cynicalbastard

There’s been a lot of coverage of the ICM survey of attitudes towards rape victims. Notably at Big Stick who references rhetorically speaking and the rather wonderful gendergeek (where I’ve just spent a happy, pissed off, and argumentative hour in that order disagreeing with about 70% of what’s posted but much enjoying the experience, a highly recommended site FWIW).

I don’t do shock horror, particularly when it comes to the attitudes of the British public. What did surprise me though was that these answers were given to totally straight-forward questions. This was not a question of, ‘if both parties have been drinking and can’t remember the night before, and the woman claims she was raped but there was no other evidence, should she take some responsibility?’, where one could understand (and even agree) with a percentage answering ‘yes’. But when the question is simply ‘did she deserve to be raped?’, it’s far less understandable. It’s also, of course, far less relevant to the great majority of situations. Being able to say ‘yes, she was raped’ isn’t always that clear-cut, and the real battlefield of the last couple of decades has been over the giving, or not, of consent.

As in the other case occupying the front pages today. I’m not massively surprised that the Judge involved has received so much criticism. It’s one of those ‘well rape is bad, so this must be a terribly conservative judge’ situations, whatever the facts of the case. It’s one of those areas where we’re not allowed to think differently, and to apply common sense. The evilness of the act must drive all before it, even to the extent of warping the way we’d otherwise view the situation. Certainly the comments of the Welsh assembly member Leanne Wood are symptomatic that this is a very strange world.

A woman should be able to get drunk if she wants to without fear of being raped. Men should not be given the impression that it is acceptable to have sex with a woman who is too drunk to consent.

The first sentence is completely correct, of course, but how does it logically lead to the second? Must consent be explicit? Is it always? If both parties are drunk how is consent received and understood (or must the man stay sober)? What level of explicitness is required? Is the woman entitled (as she did in this case) to turn round the next morning and claim rape even though she can’t remember whether she consented?

Perhaps we’re going down the lines of the US colleges where consent must be completely enunciated at every stage of sexual activity (how tedious and, well, unromantic).

If we do move further into this territory, we seem to be busy reducing women to passive creatures who have no control over their own sexuality, are not able to take any responsibility for what happens to them, but are simply at the mercy of men. It’s terribly Victorian. Which makes it odd that it’s an attitude that is associated with ‘feminism’. I wonder, if Ms. Wood’s ideas were enshrined in law, whether we’d get to breach-of-contract cases. ‘You promised to do this, but failed to deliver’.

Interestingly, the one situation where such levels of detailed consent are obtained is in BDSM scenes. But that’s probably not the sort sex that would be supported by the neo-puritans demanding the current sexual contracts.