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| This mannequin better watch out or Dick Black might get her! Image by Pedro J Perez, morgueFile |
Many
a year ago, a wise man named Jonathan Swift suggested that perhaps we need to
eat babies. Eating babies, he said,
would solve so many of societies’ ills. We’d
have food. We’d have less
population. Babies wouldn’t go to
waste! The poor could get rich selling
their offspring, which they didn’t really need or want anyway. It was a total win-win situation.
Sadly,
though, the brilliance of Swift is long gone.
Or at least, it appears to be when you are foolish enough to read
anything written by Roxanne Jones.
Roxanne Jones, who somehow won the 2010 Woman of the Year award from
Women in Sports and Events, wrote two pieces that I had hoped – prayed even! –
were satire. And sadly, for both myself
and all women in the world, they were not.
The first one appeared back around Thanksgiving.
In
the article, titled “Young men, get a ‘yes’ text before sex,” she begins by
telling her son to “watch out for stupid girls…they are trouble.” Oh my, as a certain famous and funny
performer has said a few times. She goes
on to complain about women who are “party girls…who thrive on attention.” These girls, she says, are not asking to be
raped. But, then she says, what you need
to do is to get a girl to text you “yes” before she has sex with you. This, she somehow believes, will solve the
problem of rape on college campuses.
Yes,
this awesome woman states “Never have sex with a girl unless she’s sent you a
text that proves the sexual relationship is consensual.” Wow.
Why isn’t she out there, campaigning for this to be made into a law?
Because
it’s stupid as fuck.
Seriously,
this harkens back to 1999 when an Italian appeals court ruled that a woman
wearing jeans couldn’t be raped because “it is common knowledge…that jeans cannot
even be partly removed without the effective help of the person wearing them…and
it is impossible if the victim is struggling with all her might.”
Let
me just clear this up – there doesn’t have to be a struggle for it to be
rape. A woman can say no, but if fear is
there (a weapon, a threat, anything) or if the woman is unable to fight (drunk,
asleep, whatever), then it’s still rape!
It does not matter if she fights back.
It does not matter if she texts a yes.
How easy would it be for a guy, holding a gun on a woman, to make her
text that message? How easy would it be
to put roofies in a girl’s drink, get her phone, and then text that to
yourself? Who the fuck would honestly
consider a text all the permission they need?
Jones,
at the end of her article, once again says that men shouldn’t rape drunk
women. But right before she makes that
point, she again points out that “true equality means that we are also held
accountable for our actions. Partying
and drinking until you are no longer in control of your body or mind instantly
sets you up to become a victim of rape or bodily harm – or even to die.” Yes, true, but the same is true for men – at least
the death part is. But it doesn’t
matter. People can do stupid
things. They do do stupid things. But to bring that up – to say that “nobody
wants to be a stupid girl” – implies that women are asking for it. It says straight out that women should not be
able to get drunk, like men can get drunk, without being “instantly set up” to
be raped and murdered.
But
Jones doesn’t stop there.
In
December, she got up on her soapbox again and suggested that false rape accusers should be sued.
Now,
I’m all for justice. It is very true
that some women have lied about being raped.
However, that being said, Jones even admits that some things that can
make rape cases not go to court can be as simple as the fact that “the alleged
victim did not try to fight off the suspect or suffer injuries, was not
threatened with a weapon or the victim and perpetrator had a previous
relationship.” In all those cases, the
rape charge might be dismissed, and the case might be considered a false
accusation. In fact, according to GOP
candidate Dick Black, spousal rape shouldn’t be a crime, and you can’t really
call it rape if someone is wearing a nightie.
Jones
ends her article by telling us that “we have a long way to go before there’s
justice for all.” But she’s not
referring to the rape victims who have had their cases dismissed because there
wasn’t enough physical injury. She’s referring to those falsely accused of
rape.
Again,
I’m all for justice. If someone is
falsely accused and their reputation is destroyed, they deserve their day in
court and their name restored. However,
what about those who are actually raped and can’t get their day in court? How can you ignore the 87,000 “forcible rapes”
that the FBI has on record in 2012? How
can you ignore the non-forcible rapes, where lives were just as destroyed?
I
would love to see Jones stripped of her “Woman of the Year” award. Her writing is not for women. Her views are not for women. She feels horrible for the “innocent men
[who] end up in prison or with lives shattered” but seems to ignore the women
who wind up in their own mental (and sometimes physical) prisons.
