1.19.2010

My Consent Means Nothing

(For my family who stops by, a TMI warning. I talk frankly about my sexual exploits in this post. If you don't want to know, don't read it.)

Here is some Grade-AAA, pure uncut slut-shaming: A woman meets a man she's talked to online, and with whom she had intended to have sex. At his house are four friends of his. She alleges that they proceeded to gang-rape her. At the trial, the lawers FOR THE PROSECUTION - not the defense, not the ones trying to defend a group of gang-raping rapists, the lawyers who are supposed to be on HER side, convincing the judge and jury that the men did in fact rape her - HER LAWYERS brought forth "evidence" in the form of a transcript from an MSN chat in which the woman mentioned having fantasized about group sex.

The judge's response? He ordered the jury to return a not-guilty verdict with no further evidence or trial, saying her "credibility was shot to hell". Yes, that is a direct quote. No, I am not making this shit up. I couldn't if I tried.

So be warned, women of the world: If you have ever in your life fantasized about a sex act, you have automatically consented to it forever and for always, with any and all partners. ESPECIALLY if it was a dirty, naughty, good-girls-don't kind of sex act. Because if it really was ANY sex act, we'd see this kind of defense all the time in rape cases, right alongside the usual short-skirt-means-she-wanted-it, she-let-me-kiss-her, why-was-she-drinking-then? bullshit. We'd see defense lawyers (or, hell, prosecution ones apparently) entering rape victims' porn collections or erotic novels or old AIM sex chats with ex-boyfriends as "evidence" that what happened couldn't have been rape. So why don't we? And why did it count in this case?

Because she fantasized about the wrong thing. She didn't fantasize about nice, missionary, one-man-one-woman-one-penis-one-vagina sex. She fantasized about something forbidden, something terribly dirty and slutty. She dared to have desires that defy our cultural standard of appropriate female sexuality. And for that sin, she has no credibility left, no ability to not consent. Her mind is dirtied, therefore her body is dirtied with it. She is unrapeable, because she is no longer one of the Good Girls. She is one of Those Girls, the ones you can fuck but not marry, the ones it's ok to never call again. The sluts. And everyone knows sluts can't be raped.

And here's where it gets personal, for me. If she has lost her credibility and her right to withhold consent, by merely having a fantasy...then my consent means even less. I've had polyamorous relationships. Those have, multiple times over the past year or two of my life, involved more-than-two-player situations. I have not only fantasized about group sex. I've actually had it. Does my having had a threesome now mean that, if I am ever raped by two men at once, I will be told that my consent or lack thereof meant nothing, because my credibility is shot to hell for the sin of having not only fantasized about, but actually had the Wrong Kind Of Sex?

Fantasy is not consent. Not even the Wrong Kind Of Fantasy. End of story.

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