I’d thought responses to the “group sex” issue currently being discussed couldn’t get much worse than Andrew Bolt’s idea that consent is, rather than the critical issue, a “furphy”. But I was wrong.
On Friday, the Australian published a frankly appalling piece by someone named Margie McDonald, entitled “Women need educating too”.
Based on her article, she’s one of them. Making a real effort to undo 40 years of progress on women’s sexual rights, she writes:
I make no judgment, but I do have a problem with women who can’t make an educated choice: “If I go back to that player’s hotel room or even out to a toilet cubicle at the back of a nightclub, can I really trust that the player I left with will be the only player there when I arrive, or even half-an-hour later?”
Margie might as well say, like one of those misogynist dinosaur judges from the 1960s of which the law has finally divested itself, “if I’m a woman and I go out to a nightclub in revealing clothes, can I really trust that I won’t find myself being raped in a back alley by some guy I’ve inadvertently turned on?” You know, exactly the sort of attitude that let men get away with sexual assaults, and stopped women reporting them.
She continues, with a truly offensive analogy:
If we want starstruck young women to make an educated guess, perhaps we should educate them? If I steal that lipstick off the shelf, there’s a good chance I’ll be caught on security camera, charged by police and appear in court. We are taught that.
If I go into a hotel toilet or up in the lift with a player/players to a room, there’s a good chance I’ll be filmed on CCTV or a mobile phone and, if something goes horribly wrong, I have no recourse in the courts. Maybe we need to start teaching teenage girls that.
Yes – just like a shoplifter who should expect to get caught, a woman agreeing to go to someone’s room should just accept whatever happens to her.
Are you serious, Margie?
And “I have no recourse in the courts”? No matter what happens? After, for example, being raped? WHAT? We should be “teaching teenage girls that”?!
No, Margie, quite the opposite.
Do I really have to remind you that sex without consent is rape? It is a crime. (One of the most serious crimes.) And a woman who has consented to a sexual act can AT ANY STAGE withdraw that consent, and from that point, that sex must stop. And if it doesn’t, it’s rape.
How can any journalist seriously say that a woman being forced into a sex act without her consent has “no recourse in the courts”? How can a serious newspaper publish something so staggeringly irresponsible?
But Margie doesn’t want her damaging line to end there: she wants a national advertising campaign to educate young women that they lose their rights the second they go into the hotel room:
The ideal place to strike at the core of the problem is high school, through programs held in tandem with sex education and lifestyle or career counselling classes, or through the media with government-backed mass advertising programs.
Not too long ago, the national TV advertising campaign “Violence Against Women — Australia Says No” sent powerful messages. How about a campaign “Going to Hotel Rooms With Several Men — Australia Says Think Again”?
Or how about a powerful message that DOESN’T undo women’s rights and encourage men to think that in certain situations a woman really has to do what they want. Or encourage women to think that once they’ve “gone to hotel rooms with several men” anything that happens subsequently is their own damned fault?
Although she might be right that a national campaign is needed. If Margie McDonald, News Ltd columnist, can fail to grasp how wrong, how damaging her line above is, then clearly both younger and older women do need educating on the subject – it’s just that her lesson, that once they go up to a hotel room they lose their rights, is the opposite of the one that should be being taught.
Women should be being reminded that even if they’ve said “yes” to a sexual engagement, they can at any point change their minds and decline. “Yes” ends the second they want it to. You’d think it were obvious, but apparently some people have missed this fairly basic point.
More importantly, men (apparently) need educating of the same thing – that women can AT ANY STAGE say no. Someone can consent and then change their mind, and you must then stop. Moreover, if the situation is one where someone with whom they’re having sex could be feeling intimidated into continuing, then it’s not really consent, and they shouldn’t assume it is without making sure that it’s a real choice. Any group of men with one girl need to each expressly and genuinely make it clear that if at any stage she wishes it to stop then they want it to stop too, so that she feels comfortable declining if she changes her mind. If you can’t communicate even that basic message, then don’t have sex with her. The message: don’t assume consent where it’s not really there.
The attitudes expressed by the Margie McDonalds and Andrew Bolts of the commentariat actually make things worse for young women who find themselves in a private room with any man, let alone a few of them. They are effectively saying to them: sorry my dear, you shouldn’t have gone in the first place – you only have yourself to blame for whatever happens. You’ve already consented – you have no rights from here on in.
That’s an appalling lesson. That it could be taught by several major newspapers – in, and I state the year again with surprise, 2009 – is of great concern, and perhaps the relevant authorities should indeed be looking at another advertising campaign to counter it. One that reminds women of their eternal right to at any stage say no to sex (including partway through it), empowers them to express it, and that reminds men that silence or acquiescence in an intimidating situation may well not be real consent.
An advertising campaign that works to undo the damage done by pieces like the above to the expression of this most basic of rights – the always present and non-relinquishable right to say NO.
