Consent

Here's the supposed "nightmare scenario:" a woman suddenly "changes her mind" and all of a sudden the poor innocent man finds himself charged with rape.

And yet, we're told this is a classic "he said/she said," and far from having is life ruined, this man has been acquitted.

I don't want to get into the specifics of this case, but it does strike me as the perfect examplar of one of the fundamental arguments between feminists and society as a whole: if we say that sex with an intoxicated woman is rape, will men start getting criminal records left and right for picking up women in bars?

Please note, before I go on with my rambling, that I'm not saying this particular man is guilty or that the judge was mistaken -- all I know about the case comes from the news reports, and I didn't get to hear any of the testimony. I'm not qualified to offer an opinion, and I'm not a lawyer, either. I just want to talk a little about the situation as described.

The basic problem here is that it's still perceived as okay to have sex with someone who's intoxicated, and severely so. So intoxicated, apparently, that she had to go and lie down. This isn't a case where she'd had a drink or two but was still alert. He had to know that she was pretty drunk, whether she was talking to him or not. Whatever he understood to be happening, why would he think it was okay to make a move in the first place? Why would he even want to?

And I don't mean okay in a legal sense -- I mean why is it culturally okay? This is what needs to change. There's nothing inherently wrong with partying and getting shit-faced, and there's nothing inherently wrong with casual sex and hooking up -- but there has to be a line where too much of the former means the latter has to wait for another day. Who even wants to have sex with someone who was throwing up a few hours earlier? Is consciousness really too much to expect in a sexual partner?

I don't know if this is something that can be legislated -- I'm inclined to think not. Surely, though, we need to shift the cultural attitude. We need to teach our kids and each other that not only is drunk sex not okay, it's not as much fun as sex with a fully conscious, actively and enthusiastically participating partner. Who doesn't taste like vomit (ick).

Children raping children

I can imagine few things as horrifying and disturbing as this story, in which an 11-year-old girl accuses three boys, aged eight and nine, of rape.

It's disturbing on so many levels. They're so young, all of them. It's hard to conceive of children that age being the perpetrators of a rape. At that age, how can they even imagine it? Who's sexualized those boys to the extent that they would even think to link sex and violence like this? How can we possibly consider charging eight and nine-year-olds as adults for something like this? Why can't we find whoever hurt them or whoever taught them that this was a thing to do, and charge them instead?

But I think what disturbs me most is to read that the boys' defense -- at least as portrayed in this story -- is that the sexual activity was consensual. How is it possible that an 11-year-old girl could consent to sex? How have we gotten to this state, as a society, that we take a case like this, and think "well, she just didn't want to get in trouble with her parents, so she made up the part about the rock"?

Some days, I just want to give up on our society altogether.

Warren Jeffs found guilty

This verdict is good to see. This is what needs to be done about this kind of so-called fundamentalist Mormon sects. This is what we should be doing to Winston Blackmore in Bountiful. It's the sexual assault and coercion that's the problem, not the polygamy itself (note that the rape Jeffs was convicted of abetting was within a monogamous "marriage".

I have huge admiration for the courage of this young woman, who was willing to come forward and testify against the man who controlled so much of her life. We shouldn't expect this kind of extraordinary courage, but we should really give credit where it's due. Because there wouldn't have been either a charge or a conviction without this young woman's courage.

Interestingly enough, the husband is now being charged as well. It will be interesting to see how that shakes out. I wonder why he wasn't the focus of the case in the first place?

Denial

What's depressing about this news story is not that the mother thinks her son is innocent of sexual assault. We all tend to assume that the people we know and love are innocent, unless we have irrefutable proof otherwise. It's a natural human instint to think the best of the people in our inner circle. So it doesn't bother me that the mother is coming up with reasons why her son must, surely, be innocent.

What's depressing is that this is an actual news story. We don't generally get news stories about all the relatives of the accused insisting that the accused is innocent. Oh sure, they'll often get a line or two in stories about particularly dramatic murders. But for what other crime can you imagine a news story about how the mother of the defendant is sure the crime never happened?

This kind of thing only happens in sexual assault cases. And that's depressing.

It's also pretty depressing that the victim's religion is considered an important fact. I suppose it's supposed to make the crime seem worse, somehow. Because sexually assaulting a "regular" girl... well, that's just normal behaviour. But when it's a girl who's been marked as unavailable... that's just heinous.

Hope for the human race yet

An update to my previous post:

Discharge refused in soldier's sex-assault conviction

Judge Carol St.-Cyr of Quebec Court yesterday refused to grant Private Pier-Olivier Boulet an absolute discharge. The judge said the soldier may have had a promising career in uniform, but giving him a court discharge would have rendered his crime "banal."

Thank you, Judge St.-Cyr.

A Very Good Soldier

From the annals of "news articles that really tick me off".

"Should convict serve time or country?"

That the Globe and Mail thinks this is even a question is repulsive. If someone's convicted of a crime, we generally assume they ought to go to jail (or whatever other legal remedies are deemed appropriate, of course).

Why is this case any different?

Because it's a rape case. And, apparently, rape is something we might consider excusing if the perpetrator is a 'nice boy'.

The whole article makes me really angry. It clearly works from the assumption that the victim is "crying rape" and that the perpetrator -- the convicted perpetrator, let me add -- has just been caught up in this case through no fault of his own.

She was so drunk she couldn't stand on her own.

She let him into her room because she thought of him as a friend.

They didn't "have sexual relations". He raped her. He raped a drunk 18-year-old who trusted him.

And yet the article pretends there's any question about whether he should serve time.

The whole thing makes me want to scream.