Breach of Contract
Stan said this really oughta be frontpaged rather than languishing way down on the SF thread. I agreed. Here goes…
This ruling takes neoliberal contract theory to its logical conclusion:
An appellate court said Maryland’s rape law is clear — no doesn’t mean no when it follows a yes and intercourse has begun.A three-judge panel of the Court of Special Appeals Monday threw out a rape conviction saying that a trial judge in Montgomery County erred when he refused to answer the jury’s question on that very point.
The appeals court said that when the jury asked the trial judge if a woman could withdraw her consent after the start of sex, the jury should have been told she could not. The ruling said the law is not ambiguous and is a tenet of common-law.
notice that in this ruling the start of sex means the start of fucking (see the Skull-Fuck thread for a startlingly complete exegesis of a familiar anglosaxon expletive) — i.e. the start of what is sex for dominant males — as pointed out on the other thread, it is not by any means guaranteed to be “sex” for the fuckee.
I suggest that this ruling, with its contractual overtones, reflects the ubiquity of prostitution in the legal and cultural understanding of heterosexual relations. the woman has “agreed to†a discrete contractual unit of sex — “the fuckâ€, and cannot renege on that agreement w/o being in breach of contract. the man “has a right” to collect under the terms of that contract. and unitised sex — specific sequences of physical activity taxonomised, unitised, standardised — sure looks like a commercial paradigm, the reductionist separation of a continuous analog interaction between persons into a reified Series of Things, units to which price tags can be attached. if there were not such a thing as “a fuck,” “a blow job,” “a hand job,” “a DP” — then how could johns purchase one? [the difference between "I'm having dinner at a friend's house" -- an analog, interactive, continuous process in community and communion -- and "I bought a Happy Meal" -- a packaged, unitised, price tagged product of standard content.]
in other words, the law in this instance sems to regard all sex as a business proposition. once a woman has “signed the contract†she is no more allowed to change her mind than she would be if she signed a deed of trust, a traveller’s cheque, or an affidavit. the man is then seen as entitled to the sex act — the sex “unit” or commodity — agreed upon, and consent cannot be withdrawn once it has started. allowing it to start is equivalent to a binding signature: when the woman permits her bodily space to be invaded by the penis, her sovereignty is in abeyance until the man has “finished” (consumed the atomistic sex-unit to which he is entitled, or for which he has paid).
it would be interesting to clarify this ruling with questions about what “intercourse†means in this context. if, for example, intromission has not yet occurred, does the law permit the female partner to change her mind? the implication is that it does. what if the penetration is not “naturalâ€, i.e. is oral or anal? what if she agreed only to vaginal penetration, but the man forcibly inflicted a different mode (â€round the worldâ€) — would the court then admit her right to refuse, since then the man would be in breach of contract? or by agreeing to any compromise of her bodily sovereignty has she — in the eyes of the law — lost her right to it in toto?
and does anyone — puh-leeeze — imagine that a man who had voluntarily offered sexual pleasuring to a female partner could ever be found in breach of any legal convention — or in forfeiture of the protection of the laws against assault — if, say, he became bored or tired or had a coughing fit in the midst of cunnilingus and wanted to stop? would a woman who somehow forced him to continue [and how on earth could she do that, but anyway, let us imagine that somehow in some theoretical universe she could] be considered a reasonable person exercising a legitimate right?
of course, a woman would probably have to use a weapon and the threat of GBH or homicide to do so, which would transfer the case into the realm of “uttering threats” and ADW; whereas an average man is pre-equipped vis-a-vis the average woman with superior size, reach, muscle/mass ratio, weight, and training/predisposition to violence. all of which is considered normal and correct by the culture, and hence under the law, and his advantage or edge in force majeure is not sufficient to transfer the coercion (the rape) into this clearly criminal category.
remind us once again how “all persons are equal under the law” in Western Liberal Democracy…
Yolanda Carrington:
The social contract at work, or the sexual contract? Which freakin’ one is it?
Liberal horseshit, liberal horseshit I say.
31 October 2006, 11:16 pmStan:
Clarifying liberal, and I agree 100% with Yolanda that the law (even what we call conservative law) is liberal in a more classical (Enlightenment, American/French Revolution) liberal sense.
