How strange that I heard not a murmur of feminist joy last week over the jailing of Charles Blewett, of Mansfield, Nottingham. (Mansfield, eh? Must get the gender-free nomenclatural committee working on that one.) No doubt feminists are so sated with their numerous large victories that a tiny skirmish over Charles Blewett is hardly worth raising a glass of Piat D'Or to, never mind cracking open a crate or two of the '89 Grand Dame. There are other, greater fish to fry; what care we of tiny whitebait such as Charles Blewitt, convicted rapist?
Why is this case of interest to us here in Ireland? Because we have slavishly followed the feminist agenda imported from abroad. Feminist laws have been incorporated in our legislature; feminist perceptions and feminist bias are now part of our legal culture. Though the great Erin Pizzey has now admitted that most of the first women admitted to her refuge for battered women told her that they were in mutually abusive, mutually violent relationships, the lie that domestic violence is almost entirely a male phenomenon has taken root in anglophone societies.
Triumph of feminism
But how did her message, repeated since, that violence is not simply a male phenomenon, come to be transformed into the opposite of what she intended? A simple explanation: the triumph of feminism in the media and the imposition of the feminist agenda meant that feminists were able to report her findings selectively. They did, and triumphantly.
We repeatedly hear the message that violence against women will not be tolerated in Irish life. Good. But what about violence towards men? The majority of victims of violence in Irish life are male. Seventy percent of homicide victims are men. Throughout the troubles in the North, women were almost studiously spared the attentions of terrorists. The truth is that one-dimensional violence against women is a departure from the norms of violence of Irish life. Is that too shocking a thing to admit?
It probably is. But it is the consensus that women are uniquely victims in this terrible world which has in a broader sense changed the laws and the opinions of the law-makers; and more particularly has devastated the life of Charles Blewett, who at 47 hardly fits the profile of your classic sex-offender.
Last year, Charles spent the evening lying on the sofa with his 33-year old girlfriend, with whom he had been having a full sexual relationship over several months. They were fondling one another and kissing through the evening as they watched television.
Then they went to bed. The girlfriend fell asleep and then woke up, feeling a stab of pain. Her boyfriend had just begun to have sexual intercourse with her. She jumped out of bed and Charles got dressed and left the flat. Shortly afterwards he telephoned to apologise and offered to hand himself over to the police for beginning to perform with her an act they had done many times before. No threats or coercion were involved. No doubt offering to hand yourself over to the constabulary in such circumstances is what the New Man does.
Court appearance
Let this be a lesson to young males thinking of becoming New Men. For the girlfriend said: Don't bother, I've already phoned them. Charles was arrested, and last week appeared in court. "It wasn't a cheap act committed in some alleyway," the accused's counsel, the heroically named Paul Mann told the court (though I can't see him getting far in the legal profession with a moniker like that). "He was making love to a woman whom he thought a lot of."
The judge admitted the case was highly unusual because of the consensual sexual relationship which had existed for several months beforehand. He said he agreed with almost everything said on Blewett's behalf, but the woman was vulnerable and had not consented. Therefore he sentenced the accused to jail for two years.
Excellent. And is the world a better place because of this? What will happen to the man when he emerges from prison? Will his name then be placed in the sex-offenders' register? Will be out of work and unemployable? Will he be known as a convicted rapist within the community in which this wretched middle-aged man must live the rest of his life? And after the ruin of this stupid creature, what will be next on the feminist hit-list? What other sexual misunderstanding, imprudence, inappropriateness, gaucheness, will be regarded as appropriate for the state to move in all its majesty to make judgement upon?
No, Charles Blewett should not have done what he did. It was wrong. But is this rape in any sense in which we have understood it? And who, pray, in the range of weakness and adventure and playfulness and idiocy and plain ordinary lust, has not performed a sexual deed upon one sleeping partner? What man has not caressed his wife in private places while she slept? What woman has not done the same? And how many of us have woken up performing sexual acts with a companion which had begun unconsciously, in deepest sleep?
Sex Constabulary
Are all these deeds to be open to the inspection of the Sex Constabulary? The answer to that is of course, no. Only deeds perpetrated by men: for what court would dream of convicting a woman for playing with her male companion's private parts while he slept? What court would convict a woman who initiated sexual intercourse upon the slumbering but aroused body of a boyfriend? What court would. . .
Oh, enough. The law and the state have no business intruding upon the protocols and the etiquette of the bedroom. Is that not what feminists very properly were saying of the Pope when he forbade the contraceptive pill? Now is the state to be present with a feminist-prescribed formula for how one conducts one's sex life? Which move is right at a certain time, and who does what to whom? Is every single deed between a couple to require consent from the woman? Are spontaneity and improvisation to be replaced by a ritualised sexual choreography approved after careful consideration by the imams of feminism? And where does this idiocy stop?