Sigh. It’s no use. Just when we women thought we alone had the right to scurry to Mister Officer if anyone flashed their flaccid tools at us as we lay sunbathing in the park — along come the PC police to rain on our parade.
Where once one believed that malpropre was reserved for men making indecent and unwanted moves on women, things look set to change. If new proposed changes to sexual offences legislation are anything to go by, women could soon find themselves on the receiving end of a rape charge — from men.
And a big “whoa, hold your horses” to those already punching furious missives to the editor from their toxic keyboards. Nobody’s saying it isn’t possible. Just a teensy weensy bit hard to, ahem, swallow.
Of course, it’s high time local lawmakers saw the light beaming from the rest of the civilised world — that says rape and indecent assault is by no means the exclusive domain of man versus woman. This overhaul is long overdue and a big up to the project committee of the South African Law Commission for calling for the repeal and replacement of old laws that saw a woman on the shaky end of the legal see-saw, having to prove, among other things, that her “sexual history” was pure as the driven snow, or risk being demolished in the court as having “asked for it”.
The task team that drafted the new Sexual Offences Bill has made some seriously positive recommendations. Among other things, broadening the definition of rape to include anal and vaginal penetration by whatever means. Sexual violation would now be where any object was used to penetrate the genital organs of another person in conditions similar to rape. A category including oral sexual violation has also been included.
The state will no longer have to prove lack of consent in rape cases, but rather that the act took place “under coercive circumstances”. As anyone well knows this is welcome news, particularly in the case of sexual assault of minors.
But now that the PC-speak and explanatory notes are done, one may ponder, as I have, on the more profound of the issues suggested: can a woman really rape a man? Without even seeking to go into the psychosis and the like, such pondering over the mere anatomy of it all is difficult enough to, ahem again, get your head around.
The sniggers of my mates, even the male ones, suggest they’d think not; that it’s impossible for a woman to use a man for her own lascivious ends, paying no heed to his begging and protestations that he doesn’t want to. Suggesting that force could be used — and I’m talking a gun here (like in men raping women), not knouts, scourges and silk hankies — brings on guffaws.
The most common answer to the question is simply, “How?” How can a man be forced (these “coercive circumstances” the law commission is talking about) by a woman to have sex against his will when the mere act of coitus, willing or otherwise, requires his equipment to be in a state of readiness?
But — and I must climb the crag of truth — there have been reported cases of women raping men, of women using boys as sexual prey, of female schoolteachers having affairs with naive young pupils. Even the Internet is awash with site names such as Women raping whimps and How Gorgons rape men.
But thinking of it anatomically, it’s enough to make your brain swim.
Of course, and it must be acknowledged, incredulity at the suggestion is fed by a perception that men want it all the time, that they never really mean no. That any man who says a woman had her way with him when he wasn’t keen is nothing but namby-pamby. That even if the pair are married, for instance, and he says he’s got a headache, or had a rough day in the office, there’s nothing a little manual adroitness or oral flexibility won’t solve. It’s simply inconceivable that he really doesn’t/didn’t want it.
Perhaps all this talk about men being raped by women, to quote the Feminist Foremothers, is nothing more than a pretext to detract from our own anguish at our femaleness — a crude attempt by men to detract from the misogyny of the world, by stealing a slice of our suffering pie.
Me agrees and political correctness be damned. It’s all a ploy. By men. To say, “Hey, look at us, we’re not so bad. Look, you guys can do it to us, too.”
In that way they can get to look like good guys, part of the good fight. Like white liberals who adopt black Aids orphans to prove their non-racial bona fides, but pay the domestic worker R400 a month.
“We suffer in silence too.” Picture the counselling session: “Yes, [choke], she forced me down and used her hands to … Oh, I can’t go on.” At which point the counsellor, handing over a Kleenex, prods him to continue. “She put it in, but I didn’t agree, I kept begging her to stop …”
Oh, puhleez.
In short, anatomy (depending on what side of the feminist passive/aggressive sexuality bandwagon you sit) dictates that it makes little, if any sense, that a woman can rape a man.
A woman may force men to do lots of things against their better judgement — like shopping for hours for the right shade of towel for the guest bathroom — but being raped by her requires some serious stretch of the imagination.
Talk about a lack of good will!