It's Not Semantics, It's Rape

There's a fascinating piece in today's Op-Ed section of the times on the "Gallic Shrug" toward Roman Polanski's legal embroglio.* Some people don't think--in the first place--that it was rape. Drugging a 13-year old girl and using her sexually despite her repeated Nos (who knows--there might even have been some "please don'ts" or "stops" as well) isn't the same act as, say, holding a gun to someone's head or a knife to her head and demanding sex? Sounds like rape to me. Sounds like statutory rape, too--sex with someone under the age of consent (and at least one article I've read had a Polanski apologist havering over the age of consent, saying that it was 14 at the time of the act--it wasn't--and that the girl was almost 14 when it happened, so what's the big deal?). And Bernard-Henri Levy, French philosopher, suggested that Polanski, at 43, “perhaps had committed a youthful error.” (Italics mine, all mine.)

Look: I admire Roman Polanski as a film maker. I understand that his life has been filled with terrible things. I don't think his talent or his history gave him the license to do terrible things to someone else, nor that they give him a get out of jail free card in dealing with the consequences of his behavior. If it wasn't rape because the girl was a) handed over to him by her mother; b) not a virgin at the time of the incident; c) was being raped by an artiste...well, it's still rape because she was, by definition, too young to consent, and she said No. If it wasn't statutory rape because, geez, she was going to be old enough to consent sooner or later anyway, she was still drugged and forced to have sex she didn't want.

It's really awfully simple. Maybe I'm touchy about it because I have a 13 year old girl in the house, but I don't think so. Definitions don't rape people; rapists do.

* Edited to reflect coffeeem's correction.

Quiet Sunday

Didn't do much of anything today, but it was really pleasant:

1 batch of biscuits (plus strawberries and whipped cream=strawberry shortcake; it's what's for breakfast!)
1 batch of cornbread (for dinner) to serve with chili
4 loads of laundry
1 epic drag for the doggerel
Read the NY Times Magazine cover to cover, the Style Section, looked over the Arts, Week in Review, and Book Review sections but will need to go back to finish the articles I wanted to read. Did half the crossword puzzle.
Chased after Avocado to take out the recycling.