irrelevant because sexual intercourse, even if there is no consent, or if the woman clearly says “no,” doesn’t constitute rape in most states.
So, as the Times has noted, women are bombarded with ads and other educational materials telling them that “no means no,” or that “If she doesn’t consent, or if she can’t consent, it’s rape.” as a White House video explains it.
But that could give women a false sense of security, especially once they leave the security bubble of two students at the same school having sex, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf.
Despite seemingly endless repetition of this “no means no” mantra, a Times article on why sexual assault laws should change now concludes that “this message often doesn’t line up with legal reality. A majority of states still erect a far higher barrier to prosecution and conviction by relying on the concept of force in defining rape . . . in more than half of the 50 states, a judge or jury must find that a person used force to find him or her guilty of rape.”
So probably the majority of situations in which a female student claims she was raped because she didn’t consent, or even that she clearly said “no,” could not be successfully prosecuted, and she would not therefore be legally justified in using deadly force to kill the alleged rapist.
So, contrary to Murphy’s claim, the female probably would be sent to prison (not jail) for killing the male student who had sex with her without her consent, concludes Banzhaf.