Tuesday, March 07, 2006

When Is Sex, Sex?

Has to be said I was left a little confused by two stories that appeared in Radio One’s Newsbeat this morning. The first was that men now need permission from drunken women to sleep with them on a one night stand otherwise it can be considered rape. Nanny state overkill really. When you’re both blind drunk and mid-fumble you’re hardly going to stop the passion to ask permission for sex, let alone ensure you’ve got a Dictaphone and necessary paperwork to make it legally binding.

The second story was that a woman is fighting the courts refusal to let her use frozen embryos that she created with her ex-boyfriend. Because he is now refusing to let her as he feels as they’re no longer in a relationship he doesn’t want the legal or emotional dependence these kids will force upon him.

Emotionally I feel very sorry for her if this is genuinely her last chance to conceive however, when this story is put in context with the previous one it screams of double standards.

It’s OK for a woman to call drunken one night sex rape if she hasn’t been asked permission, which morally is as it should be. However a man is being dragged through the courts and challenged because he hasn’t granted permission for his embryos to be used by his ex-girlfriend.

I just feel that if a woman hasn’t given permission for sex it’s rape then if he hasn’t given permission for his embryos to be used couldn’t the same judgement be made?

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