So Dahlia Lithwick is the Time's replacement for Thomas Friedman this month. I haven't heard of her, but based on this column, I think I'm really going to miss Barbara Ehrenreich.
Today, Lithwick argues against rape shield laws, those laws which make the sexual history of a rape victim irrelevant and inadmissible in court. Prior to the passage of these feminist-demanded laws, a rape trial centred on an investigation of the victim, to determine whether or not she `asked for it'. These laws mean these investigation must focus, appropriately, on whether or not the victim gave her consent. This is often a legally unanswerable question, but the present situation is still better than when the focus was on the victim.
As near as I can tell, Lithwick's argument is that, first, sometimes it's okay for a man to rape a woman friend, so long as she's a slut -- `the defendant's legal presumption of innocence is flipped on its head, since rape shield laws unambiguously deny him access to potentially exculpatory evidence' -- and, second, the media's going to dig up all the same dirt on her anyways, so we might as well parade her sexual history in front of the jury, too.
One word: ugh.
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