Stay Classy, Peter Hitchens
(posted by Daniel Koffler)
Apparently, our significant other in the Special Relationship recently flirted with the idea of cutting state compensation to rape victims who were drunk at the time they were assaulted. That prompted brother-of-Christopher to write:
Women who get drunk are more likely to be raped than women who do not get drunk…[Therefore] a rape victim who was drunk deserves less sympathy.
Uh-huh. Women who jog alone at night (in high population-density regions) are more likely to be raped than women who do not jog alone at night. If a female night-time jogger is sexually assaulted, is she undeserving of sympathy? Obviously not; it would be vile to say so. The only relevant differences between the night-jogging case and the drinking case are that (a) drinking (or maybe just women drinking) offends prudes like Peter Hitchens, and (b) the causal relationship is much more clear in the night-jogging case. (A woman alone at night (jogging or not), especially in densely populated areas, is clearly at heightened vulnerability to every form of assault (not just sexual); whereas, contrary to the mythology, rapists are no more likely to be strangers to their victims than people they know, and since rapists are not deformed maniacs, but instead look and act just like other men, there’s no obvious way in which drunkenness can cause, as opposed to merely being correlated with, an elevated risk of sexual assault.)
So the whole performance from Hitchens isn’t just repugnant; it’s uninformed and innumerate.
(I’m not sure what state compensation to rape victims means, specifically whether it consists only in reimbursement for medical expenses (perhaps including mental health treatment) or punitive damages as well. Rape seems to me to be precisely the sort of emergency case in which the former is warranted; but I don’t see how the latter could be.)
(Via.)
August 20th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
If a woman is passed-out drunk, having sex wit her is rape. But if she is drunkenly ripping her clothes off, and does not object to the activity, it is not. Even if when she sobers up she is pissed.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:54 am
How often does the “wake up, regret having consensual sex, and then cry rape” thing actually happen?
I don’t imagine it happens a lot but I do remember the perfect horror story for men: http://www.brown.edu/Students/ACLU/ILack.html
Summary: She admits not only consenting to, but actually initiating, sex but charges him with sexual assault on the grounds that he should have known she had impaired judgment and should have refused her advances. Furthermore, the rules were written such that her claim to be drunk meant that she was not to be held responsible for her actions in initiating sex, but his intoxication was “no excuse” for failing to reject her advances.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:06 pm
How often does the “wake up, regret having consensual sex, and then cry rape” thing actually happen?
I have no quantitative data, but when I was both practicing law and raising three teen boys, I read enough about women claiming inability to consent by virtue of intoxication to warn them over, and over and over to be careful whilst sowing their wild oats.
August 25th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Thus the path towards the adoption of the burka is laid.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:36 am
I’m not sure what state compensation to rape victims means, specifically whether it consists only in reimbursement for medical expenses (perhaps including mental health treatment) or punitive damages as well
That would be CICA, the UK Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority.
https://www.cica.gov.uk/portal/page?_pageid=33,278194&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
“What is the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority?
The CICA is responsible for administering the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme throughout England, Scotland and Wales. We pay compensation to eligible applicants who have been the victim of a violent crime.
The Scheme was introduced in 1964 where awards were set according to what the victim would have received in a successful civil action against the offender.”
Of course, there’s no need to compensate victims of violent crime for their medical expenses, because medical care is free in the UK. Nor are the damages really punitive, because they’re not extracted from the offender, but from public funds. I think the argument is that it’s the state’s job to stop you getting violently assaulted, so if you do get violently assaulted the state should compensate you.
I guess the US doesn’t have a similar scheme…