Stepping Into The Huge Mess Of Sexual Abuse And Crime Again

Our media and our culture are in the hands of idiots who can't discern the difference between the sexual assault of a young child or an adult woman and someone accidentally touching someone's back, apparently (what we've been told of the firing of Garrison Keillor).  Or that they won't for fear of having someone jump down their throat if they point out that the multiple and supported accusations being made against Roy Moore, the reaction to complaints about him as far back as the 1970s are entirely different from the accusations made against Al Franken and, now Garrison Keillor.   Or they won't because they can work this for themselves and their owners.

None of this is simple, none of it is going to be handled with reason and good will, grandstanding and the competitive desire to be seen as the most outraged in the room and ever expanding definitions of wrong and mortal sin are already taking over even common sense.

In some ways, I would guess that this is a product of many years of corporations, companies and institutions sweeping these issues under many rugs and carpets and into confidentiality agreements. But there is certainly more to it than that.  Politically, it is convenient and desirable for the billionaire oligarchs to muddy the water to try to get Roy Moore elected in Alabama.  We have seen their hired goons trying to do exactly that by impersonating a bigots idea of a Jewish (Lenny Bernstein, really?) journalists from the Washington Post the ultra scumball of that sort, James O'Keefe and his hired scum are in the thick of it.  Why he isn't both in jail and being sued into the flames of hell as well as his backers, is just another example of how our laws and, especially their interpretation in the courts, are set up to create creatures like him.

And like it or not, some of it is a refusal to admit that this is a product of the touchy-feely-kissie stuff that came in starting in the 1960s when psycholalagists and the media promoted that kind of stuff as healthy and good.  And it's a product of the encouragement by the such and the entertainment media for everyone to start screwing everyone - that this latest mania started with the revelations of the truly horrific antics of a big Hollywood producer is certainly not a mere coincidence.   The Hollywoodization of American culture, through show biz led to some of it, though much of it is, indeed, a product of male entitlement and the double standard that gave men license to treat women as objects for their use.   The highly touted sexual revolution solved that in the stupidest way possible, to advocate that women copy the worst behavior of men, the theory being that everything was allowable as long as something called "consent" was given.   That such a means of solving the problem of the double standard would only encourage the perpetuation of the habits of double standards didn't seem to much occur to the advocates of "freedom," "free expression," etc.  That the show biz which was used to promote this was hardly a bastion of equality and mutual respect should have been a dead giveaway as to what that was likely to lead to.

Forgotten in that is that "consent" as it applies to sexual intercourse, never mind sexual expression short of penetration involves many preliminary steps, most of them including flirtation and touching.   And that all of the many intricate aspects of consenting to those as well as the big "C" CONSENT that defines whether or not sexual intercourse is rape are negotiated by people of less than stellar morals, of less than disciplined self-restraint (Hollywood and pop psychologists discourage disciplined self restraint as a mental illness or prudishness) and who are sometimes quite stupid, either naturally or made so by alcohol.   And that's all assuming that a good measure of ill will, covert or overt, conscious or unconscious, isn't bound to enter into it.   Our sex lives, especially relieved of the restraints on touching and screwing around that were stronger in the past, are not conducted by lawyers specializing in defining and prosecuting civil or criminal cases brought by those who have either been harmed in reality or who decide later that, even with consent given, that they didn't like what they consented to.  If you don't make as clear a distinction between those things instead of insisting that there isn't one you're not going to be able to sustain the level of societal outrage that is currently reigning.  I don't give that two years before an even worse reaction sets in.  And, as mentioned above, the results will favor the worst of men out of sheer habit.  This is a country which couldn't avoid Trump after the Hollywood Access tape was heard, the outrage of Republicans didn't even last a week and the news media found ways to attack Hillary Clinton even out of that.

I have noted in the past that Gloria Steinem was right about LGBT people as well as straight women, the sexual revolution wasn't our war.  It never will be a war that women are going to win during our lifetimes, fighting inequality won't benefit from figuring that all women, all LGBT people have to do is all figure we'll be able to practice the same things privileged men have been allowed to do to other people and that's freedom because "consent".  As we're seeing now, even the concept of consent by a competent adult is dissolving - especially when the "freedom" to get smash drunk is asserted to be able to turn yes into no.  That's about as likely to turn to disaster as the assertion of rape culture that no means yes. 

The whole thing is a mess, the only way to try to avoid it, and it isn't any guarantee that you won't get dragged into something, is to never, ever touch people.  Though some of the accusations that are part of the current furore involves inappropriate looking, or leering.  When things come down to that, there is no way to avoid the possibility of getting dragged into it.  That is unsustainable and the resulting reaction will not end up with women winning. 

I am afraid that the maniacal proliferation of sex crimes, the ever widening definition of what those are, will end up getting Roy Moore excused long enough to be elected in Alabama and the Republicans in Alabama and the Senate will either give him a pass or they will refuse to seat him and appoint someone with Roy Moore's politics but without his sleazy history.  The results for women, for LGBT people, for Black People, Latinos, and most cumulatively, poor people won't enhance any of their rights, their dignity, their freedom.  It will be the rich, the white and the Republican who will end up benefitting, just as they always do from an 18th century libertarian program of conduct and legal theory.

Legal Prophylaxis Should Be Used Every Time

Knowing that anything I say about this is going to be misrepresented and cherry picked and elided to make it into a simplistic misrepresentation, I will point out that when there is no question of the most serious level of criminality has occurred, a rape, without consent or with rejection, the rapist deserves all of the blame for what he did.  No matter how much flirtation might have preceded it, no matter how enticingly his victim was dressed (the victim could be of either gender, men get raped too, something many straight people don't seem to believe) no matter what.  No has to mean no, and actual, verbal consent to sex always has to precede sex or the penetrating partner has possibly raped someone. The concept of "nonverbal consent" should be abolished, entirely because it leads to rape and the absence of consent every time.   That is certainly true of intercourse, it should be true of any act of touching.  I think there's far too much touching and way, way too much kissing going on, consensual and not because the consensual is bound to encourage the non-consensual, but that's a different crime than rape and it should be considered to be.

That said, there is also a difference between people minding their own business who are attacked and people who have willingly put themselves in a state (such as inebriation) or in a place (such as an attacker's bedroom) where they have a far greater chance of being successfully raped.  While a rapist's share is 100% of the guilt for committing a sexual assault on someone else, people who put themselves in danger are responsible for putting themselves in danger.   To pretend people have no responsibility in their own protection isn't asserting a right or freedom, it is setting them up to be victims of crime.  There is no right to get drunk, there is no right to do stupid stuff.  There is a right of someone who has been victimized by a crime to have the one who violated them held to the full effect of the law, there is no right to have people ignore the fact that they were irresponsible in making it easier for their attacker to attack them.  Especially if it's someone you don't know and went home with them from a bar or party.   And you can howl till the crack of doom that that's not fair but they've also made it easier for their attacker to get away with it.  You can't prove you didn't consent if there are no witnesses and there almost never are.   If your attacker can point out that you went home with him, that will be persuasive to many if not most American juries. 

I don't want women I love or any woman or man, girl or boy to believe that they're going to get justice if they are raped, even with the best of laws, lots of rapists are going to get away with it, lesser level creeps will get away with stuff at even higher rates.  Being duped by the movies, by TV, by peer pressure, by the general society into putting yourself in danger is to give rapists, abusers and attackers a helping hand in stealing your rights and getting away with it.  That's true if the person trying to convince you into getting drunk and putting yourself in a situation where you will be taken advantage of writes a "make out artist" blog or an allegedly feminist one.