O.K. Poly Dollies, We Gotta Talk

A few days ago, Raymond James of Atascadero, wrote a letter to the editor regarding the recent spate of rapes at Cal poly wherein the young women had apparently been drinking at a frat party, etc and, well, you know the rest. Here’s Mr. James:

“As long as the view persists that the victim of a sexual assault is never at fault, they will most assuredly continue. Generations of men have been brought up with the belief that if you are looking for sex that “candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.” Any young woman who goes to a party with a bunch of horny young men with the belief that she can drink all she wants without there being a risk of consequences is simply misguided.

“I believe the reason that authorities are not prosecuting recent cases of so-called date rate of three drunken women is that a jury will conclude that the women involved gave implied consent for whatever happened. When a woman lets herself get so drunk that she can’t say “no,” she must accept responsibility for being a fool. The general public may be outraged by this comment, but this is a fact of life in the real world.”

By coincidence, shortly after reading Mr. James letter, I was catching up on my reading and picked up a January/February issue of The Atlantic. There were two essays discussing several recent books about boys and girls behaving badly and the issue of the impact of pornography in our culture and sexual mores. Both articles should be required reading by all Cal Poly undergrads. As a matter of fact, the school administration and the various PC “Rape is Bad” activist groups should make these essays required reading.

In a nutshell, here’s Natasha Vargas-Cooper (“Hard Core, The new world of porn is revealing eternal truths about men and women,” p. 97) what too many young men and women either don’t know, weren’t taught by their mothers and fathers, or have simply forgotten:” Men, so the conventional wisdom goes, tend to desire more than women are willing to give them sexually. The granting of sex is the most powerful weapon women possess in their struggle with men. Yet in each new sexual negotiation a woman has with a man, she not only spends down that capital, she begins at a disadvantage, because the potential losses are always greater for her. A failed or even successful single encounter can be life-altering. Whatever ‘social construct’ you might impose upon the whole matter, nature imposes much more rigorous consequences on women than on men.”

And no matter how evolved we humans like to think of ourselves, when it comes to sex, the psyches of both males and females contains some all too dark realities: Men rape; women bleed and die. And both are simply mother nature’s indifferent drive to ensure that the species survives. For males, a successful breeding strategy is to impregnate as many females as possible any way he can: Candy, a movie, a bottle of Jack Daniels and/or a club over the head.) For a female, every sexual encounter has the potential for far more danger: A delightful encounter, a successful pregnancy or rape and/or death in childbirth.

And no matter how we would like to rise above our biology, there is no way around mother nature. As Ms. Vargas-Cooper notes: “nature imposes much more rigorous consequences on women than on men.”

Which is why the young women of Cal Poly who think they can behave like drunken frat boys with no more consequences than a ferocious hangover, are seriously mistaken. If they’re lucky they may walk away “date raped” and much sadder but wiser. If they aren’t so lucky they’ll walk away with an STD or an unwanted pregnancy. And if they are really, really unucky, they’ll never walk away anywhere, ever.

Which is why, Mr. James of Atascadero hit the nail on the head by reminding young women that in the real world, things can operate in far more dangerous fashion than it does in FantasyVille and they alone are responsible for keeping themselves safe and alive, which means they are going to have to accept responsibility for not being used as a piece of Kleenex for a gaggle of immature, horny Drunken Jerk-Boys.

Speaking of Immature, horny Jerk-Boys

Ah, so it WAS Congressman Weiner’s wienie after all. Let me ask again: Are we going to have to only elect eunuchs in order to get anything done in Washington?

So, should Weiner resign his Congressional seat? Hmmm, let’s think here: Here’s an immature lying, ego-riddled, self-involved, headline-grabbing Jerk-Boy Jackass who gets paid big bucks to jerk off on the public’s dime. Hmmm, where should such a guy go to be surrounded by other lying time-wasting idiots, all playing with themselves while Rome burns?

Oh, I know. Congress!

Now, seriously

Understand that the NRC will be in town at the Embassy Suites Wed. June 15th at 7 pm. to listen to the public regarding the re-licensing of Diablo Canyon. If you have anything to say, you might want to show up. It’s likely to be a lively evening.

And, The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to review and approve the Climate Action Plan this summer. That’s a plan that outlines various ways the County can go green. But, apparently, that plant DID NOT include a plan for “Community Choice.”

From the Sierra Club’s newsletter: “Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), established in 2002 by California Assembly Bill 117, is a major policy innovation that gives local governments new and important rights to take major roles in achieving the state’s most important clean energy and climate protection mandates. It empowers local governments and citizens to address many destructive impacts from the way we generate and use electricity. Only the state’s community choice law gives cities and counties the right to purchase electricity from a source other than the utility and determine the sources of their electric power.

 "Basically, SLO County can become its own energy distributor and increase the amount of non-polluting, renewable energy available to residents, providing energy to local residents and businesses at rates that, in successful CCA’s across the country, have been about 20 percent less than what investor-owned utilities charge.”

If you think that plan should be included in the final draft of the SLO County’s Climate Action Plan, let your supervisor know.