It got me thinking a bit more about the Me Too movement and justice. Do we still live in a society where one is presumed innocent until proven guilty? How do we balance the need for justice of those accused with their rights? How do we empower people who have been assaulted to come forward much sooner without victomizing them?
Is this a discussion you seriously want to have in earnest? Or are you hoping you can toss it out there and no one will touch it with a 10 foot pole and it won't go anywhere anytime soon?
Because that's a super tough conversation to have.
If you ask a room full of American women if they have been raped, some percentage of hands go up. If you then ask that same room full of women if they ever said "No" and ended up having sex anyway, a lot more hands go up.
This is typically used as evidence that rape is rampant and men are all rapey bastards and all need to be hung high.
The reality is that the definition of rape hinges on the detail of consent and there are people who have rape fantasies because we live in a world where saying "Yes" and choosing to get your needs met makes you a whore if you are female and a terrible scumbag of some sort if you are male. We have BDSM clubs probably because of all the societal baggage we are inculcated with that some people just can't escape psychologically while trying to get their freak on and most "First time sex" (for this specific couple -- I don't mean loss of virginity per se) involves drinking alcohol to lower inhibitions so that people raised with Puritan guilt can get their needs met at all.
And you could argue that it isn't genuinely consenting if she was drunk. You could argue that constitutes rape right there and some people make that argument. Meanwhile, if I try to tell women "Don't drink" under certain circumstances, I'm accused of blaming the victim and told women should be allowed to be falling down drunk and left the hell alone, which fails entirely to address the issue of "If she is getting toasted so she can manage to say yes to sex and get her needs met, where do we draw the line there on legal consent?"
Furthermore, this presumes that men are the initiator, women only exist to service men and don't have sexual needs of their own and sex is solely about meeting his needs. It presumes men cannot be taken advantage of. It presumes a whole lot of things that frame women as perpetual victims and men as perpetual abusers and all heterosexual sex as inherently somehow some man treating some woman abusively.
I'm happy to dig around in the subject if you want. But an awful lot of people accuse me of being a rape apologist and don't actually want to hear anything I think about the topic.
