On Friday, January 6, The United States Department of Justice announced it is revising a decades-old definition of rape to expand the kinds of offences that constitute the crime and for the first time, include men as victims.
The official statement from the Justice Department said the crime of rape will be defined as:
Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.
This is being cheered as a great improvement on the 80 year old definition which previously identified only vaginal penetration as an instance of this crime. Carol Tracy, the executive director of the Women’s Law Project, which has been pushing for the definition change said, “We are very pleased that the FBI has agreed to revise its definition used in data collection so it more accurately reflects what the public understands to be rape”
In fact, mainstream as well as explicitly feminist blogs and journals have been applauding this change – and in most cases, taking pains to point out that men sexually violated will now be correctly counted as victims of the crime of rape. However, this claim is belied by the fact that sex forced onto a man by a woman in any instance other than penetration of his body is not included in the new definition. This exclusion is not because forced sexual contact by women on men doesn’t occur, it quite obviously does. The argument that physical arousal in a male rape victim equates to consent is standard from ideologues, but the same argument, if taken seriously can negate the claims of most female rape victims. Physical arousal in men and in women is an involuntary response, outside the control of conscious choice.
The claim that the new definition of rape’s inclusion of male victims is a ruse. Mainstream and feminist commentators have persistently ignored the legal disenfranchisement of men. Those few men willing to stand up in complaint have been taunted, belittled, and censored. Suddenly this community is cheering for recognition of men as potential victims of rape? Hardly. In fact – taken outside the persistent anti-male climate fostered by organized feminism, in the larger framework of American politics, does anybody believe for a second that a change in law is for the benefit of individual citizens, whether they’re male or not? So, if the inclusion of males as potential victims is not the real goal, then what is?
The new definition also includes instances in which a victim is incapable of giving consent because of mental or physical incapacity, such as intoxication. Physical resistance is not required to demonstrate lack of consent. This is where the power of a new definition for rape is expressed. Consent is no longer consent. Voluntary participation in sex is no longer voluntary.
incapable of giving consent because of mental or physical incapacity, such as intoxication.
If a woman has a few drinks and operates a motor vehicle, she’s committed an offence, but if she has a few drinks and spreads her legs, well, then she’s a victim. How about men? If a man has sex while he’s drunk, is he a rape victim because being drunk, he was unable to render informed consent?
Don’t hold your breath.
Under the new definition, every woman participating in a sexual encounter with a man in a social setting which included consumption of alcohol is now deemed a rape victim. Are you a woman who has had a drink before having consensual sex? If so, you are now legally empowered to destroy the life of the man you slept with. Most adults drink socially, and now, for men, every woman with a drink in her hand is armed with a metaphorical gun, pointed at his head. It is the power to destroy his life, his career, his family, tear his children away from him, strip him of his savings, his home, deny him the ability to earn a living or to travel, and in many cases, to actually kill him by proxy.
In states and counties which pursue no-drop prosecution – which is where a prosecutor pursues charges and conviction regardless of the will of the alleged victim, this ability to destroy doesn’t even hang on the whim of the offended women, it’s in the hands of a state employee building a career based on notches in their briefcase.
Don’t worry though, ladies, the district attorney is surely only acting in your best interests, and if your husband or boyfriend is jailed or career-terminated, you can just get another one. Men are replaceable commodities, after all. Your son, if you have one, might get chewed up in this system, but hey, who cares, right. You can just crank out another one. It’s not like men are really human beings deserving rights.
Is that too sarcastic and cynical?
I’m still addressing this to female readers, so please consider how a legal invalidation of your choice or consent in a sexual encounter gives you the power of a rape victim if you decided to spread your legs. If the man you slept with also drank before getting naked and horizontal – why are you legally a victim and him an offender? If a man drinks and has sex, wouldn’t it be logical to consider him a victim of rape?
The standard argument is that due to “patriarchy” society puts men into a position of power in relations between men and women, and therefore they’re always the offender, while women are always the victim. However, this item of mythology falls apart with the slightest examination. Men die earlier than women, commit suicide at 4 times the rate of women, are sentence more severely than women, and continue to die on the job a 13 times the rate of women. What patriarchy is anybody talking about?
The facile follow up argument that “patriarchy hurts men too,” is so ethically and intellectually bankrupt that it’s proponents should wear a visible tattoo identifying them as mentally defective. If alcohol renders a woman unable to exercise adult volition in a sexual act, then women are not adults. They should be stripped of the right to vote, to own property, to receive an education, to go into debt or to be taken seriously in a courtroom. Except this abdication of adulthood seems only to operate when personal accountability is at stake, but never when advantage or personal enfranchisement is in operation.
If offenses like operating a motor vehicle while impaired are violations of the law – even when the drunk driver is female – then what magic is it that makes driving an offence and sex a form of victimization? This comparison is obvious. Even a public anaesthetized by years of reality TV and fast food can spot this blatant double standard. So why are feminists who’ve been arguing for years that their movement is one in pursuit of equality silent on this issue? Well, it is because they have put their mouths into advocating for it because the metaphorical gun this legal redefinition puts in every woman’s hand, pointed at every man’s head, is what they really want.
A woman willing to have sex with you after a drink is as dangerous as a violent predator in a culture without laws.
