Oct 23rd, 2007
Singapore’s law encourages men to rape their wives
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I just read AFP’s report on the failed attempt to repeal s377A (the act that criminalizes sex between two men) and this was what the Senior Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs, Ho Peng Kee, has to say:
“While homosexuals have a place in society… repealing section 377A will be contentious and may send a wrong signal that the government is encouraging and endorsing the homosexual lifestyle as part of our mainstream way of life,” Ho said.
Well, for years we have the marital immunity law. For the uninitiated, the marital immunity law basically means that a man CAN sexually force himself on his wife, whether she likes it or not. If you are in Singapore, don’t worry about raping your wife. By not repealing this law, the government is also sending the “right” signal that a man can legally rape his wife.
Singaporean men are really privileged. They don’t have to worry about their wives cooking up lame excuses such as headaches and being too tired. If they can’t get their wives to consent, just resort to rape! The law “encourages” Singaporean men to satisfy their sexual urges at ANY time of the day by granting immunity from marital rape. I don’t think there are many other countries where men have it this good!
Oh, now that “unnatural” sex between consenting heterosexuals has been legalised, all the better! Singaporean men have more choices in raping their wives! This is simply great, isn’t it?
Singaporean men, be thankful that the government encourages and endorses marital rape as, in the words of Ho Peng Kee, “a part of our mainstream way of life” by not repealing the marital immunity law. Like s377A, repealing this law “will be contentious and may send a wrong signal”.
Remember to tell your wife tonight that you can rape her and she can’t do anything about it because the government said so.
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Rejoice and be glad to all people who are promiscuous - the gahmen is encouraging and endorsing adultary (there is no law against that).
Rejoice and be glad to all teenagers and unmarried couples (heterosexual ones of course) - the gahmen is encouraging and endorsing you to have pre-martial sex (there is no law against that).
Rejoice and be glad to all women who are pregnant - the gahmen is really encouraging and endorsing abortion (it is legal what!).
the law should protect people who don’t give consent, and are thus harmed in the offensive acts in which no consent was given on their part. that is the philosophy behind it.
if the law reflects a value or a moral code of some peoples, that is just mere coincidence, because we appropriated some of our laws from our colonial masters.
studies have shown that perceptions of media bias are related to a person’s personal bias. if you are pro-PAP, you will think straits times is objective and unbiased. if you are anti-gay, you will think that the law reflects the values of the “majority”.
The real fact is that 377A is ambiguous. What is its use if there is no intention to prosecute.
I just wonder what is the use of a Law Minister when there is no justice in Singapore. Just look at how the opposition has been unfairly treated.
read that lee hsien loong said something about our law being ambiguous and that is ok. is that undermining the constitution? and is that defamatory against his own government? scary, right?
[...] I find it rather interesting that homosexual is considered immoral while marital rape is not. How queer. As my fellow blogger puts it, man have more ways to rape wives with the repeal of [...]
[...] Thio Li-Ann and her intellectuallyinferior arguments against repealing S377A - Hear ye! Hear ye!: Singapore’s law encourages men to rape their wives - panda domus: 377A - Dansong: On 377A Nonsense in the Reasonable Hall of the Sensible Nation - [...]
“read that lee hsien loong said something about our law being ambiguous ..”
If the above is true, it is certainly a very strange statement by a head of state.
I can’t help but feel this entire development has little or nothing to do with rights. I believe darkness wrote abt it.
Sarcastic remark: raping doesn’t matter — at the bottom line it may increase the birth rate for this country.
[...] a read at Aaron’s blog on this matter. He criticised the government on this matter in a humorous manner and then wrote about it again regarding conservative. Though not many Singaporeans are agreeable [...]
[...] in doing my research and reading on 377A, I came across a very interesting post by Aaron Ng on 375 and what it really [...]
For full equality, I support the removal of wife maintenance provisions.
Agagooga,
Alternatively, we should introduce husband maintenance provisions.
That’d be like introducing Affirmative Action for Asians.
You are a man.
Why cant you see it that in today’s world men are being demonized enough already?
Marital rape immunity should be retained because removing it entails thrusting a great deal of power to women. Women are emotional creatures and are extremely irrational in the face of situations like adultry and divorce. They will use all means to gain leverage and one of those will be crying rape.
