The shame of Illinois. Daniel Dighton writes in the fall issue of the “Compiler”: “In 1970, with an operating budget of $65 million, there were six adult prisons holding about 7,000 inmates in Illinois. There was optimism that a newfound emphasis on rehabilitation of the offender would control inmate population growth by cutting down on recidivism.
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“A simple ‘get the state off our backs’ position may look attractive when we are thinking about the sex lives of middle-class men,” writes the University of Chicago’s Martha Nussbaum in the New Republic (January 3). “But it is clearly inadequate to deal with the situation of women and other vulnerable groups. There is no consent where there is pervasive intimidation and hierarchy. When radical feminists say that rape and ‘normal’ intercourse cannot so easily be distinguished, they mean that a pervasive asymmetry of power makes it difficult for consent to be genuine. Just how this idea should be recognized by law is the difficult matter; but surely we should recognize that many instances in which there is no ‘no’ are not instances of genuine consent.”
Least-credible press release.
