Rape Guidance - A Danger to Women

For most of us, the notional equality of women and men has been long established.

On reflection, I note that my political representatives, professional advisers, university lecturers have frequently been women, and their gender passed unnoticed. 

On further reflection, I note that no electrician, plumber, decorator or rubbish collector calling at my house has ever been a woman – and so far I’ve heard no protests about inequality on that front. Why not?

Nonetheless, at a time when society has moved on from the Victorian, patriarchal image of women as silly little creatures, dependent on the intelligence and wisdom of men, why would anyone wish to resurrect it in the context of sexual relationships?

Such attitudes not only undermine the role of women, they increase the danger that they may come to harm – and that those who harm them will escape punishment.

The central error is exactly that of years gone by - the assignment of different roles and responsibilities to different genders. The scenario of the weak and vulnerable female needing to be protected from the brutality of the dominant male may be a theme celebrated in historical  literature but it is distorting and unhelpful perspective for regulating our day to day lives in the modern era.

We now understand that relationships between the sexes are complicated and varied but that their chance of success is always enhanced by the sense of a shared responsibility.

The idea of gender equality is particularly important in the context of the issue of rape. In practical terms, one does far more to protect a woman by reminding her of her responsibility to herself – the need to avoid becoming drunk/drugged and incapable - rather than abandoning herself to the whim of others (men or women).

To those who object that a woman has a right to behave as she likes, the obvious reply is that she has indeed such a right, but rights are always to be exercised with commonsense. She has, for example, the right to keep a note of her pin number together with her credit card. This lack of care would not excuse the thief who used it to take money from her account, but her bank would refuse to reimburse her and the law would support its decision.

The same one-sided caricature of sexual relationships is also an obstacle to conviction rates in matters which come to court. Jurors familiar with the real world just do not accept the terms in which certain cases are presented to them. It is not a question of ‘dark alley myths’, merely that when a woman decides the following day that she had not consented to sex the previous night, jurors ask themselves how has she found herself in this position, and why is it the man who must be held solely responsible?

The claim in recent headlines that men must now prove consent to sex hardly holds water, as the duty on the prosecution to prove the accused guilty, and no ministerial diktat can change that. Nevertheless, such statements do not augur well for male/female relations and relationships. It can only be a matter of time before chemists start to supply written contracts with condoms so that men can be fully protected in sexual relations with women.

But, even then, would the woman’s signature be enough or would pressure groups demand that a responsible family member (male, of course) countersign to confirm her informed consent had been freely given? And perhaps have an obligatory 6 day cooling off period.

Privatisation and the NHS

It is rarely mentioned that the pharmaceutical products used in the NHS are supplied (and most were created) by private enterprise. Nor that the same can be said for the technology used to diagnose and treat its patients - and for the ambulances, the IT systems etc etc. 

Indeed, it is hard to think of any element which is completely dependent on the public sector, apart from the people who work there. 

And they are not (as they are so often portrayed) members of some religious order altruistically devoting their lives to the benefit of others. They are employees - in just the same way as those working for Tesco, save that their employer is the state.

So when we remember that the NHS is, and always been, closely bound up with private commercial interests, why is the word 'privatisation' tabou for certain people?

One often hears the simplistic argument that profit means money being taken from the NHS, but a moments thought reminds one that such profit is greatly exceeded by other economies and improvements. Were this not to be the case, private interest would have been banished years ago and certainly would not be being proposed in times of austerity, not even by what its opponents would characterise as a wicked, blood sucking Conservative coalition.

Compare that other central need of citizens - food. It is clear to anyone that the  arrival of supermarkets have made a wider range of products available to a wider range of people and at a lower price than any state organisation could ever have managed. If there are those who cannot afford to shop at Aldi or Lidl, it is not because their prices are inflated but because of other social issues - which are generally matters of wider government responsibility .

The supermarket sector also illustrates how capitalism performs the magic trick of benefiting the consumer while taking a profit. External competition demands constant attention to innovation and improvement, and woe betide even giant corporations like Tesco, should they forget this. Contrast this with the public sector monopolies focused entirely on internal dynamics, which seem so often to favour the immobility of the status quo.

If the paramount aim of the NHS is to provide the best possible treatment for the largest number of people, the debate should be fixed solely on how best this can be achieved, and the extent to which provision is public or private determined by this criterion alone.

Unfortunately, there remain too many ideologues, too many cynical politicians and too many who work in the system ready to sacrifice the interest of others to that their own. 

This is the very antithesis of what we expect from the NHS and those who run it.

Broken Dreams

The 1960s are heralded as being the start of a social revolution. It was the moment that the 'Establishment' lost control of the social debate. As the soixante-huitards proclaimed in Paris, "It is forbidden to forbid". If questions of race, gender, class etc may have gone back centuries, this was the decade which gave impetus to the transformation of the way in which such issues are considered today.

It was, of course, the willingness to challenge orthodoxies, to question the right of the self-proclaimed religious and secular moral guardians that had made the difference.

For those of us who witnessed this period of history first hand, it is depressing to see that the revolution has now come full circle. We have returned to a time when the 'Establishment seeks to impose its moral certainties, and which considers itself justified in doing so because its members are both intellectually and morally more enlightened than others. As the sans-culottes would have said, 'Plus ça change...'.

It is a new sanctimonious left wing orthodoxy which reveals its prejudice in its vocabulary. "I am a democrat, you are populist, he is a fascist". 

And it matters not that in so many cases it is evident that the 'Establishment' got things so terribly wrong - the invasion of Iraq, the bid to join the euro, the refusal to manage immigration, the promotion of diesel engines,etc etc.

There is perhaps, however, still hope that a new revolution may be underway - and one driven by similar dynamics to those in the sixties. Back then it was the access to a more independent media, which enabled the alternative society to thrive. Rock music, provocative plays, films and magazines may often have contributed little of lasting artistic value, but they created a new intellectual freedom. 

Today, the internet with its blogs, websites and access to international media takes this to another dimension. It is this which guarantees the long term failure not just of the printed media but of the hegemony of institutions such as the BBC.

Vive la nouvelle révolution!