ITEM Wisconsin. 1990. Mark Peterson is found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman who. doctors say. has forty-six personalities.24 She claimed that one of her personalities, a girl the age of 6. reformed her afterward that she had been having sex. She then accused Mark Peterson of havng sexually assaulted her. Six of the woman’s different personalities were summoned to the witness stand; four were mdividuafly sworn n. She acknowledged that the personality that had sex — the "fun-loving" personality — did not object
To add insult to injury. Mark made the national press as a criminal. He will always be known in his community as a man convicted of rape. I lis criminal record will surface in any investigation, requiring him to explain himself. Meanwhile, the woman’s name did not make the papers. Men in Wisconsin don’t know whether the woman they are about to have sex with might be she. Or one like her.
It is one thing to expea men to hnd out which "no" means no; now we re expeaing men to know which "yes” means yes. No. we re not just expecting him to know — we re conviaing him as a criminal if he doesn’t know
This story of a woman with the multiple personalities whtxse yes could mean no could be an old Indian legend told by an Indian elder to boys coming of age as a metaphor to warn boys of their helplessness before the mixed messages of the female. But instead, it is a 1990s legal case in a state considered legally progressive Instead it is a present-day metaphor for the degree to which the legal system is willing to protea women and prasecute men. If a woman swears on the Bible in a court of law that she said one thing, then swears she said something else, and we convia him because he didn’t know more about what she meant than she did, isn’t this the perfea metaphor for telling men that women have only rights, that men have only responsibilities?
Is the multiple personality case a metaphor for a new reality? Yes. Across the country, campuses now considered progressive — from Berkeley to Harvard and Swanhmore — already allow a woman who is drunk to claim the next morning that she was raped even if she said yes the evening before!25 Put simply, your son can be with a woman who has a few drinks, has sex with him all she wants and, in the morning, claims your son raped her because the evening before, she was under the influence of alcohol and it was a different personality that said yes.
Now MacKinnon, the National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape, and other feminists plan to extend this beyond the campus — to criminal law.26 Is this possible legally? Yes. Many states already have laws saying a person cannot be considered to have consented to something if they are "under the influence" — if they have diminished mental capacity.
Once a woman can claim her "yes.” didn’t really mean yes because she was under the influence, this opens the floodgates. We have already seen how Sheryl Lynn Massip’s baby blues became the legal excase for her crushing her son’s head under her car. So it opens the floodgates for a woman declaring she felt raped because she was under the influence of a traumatic divorce, a child dying, or just extreme stress. Even a man s hint of a long-term relationship the night before can be said to have put her "under the influence." (“When he didn’t call the next morning I knew then he was lying -1 would never have gone to bed with him if 1 didn’t think he wanted a commitment, I was under the influence of him saying he loved me last night. He lied — he raped me.")
In an era of equality, we are making her not responsible because she is drunk and making him responsible even though he is also drunk. It is ironic that feminism is pioneering this new inequality.
Sexually, of course, the sexes aren’t equal. It is exactly a woman s greater sexual power that often makes a man so fearful of being rejected by her that he buys himself drinks to reduce his fear. In essence, her sexual power often leads to him drinking; his sexual power rarely leads to her drinking. If anything is evidence of her power over him. it is his being expected to spend his money to buy her drinks without her reciprocating. In brief, many men feel under the influence the moment they see a beautiful woman.
Under the influence legislation — or multiple personality legislation — has enormous potential for backfiring against women Women buy perfumes that promise to put men under the influence. Women laugh at how a man with a hard penis has a soft brain We have seen how almost every culture reinforced men’s addiction to beautiful and young women exactly so a man would make an irrational decision when he was under the influence. It is men — far more than women — whose mental capacities are diminished when they are under the influence of a beautiful woman.
It is ironic that in an era in which we are increasingly holding people more responsible if they drink and drive, we are holding women less responsible if they drink and have sex Of course, if she drinks and just has sex, that’s her business. But if she drinks and claims the man raped her, she is injuring a man Sometimes for life. And so she is as responsible for drinking and declaring rape as a driver is for drinking and causing an accident.27
The difference between a woman saying "yes" and "no" is all important when it comes to drinking A man should be held responsible when a woman drinks and still says “no" with both her verbal language and all her body language. If anything, he should be held more responsible if she says "no" after drinking.
As long as society tells men to be the salespersons of sex, it is sexist for society to put only men in jail if they sell well. We don’t put other salespersons in jail for buying clients drinks and successfully transforming a no" into a “maybe" into a "yes." If the client makes a choice to drink too much and the “yes" turns out to be a bad decision, it is the client who gets fired, not the salesperson. We expea adults to take responsibility