If you wish to be a proponent for equality, maybe you can do so in other ways like supporting NS for all, removing alimony and child support programs or the woman’s charter in general.
Men too have their rights. No relationship can ever be equal. The husband is treated as the dominant spouse for a good deal of reasons as it is he who is being counted upon to defend and protect the family.
Actually I believe if you rape your wife violently today you can be charged under some other law.
So retaining marital rape immunity won’t necessarily give impunity to men who rape their wives, to address MansVoice’s comment.
I wonder what he would suggest for women who cry rape after having sex with men they aren’t married to, though.
“So retaining marital rape immunity won’t necessarily give impunity to men who rape their wives, to address MansVoice’s comment.”
I agree but I believe it is symbolic my friends. Grant the feminists a right here, grant them a right there and before we know it, we will be stripped naked without anything to defend us.
Already, in western media, men are demonized as pigs with an extremely feminized media which encourages women to arm themselves against their husbands.
I disagree that marital rape immunity should be removed but I do not condone criminal acts either. If a man commits domestic abuse, he should be punished. Period.
MansVoice: “I agree but I believe it is symbolic my friends. Grant the feminists a right here, grant them a right there and before we know it, we will be stripped naked without anything to defend us.”
Wahey, something sounds familiar… That’s what anti-repeal 377A proponents said about 377a too. ‘It’s symbolic, the gays will push for more rights, soon heterosexuals will have to accept gay rights, etc etc.’
So wait. You think someone should be punished for committing domestic violence, but at the same time it’s okay for the person to violate another person’s personal and bodily autonomy all because ‘men have rights’ and husbands are the ‘dominant spouse’? Oookay then.
Actually in this case the analogy is false.
Granting gays more rights do not reduce the rights of non-gays. But removing marital rape exemption reduces men’s rights.
Men’s RIGHTS? Men have a RIGHT to have sex with unwilling women? That’s wholly new to me.
Women have a right to extort unwilling men. That’s not new at all.
And you’re conflating moral rights and legal rights.
If you object to spousal maintenance, why not just state that objection on its own terms? Why do you have to conflate it with granting “rights” to rape someone? Surely you wouldn’t find it a satisfactory state of affairs if women were made to support their husbands financially, but in return could abuse them physically? You have real problems with turning every conversation about specific problems into some kind of “men versus women smackdown”.
Given that you seem to be sceptical about the institution of marriage to begin with, can’t you put aside your hatred of women for one second - just one second - and see that treating rape within marriage and rape outside marriage as different has no basis whatsoever?
This is a ridiculous witch hunt.
I never said that men have a moral right to rape their wives. I was pointing out that the analogy with gay rights is wrong because granting gays rights does not reduce the rights of anyone else, not that it is wrong because it is right to rape your wife.
Similarly, pointing out that emancipating slaves reduces the rights of their masters while allowing Blacks to sing spirituals at home does not reduce the rights of anyone else (assuming no one hears them) does not amount to endorsing slavery.
Even if your cause is just and correct, using incorrect, misleading or fallacious arguments does no one any favours - least of all the cause itself.
If you could put aside your conviction that I am a misogynist for one second perhaps you would be able to see that you are just going on a roll and unloading your entire baggage of preconceptions on me.
The problem is, when you frame it in terms of a loss of “rights”, even if you mean legal rather than moral rights, you do suggest that there is a loss of something beneficial to men that should be counted against the removal of the exemption in the ledger. I would contend that it should not be considered on a cost-benefit analysis at all. We should not feel that it is even the slightest bit an encroachment on someone else that they cannot commit rape. If you think something that men possess is reduced by not being able to rape their wives, to avoid the suggestion that this reduction is a negative factor in removing the exemption, isn’t the more appropriate word “privilege”, not “rights”?
Also, when you continually deride women as dumb, irrational, delusive about our own aspirations and emotions, and mercenary, this outrage when other people regard you as misogynist is just bizarre.
well jol then tell me how you’d prevent abuse of a marital rape criminalization statute by a spiteful wife who “regrets the morning after”. where there are no witnesses present it’s not particularly easy for a man to offer even “reasonable doubt”. being a woman, of course, you wouldn’t mind all of that. probably very good for you to keep men docile, isn’t it?
in any case it’s not very fair for the penal code to say that only men can rape women. but still. i digress.
