for The Bold Pursuit
(Written September 29, 2014)
When young women head off to college, no longer under the
observation of parents, they find themselves in a world of higher learning, but
also, in a world of experimentation.
Let’s consider a composite incident which, in various
versions, is spoken of by many of these women.
They get invited to parties, the liquor flows, drugs are
available, and sometimes the naïve young lady awakens on a dormitory floor,
minus much of her clothing, hung over with a headache, and pains lower down as
well. She may or may not have been
raped, and may have to go to a doctor to find out.
Soon, cell phone video recordings emerge. There she is, in the middle of the party,
“twerking” with a young man, while someone pours alcohol into her open mouth. The music is loud. She is laughing and carrying on. Later on, someone tells her that they saw her
trying to push the man off of her, but he raped her. When challenged, the man insists that “she
wanted it. What was I supposed to do?”
She goes to the police and files a complaint. It gets nowhere. There is not enough evidence. She bitterly complains that she is being victimized
again, being blamed instead of the rapist.
Other women tell her to let it go, just move on. Take medications for any infections, get an
abortion if she’s pregnant, and forget all about it.
Then along comes the California
Quoting from the site above, “Rather than using the refrain ‘no means no,’ the definition of
[sexual] consent under the bill requires ‘an affirmative, conscious and
voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity.’"
In other words, the incidence of rape on college campuses is
so epidemic that the legislature has now resorted to a convolution of semantics
that boggles the imagination in order to protect women from rape.
I agree, of course, that protecting women from male rapists
(protecting women? I’m so hopelessly chauvinistic, shame on me) is a praiseworthy
goal. Any man who forces himself on a
woman should be prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law, no
excuses accepted. If a woman is raped,
she should be able swiftly and painlessly to get justice from the police and
the courts.
But just read the article.
Read it. Have we really come to
this? Have we sunk so low, that an
entire news story omits the most important aspect of the entire rape epidemic?
Yes, we have. The
report makes no mention, none at all, about the immorality (and
destructiveness) of having sex outside of marriage. The implication is that if the young woman
does indeed wish to have sex, there should be a legal procedure involved, a
spoken contract in which she enjoys the full protection of the law. There is no mention of her assuming any risk.
Oh, I am so pathetic, aren’t I? Did I miss the sexual revolution? You know, the one that liberated women from
the unfairness of the consequences of sex out of wedlock? The one that freed them to engage in
libertine acts without consequences?
Did I miss the development of contraceptives which were supposed to
decrease unwanted pregnancy (then why did they increase as contraceptives
became ever more available without stigma)?
Did I miss the legal but safe and rare abortions which now kill millions
of babies, some only a moment before taking their first breath?
Have I been living in a cave? How ignorant can I be?
I was in high school during the mid 1960s. I remember the injustice to women. One of the girls in our class was credibly
rumored not to be a virgin. The next day
the family moved out of state. No
graduation, no prom, no yearbook, just gone.
The other girls were shockingly reminded of how unjust social mores
were. They also became more motivated to
be careful with their virginity. The
unfairness was dismal. (I'm being sarcastic, of course.)
When I dated, I first had to meet the girl’s parents, well
aware that I had no right to date her, and reminded that I had darn well better
respect her, or else. You see, not
everybody jumped on the wagon of sexual abandon.
But that was half a century ago, seemingly on another
planet. Today, young people have become
so saturated with the culture of sexual libertinism that sexual chastity is
considered not only a rarity, but almost a disorder.
Today, to suggest to a young woman that perhaps she should
not go to wild parties with strangers, that she should not get drunk while
doing so, and that she should keep in mind her Biblical values, is considered
condescending and an unfair restriction on women. Men don’t have to put up with all this bother. Why should women? As Cyndi Lauper sings, “Girls just want to
have fun.”
Today, to suggest to young men and women that they should
avoid having sex out of wedlock is to bring on derision, scorn, and even
accusations of not being a liberal. It
is not even to be mentioned.
Some years ago a comedian did a standup routine in which he
talked about taking karate classes. He
became so proficient that he said, “I began walking down dark alleys with ten
dollar bills hanging out of my pocket.”
The serious side of this is that women are now being taught
that, by golly, they have as much right to attend wild parties and get passed
out drunk, without consequences, as any man does to walk down dark alleys at
night with hundred dollar bills hanging out of his pockets.
What could possibly go wrong?
.
No comments:
Post a Comment