For context I'm a female Australian University student living on college.
University has just started here, and at college, I had to attend a "respect session" that the university has organised for all college students. I was expecting it to be about treating your neighbour well, responsible drinking, study and careers. Oh boy was I wrong.
The first part of the talk was about gender equality, mainly in the work place. After learning that because I'm a woman and should be expected to be unfairly treated and that we have to fight this, I asked "if we want real job equality why aren't we also pushing for women in manual labour jobs and such? And why aren't we pushing for men to enter into female dominated professions like child care?" To which I was told "what we've just spoken about is just showing that women have the choice to do what they want". They never addressed the part on men.
The next part, which took up most of the 2.5hrs, was about consent. You might know where this one is going....
After learning about what consent and harrassment are, and when consent can't be given, I asked "if two equally intoxicated people have sex (i.e neither of them legally consented to it), and they both regret it in the morning, can they both push charges on eachother?" The woman giving the talk was dancing around the answer and asked "what is the definition of rape?" And the answer (at least in Australia) is non consentual PENETRATION. Not sex. Penetration. She then said "so in this case the male could be charged with rape".
In some ways I'm happy to say that everyone in the room was shocked at this. She basically said that I less something goes up his butt, a man can't be raped. So if I, a woman, got a man drunk and forced myself on him, I could very well go to the police in the morning and say he raped me. And if there was any alcohol in my system, he would be charged. But he can't say I raped him unless I penetrated him. It's absolutely fucked up.
This is one place where my country, and I'm sure many other countries, has a problem with true equality. Not because women can't do this or that. Because men basically can't be raped. It's disgusting. It's primitive. It's dehumanising.
I can't believe this is the law in Australia, and I can't believe older people are so willing to teach it to younger generations.
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