This is exactly the place where marxism confronts captialism and radical feminism confronts patriarchy at the philosophical and epistemological level, using the same premises for each confrontation.
That is why (1) it is so hard to explain what we are saying here to people, and (2) marxists abandoned their own method when they abandoned radical feminism.
(1) The validity of the social-sexual contract (the latter is a species of the former) is so axiomatic to the belief system of capitalist patriarchal society that — as with all axioms — it is held to be beyond question. So simply constructing the question in the first place takes us outside the interpretive framework of the whole society, and therefore even outside our experience as it is interpreted through this framework.
(2) Marxism is both a critical method and organization. Errors and biases in organization, along with the unexamined patriarchy of male leadership, trumped the critical method, imo (a much longer post), and the organizational tail started wagging the critical dog.
The 1988 book by Carole Patemen, that took a hard critical look at contract theory from a feminist standpoint, The Sexual Contract, voercame this disjuncture in a very decisive and thorough way, but it has become the canon of neither marxism nor feminism (broadly). When marxism rejected radical feminism, in many ways it expelled feminism-period, because radical feminism was the only species of feminism that shared the most basic philosophical challenges with the marxist method. This effectivley abandoned feminism itself to the vagaries of majoritarian politics, and elevated that status of liberal feminsm to co-identification — in the popular imagination — with… feminism-period. Marxists then themselves focused on the now-dominant liberal feminism as Feminism, then dismissed Feminism as petit-bourgeois (a largely accurate observation about liberal feminism). So, by 1988, a book called The Sexual Contract is faced with a Left that dismisses gender criticism as petit bourgeois (and doesn’t read the book), and with a dominant Liberal feminism, itself hostile to radical feminism (and doesn’t read the book).
Close examination of pieces like this, with initial critical provocations like those De gives here, makes this conversation an absolutely necessary intervention if we are ever to achieve some rapproachement between the left and radical feminism. I’m one of the stubbornly naive folks who thinks this is a worthwhile endeavor, even with the difficulties.
1 November 2006, 12:02 pmRhonda:
Does this extend to dinner parties as well? If someone agrees to come to my house for dinner, which turns out to be fetid and served up with a bunch of vitrolic insults from me, do I have the right to lock them in the house until they fulfill their social contract and eat the mess? Woo hoo!! My greeen, fuzzy leftovers problem is solved.
1 November 2006, 12:17 pmChicago_Stan:
Stan,
I’ve been reading this blog for about a year and I’ve been reading your articles and books for several.
I wonder sometimes, with as devistating a critique of the non-feminist left you give, why you even continue to bother with the left at all. Why not identify primarily as a feminist and use patriarchy as your primary lens through which to see oppression? What does the non-feminist left still have to offer?
Certainly, the “name” of the left has been damaged (maybe irrepairably in the US), so little to no status can be derived from associating with Marxism or other aspects of the left.
Is it possible that gender and patriarchy have not just been a 150-year “oversight” within Marxism, but rather that the Marxist critique has been systematically constructed to allow no room for patriarchy to even be considered as a contradiction?
Might radical feminism obviate the need for radical Marxism?
Just some questions. I’d be very interested to read your informed and well-considered thoughts on them.
Thanks.
1 November 2006, 4:09 pmspook:
more breaking of contracts…
U.S. Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques
The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. Now we learn, thanks to a reporter’s FOIA request, that one of the first women to die in Iraq shot and killed herself after objecting to harsh “interrogation techniques.”
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003345862
1 November 2006, 6:22 pmCharles:
Women, Race, & Class (Paperback)
1 November 2006, 6:40 pmby Angela Y. Davis “Proportionately, more Black woman have always worked outside their homes than have their white sisters…” (more)
Key Phrases: abortion rights campaign, black rapist, sterilization abuse, Frederick Douglass, United States, New York (more…)
Stan:
Hi Stan.
I think I already do use gender as a “primary” lens, but I still see gender, class, national oppression as expressions of a single system.
The status of the left is something I can’t worry aobut, nor should any of us. the anticommunism of US culture is not the same as my critique of the left. And I can never say the words Marx or socialism, but as long as I am saying what I’m saying, I’ll get the tag anyway.
