Shorter Dana Loesch: you can't be raped if you've previously had sex voluntarily, with someone else.
Ah, 2012. Truly we are in the midst of a second Enlightenment.
Immediate corollaries include, but are not limited to:
1. Rohypnol isn't a date-rape drug if she already uses sleeping pills;
2. It's not sexual assault if you've seen her scratching her own arse;
3. You can't be mugged if you've donated money to charity; [1]
4. Identity theft only happens to people who don't tell their friends where they live;
5. You can't object to being stabbed if you've had your ears pierced; [2]
6. It's fair game for a paper to tap your phone if your agent has ever spoken to a journalist on your behalf; [3]
7. It isn't torture if anyone in the world has voluntarily done something more uncomfortable to themselves; [4]
8. Dracula's only crime is to not check his victims suck their fingers after getting a paper cut.
The concept of consent: ruining the arguments of proudly sadistic imbeciles since time immemorial.
[1] I stole this one.
[2] And this one, from Charlie Pierce.
[3] This, of course, has actually been argued.
[4] And this.
4 comments:
Well obviously her argument is bollocks. Of course, everyone saying this rule is "state-sponsored rape" is talking bollocks too. Why do people always have to be so ridiculously over-the-top about everything?
So many of these exchanges could be stopped by everyone agreeing not to be silly.
"Of course, everyone saying this rule is "state-sponsored rape" is talking bollocks too."
I haven't checked this, but I've read from US journalists reporting on the law that according to the states own statute books, this act would constitute rape if it was done against the woman's will, whatever the ultimate intention of the perpetrator. As I understand it, it would remain rape even with the woman's consent, so long as that consent was determined to have been given under duress.
I suspect there's some kind of academic debate to be had on what should and shouldn't be considered duress (either morally or legally), but under certain social, economic or medical conditions, I suspect the difficulty of carrying a baby to full-term would be sufficient to make the above description defensible, if not actually true.
That's an exceptionally clinical and dispassionate response, obviously. There's a whole host of psychological aspects to this that I wouldn't feel comfortable commenting on, save to say that if a woman says she considers this test as akin to the doctor refusing to perform an abortion unless she agrees to sleep with him, then what else is there to say?
It seems to make little sense to consider "duress" to be "if you don't do this then the status quo will prevail", even if the status quo is a bad situation. For instance, if you are selling me life-saving medicine then I wouldn't consider the payment to be under duress so I wouldn't consider you to be extorting money.
A more accurate (still dubious but much more easily argued) position would be calling this state-sponsored prostitution.
More pertinently, while this is an intellectually interesting debate, I think it would be better to avoid making contentious statements and make much simpler ones that point out how manifestly abhorrent this law is.
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