There are plenty of women out there who are angry drunks and who could quite easily kick my male ass, whether they're sober or intoxicated. So, yeah, that legal position is pretty sexist.
This is really beside the point.
The point is: have you ever heard of a case in which a drunken woman assaulted and raped a man?
I'm not saying it doesn't happen. Just that I've never heard of it happening, aside from something I read in
Omni magazine years ago. The reverse, by contrast, happens all the time.
It's not sexist to acknowledge this fact--just as it's not sexist to acknowledge the fact that most murderers are male--or, for that matter, that most murder
victims are male--a fact that tends to be overlooked in discussions about violence against women.
A charge of sexism would only be appropriate if female rapists were not punished for their crimes, or if drunkenness was accepted as a defence for female rapists, but not male rapists.
There
is sexism in our legal systems, and in the social attitudes which underpin these systems. And sex discrimination does affect both women and men: I
have heard of cases like the one
Data Holmes mentioned, where men were accused of rape and assumed to be guilty, until proven innocent--the reverse of what should happen. As a male professor in a position of authority over female students, I am acutely conscious of the fact that it would take just one false and malicious accusation to blight my whole career, and I adjust my own behaviour accordingly.
But it's not sexist to acknowledge real differences in male and female behaviour--so long as you keep in mind that there are exceptions to every generalization.