The role the left has played in a lot of social struggles has been laudable and in many cases critical, and I am quite proud to be part of that tradition.
I don’t believe the core insights of marxism are antithetical to feminism. Quite the contrary. When one reads Nancy Hartsock, or Maria Mies, or bell hooks, or Angela Davis, or Catharine MacKinnon they are quite often applying the materialist conception of history, and the deconstruction of ideology (both marxist contributions to politics and philosophy). MacKinnon actually makes the comparisons very explicit in Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, and early-on makes complimentary critiques of marxism and feminism from each standpoint.
I believe there is a productionist-fallacy bias within marxist organizations that, along with a Cominternish demand for ideological conformity, that has been an obstacle to the integration of feminism and marxism; so my own critical development seems to be leading me closer and closer to questions of organization, even as I try the best I can to facilitate the rectificaion of marxist men, myself included.
I work with soldiers, too, because I also come from that background.
In a lot of ways, this gets personal for me, having come late to a politics of resistance. Folks didn’t give up on me; so it seems only fair that I be patient, too.
As to obviating the need for one or the other, that depends, I suppose, on specifically what these ISMs are needed FOR. The reason I stay IN marxism, as it were, is that this is a community that is fiercely engaged in politics, and part of the methodology is this incessant (and in my opinion necessary) demand for constant critical intervention (praxis) and for a very high degree of intellectual rigor and engagement.
Hope you are doing well in Chicago, namesake. (-:
1 November 2006, 6:41 pmDeAnander:
marxism may be wrong about the elephant.
but at least it admits that there is an elephant.
a while back Stan said I know a hell of a ot of Marxists who are not radical feminists. I don’t know a single radical feminist who is not anti-capitalist.
my buddy rootlesscosmo said in response (I am still trying to inveigle hin into commenting here):
I would add that most of these other anticapitalisms are male dominated and thus reject feminism; Mussolini’s corporatist fascism was extremely masculinist/militarist, many of the anarchists are boys in love with random vandalism and “total freedom” of the kind that includes freedom to exploit female anarchists sexually. the reformist S-D’s are closer to acknowledging women as a demographic with specific injustices to redress, but they seem to sink into liberalism in such areas as sex-capitalism.
anyway, there are anticapitalists outside marxism…
1 November 2006, 7:07 pmfrank:
Dammit, No Means No – WTF, over?
1 November 2006, 8:05 pmjimi 45:
Wow. How creepy can it get? Sex is not a contract. And even if it were a contract, I think we should safely be able to conclude that there should be considered a “‘No’ Supremacy Clause” which trumps all previous “yeses.” Common law provides plenty of instances of void of contract based upon this logic, so why not here?
1 November 2006, 8:17 pmDeAnander:
I think the Taint of Receptivity, described here, bears on the outrageous appellate court ruling but is not coterminous. For one thing, in patriarchy all women are “born punks” and cannot escape from that category even if they remain virgin for a lifetime. But it seems there is some common thread here about “claims” here, and male ideas of property or interest in female (or depowered male) bodies.
Stepping back a century or so, the Anglo/Euro law did not recognise rape in marriage. Once a woman had consented to marry a man, she was absolutely at his mercy sexually. Social norms might militate weakly against the “brute” who beat and raped his wife, but the law declined to intervene. With divorce impossible (prohibited by the Church/State nexus), flight and “separation” were the only options for an abused woman; and these often placed her, not her abuser, outside the law and outside the pale of respectability.
US newspapers of the late C18/early C19 featured advertising by men seeking help in tracking down “runaway wives” as well as “runaway slaves.” The idea was that the “marriage contract” gave a man certain “rights” in his wife’s body, like mineral/mining rights in a land grant. Once she had said “I Do” before a representative of the Church/State nexus, she was bound over (like an apprentice) and relinquished her bodily sovereignty. [BTW, I was recently apprised of advertising in modern papers for "mail order brides" in Asia, which included the phrase "guaranteed not to run away". will try to track down the ref.]
