Amp wrote a post on restorative justice, and the rape/consent spectrum. A lot of the comments responded to the idea of rape and consent being a spectrum (really well outlined by biting beever). In particularly arguing to what extent it was appropriate to call acts in the grey area ‘rape’.
Now as I’ve said before I draw a strict line about consent. If a man is using any form of coercion* to make a woman sleep with him, then she cannot give meaningful consent, therefore if there’s any coercion then the sex is rape.
But why do I try and define rape? I’m not a lawyer, politician, judge, or policy analyst – my ability to change the legal definition of rape is non-existance. There is no chance that my definition of rape will be accepted across society, without us having a radically different society. At the moment you’ll probably get away with raping a woman you’re a police officer, if she’s 14 and drunk, if she invited you to spend the night in her bed and sometimes even if you video yourself. If we lived in a world where everyone would accept that those women had the right to refuse sex, and those cases were rape, then I think we’d actually be a long way to fighting rape culture and be living in a completely different society. Then we could talk about the ideal rape law and legal practice. But at the moment feminists don’t have any control over the law, or legal definition of rape.
I use my definition of rape to analyse the world I live in. Most importantly, I use it to respond to what my female friends say have be done to them, and other women they know.
If a woman came to me and told me this:
She’s 15 and she’s out on a date, her boyfriend’s parents are out of town and so he takes her to his place. She’s excited at the opportunity to spend time with him so she tells her parents that she’s staying at a girlfriend’s house. They arrive at the boyfriends house and the evening starts well, however, as the night progresses he becomes more and more pushy for sex. She feels trapped, she loves her boyfriend and she likes the way he touches her or kisses her but she’s uncomfortable with him pushing her harder. She tells him as much and he grows sullen for a time, withdrawing all affection from her. Soon, however, he apologizes and they kiss again, she likes his kiss, she likes the way he smells, she likes the way he feels, she doesn’t like the way his hand is trying to unzip her pants.
She says “No” again; he withdraws ALL affection, maybe even scooting to the end of the couch. He seems sullen and frustrated. He may even argue with her, “What’s the big deal?” he asks, “Why are you being a tease?” he says accusatorily. She begins to doubt herself and feels guilt about her actions. She apologizes to him, he kisses her again and soon he’s at her zipper once more. She flinches and sighs heavily, “I don’t know if I’m ready” she says plaintively, “What?” he asks her; “Don’t you love me?”
The girl bites her bottom lip, in a flash of anger and frustration she stands up to leave. He grabs her arm, “Oh baby, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you mad” he says. She looks at him again and quickly it goes through her mind that she doesn’t really know where she’d go anyway. She lied to her parents; they think she’s over at a friend’s house. She has no car, how is she going to get anywhere? She can’t tell her parents and she doesn’t want to try to call her girlfriend who may or may not have a car. She knows that she’ll just make her boyfriend angry at her even if she DID do that. What if he kicks her out? She lied to be there and if she goes back home she’ll get in trouble for lying. In a flash she decides to sit back down.
An hour later, after more approach and retreat and more pushing his hand away, she gives in.
She goes home the next day, troubled, depressed, and unable to concentrate. She has been raped and her emotions and reactions are the same as any other rape victim, but she has no recourse. She just had “bad judgment” and that’s all. She must deny her feelings, push them underfoot and ignore them; society will not allow her to grieve because society sees nothing wrong with the boy’s rape of this young girl.
The boy moves on to pressure all of his girlfriends and this girl moves on to deal with her own rape, alone and without aid of any support. Her next boyfriend does the same thing, and soon she comes to understand that this is the way that relationships work.
I would say that I thought it was rape.
I know women who have had experiences very similar to that – I join them in calling those experiences rape. I define rape in the way I do to support the women they do, and reiterate the idea they have the right to say no to sex.
I also define rape in the way I do as a protection against men who have sex with women who don’t want to have sex with them. I believe that one of the few forms of protection women have against rape is gossip – passing on information that we know about men who hurt women.
Women need to know who the men are who don’t notice, or don’t care, that the women they’re sleeping with don’t want to have sex with them. Calling those acts rape is both protection and resistance.
Why do you define rape in the way that you do?
* The important point about my definition of coercion is that it involves power – you can’t coerce someone to do anything unless you have some form of power over them.
Also posted at Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty
Note: The comments on this post are open to people who identify as feminist, or pro-feminist only. Please bear in mind that I have referred to things that have happened to women I know..
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As you probably know, the legal definition of criminal rape usually does not even make it possible for the boyfriend to be charged here, much less found guilty. You can see an example of a rape law (Oregon’s to be precise), here. (with an explanation of the law here, if you’re interested.) In Oregon, so long as the boyfriend was less than three years older than she was, it’s perfectly clear: This isn’t criminal rape.
So I think a lot of people don’t think of this as “rape” because they understand with some semblance of accuracy what the law is; they think of “rape” as a criminal term, and since the law doesn’t call that rape, ergo it’s not “criminal rape. That is admittedly a pretty literal view though I think it is fairly common.
I think the language used in these discussions tends to confuse the issue. It’s important to distinguish between these example statements:
-“I believe this act is criminal rape”
-“I believe this act should be criminal rape though it it currently not criminal rape; i.e. the laws should be changed to make this act a crime.”
-“I believe this act is morally rape (“moral rape”) but should not be considered a crime; nonetheless we should try to figure out ways to stop/deter this behavior.”
-“I believe this act is morally wrong but, like many moral wrongs committed by
individuals, i do not see it as realistic to try to stop.”
-“I do not believe this act is morally wrong.”
I am guilty myself of not being clear, 0n many occasoins. However, when I can force myself to do so, I find the clarity that results from specificity can avoid a lot of arguments which aren’t really arguments. A lot of people who say “this is rape” can mean ANY of the first three example statements. Obviously this can result in a lot of confusion.
So when you say
Then it looks like you’re discussing law, not morality.
So my response is that you should not be so discouraged. YOU have as much right to have an opinion on what rape law is, as anyone else. You can lobby for changes to the law as you see fit. You don’t need to be a lawyer, politician, judge or analyst. You only need to be willing to do things like read the law, try to understand what it means, and participate in discussions about the results of changes.
