![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Dealing with the Anti-Women Brigade
Sep. 14th, 2010 04:38 pmhttp://www.theeagleonline.com/opinion/story/dealing-with-aus-anti-sex-brigade/
A fairly typical run of ‘she asked for it by drinking too much’ along side a dash of ‘feminists hate sex’ mixed in. There’s actually a good point in here that the qualifications for date rape are at best fuzzy, and that men bear largely the sole responsibility in instances when charges are brought up. I’ve seen this argument a lot of times.
You know what? They’re right on that point. It is unfair. It does mean that the woman, consenting or not at the time, can claim intoxication in order to withdraw consent and charges will stick. It puts the onus on the man to check every single aspect of his potential partner if he wants to totally eliminate risk on his part. That is a clear double standard and from a legal aspect, involves the potential to be used to destroy the lives of potentially innocent men. All true.
Of course, the response is ‘so what’?
The reality is that there are women who will manipulate the nature of the law for their own advantage. I personally know two guys who fell afoul of it; one because her boyfriend’s friends saw her heading off with my friend and told him, prompting her sudden belief that she was so drunk she couldn’t remember; the other had been following an agreed one-night stand that she thought was the springboard to a deep and meaningful relationship, and when that was quickly quashed, she had him charged. In both cases, two innocent guys (although, granted, guy 2 has always been a jackass) spent months fighting the charges, and without both charges getting withdrawn, at least one of them would have certainly been convicted.
Two guys. Now I know an awful lot more women who have been sexually assaulted and/or raped as a result of social situations in which alcohol is a factor, and the repercussions lasted far longer than months. The stories of my two guy friends make me sympathetic to the problem the guys face, but the stories and details of my scores of female friends who have been assaulted constantly underlines why the laws are there and fuzzy in the first place. Sometimes you have to play the odds, and the odds are overwhelmingly skewed against my gender’s innocence in these encounters that you get stuck sucking it up and supporting it. Anecdotal isolated injustice isn’t enough to suggest that what is often the only legal protection women have to challenge their attackers deserves to have the ‘line of demarcation’ he’s calling for, because where ever you draw that line, you can measure in tens of thousands every year whose only response gets limited to ‘deal with it’.
Now, one part I totally agree with is this:
Don’t jump into the sexual arena if you can’t handle the volatility of its practice!
If you think the existing laws and unduly unfair and puts you at risk, the answer is very simple. Don’t sleep with anyone that’s had a drink. Don’t sleep with anyone you don’t know prior. Don’t sleep with anyone if there’s any potential way that her consent could be challenged.
If we’re talking about taking the risks that Knepper is so passionate about being the key spice to sex, why does it have to the women who shoulder it? You want to be a sexual conqueror? A big game hunter out to bag the top hottie? Hey pal, that’s supposed to involve risk, right? How about you take the chance instead of her? When one in three women will experience some kind of sexual assault in their lifetime, and college age woman are four times more likely to be targeted, implementing Knepper’s rigid demarcation is immensely more dangerous to women than the current definitions of consent are to men.
Don’t like it? Well, that’s what the internet and the sleeve of your favourite jacket is for instead.
EDIT: Please don't thank me. A decade ago, I was saying the exact same shit as this prick. I had the same fired up 'personal responsibility' rant that he's trading on. This post is not about how enlightened and female friendly I am. It's about what is easy to buy into, and the potential danger it represents.
A fairly typical run of ‘she asked for it by drinking too much’ along side a dash of ‘feminists hate sex’ mixed in. There’s actually a good point in here that the qualifications for date rape are at best fuzzy, and that men bear largely the sole responsibility in instances when charges are brought up. I’ve seen this argument a lot of times.
You know what? They’re right on that point. It is unfair. It does mean that the woman, consenting or not at the time, can claim intoxication in order to withdraw consent and charges will stick. It puts the onus on the man to check every single aspect of his potential partner if he wants to totally eliminate risk on his part. That is a clear double standard and from a legal aspect, involves the potential to be used to destroy the lives of potentially innocent men. All true.
Of course, the response is ‘so what’?
The reality is that there are women who will manipulate the nature of the law for their own advantage. I personally know two guys who fell afoul of it; one because her boyfriend’s friends saw her heading off with my friend and told him, prompting her sudden belief that she was so drunk she couldn’t remember; the other had been following an agreed one-night stand that she thought was the springboard to a deep and meaningful relationship, and when that was quickly quashed, she had him charged. In both cases, two innocent guys (although, granted, guy 2 has always been a jackass) spent months fighting the charges, and without both charges getting withdrawn, at least one of them would have certainly been convicted.
Two guys. Now I know an awful lot more women who have been sexually assaulted and/or raped as a result of social situations in which alcohol is a factor, and the repercussions lasted far longer than months. The stories of my two guy friends make me sympathetic to the problem the guys face, but the stories and details of my scores of female friends who have been assaulted constantly underlines why the laws are there and fuzzy in the first place. Sometimes you have to play the odds, and the odds are overwhelmingly skewed against my gender’s innocence in these encounters that you get stuck sucking it up and supporting it. Anecdotal isolated injustice isn’t enough to suggest that what is often the only legal protection women have to challenge their attackers deserves to have the ‘line of demarcation’ he’s calling for, because where ever you draw that line, you can measure in tens of thousands every year whose only response gets limited to ‘deal with it’.
Now, one part I totally agree with is this:
Don’t jump into the sexual arena if you can’t handle the volatility of its practice!
If you think the existing laws and unduly unfair and puts you at risk, the answer is very simple. Don’t sleep with anyone that’s had a drink. Don’t sleep with anyone you don’t know prior. Don’t sleep with anyone if there’s any potential way that her consent could be challenged.
If we’re talking about taking the risks that Knepper is so passionate about being the key spice to sex, why does it have to the women who shoulder it? You want to be a sexual conqueror? A big game hunter out to bag the top hottie? Hey pal, that’s supposed to involve risk, right? How about you take the chance instead of her? When one in three women will experience some kind of sexual assault in their lifetime, and college age woman are four times more likely to be targeted, implementing Knepper’s rigid demarcation is immensely more dangerous to women than the current definitions of consent are to men.
Don’t like it? Well, that’s what the internet and the sleeve of your favourite jacket is for instead.
EDIT: Please don't thank me. A decade ago, I was saying the exact same shit as this prick. I had the same fired up 'personal responsibility' rant that he's trading on. This post is not about how enlightened and female friendly I am. It's about what is easy to buy into, and the potential danger it represents.
