Memory

Thursday's class discussion, was about topics related to memory. Therefore, during class we broke into small discussion groups in order to come up with topics to talk about. My group decided to talk about disabilities and consent, due to an article we had read previously in the class. The article was about a 74 year old man who's wife had recently come down with Alzheimer's. The doctor's had claimed that she was not able to consent to sex because of her problems with her memory, and her mental state. The only people who had a problem with the issue of consent, were the women's daughters. However, the man was cleared of all charges, due to a lack of evidence as well as the complications with the issue of the women having sex, and liking it. However, this is a very interesting topic for many reasons. For one, it highlights the problems having to do with varying disabilities [such as Alzheimer's and Dimensia] who can be incapable of agreeing to, or consenting to having sex.

We have not really had a class discussion about old age and rape, because 80% of rapes happen to women under the age of 30. However, in this case it was really important to pay attention to the habits of the couple. The women did not resist to having sex, and her roommate said she always seemed happy to see her husband, when he came to visit. A rape kit was performed, although it was months after the incident occurred. It could not be proved that any type of rape happened.

We also talked about Organization's official stances on Sexual Assault and Harassment. We also talked about how we train our memories to remember something. Therefore, there is also such thing as an Institutional memory. There are things such as policies and procedures that institutions must follow and adhere to. Responses may be somewhat similar, when comparing one company to another, in regards to the corpus  of rules and regulations. For example, Toyota won't let you marry anybody else from Toyota.

Also, some companies rely on evidence, rather than taking someone's word. Some companies, and people have a zero tolerance for certain things such as sexual assault and harassment. We felt as a class, that people used to rely more on "he said, she said". Now, people rely more on hard factual evidence.

We also talked about, "how would you change that situation?" In regards to rape, the reliance on evidence is a little out of bounds. People are focused more on the idea of "innocent, until proven guilty". They are also too concerned with false accusations. There needs to be a balance between this. The mindset should change to, "let's prove that you are innocent, rather than prove that you are guilty".

The Problem:
The accuser is considered a liar, until they can prove they are telling the truth. This is relatively trivial, and the law does not take equality into account, towards the plaintiff and the defendant [however, maybe they should be doing this]. It all goes back to how society needs to find a better balance, and adjust the assumptions being made. People are afraid to report rapes because they they are scared of being called a liar, and they don't want to go through the large ordeal of proving that they are indeed, not a liar. The court of law also makes it so, if certain evidence is not rebutted, than it will automatically result in a conviction. The system may need to be changed, in order to find better outcomes in our society.