But because laws are extremely difficult to write well, it’s complicated. If you want to discuss legalities, at some point you will have to address the sort of questions that make many non-lawyers get pissed: “what sort of power? How would you define it? How much power? How could you be sure that the power was or was not present?”
These are questons which MUCH be asked when you’re discussing legalities, but do NOT need to be asked when you’re only discussing moralities (thought hey can still be relevant).
I define rape the same way you and BB do. If there is coercion or pressure coupled with power, it’s rape. If a woman says no and a man keeps pressuring her until she gives in, then it’s damn clear to me that he doesn’t care what she wants. Her desire is completely and utterly irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that he wants sex and dammit, he’s going to get it any way he can.
Sounds like rape to me.
If it was the woman using the same form of coercion on a man or other woman for sex, would you still view it as rape? No, I don’t think it’s rape, so long as the “man” is not significantly older than the woman. He successfully convinced her to have sex with him and she relented. I don’t think that anyone would argue that the guy was being a real a**hole though.
I define rape by what happened, not by what can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a specific court. In BB’s scenario a rape occurred. We don’t need to know whether she lived in a state with antiquated and faulty sexual assault laws or if she lived in a state with sexual assault statutes designed with the fewest possible loopholes.
The reason I define rape this way is so we can see the gaps between the reality of what happened and the related criminal statutes and public perception which matches neither the reality of rape nor the current law.
We would never differentiate between moral murder and real murder or between moral kidnapping and real kidnapping. If someone who committed murder isn’t convicted for some reason, we don’t use that to conclude that no murder occurred but people do this all the time with rape.
He wasn’t charged or was found not guilty therefore she couldn’t have been raped.
That’s more than nonsense, it’s dangerous.
Do we really think that no rapists look for loopholes in the law and in the enforcement of the law and never gleefully exploit those loopholes?
The trouble I have with this is there seems to be a very fine line here. If, when she refuses his advances, he declares the relationship over and starts to call her a cab, and she starts to cry and pleads with him not to, and she kisses him and says she loves him, and they have sex, is that rape?
If she is hesitant again, and he says, “I don’t think we can be boyfriend and girlfriend if you’re so screwed up about what you want,” and she gives in, is that rape?
In this case, might it be dependent on the boy’s own mental state? If he’s sincerely disgusted that she won’t put out, he’s offered her a real exit that she doesn’t take. If he’s using a time-honored ploy, he’s putting psychological pressure on her.
And if these are people in their twenties, it changes.
What you’ve set up in your example is a compelling argument for a statutory rape law. A young teenager can be so fragile that any pressure, even logical argument, can be seen as unfair–and in a real sense, coercive.
With adults, though, it seems to me the power applied has to be something other than internal anxiety–fear of loss of status, or what people will think, or fear of loneliness. Even morally, I don’t consider that rape–not when it depends almost entirely on internal mental states.
Not with an adult, at any rate
Because of this experience (the link is to an entry on my blog), I have thought a great deal about how to define rape. In short, when I was in college, a woman friend persuaded me that I should see what happened to me when I lost my virginity as an instance of date rape, and I thought of myself as a date rape survivor for quite some time, until I began to question how seeing my experience in this way implicitly characterized the woman I was with as a predator, and what I came to realize is that, while she had power I did not have (the power of knowledge and experience), and while she used that power in a way that violated my trust and my boundaries, neither “predation” nor “predatory” are words that would accurately describe what was going on when she got me to have sex with her.
Maia’s example defines a certain kind of male predatory behavior; there are, of course, other kinds as well. And I should say that, were the genders in the story of my experience reversed, I would have no hesitation characterizing what happened as rape, because the cultural values that inform and create and shape male heterosexual desire define that desire as a pursuit of sex. Having said that, though, let me say what I am not saying: I am not saying that all heterosexual intercourse is rape; nor am I saying that male heterosexual desire in and of itself must, by definition, in every man who feels it, be about the sexual subjugation of women (though I would wonder whether any heterosexual man who says he has never felt desire in those terms is being fully honest with himself: we have all been socialized into those social and cultural values, after all). But the example Maia gave illustrates one iteration of the “foundational narrative,” if you will, of heterosexual intercourse in a patriarchy and male predation of women’s sex/sexuality is, it seems to me, one of its defining features. The boy in her story would have to have behaved very differently–so differently, in fact, that I can’t imagine what that difference would be–for the two of them to have ended up having intercourse that the girl didn’t really want and to have that intercourse not be rape.
I would have to say I don’t define the experience as rape, because I don’t believe that boy had any more power than the girl gave him. He didn’t have inherent power. He didn’t do anything but whine and pout and manipulate, which isn’t coercion, it’s more persuasion. Shitty persuasion, but persuasion. She had options and he wasn’t responsible for taking her options away. She felt disempowered, and as if she didn’t have options, but she did.
I can’t see rape without a rapist, and this hypothetical boy may be a manipulative shit, but I’m not seeing rapist because I’m not seeing him actively blocking another human being’s ability to say no.
That said, her internal experience should be dealt with as non-consensual sex. In a therapeutic or support environment, she should be encouraged to talk about feeling raped, and dealing with that feeling and, most importantly, learning how to set firm limits, to find her options, to stand by her know, and to push back.
It bothers me that you feel you have to justify your effort to define rape. We should not have to justify thinking or discourse. A whole ‘nother topic, I know, but isn’t it sad that we live in a world where the validity of thinking a thing through has to be justified?
Um…”stand by her no“. Sorry.
I agree the scenario presents many gray areas. However, the above recommendation begs interesting questions. Why, for example, should she more publicly label the boy manipulative, but in private (therapy) view the emotional results of the sex as if it *were* rape? Does this mean she gets all the benefits of the rape experience without having an actual rapist at hand? That’s a pretty sweet deal for male sexuality right there – and a pretty shitty one for women. It’s like we want to give this young woman all sorts of personal agency to use beforehand, but afterwards, in the privacy of her mind and emotional response, we’ll encourage her to “act as if she were raped.”
hey! what happened to my block quotes? *pout*
[Fixed! –Amp]
Persuasion is simply a pretty euphemism for coercion. She said no, he kept pressuring her, using all sorts of manipulative techniques to break down her defenses. He knew what he was doing; didn’t care about what she said, he simply kept at it until he got what he wanted.
