It can easily be answered without hijack. There’s a difference between “had some alcohol” and “intoxicated.” There’s a difference between “happily buzzed” and “drunk.” And there isn’t enough alcohol in the world to make someone incapable of knowing their principles after the fact.
I’m not talking about people who’ve only had a small bit to drink; people frequently have sex when they are FAR too drunk to drive a car or sign a contract. It’s not like this only happens occasionally. If your standards for consenting to sex include not being drunk, then there’s a hell of a lot of rape going on.
People who choose to intoxicate themselves are as responsible for their decisions and actions in that state as anyone. We don’t give people a pass for their bad driving, or their decision to drive, after getting drunk, right?
Well, if it required equal treatment for the sexes under the law it might lead to the removal, or extension, of the selective service (“draft”) in America, on which grounds a lot of people opposed it when it was first proposed. Presumably a constitutional amendment would overrule whatever legal authority the SS rests upon. Frankly, a feminist advocating for the ERA is like a Turkey getting excited over Christmas.
I can’t think of any crime other than rape where one person’s word against that of another is the norm. And I wouldn’t convict, if I was on a jury, one a single person’s word. There will always be a reasonable doubt.
They are, compared to false allegations of other crimes.
I don’t think anyone on this thread would say anyone ever deserves to be raped, no matter how they dress, or how they behave.
Sorry, was too lazy to look up statistics of sufficient precision. 435,000 American women have heart attacks annually; 267,000 die. cite.
You know, I’ve seen this scholarly theory going around lately, and so I guess this is the best time to address it.
I have to say, that this idea is one of the worst forms of theoretical A-priori assumptions I’ve seen in awhile. What this idea basically does is provide no evidence whatsoever for any of its claims, while meanwhile making an assumption that is so counter-intuitive that I really am still amazed that people circulate the idea.
In the end your saying that before the advent of farming, no conceptions of male authority or dominion over females was present. Which is essentially saying that both genders were equal. After realizing this, you would then have to go on to prove that after this period of equality among both genders, farming started, and then…men told women they were subservient now, and must obey the authority of men? It also ails me to see you subscribe to the school of thought that encourages certain beliefs such as, as you have stated, that things like virginity were inventions created to keep women in line. For starters…the concept of virginity was created to refer to a woman who hadn’t had their hymen disturbed. I’m sure upon its invention both men and women agreed it had unbiased value as a physical description. Though its so very hard to believe today…most people back then valued the virtue of chastity. I would agree that women probably get more blame for being unchaste then is fair, and the reality should accorded to both sexes, but I digress.
Gosh I don’t know…it couldn’t possibly have been the wave of feminism that has exploded over the past century…
Go to any site that describes college demographics… generally 50%(+/-1%) men, and 50%(+/-1) women. Which is only in effect because after the women’s rights movement, everyone felt bad about the whole thing, and so made sure their school policies were in line with social political correctness. Not that I at all disagree with the women’s rights period–pardon the pun–but, hate to say it, men could take things back again over if they wanted. Again, not that I would ever agree with that, but the fact draws us back to what has really been the main factor of men being the dominant of the two genders throughout time…and that is the fact that they are biologically born physically stronger. If women were born physically stronger, then they in the same way would be the socially dominant of the two genders.
Hold Fast
even sven
By the way, you do realize that what you were say-whating about was my description of your point, right…
The only way any of this holds water is if it stops being a crime to drive drunk.
Til then: adults who choose to impair themselves have chosen to impair themselves, and the decisions they make while impaired are their own fault. The law recognizes this by holding adults who drive while drunk accountable for doing so. It is illogical, irrational, and completely unjust to fail to hold a woman accountable for her bad sexual decisions in the same way and allow her to blame anyone else.
So if you think it’s right to let a woman off the hook for her bad sexual decisions while drunk, then you have to let her off the hook for killing the carload of babies she hit when she made the bad decision to drive a car while drunk.
Both, or neither.
Depending on how this case in Minnesota goes, maybe it will hold more water than you think.
I am equally amazed that people circulate ideas the idea that women are like insert stereotye here because cave men insert unfounded claim about prehistoric life here.
Do you deny that there is a different spectrum of gender roles in non-agricultural societies, including, of course, our own? How can it be that our generation, uniquely, has managed to defy nature?
Of course not. There were all kinds of different power dynamics. They likely still sucked for women, but the institutions were different than the ones we have now. Modern(ish) western gender roles are not the god-given natural “normal.” They are not universal, they have not endured through history, and they are quickly become outdated.
I’m not sure why you think I’d think that. It’s not virginity, but the value of virginity. There are plenty of societies (including our own) where virginity is not really all that important. There are others where it’s a life-or-death matter.
Why did that wave of feminism happen now, and not some time in the past? I’d argue it’s a result of economic conditions- moving to cities (and the pill) made it economical and possible to have fewer children. Women with better health and fewer child-rearing/household duties were able to enter the workforce, and soon conditions made it so they had to join the workforce. This brought increased financial independence, and that brought a demand for quality things (good sex, good education, etc.) where previously they would have to take what they could get.