The marital contract allegedly required certain things of the male partner. In some cases women could file for divorce or separation based on the husband’s infidelity, impotence, sterility, insanity, or gross physical violence; but this was rare, even among upperclass women with powerful kin networks to back them up. It was taken for granted that wives must “submit to their husbands” regardless of the absence or presence of affection, let alone pleasure (for quite a while in bourgeois Anglo culture, sexual pleasure in the marital bed was supposed to be a sign of low breeding or loose morals in a female).
The Maryland ruling appears to depart from this marriage-model only in the time scale. The binding-over of a wife to her husband’s authority was traditionally for life; the Maryland ruling suggests that this has now collapsed to “for the duration of one unitary fuck, delimited by the two timepoints of intromission and male orgasm.”
1 November 2006, 10:00 pmjimi 45:
The Maryland ruling appears to depart from this marriage-model only in the time scale. The binding-over of a wife to her husband’s authority was traditionally for life; the Maryland ruling suggests that this has now collapsed to “for the duration of one unitary fuck, delimited by the two timepoints of intromission and male orgasm.â€
Sadly, I can’t escape this conclusion myself. Although I haven’t heard/seen him comment on this, this seems to be a golden opportunity for Ronald Dworkin to step in and offer a naturalistic/interpretive escape from what, it seems to me, is a horribly misguided positivistic account of the law.
1 November 2006, 10:54 pmpeggy:
I noticed the link posted by Spook, and went there, and was struck by the story. In all honesty, I think this is way more worth thinking about, and talking about, than the appellate court judge’s decision.
1 November 2006, 10:55 pmMarilyn Farhat:
Sex in itself is not a contractual agreement since in a contract there is usually negotiation in advance (otherwise it would not be a contract) with two individuals (or more) being free participants under ALL terms and conditions agreed upon. The act of sex can sometimes be so spontaneous it cannot fall under the category of a contract.
We are getting into sticky ground here trying to simplify the act of sex into an all male controlling domain and an all female submissive one. Each situation where the act of sexual intimacy is halted is different and we cannot generalize. One would have to know the details of the court case above to really make an informed judgement or opinion and one would not be able to generalize about all cases.
In the relationship between men and women, it is the relationship that is contracted upon and it includes matters beyond sex: financial responsibility, child upbringing, etc.
In prostitution, technically, there is a verbal contract for “services” and monetary compensation in return. But we can’t go there when either party breaches the “contract” because prostitution is illegal in many states.
Men can be coerced into the act of sex just as they can be coerced (or choose) to stop from it. After all, when is it safe for a man to stop when the woman says NO? Two minutes into it? Three seconds before ejaculation? If a woman asks him to stop three seconds before climax and he can’t (the physiological response taking over), does that make him guilty? What about when women use abstinence as a tool to force the men to do their bidding in a relationship where sex is one of the clauses of the contract? In many societies, sex is considered one of the holy duties in a marriage. History is full of such instances. Let us not forget the Lysistrata movement that influenced politics and war. Did you know that men can have “hard-ons” when they are afraid and terrified or when forced to have non-consentual sex? Let us not forget the men who ARE raped. If we want to use the argument that women can have an orgasm while they are raped we have to accept the the same is true for men.
Women in a marital relationship can be forced physically to have sex and that is rape. There is another form of rape that society is not willing to acknowledge, and that goes for both men and women, and that is, having sex with a husband/wife or partner out of FEAR or mental ceorcion having to do with fear of abuse, neglect, loss of security, etc., after all, is that not the reason why most people marry or are in potentially long-term relationships? To feel safe and secure (another self-esteem pitfall and false romantic ideal that have to do with the “rescue” mentality which encourages the “victim” mentality in women since people who need rescuing are victims). Many of us are constantly on the lookout for the “other” who will resue us from some intangible fear (usually it is ourselves) only to find they are just as deficient as we are, though in other ways.
Men are physically stronger than women and can push their weight around where sex is concerned, but many men CHOOSE not to even when they WANT to. They can also “fake” it just like the women do. An erection is never an indication of enjoyment or acuquiescence just like an orgasm in not either. Both can be purely physiological responses.
Women have been second class citizens in the world community for thousands of years. I would argue that due to that status, they have learned to develop their “negotiation” skills in the bedroom. That is the area where women have the power in the world. I think many feminists are not willing to consider that fact and are into black and white thinking. One owuld only have to look to the Middle and Far East and study the role of women in family and society and their influence on their husbands/lovers/partners/sons.