I fail to see how this isn’t rape. Does rape need to involve brutality to be considered rape?
To me, we understand that there are levels of abuse – physical, mental, emotional etc. Why then do we try to deny that there are levels of rape?
Q,
Because people can have widely divergent experiences of the same event, that’s why. It’s “OK” for her to feel any way she wants–her feelings don’t need to match my/your/our perception of what “really happened”. The only thing we DO all need to be in agreement on (or at least majority agreement on) is what constitutes a crime.
I mean, who am I to say she “shouldn’t feel ___”? Hell, i’he had friends who were depressed for ages because someone said/did something that (to me) was really not all that bad. But I respect their feelings; they can be as depressed as they need to be. The disparity between their feelings and mine is part of human nature.
It seems you’re trying to force a dilemma between “blaming the victim” and not calling him a rapist:
Personally, I don’t much like blaming anyone who is upset. They’re already upset. But just because they’re upset, and just because I think their upset is their right and their business, doesn’t mean I think they’re objectively correct in being upset. As Deborah says,
I have no problem with her feeling like she was raped, and acting as such. Who am I to control her? But if you want to force the choice between tossing him in jail versus telling her she shouldn’t feel like she was raped because she had an “out”, I suppose I’d choose the latter.
There’s no reason to force that choice, though.
That’s a bit strong. The law isn’t what many feminists would like it to be, but feminists have directly inspired plenty of changes to rape law. They clearly have some control over it, and if they hadn’t exercised that control those changes wouldn’t have happened.
Come again? I could care less whether someone determines if a “crime” has happened if we are encouraging young women to emotionally respond to act as if she *has* been violated. Men get to get off scott free b/c no crime has been committed, but women are encouraged to emotionally respond to it as it there has been a crime? Talk about using sex as a weapon and a tool to control women.
And again I say, folks wonder what I mean by a “rape culture”.
Of course you don’t. You’re a man in a rape culture, benefitting from this woman’s reaction to coerced sex. It’s no big deal to you. And yes, by *encouraging* her to view it as rape, to respond to it as rape, you are controlling her. Becuase you’re casting her out into this larger social issue all by herself, with no legal, moral, or emotional backing. You will encourage her to continue to internalize this issue, using terms that refer to *social* phenomenas (like coerced sex and rape), but insisting that it is all, basically, in her head — and if only she’d interpret it another way, why then she’d see that what the man did was right… and normal.
It might be useful if there were (in law and in common understanding) different degrees of rape, as there are of murder. Rape which used (or threatened) actual physical violence would be first degree. Second degree might be “date rape” situations where a “no” was ignored but in the end she wasn’t overpowered physically. Maia’s example might be third degree, or no rape; I’ll leave that debate to others.
That depends on what we mean by “pressuring,” though, and how the “no” is understood.
Let’s say two people are in a sexual situation for the first time. Partner A tries to advance things to a more intimate level, and is rebuffed by B. Does that “no” mean “not now,” or “not tonight,” or “not ever”? A doesn’t know, and has no way of finding out without doing one of two things — asking, or waiting a while and then trying again. Let’s say A waits. A and B continue doing what they’d been doing before, and then after a while A tries again, and is rebuffed again. A backs off again, waits some more, and tries again. This time B doesn’t rebuff the advance.
Can we describe this as a situation in which “B says no and A keeps pressuring B until B gives in”? Maybe. It may be perceived that way by B, or not. It may be perceived that way by A, or not. A and B may or not have the same perception.
And of course in a heterosexual encounter, in our society today, A is usually going to be male, and B is usually going to be female. For a lot of people who are just starting to have sex, that model — of a boy or a man trying to “get” as much as he can, and a girl or a woman deciding how much she’s going to let him do — is their only available model for what sex is like.
Some encounters that follow this model are certainly coercive. Some are merely clumsy or uncomfortable. Some, eventually, are satisfying for both partners. I think it’s a really good thing to think and talk about alternatives to the model, and about how to encourage people to adopt those alternatives, but it’s important to remember that this is what a lot of sex looks like, including quite a bit of sex between people who care about each other and are trying to be respectful of each other.
That depends on what we mean by “pressuring,” though, and how the “no” is understood.
i understand “no”==”no” pretty much.
i’ve had sex with a few women and even, amittedly, put pressure on some who didn’t really want to, when i was younger and stupider – having some idea of what they wanted and didn’t want because i sort of, you know, cared – but when they said no…i stopped. i have never met the mythological woman who “said no but meant yes”. and if i were to meet such a person – i would be concerned about the quality of that interaction.
nobody owes anyone sex, ever. no one deserves access to your body – ever. it seems simple enough to me. and as for the meaning of “no” – say “maybe later” or “talk me into it” and i’ll take you at your word, but “no” is plenty clear enough for me.
Sure it is; sure I do. I don’t like it either. I would not raise my son to act like that. And I don’t get any benefit from rape; that’s offensive to imply. To the degree that you might pull out the old “all men benefit from rape” line, I’d point out that the majority of people who I love most, who I consider most important to me, around who my life revolves, and around who I have built my life and emotions, are female. Their interests and happiness are PART of my interests and happiness. When they thrive or fail, so do I.
No need for the ad hom. Really.
I’m not encouraging her to do anything. I’m merely thinking it’s not my business to discourage her either. What would you have me do given that I DON’T think it’s criminal rape? Are you suggesting that I actively tell her she’s making a mistake? I have a sneaking suspicion that if I had said that, you’d have accused me of victim blaming.
Other than agreeing with you that this should be a criminally punishable act, it’s not clear what would satisfy you. Do you really want me to say “no, sorry, it’s all in your head, your feelings are invalid?”