Uh. How? Simulatiously beat us all up? I’m not sure how you plan to deal with all of the armed women, or what the world will be like afterwards when half the workforce stops doing its thing.
Why don’t we see more stratification based on strength then? It’s not like male/female is the only social divide that has a physical strength difference.
I’m not sure this works unless the woman is driving KITT.
What is this “let her off the hook”? If she drives drunk she’s committing a crime; that’s what she’s on the hook for. If she gets raped while drunk… what, exactly? It doesn’t make any sense to compare the two situations.
Here’s a comparison. If I made it my business to go around to all the local bars at 2:30 every night with a bunch of pre-printed service contracts and bills of sale, and just made a shitload of business deals with people who were drunk out of their minds, would you be OK with my collecting on those? If I can convince one or two people every night to buy some rental property, or a jet ski, or some pork bellies, or whatever, even though they’re completely shitfaced, is that consent valid? Should I be able to go in front of a judge and say, see, judge, his scrawl is right there; he owes me $750,000 for this sweet-ass horse I sold him? Or was the agreement rendered meaningless and void by the fact that they clearly weren’t competent to make a rational decision?
What if I did the same thing as an Army recruiter? He signed it, judge; I told him he could have one of those bomb suits if he wanted. What if I was a plastic surgeon? You’re right, lady, all your friends are prettier than you. I can fix that!
Instead of focusing on someone who may or may not be deliberately exploiting someone else’s drunkenness (and your example bears almost no resemblence to the average she-was-drunk-so-it-was-rape scenario, by the way, which is far muddier and much more often than not includes HIM being drunk…so how is HIS actions taken while drunk something he must be responsible for, but HERS are not?) speak to the intoxicated person’s responsibility for their own actions and decisions.
On the face of it, it would seem that you favor treating all decisions made while intoxicated as not really valid. But the law doesn’t agree with you.
People go to Vegas, get shitfaced, and blow their life savings. The casino GAVE them free drinks! Do they get their money back when they are sober again?
And do you disagree with laws against drunk driving? If someone got shitfaced, made the bad decision to drive, and killed your whole family, would you give them a pass because they didn’t know what they were doing? Or would you think that they made the stupid decision to become so intoxicated that they have to accept the consequences of whatever follows that decision?
And if your answer is: responsible here, not there, sometimes this, not that, I’d like a clear understanding of the distinctions you make, without reference to third parties and any blame they may or may not have.
I would love to respond to that, but to be honest, your statement that “the law doesn’t agree with you” is setting off klaxons left and right over here. The scuttlebutt going 'round is that sometimes you say what the law is, but what you say it is isn’t what it actually is.
So could you just kind of roughly tell me what the law is that you’re correcting me on? Is it this:
?
I’m not trying to play the sort of gotcha game that is popular in this forum, trying to get you to make a semantic misstep I can pounce on. I’m just not sure whether or not it’s going to be a waste of my time to go to any length pointing out the distinction between consent to a voluntary interaction on the one hand, and culpability for a wrongful act on the other.
If you don’t want to play games, then don’t. Of any kind. Just read, respond or don’t. Nothing complicated about it.
Here’s what I said:
Not really hard to determine one way or another. First.. you SEEM to favor treating ALL decisions made while intoxicated as invalid. Do you? If not, then I was asking how you differentiate. If you do, I was pointing out the self-evident fact that the law does not. Because if the law treated ALL decisions made while intoxicated as invalid, then the law would never hold anyone accountable for any of those decisions, including the ones to drive.
The rest of my post was pretty specific and doesn’t require any kind of wondering or guessing at all.
But I’ll try again:
Jane is 25 years old, healthy in mind and body.
She decides to go out on Friday night and party with friends.
She chooses to drink 8 vodka martinis.
She is totally shitfaced.
She starts necking with Jim on the dance floor, then it gets hotter and heavier, they retreat to a secluded area and she lets Jim fuck her in the ass even though she’s never done that before in her life and would never agree to it sober.
Half an hour later she decides to go home. She gets in her car with her blood alcohol level through the roof, and drives away. While fumbling drunkenly in her purse she fails to note the red light and smashes into a car, killing two children and leaving their mother in a wheelchair.
Next day, when she’s sober, in addition to her shame and horror at killing the children, she feels shame and horror that she let Jim fuck her in the ass, and she calls it rape.
So. Do you think it is reasonable and just to prosecute Jane for her decision to drive while drunk, but prosecute Jim for her decision to assfuck while drunk?
If your answer is yes, you think it is reasonable and just, fine: I am asking you to please explain your logic.