If the evidence is insufficient there should be an acquittal. The fact is, more guilty men are likely to be exculpated (precisely because proof is so difficult) than innocent men are likely to be convicted. The question here is solely whether you think husbands should have BLANKET IMMUNITY, REGARDLESS of the evidence.
I also agree that non-consensual penetration of either gender by either gender should be considered rape.
Non-consensual penetration? That brings rather interesting images to my mind involving strap ons, ropes, and some back door action.
(The sad thing is, p0rn exists depicting the above. Those dastardly Japanese. :cool:)
Perhaps more rigorous terminology would be along the order of ‘Penetration and/or -Envelopment-’. On this topic, is it true that men can have involuntary erections regardless of whether they were aroused? Since it would be rather difficult for Non-Consensual Envelopment to take place if Little Brother was scared of some Non-Consensual Envelopment. I would not know, I have not been raped before.
Maybe if she drugged the guy with some Viagra and sleeping pills before binding him with multiple cast iron Yale locks and chains to a bed or ceiling suspension and then threatened to burn his childhood comic books since there’s no way a female can possibly overcome the overwhelming male physique.
I guess she could also whip him a little for good measure, I dunno, be creative for your poontang.
Also, I feel this is a given, but worth saying:
Regardless of all that is said and done, let us please not forget that at the end of the day that as men, spoiling women a little is well and fine, and in fact, rather fun and fulfilling.
That said, know your limits and when to say no. If you find that she’s stabbing you in the back, take that as a signal that you need to overhaul your dating procedures and emergency protocol. -Those- emergencies.
In my humble opinion, if more of us remembered this we would hardly have a need to quibble about these laws. Also, if a guy ever gets -Raped- by a woman, he has much MUCH greater issues to worry about. Trust me on that.
Not that that’s even remotely possible.
In short, women can have their cake and eat it (If it doesn’t break their diet; have to keep up the eye candy now).
[...] Singapore’s law encourages men to rape their wives I just read AFP’s report on the failed attempt to repeal s377A (the act that criminalizes sex between two men) and this was what the Senior Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs, Ho Peng Kee, has to say: “While homosexuals have a place in society… repealing section 377A will be contentious and may send a wrong signal that the government is encouraging and endorsing the homosexual lifestyle as part of our mainstream way of life,” Ho said. [...]
So what’s the quickest route to Singapore?
What a cheap way to draw traffic.
There is no marital immunity the way you say it. Battery, sexual assault are still criminal charges
Yes, but the problem is that those offences (i) have significanlty lower penalties; and (ii) have a different “symbolic” status from “rape”.
Imagine we live in Redland, where grievous bodily hurt is an offence but for some strange reason, murder isn’t. Now imagine that X twists off Y’s testacles and leaves him to bleed to death. X will be charged with GBH, but not murder. If that a just outcome for Y? I doubt so.
In case you think my analogy is flawed, i should direct you to PP v. N, [1994] 3 Sing. L.R. 369. A husband tied his wife up, stripped her naked, and forcibly violated her multiple times. If the couple had not been married, the husband would’ve gotten 10 years for rape. However, even though the husband behaved like an animal, Yong CJ’s hands were tied. He could only give him a maximum sentence of 18 months- a pittance compared to the arguably deserved 10 years.
This is why the “marital rape is still covered by other offences” argument is only superfically convincing, and actually falls apart under scrutiny.
As for the evidential problems, don’t courts face the same issues when dealing with typical rape cases? And don’t they cope fine? If a marital rape case comes before the court, the marriage can count as circumstantial evidence that the husband reasonably believed consent was given, and can at least defend himself under s. 79 of the Penal Code. Lest you think wives will be able to get away with scurrilous accusations, be advised that if the court finds that she’s doing this just to vex her husband, it will reflect *very badly on *her reputation- arguably worse than for the husband. That in itself should suffice to deter vexatious litigation, while achieving justice for women who truly deserve protection.
Last but not least, i also think that rape should cover male victims of female predators. This could assuage Agagooga’s fear of men losing their rights, and also more accurately protect men in the face of women’s increasing empowerment.
sorry, didn’t mean to include “accurately” in my last sentence… my bad =S