Well, legal I’ve already addressed. I don’t have control over moral or emotional stuff though.
one of those is social, the other is legal. At least in most people’s vocabulary. And I’m happy to use specific terms–didn’t you read my post above? It is odd that you’d be making this accusation, given that 1) I posted on specificity; and 2) your reply uses “rape” but honestly I’m not sure what you mean by that.
Sure, if she looked at it differently. What’s so odd about that? Hell, you’re a feminist: You know as well as I do that there are a gazillion viewpoints on sex relations. Depending on which viewpoint you adopt things are “good” or “bad” or “patriarchal” or “supportive” or “empowering” or what have you (porn debate, anyone?) and the existence of these disparate viewpoints doesn’t mean that they whole discussions are invalid.
The bizarre thing to me would be INSISTING that she look at it differently. IMO she is entitled to her own interpretation of events. Only when we need a “common interpretation” vis a vis who is/isn’t guilty of a crime do we need to force interpretations to match.
I remember that point being made in the restorative justice thread. I have real trouble with it:
(1) How do we know he was going to get sex any way he could? For instance: in the example we can’t know he would have been willing to physically overpowered her to get sex, because it never came down to that. I think judgements are being made based upon a counterfactual we can never know would have happened. It’s possible he would not have tried to get sex any way he could.
(2) Even if we knew he would have gotten sex any way he could, aren’t we calling the law into action based upon the accused not doing something that didn’t happen? That seems alien to common notions of justice, what is being thrown at him “premeditating an attempted rape that was not attempted” is a thoughtcrime.
Ad hom was not intended. Yes, I’m putting you in with the class of men.
In Deborah’s original comment, she used the word “encouraged” which is why I’m responding along those lines. “You” should be read as the universal.
But I do have to ask you this Sailorman, Maia clearly stated that a better social understanding and definition of rape was needed before we, as feminists, could address the legal system and corresponding laws. You are using the law as the platform from which to lauch this discussion, so you’re skipping over a large part of what Maia was asking and what I’m talking about.
(And FTR, my bottom line analysis of men and rape is that all men benefit, in some way, from living in a rape culture — that part never changes in my mind.)
Peace.
No, I’m not insisting *she* do anything differently. I’m insisting that *we* create a more consistent social framework in which what she rightfully feels and thinks corresponds with legal and social support and recompense. Right now, as it stands, our recommendations only create a psychic and moral schizm in the minds of women who have been coerced into sex because what they feel, and what they deal with in private, does not match the outward social reaction and legal response.
Yup. It is simple, and you’re one hundred percent right. Did anything I said give you the impression that I was likely to disagree with it?
That’s a good policy. The world would be a far better place if everyone adopted it. But I was using the concept of “no” to encompass a lot more than just that specific word. If, while two people are being intimate, one person puts his or her hand somewhere and the other person moves the first person’s hand away, I’d call that a clear “no.” But it may also be a “maybe later.”
I’m not talking about someone saying no but meaning yes. I’m talking about someone rebuffing a particular advance in the course of an ongoing sexual encounter.
But it’s only a sexual encounter from the man’s POV. From the woman’s POV it’s coercion that ends in sexual activity to make it stop.
What’s the “it” here?
Are you saying that every time a person rebuffs an attempt to initiate a particular sexual act, they’re saying that they want the entire encounter to end immediately? Because that’s pretty obviously not true — I’ve been in the position myself where I’ve been happy to continue kissing someone, but didn’t want to do more.
Or are you saying that every time someone rebuffs an advance, they’re indicating that they’re not interested in engaging in the activity ever in the future? Because that doesn’t seem right, either.
That said, I certainly agree that there are times when one partner thinks an encounter is consensual and the other perceives it as coerced. And I believe that anyone who’s taking the lead in a sexual encounter should make sure that he or she is receiving enthusiastic consent, not just acquiescence.
sorry I misinterpreted; my bad.
That’s probably because I’m a lawyer. When I see a social issue and people are tlking about it in relation to a crimina act, I tend to often start with the law and work form there. it’s just my training.
I confess that I’m biased to also think this is a good thing: Given the legal system, the “law approach” tends to focus and IMO can avoid ending upwith a definition that seems workable, but really isn’t. In fact, I recently recently wrote a “write a rape law here!” post for that reason.
We have a common goal but different starting points, i think. We are approaching it from different sides.
I’m not doing this to be annoying–really–but do you mind if I split these?
Legal is, well, legal.
Social support and recompense can be related to legal support: i.e. it can be part of the rape trial process, or, like RESTORE, an alternative to a traditional trial.
To the degree it depends on the ‘legal link’ then social support also means you have to discuss legalities.
If it does NOT depend on legal links–for example, if we were to offer all women who say they were raped free psychiatric help in recovering, irrespective of whether the acts had a chance of constituting criminal rape–then this seems to be what you said was bad, above…? IOW, if the social help needs to be consistent with the legal punishment to be effective, we need to end up talking about legalities.
If it doesn’t need to be consistent with legal punishment then I think we end up with what you are describing:
And I agree: this is a huge problem.
As I see it, though, we can basically solve the italicized problem only by matching the “inward” and “societal” reactions. Something has to change, so there are really IMO only two different ways to fix it:
1) We can increase the %age of convictions, creating a closer match to “perceived” and “criminal” rape; (thus moving society “closer” to where women are)
2) We can publicize and increase awareness of the fact that “moral rape” IS NOT in fact equivalent to “criminal rape”. This would be an attempt to move womens’ beliefs toward where the law is. This could also include a statement that moral rape is harmful to women–this might include making services available as I described above. But such a statement would create the same congnitive split that you and I agree is a bad thing.
I think there are some obvious problems with #2. So I tend to focus on #1.
This post has just convinced me to teach my daughter to just call me to come and get her and put my desire to see her unharmed over my desire to punish her for lying about her whereabouts.
I would much prefer this to having her learn that this is the way that relationships are supposed to be.
I am extremely uncomfortable with describing the rape experience as “beneficial.” I don’t think it’s a sweet deal for anyone.
