Letters to the Editor
Amity
Published Letters: 1153 Editor's Choice: 107
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Juliebird's questions
[Read the article: Britain in "moral collapse" over rape?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1. What is so appealing about a slobberingly drunk woman (besides being able to take advantage of her)?
You may be overthinking here: take out everything up to "drunk", and everything from "besides" to the end. That's probably about the extent of the thinking involved — and that may be being charitable.
To be fair, there are plenty of women who show the same degree of thoughtlessness. But there are two other factors worth considering, as out of fashion as it may be to admit them.
From a sociological view, many women don't perceive themselves as having to trick men into having sex with them. If they want it, they can get it (goes the assumption). Many men on the other hand are socialized to believe that they will have a much harder time of it unless they do something underhanded.
(Maybe these assumptions have some bearing on reality, maybe not — but they're certainly very real for the people who buy into them.)
Secondly, from a biomechanical point of view, it's much harder for a woman in a casual situation (no weapons involved, for example) to take advantage of a man than the reverse. So in a sense, women who get men drunk and then sleep with them are generally off the radar when we talk about coercive sex.
2. Why are we so quick to condemn women who get drunk, but not drunk men, men who hang with drubk women, or men who ply young women with booze?
Well, so far as I know, women who get outrageously drunk at parties full of men of poor reputation are sometimes subject to social censure, but drunk men who violently abuse women, or who serve alcohol to underage women, are committing actual crimes. I think a criminal conviction counts as condemnation of a pretty serious kind.
As a society we decided that it would be better for all of us if men and women alike could make decisions for themselves without the straitjacket of medieval notions of honor and purity. That's great and I'm all for it, but sometimes it seems that a lot of what these debates boil down to is figuring out what to replace those old notions with.
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Juliebird on applying the same standard
[Read the article: Britain in "moral collapse" over rape?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"I think a criminal conviction counts as condemnation of a pretty serious kind."
In theory. But, just looking at this thread, there are plenty of hearts and minds to be won over, no?
Lordy pants. You think?
But, shouldn't the same standard apply to both genders: don't be stupid, because women may be raped, and men may be slandered.
Woah. Is that really applying the same standard?
And anyway, that's kind of what I was getting at earlier — what you describe is pretty close to how things used to work, and we decided that we didn't like that. So I think it's worth asking why, and whether we want to return to the age of elaborate social barriers. (Maybe we do, I don't know.)
And what's wrong with saying that, yes, he may still be guilty but it is different if they were both drunk as opposed to if she was and he wasn't, or if neither of them were drunk and he's been stalking her for months? I know we want to say "rape is rape" but is that realistic? When it comes to the only other comparably heinous crime — murder — we allow for a wide range of severity indeed. Intent matters, state of mind matters, what else you were doing at the time matters. We even say that if you kill someone but hadn't meant to you may still be guilty — just not as much as if you had.
In practice it seems that (reasonable) people try to approach sexual assault cases in the same way, but so much of the law is nebulous and sex still makes people so uncomfortable that maybe it's time to just come out and codify the ways in which circumstances do (and do not) matter in sex crimes as well.
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brightstar65 on me posting more
[Read the article: Britain in "moral collapse" over rape?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Amity, please post more. You are a voice of reason in a wilderness of man-hating numbskulls.
Okay, for once I'll bite.
While I do like to think of myself as a voice of reason, thanks, Salon is more like a cozy parlor to me than a wilderness, and really, I don't see very much man-hating going on here at all. I'm sorry if you feel that there is — all I can offer is that in my experience real hatred of men as a matter of politics and policy seems to be (thankfully) out of fashion by about 25 years.
I would only correct that many men cannot get sex PERIOD without it being underhanded, or at least less than above board.
Well, you know what they say about the one constant in all your failed romantic encounters...
And anyway, let's be clear here — "underhanded" is not the same as "rape." At all. Everyone can agree on that, right?