Crap like this really pisses me off when the army is: 1.) letting in more people with lower aptitude scores, 2.) letting in more people with criminal backgrounds and 3.) stop-lossing soldiers to extend their tours of duty.

Here we've got a heroic female medic removed from a unit where she was probably doing the most good--female medics are especially important when working in regions where female modesty is prized. Who will be able to directly help female civilians now?

These are some screwed up rules and priorities. And don't get me started on the army booting homosexuals (some Arabic-speakers, no less!) from the army during a time of war.

But kudos to the heroism of Pfc. Brown, tough-as-nails and only just old enough to smoke!

Also, to "David Will Someone please get a fucking basic-editor for Broadsheet?' Terry"-try reading the WaPo article linked to and discussed in this piece for a deeper understanding of "women's skills." It would probably have been better had the editor defined these "women's skills," but it wasn't difficult to find out what she meant.

I think that the refusal of many feminists to make a finer distinction between the situations I described above, where it's at least possible that the woman was partly responsible, and actual forced rape contributes to the stigma.

No, no, no, no, no. Rape is rape is rape.

There is no such thing as the victim being reponsible for a rape. The onus is on the rapist not to rape. It is not on the woman to not drink, to not wear a mini-skirt, to not be promicuous or to not go to certain places alone. You might think that any of the actions listed above are bad or unwise behavior, but it doesn't make the victim culpable. If someone walks into a person's house and steals all of their stuff, you don't say, "sucks to be you, you should have had a dog/bought an alarm system/lived in a better neighborhood/or even you should have remembered to lock the door."

When only the victim is too drunk/drugged to give consent, it's clearly rape. If you think she meant yes while she was saying no, that's rape. If you've been dating her and had sex before and she says no this time, it's still rape. Rape is about force, threat and proceeding when consent is denied. Just plain regrettable/bad sex isn't rape. Most mainstream feminists don't think it is.

I agree with much of the rest of what you said but I want to halt this whole notion of "gray rape" that's been getting a lot of coverage recently. Rape is about force, threat and proceeding when consent is denied. Just plain regrettable/bad sex isn't rape.

When a prostitute has sex with five guys and is raped by one in a day and a half period, why do we summarily have to believe her? Why do we have to ignore her profession? The way some of these conversations go, some feminists seem to think we should, as its not relevant, when it is relevant.

Being a prostitute doesn't mean you're inclined to lie about rape. In fact, you could interpret it the exact opposite way--if you're someone who willingly submits to undesirable sex day in and day out, it must have been something pretty awful for you to go the police--who may arrest you for prostitution--and say it was rape.

Heck, you could argue that actors, lawyers and politicians shouldn't be believed because they lie for a living! I don't mean to be glib, just to point out that you can interpret a person's character in different ways. Which is why it's good to let juries decide these things, not, say, one cop with a pre-existing bias.

The notion of "illegal immigrants" is a relatively new idea that came into being well after many of our ancestors came through Ellis Island. Pre-1952, there wasn't a uniform, national immigration policy--there were a hodge-podge of statutes. There was an outline of national policy that roughly said, "feel free to come on in (in certain numbers) if you're from Northern or Western Europe."

So harping on the "illegal" aspect is a bit of a distraction--they're not really doing anything different than what many of our recent ancestors did.

But the law has changed, and that ought to be respected. Which means that people who come here illegally shouldn't be able to jump ahead in line before people who played by the rules. Just let's not lump illegal immigration in with robbery and murder. I'd liken it more to a traffic violation.

[You may begin picking at my immigration law generalizations starting...now.]

So in your statement, "When a prostitute has sex with five guys and is raped by one in a day and a half period, why do we summarily have to believe her?" the relevant part was not that she was a prostitute but that she had sex with five guys?

• If that's the case, her profession isn't relevant. The number of sex partners is.

But, when it comes to rape more so than other crimes, it seems there is a guilty before innocent.

• With the notable exception of the Duke case, I believe the exact opposite is true. An accused rapist doesn't have to prove consent--an alleged victim has to prove she physically, vocally (and perhaps through her overall demeanor) denied consent. Which makes rape unlike any other crime. We don't make a robbery victim prove they indicated they didn't what their stuff taken.