Consent, the 'lascivious Arab' and standards of reasonableness in legal and official discourses

This paper explores the ethnocentric valorisation of Reason in the Australian legal system. It is informed both by post modern feminist critiques of the law and by Edward Said's analysis that the Middle Eastern and Islamic masculinity has been constructed in the Western imaginary as misogynistic, barbaric, sexually perverse and above all - irrational. The central argument is that the 'reasonable person' of law has a masculine and also a White, middle-class and Anglo particularity which functions to disadvantage and further marginalise groups constructed as aberrant to this. The empirical content of this paper will be two separate gang rape incidents in Sydney involving a group of "Lebanese" youths in 2000, and four brothers" Pakistani immigrant Muslims" in 2002. The paper will examine the various different manifestations of 'irrationality' by the perpetrators in these cases. The primary focus will be on the issue of consent and the idea that Arab / Muslim men see all white women as "fair game". The paper will also investigate the construing of 'paranoia' of the two eldest brothers in the latter case" with their decision to represent themselves in court because of their belief that the government and the criminal justice system were involved in a racist conspiracy against them. The paper will analyse the implications that these constructions might have for perpetrators of Middle Eastern and / or Muslim background" both within the context of legal discourses and in terms of legislative change.