Hmm. Very good points, all. I might mostly limit my sympathies to those who haven't been taken to court and/or those whose victims were undamaged enough, or confused enough, to allow for the possibility that it really was a mistake more than a crime.

I have sympathies for the people in the original thread who said, "D'oh! Umm... I did some of that. I was icky, and I realize it now."

So long as we're holding more sympathy for the kid than the victim

Ah. No, I did not mean that. How much sympathy I've got for any individual offender has a lot to do with how damaged the victim(s) are, which in my mind points to some of the offender's subconscious choices. A date rapist who chooses dates whose reaction includes a measure of "meh, stupid boys, whatcha gonna do?" has shown some attempt to mitigate harm, and that inclination should be encouraged, not ignored entirely because the case is about sex. (However, one who chooses victims who have low self-esteem and are prone to thinking it's their own fault, shows intent to avoid consequences, and that should be additionally punished.)

I'm aware these are very difficult to distinguish, and almost impossible to encode into law. My sympathies are limited to the personal, social level, and have almost no connection to the legal system. I think we should have (here) a lot more education & reform programs; I don't think any of our penalties should be more lenient as a whole, just that *when/if* a judge can determine real miscommunications, or the confusion that youths have, or lack of basic understanding of sex & relationships, there should be an allowance for something other than just a prison sentence, and judges should be free to get creative in that "something else."

Prosecutions are not easy to get, here. The vast majority of date rape goes unprosecuted, along with most stranger rapes. Most of the 104 "No pity, no shame, no silence" sexual abuse stories collected here (many of them are f'locked now) were not prosecuted.

Our courts do not, for the most part, prosecute frat boys or sports stars for unwanted sexual advances or outright rape, especially of girls who sought out their attention, if not their beds. A girl who was drinking at a party can assume that, unless she's hospitalized as a result of an attack, she won't be able to prosecute. The courts are still plenty big on "sluts don't get to cry rape." Prostitutes almost never have the option of going to the police; since prostitution is illegal (everywhere except Nevada), they have to admit their own crime in order to stop someone else's... and it's often considered that they got what they deserved.

I have no idea if it's easier to get a prosecution for rape in the US than in the UK. I believe the social stigma here is skewed--for pedophiles, the stigma is so great that they have to be protected in prison to keep from getting killed, but for other kinds of rape, the rapist might get "macho points" depending on circumstances.

It's hard for me to tell--my social circle is mostly lower-class (or at least low-income; it's very hard to separate those here), and criminal records of any sort don't carry much stigma. Most of my friends' criminal records, if they have them, relate to activism of various sorts, but the record doesn't say "assault on a police officer during a gay rights march" vs "assault on a police officer while attempting to rob a store;" it just lists the assault. And our court system is heavily skewed in favor of the wealthy... poor people are often convicted of crimes that the rich can commit with impunity. So in some social groups, there's a believe that conviction of a crime, any crime, indicates poverty & lack of resources, not actual guilt.

do we make it clear that they did something seriously wrong, but bear in mind that they were stupid and selfish instead of malicious when dealing with the wrong

This is what I want. I'm not sure how that plays out on a practical level in the real world, but I want an awareness that there's a difference between stupid selfishness and outright malice, and we need to pay attention to that difference to change our cultures to ones where rape is less likely, less acceptable, less common.

Because to convince people not to rape again, to teach children not to become rapists, we need to know why they would in the first place. And for most of them, it's not because they hate women and want to leave them in emotional agony, and punishments & therapies based on changing *that*, just won't work.