The Denver Postd.note
Sexual politics
Tuesday, February 10, 2004 -
There’s a bizarre 19th century presumption underlying the coverage and commentary of the sensational sexual assault scandals hitting Colorado recently: that women are weak and silly beings requiring the paternalistic protection of the state and the press.
But here’s a news flash: we’ve got the vote – we’ve got guns – we fly planes and drop bombs. When it comes to sex (and rape), it’s high time adult women stopped acting like trembling 14-year old virgins. Three cases in point:
Drunkenness
Incredibly bad things can happen when you get stupid, slobbering drunk. Unlike Joyce Lawrence, the co-chair (for now) of the CU commission investigating the athletic department’s responsibility, if any, in the sports-and-sex scandals, I’m aware that Lisa Simpson and Anne Gilmore were slobbering drunk (Gilmore said she passed out several times) in Simpson’s apartment the night three vans of men showed up on the doorstep.
Gilmore (who rated herself a “10” out of 10 on the how-drunk-were-you scale) says Simpson gave directions to her place to a woman who wanted to bring “two or four” football players over. Gilmore actually stumbled outside to let the folks know they had the right place.
Too bad these women were so gassed they were unable to tell them that they were not welcome, or once in to tell them to get the bloody hell out, or to scream, or to call the police, or their parents.
I’m not letting CU or its athletic department off the hook. I went to CU – its macho football culture is beyond pathetic. My apologies to any football players out there who actually aren’t jerks.
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But these women weren’t drugged against their will. They drank themselves blind, and ended up with strange men on top of them – having sex or whatever.
Why do our laws absolve a woman of responsibility for any sex that may follow her drinking herself into incoherence, but hold a man liable on a rape charge and not allow him to plead “drunken oblivion” too?
Because we women are too damn silly to be held accountable for own actions? Please.
Sweet young wild things
The Post recently published a letter titled “One woman’s story.” The writer, Lisa from Monument, recalled staying overnight at a Boulder hotel years ago on the same night that some CU football team members and recruits were attending a dinner there. A couple of the players had the room next to Lisa’s.
In the evening, two women in “party dresses” knocked on Lisa’s door. When she answered it, the women realized they had the wrong hotel room, and then went next door to the football players’ room. Lisa says she heard one of the women ask “Are you so and so?”
Shortly after this exchange, Lisa wrote that the sound of “extremely noisy, wall-pounding sex” forced her to move to a different room. She was outraged: “The time is long past for men to get away with treating young women, individual precious human beings, as pieces of meat, as toys for their amusement, as tools to manipulate other men, as ‘things’ to be used and cast aside.”
Hold it, sister!
If these wild things were 18 years old, voluntarily strutted their stuff up to that hotel room door and chose to have “wall-pounding” sex with strangers who didn’t give a good damn what their names were – that’s their problem. The sweet young things were out to get it – and they got it.
A woman should never expect a man to save her from herself.
Confidentiality
When an ADULT woman files a charge of rape against a man, she shouldn’t expect the state and the press to keep her name confidential.
I understand why news organizations originally adopted this policy – to shield a woman from attempts by accused rapist to paint her as a whore. But there’s another assumption underlying that policy that no one acknowledges: the notion that there is something shameful in being raped.
And that assumption has everything to do with the sexual double standard that still exists in this country, although in a more muted form than the outrageous Victorian era where state laws banning contraceptives usually carried a BIG exception for “devices” intended to control the spread of disease (benefiting men of course).
News operations don’t shield the names of other adult crime victims. Is it any more “shameful” to claim to have been raped than robbed, mugged, beaten or murdered?
I know rape-victims’ advocates will want me shot – but rape is not only a crime of power and domination. It involves sex – albeit one-sided – and apparently when it comes to rape, some folks believe that women still have something to be ashamed about.
The Kobe Bryant case illustrates this absurdity.
By all accounts, the accuser (I haven’t even bothered to find out her name) schemed to meet Kobe Bryant. She allegedly booked Bryant into a room quite a distance from the rest of his entourage and remained at work after her shift had ended to meet him. She gave him a tour, entered his room willingly, started making out – and charged rape and showed up for her rape exam wearing underwear with semen from someone other than Bryant.
WHY is this accuser any more entitled to have her name kept out of the news than Kobe Bryant? Shouldn’t news organizations shield a rape defendant’s name if and until the charge is proven?
Because unlike being an alleged victim of rape, being ACCUSED of rape IS shameful.
Women – we’ve come a long way. And with our freedom comes responsibility. That’s what I’m telling my daughter – and my son.
Dani Newsum, a former civil rights attorney in the Colorado Attorney General's office, appears weekly on KBDI Channel 12's "Colorado Inside Out" (8 p.m. Fridays).
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