It's not Sex
With the arrest -- finally! -- of Roman Polanski thirty-some years after he raped a child, pled guilty, and fled the country before sentencing, there's been a lot of failtastic media coverage. Anne Applebaum's rape apologia and attack on... the American rule of law? It's hard to process well when your stomach is trying to crawl out of whatever opening it can find.
Ms. Applebaum thinks he should get a pass on that because... I don't know. Because the Nazis did ghastly things to Jews? They did, but that's not got a whole lot to do with a court in Los Angeles in 1977. But one of the things she cites as support is that the victim now says she forgives him, that she doesn't want him in court or in jail, and that a new trial would hurt her family. The last, maybe, but at no point would they need to be involved in any trial.
Let's not fuck around: The claims of judicial misconduct are tenuous at best. The man pled guilty. There is not going to be a criminal trial for rape. There may be a trial for having evaded lawful detention, contempt of court, things like that, but the rape charge has been settled.
I bet Ms. Applebaum's column would be way different if the perpetrator hadn't made movies she liked. Or committed a crime that she considered more worthy than just raping fucking having sex with a child who probably was doing it as a career move anyway.
File it under "Oh Yeah Women Can Propagate the Patriarchy."
Meanwhile, Mackenzie Phillips is coming to terms with her own long-term abuse and rape by her father. I'm gonna say, categorically, that a child cannot consent to sex with a person who raised her. When you've been feeding your child drugs for a while and she wakes up to find you inside her chugging away? That's not even a vaguely gray area: that is rape and nothing else. When you keep feeding her drugs and keep fucking her? It is still rape, every single time.
She may as a way to survive without going more crazy than she already has come to describe the ongoing abuse and rape as 'consensual.' But that definition is only for her own use. Those of us on the outside are morally obliged to see what is being done to her for what it is and to describe it accurately. We are likewise obliged to place blame for any family upset that may ensue should the victim decide that it would be best for her survival to go public with the fact that she had been abused and raped over the course of years on the person to whom blame should accrue: the rapist. (Corollary to this, we are not given license to condemn the victim should she decide that she could not go public. Only she is in her circumstances and only she may make the decisions necessary for her survival.)
That does mean that now we have to think of a man who made very pretty music also as a man who fed his daughter heroic amounts of drugs and raped her for years. It gets complicated. It may lead to some cognitive dissonance when you hear "California Dreamin'" when it comes on the radio. Ooo, pretty song. Whoa, isn't that the guy who raped his daughter for like years? Euyrgnh. But don't lose hold of the fact that the only person who could have prevented Mackenzie Phillips from coming forward with this unsettling information was John Phillips -- by having not abused and raped his daughter in the first place.
Of course Ms. Phillips's siblings and cousins are lashing out at her; this is ever the pattern in abusive families. Rule One of Abuse Club: You do not talk about Abuse Club.
Ms. Applebaum thinks he should get a pass on that because... I don't know. Because the Nazis did ghastly things to Jews? They did, but that's not got a whole lot to do with a court in Los Angeles in 1977. But one of the things she cites as support is that the victim now says she forgives him, that she doesn't want him in court or in jail, and that a new trial would hurt her family. The last, maybe, but at no point would they need to be involved in any trial.
Let's not fuck around: The claims of judicial misconduct are tenuous at best. The man pled guilty. There is not going to be a criminal trial for rape. There may be a trial for having evaded lawful detention, contempt of court, things like that, but the rape charge has been settled.
I bet Ms. Applebaum's column would be way different if the perpetrator hadn't made movies she liked. Or committed a crime that she considered more worthy than just raping fucking having sex with a child who probably was doing it as a career move anyway.
File it under "Oh Yeah Women Can Propagate the Patriarchy."
Meanwhile, Mackenzie Phillips is coming to terms with her own long-term abuse and rape by her father. I'm gonna say, categorically, that a child cannot consent to sex with a person who raised her. When you've been feeding your child drugs for a while and she wakes up to find you inside her chugging away? That's not even a vaguely gray area: that is rape and nothing else. When you keep feeding her drugs and keep fucking her? It is still rape, every single time.
She may as a way to survive without going more crazy than she already has come to describe the ongoing abuse and rape as 'consensual.' But that definition is only for her own use. Those of us on the outside are morally obliged to see what is being done to her for what it is and to describe it accurately. We are likewise obliged to place blame for any family upset that may ensue should the victim decide that it would be best for her survival to go public with the fact that she had been abused and raped over the course of years on the person to whom blame should accrue: the rapist. (Corollary to this, we are not given license to condemn the victim should she decide that she could not go public. Only she is in her circumstances and only she may make the decisions necessary for her survival.)
That does mean that now we have to think of a man who made very pretty music also as a man who fed his daughter heroic amounts of drugs and raped her for years. It gets complicated. It may lead to some cognitive dissonance when you hear "California Dreamin'" when it comes on the radio. Ooo, pretty song. Whoa, isn't that the guy who raped his daughter for like years? Euyrgnh. But don't lose hold of the fact that the only person who could have prevented Mackenzie Phillips from coming forward with this unsettling information was John Phillips -- by having not abused and raped his daughter in the first place.
Of course Ms. Phillips's siblings and cousins are lashing out at her; this is ever the pattern in abusive families. Rule One of Abuse Club: You do not talk about Abuse Club.