I do think there is value in dealing with inner experience in a subjective manner, and not taking it to have objective repercussions. During a period of time when I was in therapy, I experienced my mother (subjectively) as neglectful, harmful, etc. Objectively, she was none of those things; she was flawed and human during a period of time I needed much more from her. She should not be subjected to charges of child neglect, but I am entitled to deal with my experience subjectively, and to receive support for that subjective experience.
I am extremely uncomfortable with this. There have been times that I have persuaded all sorts of people to do all sorts of things. Persuasion is a natural part of negotiation. A blanket statement like this virtually prevents any human from having a conversation with any other human.
No! But it needs to involve more than whining and pleading and pouting. Locking and blocking the door. Threatening of any kind. Purposely inducing fear. Altering the ability of the victim to say no (i.e. by getting her drunk). Using authority to coerce. None of these exist in the story.
I do think there is value in dealing with inner experience in a subjective manner, and not taking it to have objective repercussions. During a period of time when I was in therapy, I experienced my mother (subjectively) as neglectful, harmful, etc. Objectively, she was none of those things; she was flawed and human during a period of time I needed much more from her. She should not be subjected to charges of child neglect, but I am entitled to deal with my experience subjectively, and to receive support for that subjective experience.
But Q’s point–and I hope I’m not misconstruing it–is that there’s nothing subjective about institutional misogyny that allows the guy to coerce a woman without lifting a finger. She has in fact been deprived of her right to say no, it’s just that the contributing factors cannot necessarily be reduced to clear coercion on his part or even to his individual behavior. So it’s wrong to deal with this on a therapeutic level, wherein this woman is encouraged to see her upset reaction as the problem to be resolved, rather than the power disparity that’s causing her pain. We as a society need to not only recognize that she’s been injured, but seek redress and protection from future injuries as her right.
A doesn’t know and has no way of finding out? Is A unable to communicate with the person beyond “yes” “no” “sex now pls?” – then I would suggest giving the “relationship” a miss. You ASK if you are not sure which way the “no” is meant.
Furthermore, even taking a wild leap and assuming that the relationship is continuing despite an inability to communicate – B never starts anything? B never asks for sex? Here’s a hint: If you are pushing your partner to do something, and they keep saying no – GIVE UP ON IT. Becuase if they really want to do this activity, they already know you are interested THEY DON’T NEED YOU TO ASK AGAIN. They can ask you.
*shock* *horror* Women can ask for sexual activites? Women can sexually assertive? Women can talk?!
Being rebuffed and asking over and over until the other person gives in is wrong. It pushes people into an activity they don’t want because at the back of their heads is a little voice saying “what if he gets violent, could I stop him? Is it easier to give it now than make it actually rape?”
Good point (you and QGrrrl).
Living in SoCal as a kid, I used to listen to Love Lines all the time in high school. It finally struck me as I was listening to it again years later that their overall reaction to relationships made no sense. When a girl or woman was in a bad relationship, they’d tie it all back to her father (not her parents – as if emulating and learning from her mother could not have possibly played a role) and tell her that she deserved better. Then, not two seconds later, they (mostly Adam) would essentially say that all men are scum and they can’t help themselves – or at least they can’t help keep from wanting it – whatever “it” was.
All I could think was: how little agency to these guys think people have? First, mothers don’t play a role in raising children, then the people who are responsible can’t really help themselves half the time. How can they tell her she deserves better, then turn around and say that it’s not possible for guys to be as a good of a person as she deserves? How are they really helping her by telling her that she needs to go to therapy to work this all out, and then minutes later argue that it’s inevitable that guys would act like this? How is that not making her reaction to what happened her problem and not his?
Sailorman:
There are several problems with this when it comes to rape. If those on the receiving end of a scenario consistently have the experience of being raped and those on the other side have the experience of acceptable sex, we need to take the trend of feeling raped in certain scenarios seriously and not dismiss it as something separate from what really happened.
Rejecting girl’s and women’s public use of “rape victim” supports those who label those girls and women as liars who should be prosecuted when they call the cops. It’s not much better when people call these rape victims out of touch with reality.
It’s like telling the person who was beat up that it’s fine if they felt assaulted, but they don’t have the right to tell the police they were assaulted or have anyone believe they were assaulted because the person who beat them up knows he could have really hurt the other person if he wanted to. “I barely tapped him. That wasn’t a real assault. Believe me I could have assaulted him, but I didn’t.”
We don’t let those who commit other violent or exploitive acts negate a label simply because they want to give their actions a softer label. Why would we do that with rapists. Frankly, if rapists labeled their actions as rape and knew everyone else would too most of themwould be a whole lot less likely to rape.
And to me that’s the bottom line. When the other person says no or resists. Full stop. No excuses for anything less.
Brooklynite
This is a major contributor to rape IMO. This model makes the girl act like the goalie and sets boys and men up to rape and it sets girls and women up to be raped if they drop their defenses for even a moment. This model disrespects other people’s sexual boundaries and makes the smashing of those boundaries a “score.”
But this is not the only model available for sexual interactions.
I guess I haven’t made it clear enough that I’m not endorsing this kind of sex. It’s bad sex, mostly. It’s fraught and it’s clumsy and it’s often shame-ridden for both parties. It is, as Abyss suggested, a model of sex that contributes to rape.
But.
Not every sixteen-year-old virgin boy who doesn’t know how to talk about sexual boundaries is a rapist, or a manipulator. Not every sixteen-year-old virgin girl who doesn’t know how to straighforwardly express her desires and her limits is the victim of coercion.
The question that I’m framing is how we understand sex between people who’ve been socialized into the “goalie” model. If we understand it as encompassing a wide range of motivations and intentions, I think we’re understanding it more accurately than if we understand it simply as a man who “doesn’t care what [his partner] wants” forcing himself on a woman who is uninterested in his advances but unable to resist.
Let me say one more time that sometimes it is simply that. And sometimes the woman feels coerced even if the man isn’t intending to force himself on her. That happens a lot. And it’s horrible.
But a lot of well-meaning people — men and women, straight, gay, and bi — don’t learn how to talk about sex frankly with their partners until they’ve been having sex for quite a while. And if we want to understand the blurry real-world line between consent and coercion, we need, I think, to bear that in mind.