21 Comments
It’s also more than just saying no at any stage, it’s also saying what she agrees to in the sexual act(s).
Is Margie saying that a woman who has agreed to go up to a room for standard intercourse doesn’t have the right to say no to another form of penetration or stimulation on her or her partner just because she agreed to go into the room in the first place?
Hell, this is the old “the uterus is public property unless the girl is kicking and screaming argument‘
So girls don‘t get delusional and think you have 100% control over your own bodies, cause if it goes to court you‘ll be proved otherwise.
I surprised Margie didn’t say something about uncovered meat.
fucking hell! what throwback to the 50s bullshit is that?!
here’s a novel idea: why don’t we place responsibility for men’s behaviour where it belongs to start with: WITH MEN! why don’t we start educating men that no means no, yes and then no actually means no more, yes I’ll have sex with man X and man Y doesn’t mean yes to sex with men A,B,C,D and E, and just because you happen to be, like famous and all, doesn’t abrogate you of your responsibility to behave with respect and decency.
Why is this so fucking hard for our star-struck news ltd columnists to grasp? and why are they so quick to remove all responsibility for men’s abusive behaviour from the actual men themselves?
Is there any reason for publishing this drivel other than to create controversy and boost hits on The Awfulstrailian’s dull site? A new low has been reached.
Agree with monkeywrench.
As bad as one of the 6PM TV news shows last night (or was it Friday? Anyway …) where they showed THE room in NZ where it all happened.
Talk about sleazy.
It’s all her own fault, of course. What else would you expect to happen if you go with one footballer? Of course a couple of others will show up and join in, and it’s only right that they should trophy the exploit on their mobile phones. This is what football is all about: team bonding! She was asking for it, obviously. Margie knows what it’s all about, she’s a sheila.
confessions @ 10:36am:
**Why is this so fucking hard for our star-struck news ltd columnists to grasp?**
That’s a very good question confessions. Particularly since, as has been said, if it were a group of Muslim, or Maori, or African men these same columnists would be shrieking for the men’s ritual disembowelment and boiling in oil.
You wonder about the financial connections between FixNews and the NRL.
Exactly, bertus. What puzzles me is just how quiet many of these cases are kept by the media until too much shit starts hitting the fan ( no pun intended). The New Zealand case was seven years old, and I don’t recall hearing anything about it at the time, likewise the above link in my last post, an incident that happened a year ago.
Margie McDonald tries to give the impression that she’s a football insider, but in reality she can never be anything but a triviality to the backslapping boy’s club that is football and its media chums. How could it be any other way? The media is riddled with ex-players who know exactly what goes on when the lads have a dozen beers on board and some unfortunate woman makes the mistake of believing they would always have her welfare in mind.
I bet I know what sort of terminology the presenters of the Footy Show use to describe the victims of this cowardice when the mics are turned off. That dumb oaf who started blubbering when Matthew Johns got the sack should shed a few for the real losers in these cases.
As a general rule, sports reporters should never be asked to step outside their area of expertise. It usually ends in tears.
I’m asking for it a bit here, but it bothers me that in this chorus of well-deserved condemnation for Matthew Johns and his cohorts, there is not at least some small measure of compassion for people who have clearly been deeply affected by this whole mess. There are big moral and cultural issues involved here, and the perpetrators of these acts and those close to them are not the evil demons they have been made out to be. They are – at worst – stupid, misogynistic oafs who were only dimly aware of the gravity of the offences they have committed {NB: In the specific case you mention, no criminal charges have been laid let alone proven; I would stress that your use of “offences” should not be taken to imply otherwise – Toby}. That does not diminish their culpability in any way, but it always concerns me when these issues turn into an opportunity for sanctimonious finger-pointing. Helen Garner’s “The First Stone” cautioned against this kind of dehumanising process way back in 1992, but I don’t think we’ve learnt much since. Jesus did the same thing a couple of thousand years earlier, and hardly anyone listened then either, least of all his followers.
bertus: News Ltd and the ARL are co-owners of the NRL. News also owns or has majority shares in several NRL clubs.
Gosh. It’s the LAW that it isn’t ‘consent’ unless you specifically say yes (none of this ‘didn’t refuse’ business).
I’d like to think that when I consent to sex with someone, it doesn’t give every single person I come across in the next few hours consent by extension, but perhaps I’m wrong.
Why is my comment from 4.59 pm on 17/5 still awaiting moderation?
We’re back on track now, Bloods. I did add a little note to your comment.
Bloods05 @ 11: for me the issue is that I haven’t seen any remorse shown by Johnns or his supporters for the role they played in the position the women now find themselves in. johns made it clear in his TV interviews he was sorry to his fans, his family and team, but could not find it in himself to acknowledge the pain and suffering of the real victims.
Fair comment confessions.
Why, two days after this discussion, are we suddenly being dragged to Jeremy’s personal site?
I fixed the second update text on my other post to include the number #2 – Wordpress automatically did a trackback.