Despite serving two-and-a-half years of a five-year sentence following his conviction for rape, footballer Ched Evans has been acquitted of the charge after a successful appeal.
At this point when discussing this subject, it appears that the correct thing to do is to spend a few a moments condemning Evans, whether he is guilty or not, for his lewd and objectionable behaviour. All of this, I assume, is to make clear your disgust at the crime of rape and to publicly signal that you are not a ‘rape apologist’ as many will be quick to label anyone who they disagree with on this topic. I am not going to do this: it goes without saying and to do so would feed into and legitimise the narrative I object to below.
It has been suggested that Evans’ exoneration has ‘set us back 30 years’ because it ‘threatens women’s right to fair treatment in the courtroom’. The main reason for this is the admission of testimony from other sexual partners of the complainant as a comparison to the behaviour she exhibited during her tryst with Evans. The concern is that this will set a precedent of alleged victims of rape having to discuss their entire sexual past in court. As has been discussed elsewhere, this concern is unnecessary as the case does not set any legal precedent. However, it is my contention that this case is a big step forward in ensuring equal treatment for women under the law.
The issue at hand in the case of Ched Evans, as with all rape cases, is one of consent. One of the claims of the prosecution in this case was the complainant was too drunk to give consent. In fact, the complainant in this case, has never claimed she was raped, she has stated that she cannot remember. (This is just one of the reasons that her treatment by those who have leaked her name or abused her is nothing short of despicable.) It is others who have determined for her that she was raped because she was too drunk to consent. It is at this point that the first inequality between men and women arises. Can men be too drunk to consent? No one has ever questioned the woman’s behaviour during this encounter, she behaved as you would expect a willing participant to behave. This is not a case of woman being unconscious and being violated, the question is only whether she was of sufficiently sound mind to actively consent. If this is the case, had the conviction had stuck, would we have opened the floodgates to men being able to cry rape after a one-night stand on a heavy night of drinking? I suspect not: rightly so. But we should not be holding women to a different standard.
Unfortunately, the controversy surrounding Evans’ and his acquittal, actually has very little to do with the particulars of this case. The problem is that it no so much ‘threatens women’s equal treatment’, but rather it threatens the narrative that is gradually being built. That narrative is that women are sexual victims and men are their victimisers. I would not deny that in vast majority of sexual crimes are perpetrated by men against women, but that is not to say that the answer to this problem is to demonise men and relieve women of their own sexual liberty and responsibility. (I realise at this point I will be accused of ‘blaming the victim’ but read the article again, I do not such thing. I might also remind readers that in this particular case, it was determined by a jury of my peers that there was no victim.) This growing narrative has led to universities, among other institutions, running compulsory consent classes in which men are taught how to know when they have gained consent from women; and women are taught how they know when they have been raped. If we work from the premise that all men are potential, or even probable, rapists that need to be stopped, and that women are victims in waiting, how can we ever hope to ensure women’s equal treatment? We must grant women, as well as men, autonomy over their own sexual liberty and the responsibility that comes with it. Thankfully, in this case, the jury did.
How nice to come across a site offering broad, cool rationality for once. I will however, take issue with a couple of points in this thorny and widely misunderstood phenomenon of rape:
1) “… it threatens the narrative that is gradually being built.” This narrative has existed since the word “rape” shifted in common meaning from the pillage of lands and their people to the crime of penetrating another without their consent. It has, since then, always been considered something “men” will do to women (even children) given half a chance, hence why we as boys are still so indoctrinated into never doing anything to a female without her permission (sadly the reverse is not done: see point 2 below). Feminism itself, a doctrine codified by European Utopian Socialist men, was built on this notion. Wars have started over this notion. It’s always that nebulous “other” demographic of men, though, right? The 1920s and 30s Weimar public was told repeatedly by the gutter press that Jewish men considered the rape of young, lilywhite Teutonic girls was acceptable in their faith. It’s what we’re told about Muslim men now. It’s even still how soldiers are riled into battle: “Are you going to let those [insert enemy male demographic] rape YOUR women?” It’s gynocentric White-Knighting going in cycles of intensity; we’re merely seeing a fresh peak.
I’m afraid that is utterly untrue. By sheer number, rape and sexual assaults are committed mostly (by a factor of multiples) by men on other men; rape in prisons, the military and other institutions which physically bind one sex togther make up perhaps around three-quarters of all such crimes. We don’t hear about them and we don’t generally care about them. We have no compassion for men in this regard. You may be interested to know that per-capita rates of such assaults are higher in women’s prisons, but then women only represent 5% (and falling) of the incarcerated. [NB: lesbian relationships are also by far the most abusive and violent].
In what we deem “normal society,” women actually rape men more than the reverse. This is not something many people at all are prepared to accept, the path of ugly truth being so lightly trod, but new research and fresh trawls through older, typically-biased rape research confirm this. There are two factors at play here: firstly, men are biologically programmed to be deferent, protective and indeed servile to women and their perceived wants and needs. Raping women is simply not something we naturally do and the first to react against an accused man are other men. We police each other heavily in such respects; take a look at how sex offenders are generally treated in prisons. With high-fives and cheers? No, they get raped, battered and butchered. Men who do genuinely rape women are thankfully rare, but between 60% and 90% (depending on your source of research) of them are men who were severely abused as boys, by women – almost always mothers. Secondly, our society does not teach girls at an impressionable age that consent goes both ways; we simply teach boys not to assault girls and that’s that. Thus, unsurprisingly, girls quickly begin to bully boys 20 times more than the reverse with a huge dose of privilege and impunity that goes unchecked into adulthood, wherein women commit (or at least initiate) about 96% of domestic assaults. Women can, and do, employ a vast range of tactics to have sex against the wishes of a male, even if it rarely involves brute force. Women have all the social power in this regard. Begging, shaming and veiled threatening are commonplace gambits for the female rapist and they generally work like a charm. Also, try fighting off a woman with sex locked in her sights, especially a drunken women, and you’re liable to find yourself at least fearing being subsequently arrested for assault – and perhaps even rape, if the woman decides to absolve her behaviour by lying to that degree.
One thing I think helps in understanding the vile cesspit of “gender politics” in any of its facets is to learn that Feminism, like all Utopian Socialist ideals, presents the mirror opposite of truth, here flipped along the sex axis. If men were indeed the oppressive beasts we’ve long been told we are, Feminism could never have existed, let alone have grown into a multi-billion dollar industry that has poisoned every aspect of modern life. Lastly, cherries and sprinkles: the phrase “Women’s Equality” is a logical and lexical oxymoron. You can only have equality BETWEEN two or more things, not just FOR one – but you cannot make different things the same in the real world. To believe you can make men and women – so very different but honed to work in symbiosis – the same or “equal” is insanity. Forcing parity of social outcome between individuals is merely Communism which, as we all know, simply kills people.