It’s happened again. One of our key politicians has spoken without censoring himself, and everyone’s in shock. But should we be? How much more do we need to hear to realise that this is the reality of politics in the western world?
Kenneth Clarke talked about a distinction between “serious rape” and “date rapes”, referring to the latter as “17-year-olds having intercourse with 15-year-olds”. Serious rape, he explained, includes “violence and an unwilling woman”.
Mind-boggling, yes. But frankly not so surprising, at least for those who knew that Clarke has previously commented on how “a woman can make an anonymous complaint, the man can eventually be convicted, after going through a long and probably rather destructive ordeal, and the woman retains her anonymity as she walks away, with her ex-boyfriend or ex-husband left to live with the consequences.”
Not only does he seem incapable of distinguishing between rape and consensual sex between people under the legal age of consent, but it also seems like he’s sympathising with the offenders. This, ladies and gentlemen, is our justice secretary.
What next? Well, far from promising to read up on equality, he has vowed to choose his words more carefully in the future – just to make sure that his offensive world view doesn’t punch us in the face again.
But let’s put him back into the context in which he works. Most of you will remember Cameron’s, the prime minister’s, “calm down, dear” fiasco from a few weeks back. And then we have the rape allegations against now former MD of IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, which media keep referring to as a “sex scandal“, highlighting how DSK always was a bit of a “womaniser” with a “tangled love life”, thereby categorising the whole thing as similar to, say, Bill Clinton’s consensual affair with Monica Lewinsky.
French journalists even went as far as to defend Strauss-Kahn on the basis that he never had any issues with getting what he wanted – the logic being that a man who gets laid doesn’t need to rape – while one Libération writer explained that “it’s a flaw known about in the media” that the IMF head often is “too forceful” in his relationship with women.
Many have insisted that, in Ken Clarke’s defence, he is sharp but clumsy – he is “clumsy, not evil,” someone tweeted – and I don’t doubt that for a second. On the contrary, I think that this is what we have to understand: many of the big boys in charge, be it on a national or international level, really do look at the world this way, and so do a large number of journalists at the major newspapers. When they speak their mind, the truth comes out. And the truth ain’t pretty.
We don’t elect journalists, but we do elect politicians. So why do we keep voting for them? Why does no one seem to be calling out for real change?
