Author: Andrew Sullivan

That’s Kevin Drum’s reaction to Gallup’s latest:

I have a rule of thumb that favorability ratings need to reach about 65 percent before you hit a tipping point where a major social change starts getting codified into law nationwide. There’s nothing magic about this threshold. It’s just a general sense based on previous issues similar to this.

And as you can see, public opinion isn’t merely rising on marijuana legalization, it’s accelerating. The rate of increase has gone from about 0.5 points per year in the 90s to 1.5 points in the aughts to 4 points so far in the teens. If this keeps up, we’ll pass the 65 percent threshold by 2016 or so.

Mark Kleiman agrees that, unless the polling trend reverses, that federal legalization will happen in the near future:

If the question of whether to legalize now seems largely settled, that makes the much-less-debated question of how to legalize even more topical. Some of the smarter opponents of cannabis have figured this out, and are now looking for ways of limiting the increase in drug abuse likely to follow legal availability. However, career and ideological interests and group ties are likely to lead the majority of the active drug warriors to keep fighting what now seems like an unwinnable battle, telling one another that legalization is sure to be such a disaster that the public will demand re-prohibition. By doing so, the warriors will help to ensure that the legal system that eventually arises will be over-commercialized, under-regulated, and under-taxed.

This would simply repeat the mistake they made in opposing the medical use of cannabis. While the warriors kept chanting “Cheech and Chong medicine,” the pot advocates rolled right over them.

Mark also takes me to task for downplaying marijuana’s downsides:

Andrew Sullivan strikes a triumphal note. Hard to fault him for that. But goddammit, “less harmful than alcohol” and “not harmful to most of its users” do not add up to “harmless.” Adolescents spin out on cannabis and wreck their academic careers. People of all ages do stupid things while stoned, including driving their cars into trees and other cars. Cannabis now follows only alcohol as the primary drug of abuse reported by people voluntarily entering drug treatment.

Why take the perfectly reasonable case that cannabis should not be illegal and ruin it with the silly claim that the stuff is harmless?

Well, I was perhaps a bit too giddy last night to avoid stupid, simplistic adjectives. In The Cannabis Closet and this blog, we’ve long aired the harms that can attach to the plant. I think it should be kept from teenagers the same way we restrict alcohol (perhaps more so). What I was getting at is that there is no fatal overdose for marijuana – unlike alcohol and so many other drugs; and that almost everything is harmful in certain contexts and degrees: driving sober, for example; or skiing; or sex; or porn. My point is that in this broader context, pot is pretty harmless as these things go. But nuance eluded me last night, for which I apologize.

A new paper does just that. George Dvorsky summarizes:

The specific virus used for the new study, which was conducted by Curtis Brandt and Aaron Kolb of UW-Madison, is the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) which typically causes nothing more than cold sores around the mouth. It’s not lethal, but it’s incredibly virulent. It tends to run in families owing to the manner of infection, which can include simple contact like kissing or through saliva. It’s been such a part of the human story that Brandt refers to herpes as “a kind of external genome.”

For the study, the researchers compared 31 strains of HSV-1 collected in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. Then, by mapping the mutation patterns of the virus, they were able to reconstruct the way herpes hitchhiked on humans as they traversed around the globe. By using high-capacity genetic sequencing and advanced bioinformatics, the researchers were able to parse through the massive amount of data embedded within the 31 discrete genomic strains.

Joshua Keating adds:

In general, the paper suggests that the data “supports the “out of Africa model” of human migration with HSV-1 traveling and diversifying with its human host”. There was one North American derived strain which they found was related to the East Asian family of the virus. They estimated the “divergence time” between this strain and its relatives as around 15,000 years which corresponds “with the estimated time period in which the North American continent was populated from Asia, approximately 15,000 years BP.”

In other words, the first arrivals on the North American continent may have brought their cold sores with them.

Lindy West praises the short film Meet My Rapist (seen above) as an effective comedic take on rape, especially from a victim’s perspective:

It’s a brilliant, troubling example of how “rape jokes” can be cathartic and complex and difficult and empowering—for victims and allies, not for the predatory and indifferent. As I’ve said many times before, I don’t want to ban rape jokes; I want to see more rape jokes, everywhere, targeting rape culture instead of perpetuating it. Because nothing punctures and deflates hypocrisy like humor. Nobody speaks truth to power like a sharp-toothed goofball.

