Polanski Case About Rape, Not Nubile Hotness
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Jessica, your observation about the probation officer's report highlights the fatal flaw in Michael Cieply's argument: Polanski's case was more about 70s attitudes about forcible rape than about 70s attitudes towards sex with teenage girls. What Cieply discovers in investigating the soft hand the media and law enforcement took with Polanski is that rape wasn't taken seriously as a crime in the '70s, at least if the rapist knew his victim. That's what all those feminists taking back the night were protesting!
There might be a case to be made that sex with minors has become more of a cultural taboo now than in the '70s, but you can't make that case using the Polanski rape as evidence. Polanski's case could be used as a textbook example of the excuse-making and crime-minimizing that follows when a man rapes a social inferior, just as surely as wet sidewalks follow the rain. The victim had had sex before, making her a dirty slut who had it coming? Check. The man's too rich and powerful to be taken down by some wee woman who can't just get over it? Check. The only thing her minor status adds to the usual litany of excuses is that the victim's mother allowed Polanski to supervise, which apologists imply means she handed her over to be raped. Call it the Babysitting Exception, if you will.
Using the fact that Polanski pled down to a much smaller charge as evidence that things have changed dramatically doesn't match up much to reality. Unfortunately, defense attorneys can use the "we'll shame the victim" leverage to get severely reduced sentences from prosecutors who don't have the stomach to put the victim through a process some describe as like being raped all over again. Polanski probably would be able to plead down to a minor charge ifthe incident occured today, for the same reason. What he pled down to doesn't tell us much about the culture at large, but the excuses made for what he really did tell us a whole lot about how the culture then and now views forcible rape.
Comments
Not the plea, but the sentence
By: PGofHSM | Mon, 10/12/2009 - 16:20
"What he pled down to doesn't tell us much about the culture at large, but the excuses made for what he really did tell us a whole lot about how the culture then and now views forcible rape."
I think the emphasis in the article was less about Polanski's ability to plead down charges to the one that was factually indisputable (sex with a minor, i.e. statutory rape), and more about the relatively lenient attitudes everyone, even the judge who improperly engaged in ex parte communications with the prosecution, took toward his crime. Nowadays, mandatory minimums and other shifts in sentencing make it unlikely that a guy could get only a 90-day stint in jail and deportation for sex with a 13-year-old. A few years ago, a 22-year-old who'd had sex with and impregnated his 13-year-old girlfriend drove to another state to marry her there, yet was still prosecuted for statutory rape. Even after a plea bargain, Matthew Koso was sentenced to and served 18 months in prison -- 6 times as long as Polanski. He was only able to get that small a sentence because of public pressure to allow him to go home and support his wife and child.
Polanski went one baby step too far
By: fsilber | Mon, 10/12/2009 - 13:22
We are not talking about forcible rape. The girl felt afraid of Polanski; he emotionally intimidated her, but that is not the same as force. Force is when the female tries to get away but the man holds her down, or threatens to harm her. There have always been men who had sex with women who expressed reluctance but did not resist. There have always been men who made women more pliable with alcohol (or, since the 1960s, recreational drugs). The only difference in this case is that the female was a child.
In nonsexual situations, compelling a child to comply with an adult's wishes is _less_ serious than compelling an adult. We make children practice the piano, pick their clothes up off the floor, wash the car, visit the museum -- things we would never get away with when dealing with adults. We even give them drugs to make it easier for them to do things they'd rather not (such as when a doctor or dentist delivers anesthetic before a procedure).
Pressuring a child to have sex is different, but let is ponder the reason. The assumption based on Christianity is that fornication is a crime of immorality. (This is why hotels used to have staff detectives -- to prevent guests from using the hotel as a place of fornication.) To induce a child to commit a criminally or immoral act is considered more far more heinous than the act itself.
During the 1960s and early 1970s the rejection of religious dogma empowered people to challenge a whole host of sexual taboos, starting with masturbation and pornography, moving on to premarital sex and living in sin, and finally to group sex, S&M, and homosexuality. Some justified this New Morality on the basis of privacy -- arguing that the government had no business snooping around to ferret out consenting adults' private sins. Those more radical argued that there was nothing sinful whatsoever in the way sexual pleasure is taken -- whenever, however and with whom it is taken (as long as it was not forced). Usually, though, they qualified their assertion by restricting it to consenting ADULTS -- but without offering any real justification for excepting children from the fun.
With regard to most of the thousands of others who "courageously challenged our Victorian sexual taboos" in the 1960s and '70s, the general society eventually "caught up." But an exception was suddenly and strongly made in 1977 where minors were concerned. That was when child pornography became illegal, and all the people who resented the New Morality concentrated their ire on the one type of sexual sin they still felt authorized to suppress. Polanski had the misfortune to stray over that arbitrary line just before society took its hard stand.
Ironically, the basis for this stand is being weakened daily. Sexual acts between minors is being ever more normalized. Unlike the "modern people" of the mid-20th century who argued that teenagers can be trusted with privacy, people today now argue that expecting them to have the character to resist sex is unrealistic. In an earlier age this belief justified the requirement for coed social encounters to be chaperoned; today it's used to argue for teenage contraception. At the same time, breakers of many longstanding sexual taboos, such as gays, are no longer satisfied by the opportunity to sin in private; they demand the denouncement of anyone who would dare to express religion-based moral disapproval.
In the eyes of the New Morality, Polanski urged a child to perform an innocent act that she strongly preferred not to do. Big deal.
I predict that Polanski will be treated harshly. However, I wonder whether this battle will be morality's last victory in a lost war.