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Discussion Membership
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Letter on Cocktail Rape
November 5, 1980 One of the things I dislike about academia--we were discussing this when I last visited--is its compelling urge to attempt to answer the unanswerable question. In certain cases this is admirable; so many of our unanswerable questions have turned out not to be so unanswerable after all. Nevertheless, there have been untold number of brain cells fried by well-meaning academicians trying to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Real numbers have been produced, I think. The problem is that they have not been able to accept as reasonable two particular responses to their best-intentioned questions:
The questions are good to keep around, but simply because they exist today doesn't mean we must answer them today. Abortion is a more practical and timely example of a badly phrased question. So is cocktail rape. Let me leave the former for later and address the one we were discussing the other night: What do you think about the problem of cocktail rape? Montaigne, writing in Essays in the late 1500's applied his not inconsiderable powers of observation to sex:
I who boast of embracing the pleasures of life so eagerly and so deliberately, find in them, when I consider them so minutely, little more than wind. But what of that? We are all wind. (Pg. 395) Looking detachedly at this wind that is a man and a woman, I conclude that it is every person's natural instinct to try to achieve orgasm. And secondly and equally, it is every person's instinct to try to get someone else's help to do it. Sex is useful for many reasons: procreation, pleasure, to pass the time, earn money, hurt someone, help someone, and God knows how many other reasons. As I look at the Ten Commandments' admonition, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" I wish to know why--other than that God willed it to be so--that is should be, in purely human terms, a useful rule. From a purely sexual approach I could find no good justification. It was from a far different direction that I could. If adultery must be kept discreet, it creates the necessity to constantly edit one's conversation with one's spouse. Therein lies the sin. As Montaigne pointed out earlier in his book: Why shouldn't I imaging myself alone with my thoughts when I am with my friends. What we lack as a society then are the symbols to deal with sexual approach. Approaching the question from this tack opens us to even more startling insights into current social problems: the employee-employer relationship, concern about homosexual advance, the strain of sexuality in platonic friendship, the place of sex on the continuum of friendship and love. Cocktail rape is inextricably intertwined with both our societal concept of the uses of sex and, at the same time, our symbolism to convey to others our current position to sexual approach in a face-saving manner. Deal with these questions first and the question of cocktail rape will be more easily addressed.
Warm regards,
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