The filmmaker, Jessie Kahnweiler, describes how she translated her own experience of rape into comedy:

I think the distance between making the film and the actual rape (which occurred eight years ago) and the frustration came with this feeling, like, “what the fuck, it’s been eight years and I’m STILL not over this? what the hell, man?!” The film deals a lot with my frustration and trying to reconcile being a “strong/ badass feminist” with a “hurting victim,” and being a sexual being as well. There is such a certain amount of guilt and shame around my own body with this experience, and the film was a chance to confront all these lurking fears.

My immediate reaction was just that: a reaction. I was formulating my feelings around my rape based on what other people felt and thought about it. Does that make sense? Like, I was so busy making sure my friends and family knew that I was “OK” that I forgot to ask myself if I actually was “OK.” Perhaps I used humor to skip over the pain and move straight to the hero rape victim, but obviously that shit caught up with me.

In a 1982 review from TNR’s archives, Samuel Hynes evaluated a biography of P.G. Wodehouse, the British humorist behind Jeeves and Wooster.  He zeroed in on Wodehouse’s lowest moment, when he provided broadcasts for German radio after being captured during WWII.  But Hynes wrote that “as Fascist propaganda [the broadcasts] were surely no more useful than [Ezra] Pound’s were”:

Still, it’s not surprising that the British took a harsher view, and considered that Wodehouse had given comfort to the enemy. He was never tried, but the incident darkened his life, and made him an exile until his death. Even long after the war he could get no assurance from the British government that he would not be prosecuted if he returned to England, and so he ended his days at Remsenburg, on Long Island, though at the last moment the British did relent enough to offer him a knighthood (the Queen Mother’s work, no doubt).

The whole episode is a sad one, reflecting only discredit on everyone connected with it. It is interesting, though, for what it suggests about Wodehouse the man, and also about the kind of writing of which he was so much a master. Throughout the German years, and for long afterward, Wodehouse behaved like one of his own characters—like the imbecile Bertie, or Lord Emsworth, that “vague and woolen-headed” peer whom he admitted he resembled. He never really did understand what he had done that was wrong, and though he regretted having broadcast, it was only because it had offended his readers. The moral issues of the war seem never to have penetrated his woolen head.

Update from a reader:

As is often the case, Orwell got there first. In his wonderful essay “In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse” (July, 1945), he makes the argument that Wodehouse was really only guilty of stupidity and to charge him with treason, etc. was “untenable and even ridiculous.” Orwell believed the that fascism was a distinctly modern (i.e. interwar) phenomenon. Orwell’s contention is that Wodehouse’s mind never moved beyond 1914 (nor did the mental universe of any of his characters, including the knee loving “fascist” Roderick Spode). To Orwell’s mind, Wodehouse was a Victorian who couldn’t even comprehend fascism and Nazi tyranny, let alone be complicit in it. It’s interesting that this is also his argument for why Kipling, that “good bad poet,” was also innocent of fascism – his mental universe never grew beyond the summer of 1914. 

(Video: “P.G.Wodehouse faces the music from his wife, Ethel, following the reception of his broadcasts on German radio during WWII.”)

A reader writes:

I think one of the things that is being missed by most of the contributors to this thread is that male-on-female rape is rarely about sex.  Typically, it’s an assertion of power on the part of the male, not a desire to get off sexually without seeking the consent of the other.  But in most of the stories sent in by your male readers about non-consensual sex, the dynamic seems different.  In none of those stories does it seem like the female is trying to exert power over the male; it seems like the females just want to get off.  Maybe that’s why the guys respond so differently to being “violated.”

Another reader:

Interesting conversation you’ve been having about the many forms of rape and how we as a society perceive them. I actually think language is posing an obstacle here. Look at “killing”. All killings end with the same result: death. But look at how many legal names we have for it. There’s murder (and even murder one and murder two), manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter. There’s also justifiable homocide, killing in self-defense, suicide, euthanasia, assassination, killing during war – all these distinctions and definitions to describe a variety of traumatic acts that end in the same exact result: death.

And yet we use the word rape to describe a widening range of actions with a vast range of outcomes.

We use rape to describe a man hiding in the bushes, pouncing on a woman in the dark and penetrating her while holding a knife to her throat. And we now also use it to describe a man buying a woman too many drinks at a bar and having sex with her while she’s conscious but inebriated. Both acts are wrong, but do they really deserve to be described with the same word?

Yes, we do sometimes distinguish between rape and statutory rape, but even there, when a male authority figure coerces a young child into sex, is that the same thing as a high school senior smoking a joint with his sophomore girlfriend and engaging in sex that is seemingly consensual, even if the law doesn’t recognize it as such?

