Posts by Deborah
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Because of reasons, I was quite excited to see this op-ed in the Dom Post this morning.
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My commiserations to the Hay/Haywood family, and to Islander's whanau.
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Muse: V.S. Naipaul and the Gentle Art of…, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
I feel no such restraint, Martin.
“…. Well, Miss Elliot,” (lowering his voice) “as I was saying, we shall never agree I suppose upon this point. No man and woman, would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you–all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.”
“Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”
Persuasion, by the divine Jane.
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I'm thinking of people in Christchurch too. The on-going shaking must be very hard to bear. And hearing the news of Avonside this morning... I'm hoping the Haywood / Hay family are safe.
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Hard News: Here's one I prepared earlier, in reply to Che Tibby,
Raw kina. I lost a kilo in the space of 12 hours. Not very nice at all.
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Battery hens were happy and healthy?
Saw this for the first time today. It seems apposite. Also full of gender-confused drawings. And bad cow puns.
H/T: Tigtog at Hoyden about Town
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Holy fuck!
NB: Both the quotes below and the story may be TRIGGERING
A win for women at the Supreme Court of Canada last week in the J.A. decision also had a worrying subtext: All three dissenting justices who argued in favour of decriminalizing sex with unconscious “consenting” women were men.
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The three dissenting justices argued that it would further women’s right to autonomy to create a new doctrine of “advance consent,” so that unconscious women can have “sexual adventures."Consent ruling sends a welcome and clear message
At least the overall decision was good i.e. that an unconcious ‘consenting’ person can’t actually consent. But I am astounded that some of the judges thought otherwise.
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I've got a lot of control over what I teach my children about sexuality and consent, and the need for respect for other people. We're talking about it already. But I have no control over what other people teach, or don't teach, their children. For every family who takes a huge amount of care with it, I bet there is another family who just shrugs their shoulders, and says, "Well, kids will be kids."
No, legality or illegality is not going to stop willing adolescents, and yes, I agree there is a problem where the law prosecutes two 15 year olds. Or two 14 year olds. Or two 12 year olds.
What we have in law at present is a deeming type provision. We have no way of knowing whether a particular person is physically and emotionally ready to start having sex. I'm sure that many 14 year olds are, more 15 year olds are, and by 16, well, perhaps most people are. Perhaps the age of consent should be 15 years and 364 days. There's nothing magical about any of the numbers, except that perhaps we are trying to make an assessment about when people are mature enough for sex.
So if 13 or 14 is " way too young", then almost certainly, there is no issue with the current age of consent, with perhaps a margin of one year. And perhaps where children are engaging in sexual relationships before 16, the answer is education, not prosecution.
Moving agent at the door... gotta go.
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I’m not happy about the idea of tiered consent, or more specifically, with the idea that a two year age gap necessarily makes it okay. I really, really, seriously don't want my 14 year old daughter (well, she’s 12 now, but she will be 14 in time), being pressured by some 16 year old to have sex because, “it’s legal.”
I agree that we need to think about what to do where both participants are under the age of consent. Perhaps the answer is to have some criterion where there are consequences of some sort for the older person. Perhaps we need to have a much better commitment to sex ed. in schools, of the sort we were discussing above, about respect and how to recognise consent, and making sure the other person really is okay with going ahead. I suppose that IF that sort of sex ed was in place, AND it was being widely taught in schools, THEN I might be happier about changing the rules around the age of consent.
Otherwise I just don’t see what’s any more magical about a two year gap, than there is about our current age of consent. Why is a two year gap acceptable, but two years and one day is not?
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An interesting analysis of the extent to which some men think that all women are sexually available.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the myth of consent
In the Colorado case, one of the attorneys for the raped women asked the football players a most telling question: “How many female students here at CU would you consider to be ‘football groupies’? One running back said, “About half.” Another player, a wide receiver, answered “a majority.”