Sometimes we treat the relationship between men and women as a war or a battle with a “good gal” and a “bad guy.” This way of thinking does a disservice to both. Women have used sex as “weapon” to influence men. MY point is, we cannot have our cake and eat it too.
We all know that women’s lots are in dire need of improvement. They can improve if women are sold on the idea that they are equally important and valuable in ALL areas of life, not just sex and procreation. There are many celibate women (and men) out there and they are doing just fine precisely because many of them do not have to deal with the POWER issues in a relationship. No power equals no FREEDOM. Sexual control is all about power and if the woman “wears the pants” in the relationship, she will use sex to her advantage just like rich women will use money to do the same. As more women, especially in the West, develop a better earning capacity, we will see this happening more frequently. One only need look at the women in the corporate world.
2 November 2006, 2:38 amDeAnander:
ah, rootlesscosmo remembers:
I remember we speculated as to how this guarantee was enforced. Presumably the women’s passports have been confiscated, the traditional trafficker’s tactic.
2 November 2006, 2:50 amStan:
Popping back over to what is and is not useful in marxism, some of the conclusions with regard to economics have held up quite well with regard to economics, i.e., the tendency to overproduction crisis that inheres in commodification, and the notion of the organic composition of capital. I offer this link to a piece in Asia Times, by Walden Bello, as an example of how this particular lens can be useful:
Chain-gang economics
By Walden Bello
“The world is investing too little,” according to one prominent economist. “The current situation has its roots in a series of crises over the last decade that were caused by excessive investment, such as the Japanese asset bubble, the crises in emerging Asia and Latin America, and most recently, the IT bubble. Investment has fallen off sharply since, with only very cautious recovery.” FULL
Quick note on rootless’ remarks about anticapitalism…. I agree, and my use was not intended to refer to this ISM as a historio-taxonomical category, but as a simple descriptor. Radfems oppose capitalism… generally for the same reasons Reds do… only more deeply.
Red Radfem Ally
2 November 2006, 7:35 amAudrey:
Marilyn, I have to reject this framing of withholding sex as using sex as a weapon. Not having sex with someone does not constitute an attack on that other person; there is no “weapon†involved.
I’m also not comfortable with the word “withhold†there, though I know that’s a common usage. It implies ownership rights by the man of the woman’s body as an object, rather than shared actions. If I opt not to go on a bike ride with someone, for example, I’m not “withholding†bikeridingness from them. They are still free to go on a bike ride by themselves.
2 November 2006, 8:13 amhoward:
Isn’t one of the the subtexts underlying this legal opinion the myth of the Irresistible Male Sex Drive — that it’s this Primal Force of Nature that can’t be stopped (and somehow comes from outside the man’s own conscious will) — so that the man himself is powerless to do anything but follow the Urge to its inevitable conclusion?
Also, to extend Audrey’s comment, doesn’t this idea of “withholding” something (and challenging the Irresistible Primal Urge) spill over into other aspects of male/female relationships in our culture? I am especially thinking of the discourse one sometimes hears from men who become stalkers of women who were once their significant others — don’t they often seem to have a perception of aggrieved “rights?”
2 November 2006, 12:08 pmCharles:
A better legal analogy for sex might be a legal gift rather than a legal contract. I’ll explain what I mean ,but first I want to make emphatic ,I am in no way saying “no” doesn’t mean “no”.
2 November 2006, 1:51 pmCharles:
Oh, and the law of gifts is also liberal horseshit. I’m not saying it’s not.
3 November 2006, 12:40 pmCharles:
Gift (law)
A gift, in the law of property, has a very specific meaning. In order for a gift to be legally effective, the grantor must have intended to give the gift to the grantee. The gift must actually be delivered to and accepted by the grantee.
Gifts can be inter vivos – during the life of the grantor – or causa mortis – made by the grantor in anticipation of his own death. A gift causa mortis (or donatio mortis causa) is not effective unless the grantor actually dies of the impending peril that he or she had contemplated when giving the gift.
