Illusions of Choice

This might seem totally out of context, but: For the past couple of weeks we've been reading about rape in CrimLaw. I understand it's somewhat unusual for an introductory CrimLaw course to spend so much time on rape, but our prof is doing a great job bringing out the hidden assumptions that underpin our rape laws. So far he's focusing mostly on assumptions about gender and race, but there are plenty of class issues involved, as well. Anyway, we keep reading cases where courts have a hard time deciding whether the sex was consensual, and I keep hearing my classmates say stuff like, "She still had a choice, she should have fought harder, she's responsible for her actions," etc. And all I keep thinking is how often what we call "choice" is but an illusion of choice. Then, while searching for some responses to Katie Roiphe (we're reading "Date Rape's Other Victim," which Roiphe wrote in 1993) I stumbled on this:

'The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions.' - Karl Marx

It doesn't get much more concise than that. (If anyone can identify the source of this quotation, I'd be, as they say out West, much obliged.)

Part of what Roiphe's arguing for is that we should give up some of our illusions about sex and gender, namely that women are fragile and need protection from the predation of lascivious men. She claims this led to Newsweek calling her "the Clarence Thomas of women," whatever that means. Her arguments carry obvious dangers—they could easily be appropriated by anyone who wants to maintain the status quo which seems to let men off the hook for "behaving badly." See, for example, the story of California's new governor. As a society, we too often seem to give men a free pass to grope and fondle, and I'm convinced too many men go unpunished for doing much worse. Hence the question of when choice becomes mere illusion. It sounds nice to say that women should just stop believing they're fragile and start standing up for themselves instead, but if it were really that simple, the world would be a much simpler place, wouldn't it?

Posted 06:01 AM | Comments (3) | law school