Apologize To Your Abuser

After much deliberation, it was finally ruled in the Canadian courts this month—May 2011—that a woman cannot in fact consent to sexual activity if she is unconscious. I repeat: this happened in May 2011.

I was shocked to hear about this development, considering how late it comes. Stories like this are a scary reminder of how male-dominated the idea of “justice” continues to be, even when it comes to reprehensibly violent crimes.

That’s not to say that these judges don’t judge. If someone robs at gunpoint, the judges are often quick to assign blame (even though the Canadian laws to do with any violent crime, even murder, are pathetically lenient), especially if the person who committed the crime is a minority.

But the issue of women being sexually assaulted somehow puts unrealistic visions in the judges’ minds. Their idea seems to be of woman as sexual conjuror, putting on makeup, going out at night, talking to people at a party only for the sake of titillating men. Some judges have even called these women “teases”, which says something about their own sexual frustration, perhaps.

The old boys’ club that is the Canadian legal system is intolerable for many reasons. But the issue of judges not taking sexual assault seriously is one that has been public for a long time now, and it seems that nothing is being done about this grave shortcoming. Only a couple of the offending judges have been let go from their post. This appalling behaviour cannot be tolerated, especially not from one whose position is supposed to denote a certain level of intellectuality. No matter how well-read you are on the legal system, if you can so flippantly justify rape, you should never be in a position of authority.

The courts of Canada are littered with stories of insensitive judges blaming a woman or girl for her own rape, especially of late. “There was sex in the air that night,” one of these geniuses was quoted as saying. Blaming a woman for her own rape is like blaming a child for their own abuse, or a bank for its own robbery: senseless, and despicable besides.  

This issue of blaming the victim reminds me of the date rape debate that was so hot in the 1990s. Aren’t we past this? Do we need to debate the morality of rape any longer? It’s astounding that in a Western world where we’ve made so much progress in terms of promoting racial accord and discouraging discrimination based on sexuality, that we still have trouble acknowledging the human rights of women. Of course, this again speaks to the old boys’ club: social change comes almost always from the bottom, from young people, whereas social reversion comes almost always from rich old pricks.