I read an article in the Baltimore Sun the other day that just blew me away. There is a case before the Maryland Court of Appeals that is trying to decide if an act is rape if the sex was initially consented to, but then objected to later in the act. This blows my mind. Apparently, there is actual law that discusses various stages of sex and whether or not consent is needed throughout. I feel like I'm on some other planet.
When the lawmakers get together and write these laws, do any of them ever think it odd that this should even be decided by them? How many years will it be before a woman's right to consent is no longer decided by lawmakers? It's taken us this long to acknowledge that rape occurs, which implies that woman have a right to consent. But what I didn't realize until reading this article was that after a woman says "yes," she has to keep going until the man is finished. Sure, she can say "no" but the guy doesn't have to stop, and when he doesn't stop he's not raping her.
Help me understand how this happened. Help me understand how anyone ever felt entitled to write laws that govern when women can consent to sex and when they can't. Apparently, when a woman consents to sex, she's entered into a binding contract. What would happen if a man took a woman to court for not completing her obligation? "She said yes, and half-way through she wanted to stop which caused me duress. I'm suing for damages. She broke her contract." That's absurd, right? You know, I know it may be inconvenient to have to stop in the middle, but life is full of inconveniences.
Clearly, our laws still favor a man's right to sex. A woman, by her biological nature, is obligated to provide sex to a man, except under certain circumstances. You can say "no" and then the man has to respect that, but if you say "yes" you are fully obligated to follow through.
If the court doesn't rule in favor of changing the law, the only recourse will be the legislature. I'm having reflux here. The argument to keep the law the same will be to reduce the instances that woman will cry "rape" when, according to men, rape didn't occur. But our justice system should be able to discern a real rape. And frankly, that's just a fear tactic played on the feeble sensibilities of men who aren't sure they want their own sexual behavior to undergo scrutiny.
I hope the court will see fit to make the right decision on behalf of women.
Another topic - City Cafe in Mt. Vernon. I went there this morning to study and I bought a fresh squeezed orange juice ($2.95) and a bagel. After a while I decided to order some soup. When I went back to the counter, one of the staff was preparing more cups of fresh squeezed OJ. The City Cafe gets its fresh squeezed OJ from cartons of Tropicana Orange Juice - No Pulp. Hey, if you're going to lie about your product, maybe you should prepare it out of sight of the customers. Just a thought.
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5 comments:
No, false rape accusations are not a fear tactic used by men. I'm a guy who agrees that "no" means no, whenever it is expressed (of course "no" is not retroactive -- once initial consent is given, a "no" only means no going forward from when it is expressed). But just as women express the feeling that they live in fear of rape, please do not minimize men's legitimate fear of false rape accusations by labeling it a tactic. Men know that if a woman wanted to hurt him by lying, he could go to prison for 40 years, even though he did nothting wrong. (The one Duke lacrosse kid wasn't even at the party when the alleged rape occurred, yet for a year had lenghty jail time hanging over his head.) Statistics on false rape are a moving target, low or high depending on one's agenda. The truth is very difficult to discern, but it does happen. The woman who headed Manhattan's sex crimes unit said that of the 4,000 reports of rape in Manhattan every year, fully HALF did not happen. You can advocate against rape, as we all should, without being dismissive that false accusations are a problem.
That is correct, anon. False rape accusations do occur, and they can be very hurtful to the falsely accused man. They are, hopefully, rare, but it's not fair to dismiss them out of hand. I was personally falsely accused of that very male crime of stalking a co-worker who was trying to oust me from the company in a power play. I was never charged, and the company believed me. That was a wholly sexist lie -- accusing me of a crime men are far more likely to commit. Nothing even remotely similar to her lie occurred. In fact, this woman had previously tried to break off my engagement to another woman (now my wife), claiming she was interested in my.
I can only imagine how terrible it would be to be falsely accused of rape. And that does not mean that I am unsympathetic to rape victims. Sympathy for the two are not mutually exclusive.
Regardless of gender, people lie about every conceivable subject that arises in the course of human events for all manner of reasons - except, according to certain feminist groups, when it comes to the subject of rape. In that singular instance, mirabile dictu, one gender supposedly is wholly incapable of telling a lie, and the other is supposedly composed of pathological liars! That defies common sense.
Unfortunately, to some feminists, even s proven false accusation is viewed merely as an unfortunate setback to their cause since it might sway public opinion to disbelieve rape accustations -- there is never any concern from these groups for the falsely accused man who likely had his reputation destroyed by having his picture splashed all over the newspaper and he was under threat of spending decades in prison. (Some of these sick individuals still insist, for example, that some kind of rape "must have" occured at the Duke lacrosse party! I wonder -- did this rape involve the kid who was proven by evidence of an ATM camera of being far away from the "rape" house when the "crime" was being committed?)
Men have to be afraid that some woman will lie and accuse us of rape. If she is sufficiently convincing, a jury might believe her and he could be locked away from 40 years. That could be your brother or your cousin or even your boyfriend or husband. Only a true misandrist would not think this is terribly, terribly wrong.
One solution? Men need to videotape their sexual encounters -- with the woman's permission, of course. That's how sick and twisted this world has become, all because this issue has become so politicized that we are ready to toss away the presumption of innocence and adopt an anti-intellectual assumption that the rape accuser "MUST" be telling the truth.
Anon & Falsely accused: Thanks for reading my blog. Of course, false accusations of rape are horrible and damaging, but you both totally missed the point of this post. The question I want answered is, when did our society determine it was okay to legislate when a woman can consent and for how long that consent is valid?
It's absurd to say, which the law in effect does, that once a woman says "yes" she's "contactually" obligated to follow through with sex. It's absurd to place rules around when it is okay for a woman to stop sex and why. If we legislated the male role in sex in this way, our society would be incensed. There is no corresponding law that a man has to continue the sex act after he has consented until a woman is "finished." There is no corresponding obligation for men. This is the issue at hand.
I did address the issue of false accusations (though it wasn't the main theme) by stating that our justice system should be able to weed out cases that aren't valid. Just as the head of the Manhattan sex crime unit does. False accusations aren't limited to rape and it is the job of our legal system to determine which cases are valid and prosecute. The Duke lacrosse players were hurt more by an over-zealous prosecutor than the "victim." The prosecutor failed to do his job and uphold the law.
I agree with you. Nicely said.
Even during the sexual act, if consent is withdrawn for whatever reason, the guy has to pull out. (And chances are, it would be some physical discomfort that prompts the woman to say "let's stop." But regardless, it has to stop.) No enlightened person should disagree with that, and the legislators that say otherwise are fools or misogynists.
And yes, I agree that the D.A. in the Duke case was the culprit(a male, by the way). We will always have unbalanced people who make up charges of criminal activity, whether it be theft, or assault or rape. The accuser in the Duke case was so unbalanced that the state attorney general would not even bring charges against her -- yet the D.A. could see that.
I agree with your comment, too -- but not the original characterization about false accusations being a "fear tactic." I would never, ever rape anyone, but I am in fear of false accusations. It does happen. Maybe everything ought to be videotaped and everybody would be safer.
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