By the way, just in case you weren’t aware: I’m female, and a committed feminist. And the idea that women are not responsible for their sexual choices while drunk offends me because it is, in my opinion, a particularly odious example of the infantilization of women which is sold as “protecting” them, which is itself part of what I consider a very conveeeeeenient double standard maintained by a certain flavor of feminist who wants to have her girly cake and eat it too.
All of which is extra-super icky and infuriating because it is grossly unfair to men, grossly, and dilutes the fight against real rape: the kind where she says no.
And just a reminder: your logic about HER, not about him. Because in order to prosecute HIM, you must be relieving her of her responsibility for her choices, and that’s the part that interests me, not how you arrive at blaming him.
I’ve always used riddles as a teaching tool to get students to practice asking questions in a foreign language. I give them a problem and the class has to solve it by asking questions to which I can only answer yes, no, or don’t know/not relevant to solving the problem. Students who happen to be familiar with the riddle are not allowed to participate with the questions but become the answerers. An example of such a riddle: Someone is reading the obituaries in the paper, points to one of them and says: “ I’m 99% percent positive this person was murdered. “ Find out why this reader thinks so.
The beauty of this method is that students tend to really really really want to solve these kinds of problems and this overcomes individual shyness, fear of making mistakes and even laziness. The class becomes vibrant, cooperative as a group, and dictionaries rustle. And, they simply need to ask questions to get to the solution. Except for that one riddle in my stack, the one that in a post feminist society would be obvious right away without asking a single question.
I refer of course to the old chestnut:
a father and son go out on a drive, they get in an accident, the father is killed on the spot and the son is rushed to hospital. When he arrives in the operating room the surgeon says: I’m sorry I can’t operate on my own son, get a replacement. How can this be?
You’d think a class full of teenagers or adults have as part of their general knowledge that usually a son is called son by two people, his mum and his dad. Dad is dead, therefore the surgeon is his mother. We are not talking about some obscure fringe social arrangement here by any means. But yet, to this day, both male and female students have reacted to this riddle as if it were. They immediately go for the dead-dad-is-not-the-biological- father option and then go on to modern reproductive methods and end with increasingly science fictional solutions like cloning. Anything before the mum solution really. If that, I sometimes have to put them out of their misery and tell them.
Perhaps some of you live in enlightened regions, so try it out for yourselves. I’m curious what your results are. (but be fair, ask them : are you familiar with the riddle about …., so as not to count false positives given by people who have previously been given the answer.)
In the seventies, when this riddle first became popular, female surgeons were rare indeed, both in real life and in popular culture. The difficulty in solving this riddle was chalked up to lack of female surgeons, even though there wasn’t exactly a lack of sons having mothers. So there was no excuse even then, to not have people immediately think: dead dad, therefore mum, easy! Nowadays, there’s still lots of sons with mothers but we live in a new and improved world with lots of female surgeons on TV and quite a few in real life as well. A hell of a lot more than human clones anyway. So, the difficulty with solving this riddle seems much deeper to me than just the 70-ties explanation of perceived career opportunities for women. That has changed. But apparently, a lot hasn’t. And a lot of feminism is about that . I welcome it.
Based on the example you provided, I completely agree. I feel the same way about women being excused for acts of violence on the basis that they are irrational or psychologically threatened or whatever. The problem, as I see it, is that people are all too quick to jump to the conclusion that many cases of date rape are a result of exactly this - a woman who regrets a choice she made, a woman who ‘‘wants to have her cake and eat it too,’’ as it were. If I could nail down a fundamental problem I have with attitudes about rape in this society, it’s that people on both sides of the fence have made up their minds about ‘‘what really happened’’ long before the details of the story come out. People will do just about anything to twist the facts to fit their conception of what happened. A woman will disown her own daughter if it means protecting her own idea of the way the world works (speaking from experience, here.) Whenever I tell my own story, people react as if it’s some kind of horrible anomaly, when the truth is I’ve heard tens of stories just like it.
I was ashamed to call myself a feminist for a long time, for exactly the reason that is proposed in this thread - that it’s somehow about elevating women above men. I am aware that such feminists exist, but I certainly don’t ascribe to that philosophy. I am just as irritated by stereotyping of men as I am of women. While I do believe that women still face tremendous barriers to success in this society - particularly low income women of color - I see the gender binary as damaging to both men and women. I have no interest in villainizing men. I have an interest in addressing certain attitudes, present in both men and women, which contribute to the oppression of women, because I do believe they are still getting the raw end of the deal. I would attribute that to a series of social and economic factors, none of which point to some kind of malicious agenda on the part of men to keep women down. In fact, I would say the most marginalized of all as a result of the gender binary are gay men and trans women, an argument borne out by homelessness, suicide, and assault statistics.
Anyway, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is you can’t achieve progress without being confident in what you stand for. I stand for gender equality. I am a feminist.
The difficulty? :dubious: It was dead simple when I was 9 years old in 1982. Seemed like a pretty stupid riddle, despite the fact that I certainly had a mental image of a male surgeon.