DUIs, rape and the double standard.

I was reading a news article the other day about a young woman who, while drunk, hit a telephone pole and killed her boyfriend who was in the passenger seat. Reading the comments of the article made me think of a few things, hence this post.

It is conclusively accepted that drinking an excessive amount of alcohol impairs judgement. Right? Then what is the point of telling people not to drink and drive? Do they really think a drunk person will have enough judgement not to drink and drive? If they do, they life in a fantasy land. Telling everyone in the world to not drink and drive is just like telling the rain not to fall. The judgement to make a distinction between right and wrong does not exist in a fully intoxicated person. End of story.

So, this woman is going to jail, and rightfully so. Her bad judgement has handed her a manslaughter charge, in addition to a DUI. Yes, I agree she needs to do some time... BUT why is it that if this same woman had had sex while very intoxicated, she is NOT held to the bad judgement call?

A man can be convicted of rape for having sex with an intoxicated woman. If she is really that intoxicated, how does she know, for absolute certain, that it was rape? Also, if she had such bad judgement as far as driving while intoxicated and she is to be held accountable for that, then how come she is not be held just as accountable for having sex while intoxicated?

Talk about double standards! What stupidity our laws are!

Now let me be clear here. I fully support DUI convictions, and I also fully support rape convictions. I will take that further and say that there are plenty of intoxicated women (not all) that are truly raped, that is the woman says NO and the man says YES. No, means no. However that is not what happens. A woman who said yes can still claim rape so long as she was intoxicated because her judgement was impaired. Also, we have only her word that she said no, and most of the time I believe these women don't even really remember what happened in the first place. How can we trust them? They were intoxicated and memory loss is frequent! What I am saying is that I do not support the double standard that a woman responsible in one situation, but not in another.

Earlier today, I posted about how criminals should be prosecuted as individuals and I believe that sometimes law should not be just black and white. I stand by that, but this is an entirely different type of law and crime. One says you're impaired and should be held accountable and the other says you're impaired and someone else should be held accountable. That is neither gray nor black and white. What it is, is insanity.

It is time that responsible women denounce the behaviors of those who are not.