I’m new to posting here, but read this entry and wanted to comment on it. First, although we normally equate rape with brutality and force, the hypothetical presented in your post is no less coercive than someone forcing that girl to have sex with him through physical means. To my mind, it might even be worse because she’s in a situation where she should be able to trust her boyfriend, and he betrays her by not respecting her boundaries and desires.
Second, I think it’s incredibly important to define rape, but it’s one of those slippery things that constantly eludes us. Justice Potter Stewart said, with reference to pornography, that he knew it when he saw it, but couldn’t define it. I think that’s the case with rape, too. Maybe one of the problems in our statutory construct is that we have specific definitions for what is and is not rape, whereas in many other cases, a court is willing to look at things in a case-by-case basis and take all of the facts before making a determination. There’s no list we can make for rape victims so that they can check off a few yes/no answers in order to adequately determine whether they were raped or not.
Moreover, I think there is another important issues a hand in the above scenario. The girl knows she can call her parents, but decides not to do so because she has lied to them. I think this just reinforces the idea that families need to communicate with their children that even if they are angry with them, they still love them and that they will protect them. It also seems that being open and honest and accepting about sexuality would have helped this particular girl — after all, if she felt comfortable telling her parents where she was going, then she would not have felt uncomfortable about calling them to pick her up (or leaving early).
Last, I think the scenario presented above might be one-sided. I hesitate to say this, but I am an attorney want to look at things from multiple angles. This boy might have viewed this girl’s actions in a way that made her look indecisive or teasing. I don’t think his obvious manipulation of her is in any way pardonable, but when you’re dealing with two 16 year olds, it’s hard to say where to draw the line. She’s not comfortable enough to say yes, and she wants to please her boyfriend. He wants to have sex; maybe he does really “love” her in whatever way a 16 year old is capable of loving. She’s there with him and seems to be enjoying herself and then she says yes, and then no. It’s such a terrible, sticky situation. I wish I knew of a way to easily define these terms, but even defining them wouldn’t help to alleviate them.
Part of the solution has got to be really comprehensive sex ed to teach kids how to communicate what they want and don’t want, how to negotiate without coercing, how to recognise when it would be better to walk away (especially for boys. Teach them how to notice that maybe a girl is just playing along and they should leave her the hell alone), and how to deal with the messy emotional stuff without taking it out on each other.
If things like this were part of the curriculum and kids learned it as a matter of course, far fewer boys would put pressure on their girlfriends, and we would have less qualms about saying the ones who *did* were rapists.
there are some issues I wish to address on this discussion
1. the environment.
At no point in the society we live in are a man and a woman of equal age equal per se. Living in the society creates a major power imbalance. As such, there is no way they have equal bargaining stakes in a sexual situation
2. legal
isn’t it a fallacy to use the state of current legal framork as faulty as we all acknowledge it to be, as point of judgement regarding the situation as if the framework became somewhat of a refrence system? I think it is a circular paradox.
3. a concept to think about:
the Rape by non violent coercion
I would apply this mainly to teenager girls, because I believe that in teh current societary framework they are the most disadvantaged women in raport with their male peers of similar age and social status.
Okay, so my long, thoughtful post with the blockquotes disappeared. This is by way of a test.
okay, so…here’s what bugs me about about the scenario:
if the girl had decided “this guy is creepy, and not worth it, and i’m going home, and i’ll accept my parents’ punishment”, then i think we would all agree that she had made a good decision.
but she decided the opposite. under slimy-asshole coersion, for sure, but she did decide the opposite (the story makes it clear that she wasn’t physically or chemically prevented from leaving, and it gives no indication that she felt physically threatened at any point). and then we no longer agree that the bad decision was hers to make. now, according to some, the society is so prescriptive about her behavior, and men are so powerfully in charge, that she had no choice in the matter, and it deserves to be called rape.
now, don’t get me wrong. society is prescriptive about her behavior, and men are powerfully in charge. but to take away the “this girl made a bad choice” option from her feels paternalistic and condescending, to be honest. but i don’t think this means that “She must deny her feelings, push them underfoot and ignore them; society will not allow her to grieve…” it could very well require a long healing process before she feels like she has her dignity back. and society should acknowledge her feelings, support her in the healing, and teach boys to care more about the consequences of their actions. and if i were that boy’s parent, i would certainly not “see nothing wrong” with what he did (a punishment like being grounded until completing 200 hours of community service at a homeless women’s shelter seems appropriate).
if she were 9 instead of 15, or if the man were her brother or 25 years old, then yeah, sure, it was rape. but at 15 with another teenager not in her family, i don’t think so. it was a terribly bad decision, and we need to work on ways to give girls the power to make better decisions. but i think we can agree that at some point, a rape law that punishes men for bad decisions of women actually does become unfair. the question is, at what point is that.
imagine a related scenario: a 17-year-old boy convinces a 15-year-old boy to sled down a hill –a dangerous one, on which people have gotten hurt before, but no one has ever died–by calling him a pussy if he doesn’t and threatening to tell everyone at the school how gutless he is. the boy sleds down and gets killed. a bad decision to be sure. but murder? homicide? probably not. a tragic decision, but we give the boy the benefit of the assumption that he was mature enough to make a bad decision. by making the opposite assumption for the girl in the above scenario, i think you are taking some dignity and power from the girl. i suspect that many of the 15-year-old girls i have known (which is a lot, because my students are that age) would resent hearing someone say that the girl in this scenario was raped because she was coerced. it would feel to them that someone was telling them that their decisions are never really their own.
i know that some women feel that way (that their decisions are never their own). but i don’t think that’s true, either. but that may be a completely different post.
from my perspective, this is the bottom line. i was a virgin until i was 30, because i couldn’t figure out how to communicate. my first marriage failed because neither of us knew how to communicate. i was sexually assulted because i was afraid to communicate. and finally, my current marriage is successful, because after 7 years of therapy, i finally know how to communicate.
