We haven’t discussed this issue, but my personal opinion is that it is possible to have truly consensual sex if one is slightly under the age of consent (I do support age of consent laws, for want of a better alternative, but I do think they need to be applied flexibly) although I’m not sure whether that was the case here. I also think that the law which gives a tougher penalty for non-consensual oral sex is stupid, but fairer penalties for rapists really isn’t at the top of my list of priorities at the moment.
This article concerns me for a couple of reasons. Firstly is this paragraph:
Back in 2003, Wilson, was a 17-year-old pupil getting top grades and showing enough promise as a footballer to catch the attention of Ivy League schools. Popular among students and teachers, he was voted Homecoming King, an honour bestowed on a star student or athlete.
Today Wilson is two years into a 10-year prison sentence for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year old girl at a New Year’s Eve party three years ago.
I’m not sure whether telling us about what a good student and footballer he was, was meant to make us think he’s innocent or to make us feel more sorry for his current predicament. If it was the former, it’s continuing a dangerous myth; intelligent, popular, gifted men can be rapists just as much as unemployed, borderline mentally ill, loners who’ve never had a girlfriend. If it was the latter, it’s irrelevent; if his jail sentence is wrong then it’s wrong irrespective of what their circumstances were before (reminds me of the case of three teenage Pacific Island girls who were given a disgustingly low amount of compensation after being wrongly jailed, essentially on the assumption that they wouldn’t be earning much).
The TV programme Primetime got its hands on the tape which shows Wilson, then 17, having sex with a seemingly drunk 17-year-old girl. She was earlier filmed passed out on the bathroom floor. Another section of the tape shows a second girl, 15 at the time, having oral sex with several boys in succession. Wilson was one of them. The girl later said she had not been drinking on the night in question.
It doesn’t sound like the seventeen year old was in any position to consent to sex to me. She later reported Wilson for rape, but he was acquitted of this by the jury. Yet the article doesn’t seem to challenge this verdict, like they do his prison sentence.
I wish even a fraction of the attention given to people (supposedly) wrongly convicted of rape was given to women wrongly deemed to be lying. And if convictions are viewed to not be binding, then acquittals should be viewed just as critically.
So far I’ve been focusing on reporting here in Aotearoa New Zealand, and I intend to carry on doing so, if only because I already have far more I want to write about than I have time. However, I felt this discussion of the court case and media coverage of four African-American women who defended themselves against a physical and sexual attack was worth quoting for reasons beyond the horrificness of the case.
In particular, it highlights the interplay between the media and the courts, and also examines the influence of racism and homophobia. I quote (and I would certainly recommend reading the whole thing):
Deemed a so-called “hate crime” against a straight man, every possible racist, anti-woman, anti-LGBT and anti-youth tactic was used by the entire state apparatus and media. Everything from the fact that they lived outside of New York, in the working-class majority Black city of Newark, N.J., to their gender expressions and body structures were twisted and dehumanized in the public eye and to the jury.
According to court observers, McLaughlin stated throughout the trial that he had no sympathy for these women. The jury, although they were all women, were all white. All witnesses for the district attorney were white men, except for one Black male who had several felony charges.
Court observers report that the defense attorneys had to put enormous effort into simply convincing the jury that they were “average women” who had planned to just hang out together that night. Some jurists asked why they were in the Village if they were from New Jersey. The DA brought up whether they could afford to hang out there—raising the issue of who has the right to be there in the first place.
The Daily News reporting was relentless in its racist anti-lesbian misogyny, portraying Buckle as a “filmmaker” and “sound engineer” preyed upon by a “lesbian wolf pack” (April 19) and a “gang of angry lesbians.” (April 13)
Everyone has been socialized by cultural archetypes of what it means to be a “man” or “masculine” and “woman” or “feminine.” Gender identity/expression is the way each indivdual chooses or not to express gender in their everyday lives, including how they dress, walk, talk, etc. Transgender people and other gender non-conforming people face oppression based on their gender expression/identity.
The only pictures shown in the Daily News were of the more masculine-appearing women. One of the most despiciable headlines in the Daily News, “‘I’m a man!’ lesbian growled during fight,” (April 13) was targeted against Renata Hill, who was taunted by Buckle because of her masculinity.
