Sunday, December 31, 2006

Drinking and Rape

For Hebrew readers, Israeli exremist feminist Orit Kamir (I hope I spell it right) is more then worth reading. In my views Kamir is quite often wrong, and almost always over the top even when she's right, but she's thought provoking. Take this post:

http://www.notes.co.il/orit/26644.asp

Following an anti Drunk driving campaign, (which states that if you chose to drink and drive you risk committing murder) Dr. Kamir writes about how, when one decides to drink, one risks raping. That's reasonable. If I knowingly put myself into a position in which I will not be able to read someone else's signals, I should be held responsible.

What strikes me as much less reasonable is Kamir assertion that it also goes the same way the other way around - if one has sex with a drunk person, one risks becoming a rapist because one risks misinterpreting the signals the drunk sends.

This is a bait-and-switch argument. In the first argument, we hold the sober person responsible for what s/he does when drunk, because the decision to commence drinking is done knowingly. In the second case, we don't hold the drinker responsile for his (in Kamir's post, almost certainly her) drunken actions. We don't blame her failure to communicate on her drinking - we blame the non-drinker!

In Kamir's world, instead of blaming the drunk drivers, we should blame the sover people who don't get out of the way fast enough.

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