The question that I’m framing is how we understand sex between people who’ve been socialized into the “goalie” model. If we understand it as encompassing a wide range of motivations and intentions, I think we’re understanding it more accurately than if we understand it simply as a man who “doesn’t care what [his partner] wants” forcing himself on a woman who is uninterested in his advances but unable to resist.
Let me say one more time that sometimes it is simply that. And sometimes the woman feels coerced even if the man isn’t intending to force himself on her. That happens a lot. And it’s horrible.
I think you are giving too much forgiveness to the guy. He hears no, and isn’t sure if it means “not right now”, “not tonight”, “not ever”… and rather than asking for clarification he _assumes_ it’s the answer he wants (“not now, but try again in five minutes”). And often it isn’t just “no” flat out – it’s no with a reason, and rather than listening to the no, the guy starts arguing with the reason. They are relying on their superior strength and power to push the girl in a direction she doesn’t want to go. They force the issue. It’s not merely a lack of communication, it’s the guy being unwilling to hear an answer that disagrees with what he wants to do.
I’ve been in several situation fairly parellel to the one you were talking about. The worse one he said “let’s fuck” I said “no”… five minutes later “sex?” “no” “why not?” “I don’t want to” “I want to, it’ll be good I promise”. He literally refused to understand what I was saying, refused to keep activities at a level I was comfortable with, refused to let me leave without a fuss… so when I eventually forced my way out, he got all *hurt* and was all “why are you so angry?” And then guess who had to spend the next few weeks being hounded by his friends asking why I been so rude/angry to him.
Polymath:
Why can’t it be both? Why can’t it be that the girl made an unwise decision and that she was raped?
Brooklynite:
There is an inherent contradiction here: The “goalie model” of sex already establishes the range of motivations and intentions that people bring to sex, i.e. men (and I am going to limit myself here to heterosexuality) need to score goals and women, except under very narrowly defined circumstances, need to prevent those goals from being scored. For this reason, talking about understanding the model in terms of a “wide range” of motivations and intentions makes no sense to me.
I, too, have been in similar situations more than once, and this sh*t has got to stop! This is not a case of a man being rebuffed once and then trying a couple of more times. He kept at her for ONE HOUR until she finally gave in. I’m sorry, what, he wasn’t sure she didn’t want to have sex after ONE HOUR of refusals? Just exactly how long until he would have been sure? Let me answer that for you. He knew perfectly well she didn’t want to have sex with him. He DID NOT CARE. He was only willing to accept one answer. He knew that if he persisted long enough, she would submit. He knew she didn’t have a car. He knew she would get in trouble if she told her parents where she really was. He knew that she liked him. He used all of that to manipulate and coerce her to do what he wanted without a care for what she wanted. Having been in somewhat similar situations myself, I’m quite sure he used her feelings to manipulate her too. He played on every insecurity and self-doubt that he knew she had (or banked on her having as a teenage girl) until after an hour, she was so confused, upset, and tired from arguing that she figured she could end the emotional pain by having sex with him. Of course, she simply traded that emotional pain for another kind, but at the time, you think it won’t be that way. You think you made a choice, so you won’t be hurt, because it was your choice. But once the short-term emotional pain is gone, you realize you didn’t make a real choice. Then you feel sick and you feel weak, because you think it’s your fault. You shouldn’t have submitted. You should have been stronger and continued to refuse. What’s wrong with you, why couldn’t you just have held out a little longer. Surely if you’d just held out a little longer, he’d eventually have stopped. Or maybe you think you were giving him mixed signals, so that’s your fault. After all, he loves you right? He says he loves you, so he must. So he wouldn’t have hurt you. He cared about what you wanted, didn’t he? He must if he loves you. You’re in a spiral of self-blame.
If you’re lucky, as you get older, you realize what an absolute crock that is. He didn’t care about what you wanted at all. All he cared about was getting some. If he had actually cared about what you wanted, he would have stopped pressuring. I can deal with maybe after you refused the first time, he might ask a second time. But, really, after that, there is no excuse. Beyond that, he either knows you don’t want to and doesn’t care or doesn’t care at all if you want to or not. It’s irrelevant to him, because he wants to and that’s all that matters. At that point, for all that he gives a sh*t about your feelings, you might as well be a blow-up doll, because he certainly isn’t interested in any kind of meaningful consent. Sure, he gets to live with his behavior, because, after all, you eventually said “Yes.” It doesn’t matter the kind of pain he put you through to get you to say “Yes”, just that your saying “Yes” is his “Get out of Rape” free card.
By continually focusing on what the woman did or should have done or didn’t do, we are enabling his behavior. Don’t fool yourselves. This kind of scenario is not uncommon. It happens far more than you think. You know the men who do it, even if you don’t know that they do it, and you probably think that the vast majority of them are nice, normal guys. Because in other respects, they are. They’re not always men who you would say “Wow, what a slimy asshole.” They think their behavior is acceptable. Why shouldn’t they? We never really focus on it. We continue to focus on the behavior of women and examine that in great detail. What’s the implicit message in that focus? It sure as hell isn’t that the man needs to examine what he did, I’ll tell you that much.
So I asked this question in the first thread about this, and I’m going to ask it again. When do we start to focus on the behavior of the man? When do we examine that in great detail and not have the conversation continually shift to what the woman should have done? When do we stop effectively dismissing this behavior and make the men turn the unpleasant light on themselves? We women don’t need you to continue to examine our behavior in these situations. We do a fine job of beating up on ourselves without your help. It’s time that the men who behave this way had to beat up on themselves instead. How do we accomplish that?
I am almost positive Q was being sarcastic, seeing as she was talking about the victim. She just left out the scare quotes around “benefits.”
Sure. We can start by
1) Being excruciatingly clear about the goals. Are you trying to establish what we should teach our sons as a moral standard? Or are you trying to establish what we should set up as a criminal standard? (I do not think that morality and criminality will even truly match. Criminality will always be a smaller subset of immorality. What is criminal is always immoral; the reverse is not true)
I think you are having trouble here because you are conflating the two. I don’t really see anyone here who doesn’t see the boy’s behavior as at least somewhat problematic. I don’t see anyone here who would want their son to act like that. I don’t see anyone here who wouldn’t think less of a man who acted like that. The real debate is whether or not he’s a criminal–which is to say, how MUCH to condemn his actions?