3 November 2006, 12:41 pmrobert:
I was dumbfounded by this news as well but upon further inspection i see that a man in this case can still be tried for ‘sexual assult’. It’s not as if the courts assert that the man has a ‘right’ to continue sexual intercourse if a woman changes her mind. He can still be charged with a crime but that crime is defined as something other than ‘rape’ at that point.
5 November 2006, 7:15 pmI sympathize with the views expressed here, but the law does require definition for it to work properly and whether you call a sexually violent act ‘rape’ or ‘assult’ may all be in the eye of the beholder but the legal system cannot be as symantically versatile as our emotions about this may be.
Elaina:
Bluntly, Robert, that’s a load of horseshit. The legal system’s all about semantic versatility.
Which is what’s fucked up about the whole thing, right? A gaggle of folks deciding for victims what’s happened to them. This is why women don’t want to report rape to the authorities. The delineation between “rape” and “sexual assault” is the very epitome of “semantic versatility.” There’s no real reason, materially, for the differentiation, other than legitimizing the false notion that a man, due to his “natural instincts” or whatever bullshit excuse we would be held to believe, shouldn’t be expected to back the fuck up off a woman when she fucking tells him to.
But I shouldn’t have to defend my disbelief in the almighty “legal system,” not here. The last thing we need, the last thing women and those who wish to have fruitful discussion that breaks down this system that supports rape is the sympathy of those who wish to defend the system.
I don’t throw my hands up when it comes to laws and legalities that only shore up male supremacy.
Plonk. Plonk, plonkity, plonk plonk plonk!!!!!!!!!
6 November 2006, 1:03 amAudrey:
I understand the attempt to liken sex to a gift rather than a contract in that a gift implies no obligation, and I think that’s what Charles was getting at. But, as he pointed out, he’s talking about gifts as in the law of property. Women’s bodies aren’t property whose ownership transfers to another person if they agree to have sex with someone.
Enough on that.
If I weren’t already in the “if I were raped I wouldn’t report it†camp, the way the jury and the media handled this would be enough to push me there. While I understand some focus being on the new interpretation of the law, the fact remains that this particular rape has been presented by the media as a case of the confused undecided woman changing her mind. Poor men – how can they ever tell what women want when we are incapable of figuring that out for ourselves? The comments on alternet make it clear the woman (and by extension, every woman) has already been judged as guilty: “we ought to come up with a criminal category for cruel and unusual teasing. I bet everyone here has known some girl who gets her jollies by saying yes then no after the fact.†And “responsibility is a TWO way street….Women shouldn’t expect to be the vixen/vamp one minute…and play poor abused choir girl the next.â€
Here is the scene described in the court papers: She is a teenager, in a car with two boys. One asks her to show them her breasts, she says no. He grabs her breast. One of the boys sits on her chest and tries to put his penis in her mouth, the other is removing her jeans. She tells them to stop. They reposition her, then one of them is holding her arms while the other penetrates her.
Jumping ahead, then the other boy says it’s his turn.
Q. [ASSISTANT STATE’S ATTORNEY]: And what else did he say?
A. He, after that we sat there for a couple seconds and he was like so are you going to let me hit it and I didn’t really say anything and he was like I don’t want to rape you.
Q. So when Maouloud said I don’t want to rape you, did you respond?
A. Yes. I said that as long as he stops when I tell him to, then -
Q. Now, that he could?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you feel like you had a choice?
A. Not really. I don’t know. Something just clicked off and I just did whatever they said.
Q. Now when you told [appellant] if I say stop, something like that, you have to stop. What did he do after you spoke those words?
A. Well he got on top of me and he tried to put it in and it hurt. So I said stop and that’s when he kept pushing it in and I was pushing his knees to get off me.
http://www.courts.state.md.us/opinions/cosa/2006/225s05.pdf
That her “yes†under those circumstances was taken as legitimate consent, and not coercion – and that the court based their decision on the intricacies of “contract law†when the incident began with them physically holding her down, as a team, demonstrates the problem with the courts. And as usual, the media managed to pick and choose what to report and what to omit in a way that gives people the maximum opportunity to condemn the woman involved.
6 November 2006, 1:45 amYolanda Carrington:
Audrey…it was a violent rape from the get-go. What the fuck did the court base their ruling on? Contract? What the hell did contract law ever have to do with this case?