And now we bring in the variety of male-victim rapes, many of which are certainly as traumatic as those of the female variety. However, having a stronger man force himself upon you and penetrate you is not the same thing as waking up to find your girlfriend using your sleep-induced erection for her pleasure without your permission. I was once the “victim” of the latter, some 15 years ago. Prior to that, had you asked me, I would have said that waking up to such a scenario might be fun. But it wasn’t. It was annoying, disturbing and felt like a violation. I expressed my displeasure, she apologized and then I felt a little bad for making her feel bad about it. I forgot about it shortly after and never think about except at the rare times like now, when the topic is brought up.

Had it been reversed, had she woken up with me on top of and inside her, I’m pretty sure she would have been far more upset and far more traumatized. In the instance of my being violated, I think it would have been a gross overreaction for me to call the police and cry rape, but in the reverse scenario, that might be a reasonable reaction.

There is a double standard, or a multiple standard, and one of the key factors is penetration. I think I would have felt differently had there been a digit or object inside me than I felt waking up inside her. And I think the distinction is enough to give the two acts different names. One is rape and the other is… something else, maybe harassment?

As for the story that started this all, that of Chris Brown’s loss of virginity at 8 to a girl of 14, it seems there are so many distinctions that keep it from feeling like rape to my mind, and the fact that he is male is NOT one of them. First, he was underage, but so too was the girl. Second, according to his description, she did not in any way seduce him; rather the desire was mutual. And finally, while there was pressure put upon Brown, it did not seem so much to be from the girl as from his environment. You could blame those around him who applied the pressure, but then who would be the culprits … 11 and 12 year old neighborhood boys?

Did the incident in question shape Brown’s attitude toward sex and later actions? Possibly. Probably. But does that make it rape? I just don’t see it.

One more story:

Ok, you finally have provoked me to respond. I unfortunately have a lot of thoughts on this subject. For one thing, I have unequivocally been “taken advantage of” by a girl before. In my college days, back in the ’90s, I went to a friend’s apartment, and when I arrived, I was invited in by her roommate. Her roommate was extremely attractive, and in the process of waiting for my actual friend, somehow she talked me into taking a pill. Now, I liked pills back then, and this is not about my genuine lack of good judgment at a time when I was totally reckless. Besides, I think this girl could have talked me into just about anything.

Regardless, it was a Rohypnol, the infamous roofie of date rape fame. What ensued that night was a total blur. I remember bits and pieces, like ending up at a party with the girl, but not what happened at the party, or what happened when it was over. What I do remember, however, was waking up the next morning, naked in the bed with her, and then taking a shower with her (we were both late for class), as if it were perfectly normal, and wondering, “what the hell just happened?” I wasn’t upset over the thought of having been with her. I was upset that I couldn’t recall any of it. Not one bit. The most satisfaction I got out of it was seeing her naked, and wondering.

Now, I clearly was culpable in the sense that I freely popped a pill which I didn’t have any experience with. But as other readers have pointed out, had the gender roles been reversed, I would clearly have been the aggressor, and she the victim, and subject to prosecution had she desired it.

The bigger picture here is that we, as a society, are using one term, “rape,” in an overly broad fashion. Rape is a crime of sexual violation, with elements of aggression, violence and/or control. What happened to me, was not a crime of aggression, was not violent, and arguably was not about control, as I more than certainly would have had sex with the girl freely, if my consent had been solicited.

Therefore, it can not be rape. It was a non-violent exploitation, maybe even some violation of me (was the violation sexual? Or was it a violation of trust?), with a sexual component, and it didn’t live up generally accepted ethical standards, but it wasn’t rape. Unfortunately, we don’t have a criminal system that recognizes “ethical lapses” as very real, albeit misdemeanor, classes of sexual misconduct. The lack of such distinction, however, means that many people are wrongly accused and convicted over a minor ethical lapse for the same crime as legitimate menaces to society; conversely, many people are never brought to any kind of justice because (in my case) there is no way I would make an accusation of rape against that girl, even if what she did was “wrong,” and I am sure there are many examples of women who have been wronged that aren’t prepared to make a rape claim for similar reasons. And even worse, the contorted legal standard creates the terrifying reality that men in emotionally abusive relationships have to live in fear of being accused of rape, as at least one of your readers alluded to.

As usual, thank you for airing such a sensitive topic.