Letters to the Editor
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She shows outrage at society's attitudes toward women who have sex without submitting to male control.
Society is NOT outraged with her for having sex without submitting to male control.
Society is outraged with her for getting into bed with two drunks and then expecting that if she says no they will immediately climb out of bed, and her claim that she has no responsibility for her poor decisions.
Society is outraged with her inability to see this as an outcome of her poor decisions and her responsibility and her decision to mischaracterize this as some sort of problem society has with women having sex.
So please, before you go further, show me the proof that the problem is with society having a problem with women having sex without submitting to male control, and not a problem over this particular women deciding to have sex with two drunks that she then blames for being drunk and male.
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Well this is a no brainer.
First of all, no rape happened because no rape happened and no one says a rape happened.
If, after Kiddle said no, the non-condomed guy proceeded to force her to have sex without his wearing a condom, then it would have been rape. It is simple: When someone says no to sex and another person proceeds to force sex upon that person, it's rape.
People get to prescribe the conditions under which they have sex. Why is no one commending Kiddle for refusing to have sex without a condom? However irresponsible she may be she is at least not bringing an unwanted child into the world. This is good. At this juncture in her life she would not make a very good mother. However irresponsible she maybe, she did not get pregnant and then seek an abortion. However irresponsible she may be, she did not have the child and then seek child support. She said "No," which is the responsible thing to say to a guy who is not wearing a condom. She also protected her health and his by not having unprotected sex.
If I say to man that I refuse to have sex unless I get to wear the dog collar this time and he tosses the dog collar out the window and proceeds to force me to have sex despite my protestations, it's rape. Maybe I just never enjoy sex without the dog collar. He exerted inappropriate control by forcing me to have sex under conditions that I disagreed with.
Sex is a negotiated arrangement. It simply has to be to be fair to all parties involved. If a man says that he cannot have sex unless he wears the dog collar, and I say I refuse to have sex with a man wearing a dog collar and force him to have sex when he says no then that too is rape.
Rape is not about who is drunk or who has sense or who is a slut. Let us say that three women know a guy who is dishonest player. He controls women by lying to them. These three women decide to get back at him by kidnapping him and tying him up and forcing him to have sex. They have committed gang rape. He may still be a dishonest slut, but they have committed an act of force.
When someone actually goes so far as to charge someone with rape and the case proceeds to court then a jury decides whether the circumstances warrant a verdict of guilty. The courts allow lots of information in that concerns the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape.
The circumstances that Kiddle describes are similar to someone leaving the keys in their tempting looking car and leaving it parked in an area known for car thefts. If someone take the car, it's still theft. It is unlikely that the jury would feel sympathy for the thief because he is drunk. They may also choose to have little sympathy if he claims he has an incredible compulsion to steal cars.
People like Kiddle take the risk that sex may go bad. That does not mean that they should have no recourse when that sex turns out to mean rape. Having a wild sex life never means that one agreed to rape. It is impossible to agree to rape.
Women have as much right to a wild sex life as men do.
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It's lazy thinking...as well as not wanting to face reality...
>The more I think about it, the more I wonder about those who are longing for the good old days. Are they like Katie Roiphe, who appears to be pining for a knight in shining armor to sweep her off her feet? Or would they like to have the free and heavy hand that my grandfather had?<
Eheheh. On an author board I frequent, there's a woman who's a major nostalgia junky in this way. She's lived her entire life down South and has a dominating father. Now, she has a job and a life of her own--but she feels she's been cheated out of what the "good old days" might have brought her: a wedding in the church where her parents were wed; a chivalrous, rich husband who'll always protect and love her; perfect upper-class children; and a nice life as a wealthy Southern matron. She has said she longs for the 1890s, for the most part. She blames feminism for scaring all the "good" men away--or "wrecking" society so that good men don't get made the way they "used" to. She's an interesting study, to say the least--she's independent, but she wants the kind of life one suspects her female relatives would have been happy to dump. A lot of this nostalgia is ignorance as to what the "good old days" were really like. I forget which SF author said it, but he noted that all those folks who'd want to live in Victorian England or medieval times forget that the vast majority of people were servants or serfs doing backbreaking dirty work, not wealthy lords and ladies swanning around in beautiful clothes and perfumed gardens. The same applies to women who think feminism screwed up the "natural" order of things. They have the privileges feminism got them (the ability to have a bank account; leave an abusive husband; have a job in the field of one's choice), but they think if this were back in the day, they'd be some cossetted maiden instead of the overworked maid or frustrated wife they most likely would be.