The Maryland appellate court needs sanctions, censure, or something like that.
6 November 2006, 11:08 amYolanda Carrington:
Oh…and THANKS for posting that transcript Audrey.
6 November 2006, 11:09 amspook:
Female bomber strikes Gaza town
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6119810.stm
i always find it interesting that the media ALWAYS and ONLY notes gender when the “suicide bombers” are women.
6 November 2006, 11:41 amCharles:
Given that transcript, I just don’t think the facts here substantiate the seeming initial characterization that the girl consented or said “yes” at all. So, this case is not really what I thought at first, where there was a “yes” followed by a “no”. So, I wouldn’t even use the gift analogy either, given the transcript.
In general, I think the use of contract law analogy doesn’t clarify sexual “exchange”. I think it confuses it. But given that “contract as analogy for sexual exchange” is a common theme here, I thought maybe a gift analogy is better for analyzing rape. But in general I think both contract or gift analysis confuses rather than clarifies analysis of sex.
6 November 2006, 12:02 pmDeAnander:
the law does not seem to recognise that if she said Yes at any point, it may have been in the hope of getting out of the car alive.
how on earth this rape of a teenage girl by two boys can be called “sex” — well, it just illustrates what is meant by a ‘rape culture’.
6 November 2006, 3:29 pmpeggy:
The transcript really shows this whole case to be more than just one of a girl “changing her mind.” Thanks, Audrey, for posting it. I hope it is posted widely, together with what the newspapers say (and don’t say), and I hope that judge is put to public shame, just as the girl was shamed. And I apologixe for what I said earlier here on this matter.
And I agree with Elaina that we cannot trust the law, most especially on a matter like rape. Maybe this is a dumb thing to say, but if I were raped I would report it to the police and make a public matter out of it, but only because I am a “respectable” older woman in a “respectable” position, who has little fear of sexual shame, and could reasonably expect the local community (at least some members of it) to make a big fuss in my behalf, and also because I would want to show the law up for what it is. If it ever happens to me, maybe I would be shown just how foolish I was to try and fight, and maybe I would regret it. But maybe not.
I think we should focus on what can be done outside the law. Extralegal systems exist everywhere, on both small and and enormous scales. Some such systems openly violate the law (like the current executive branch of the US gov) and some do not violate it, they just operate outside it.
To fight rape, we must teach our girls how to defend themselves, how and where to bite, kick and scratch, how to rupture internal organs, how to break bones, what kinds of weapons to carry and how to use them. And how to take revenge, if mere self-defense proves inadequate.
6 November 2006, 6:50 pmspook:
someone on another site mentioned the possibility that alyssa peterson, having objected to interrogation methods, may not have pulled her own trigger.
all things considered, i thought it completely reasonable.
7 November 2006, 12:05 amspook:
sorry, i should have posted that on the other thread.
7 November 2006, 12:49 amMark:
There have been so many good threads concerning gender on this blog that I wasn’t certain where to post this but the most recent seemed a good choice. This links to a letter from and subsequent interview of a Seattle based stripper who supported the proposed four-foot rule.
http://www.seattlest.com/archives/2006/11/09/seattlest_interviews_an_antilap_dance_stripper.php
It wasn’t until the last few years that I realized some of the best feminist writing I’ve read comes from women who’ve been forced into the sex industry. Every man who even considers going to a strip club should have to read things like this. Maybe it could jar at least some of them out of the little fantasy world they’ve created concerning what the women there are really thinking.
Even before I started reading rad-fem authors and thinking about patriarchy, I always found myself uncomfortable with the idea of paying women to pretend to like me on a visceral level. I always turned down invitations to join ‘buddies’ going on a strip club outing, even if I couldn’t always articulate exactly why. That also goes for the ‘sexwork-lite’ places like Hooters.
Just a few months ago some guys from work invited me to watch a sporting event (that I was actually interested in) at a local Hooters knockoff called Show-Mes. I told them I was a feminist and didn’t really like to patronize places like that. And yes, for the record, I read the threads on here relating to that word and have vowed never to refer to myself as a feminist again. Regardless, it got an interesting reaction.
10 November 2006, 11:03 amdemonista:
Thanks for the link, Mark!
2 February 2007, 1:37 pm