2) Understanding that this is an interplay between two people. You seem to think we’re only talking about the girl. But in reality, we’re talking about the CONVERSATION: she makes him feel ___, he makes her feel ___.
Neither of them is acting in a vacuum. And–as many have pointed out, accurately I think–his exact behavior in a different context, or with a different result–would not be seen as a problem.
While we can generally say
“forcing people to do anything through threat of violence is always bad”
we don’t say
“getting people to agree to anything by haranguing them is always bad.”
So to differentiate between what is/isn’t unacceptable behavior, we need to talk both about him and her.
3) Answer the hard questions. Because of the example I gave above (see #2), there are a lot of followup questions: If you think this behavior should be condemed here, but not in other circumstances, why? How do you draw the line between what should and should not be condemned? How/where would you draw the line for official (e.g. criminal) condemnation?
Saying “Well, it’s a sliding scale so we don’t need to draw any line at all” or “well, this is obviously rape so it doesn’t matter” limits the validity of your response.
4) Explain your assumptions. Is this “what should happen here?” discussion taking place with any “reality” limitations? Are we talking about an ideal society, or are we talking about how to change our existing society? Are you talking about perfection (“all men should fully respect womens’ sexual autonomy at all times and should never push for anything that makes women feel sexually uncomfortable”) or just getting cloer to perfection (“what can we do/teach/change to reduce the incidence of such issues?”)
5) Stop saying it’s so goddamn obvious. Look: there are a lot of people here, and a lot of them disagree. Most of us realize that while we think ___, we are quite possibly wrong. That I think this isn’t rape doesn’t mean I think, at this point, that you’re a foolish tool for believing it is. I just think we disagree; I think you’re incorrect but I can still see why you take your side. We’re all looking at the same issues and assigning different weights to different factors to come to our overall conclusions.
Any time someone on EITHER side starts spouting off about things that are “obvious” or “of course” and all that, the ability to actually converse dies, just a little. The more certain you are, and the less willing to change your viewpoint in response to discussion, the less point there is in discussing anything with you. It’s a discussion, not a lecture.
i agree that this might be morally possible—she made an unwise decision and she was raped in a true moral sense.
but if it were true legally, that puts a man in the position of being fully responsible for a woman’s decisions. that’s somewhat unfair, but worse, do we really want the law to enshrine that idea?
Really? Consider a situation in which two people like each other and enjoy sexual intimacy with each other. But neither one of them is sexually experienced, or comfortable talking about sex. Both have been socialized to believe that it’s the man’s role to take the lead sexually, and that it’s the woman’s role to dictate the pace at which things progress. Neither wants to hurt the other, both are concerned with the other’s feelings and desires. But neither feels capable of discussing and negotiating sexual limits in the abstract.
I’m including that kind of a situation under the umbrella of the “goalie” model. And I’d say that the motivations and desires of those two people are very different than the motivations and desires of the two people in Maia’s original scenario.
Polymath:
The problem with this is that knowing this entire story we say she should have known he was a slimy asshole, but then those who say he didn’t commit rape say he’s no more guilty than she is.
He can’t be both a slimy asshole and someone who did nothing wrong.
That means that even knowing the outcome of this situation, there isn’t an absolute agreement about him. So why does anyone expect her to know whether her misgivings are from nerves or a warning that her boundaries won’t be respected and that this guy is a rapist?
Also saying this girl made a bad choice shouldn’t be used to negate the charge of rape since a bad choice doesn’t equal consent.
Can you pretty please explain what on earth you’re talking about?
You say ‘the charge of rape” which is a criminal term. But I don’t think you mean to imply that all slimy assholes are criminals. Or that all pushy people are criminals.
Do you?
Polymath:
There is a key difference between BB’s scenario and this one. Who took the action in question? In your scenario it’s the boy who got killed who took the action. In BB’s scenario it’s the boy who took the action not the girl.
To be parallel, your 17-year-old boy would need to push the younger boy toward the dangerous hill and grab his arm the one time he tried to get away. Then the 17-year old would give the sled that final push knowing the younger boy didn’t want to go down that hill. Oh, and we have to add that this action gives the 17-year old pleasure.
I think he can, legally.
Think of it like the slimy used car dealer who talked you into buying a lemon. He didn’t lie to you, he didn’t stop you from leaving the lot, he didn’t actually steal your money . . . he just convinced you to make a poor choice.
Did he do something wrong legally? NO.
Did he do something wrong morally? YES.
Was he a slimy asshole? YES.
Brooklynite:
Unfortunately, I was pulled away from my computer before I could finish what I wanted to say about the “goalie model” of sex. So let me use this quote from you as a second take-off point. The fact that both have been socialized the way you define, I would argue, means that their underlying, perhaps unconscious, but nonetheless underlying sets of motivations and intentions about sex are what I suggested above: It is the man’s job to score the goals and the woman’s job to allow them to be scored only under very clearly and narrowly defined circumstances. They may have other, more conscious motivations and intentions concerning each other and those conscious motivations may in fact be in conflict with the underlying “goalie model” motivations and intentions, and the consequences of that conflict–i.e., their inability to communicate openly about sex–may result in something happening sexually that is diametrically opposed to their conscious intentions. Still, assuming that what I just described is what happened in the case of Maia’s example (and I very pointedly think it does not for all of the reasons inherent in the boy’s behavior that other people have talked about), why would we not want to describe what happened as a rape?
I am going to hazard an answer to my own question that is in addition to the conflation of and attempt to separate legal and moral issues that has been going on in this conversation. I think one reason is that people don’t want to look at the way in which heterosexual intercourse is normalized in patriarchy as rape. Look at all the ways we talk about fucking that compare it to forms of violence and/or possession–screwing, nailing, “having” someone and so on. (There’s a great book, Men on Rape, by Timothy Beneke which contains a great analysis of the way we, but particularly men, talk about sex, complete with some pretty powerful examples.)
Now, please, I am not saying that anyone who engages in heterosexual intercourse is either a rapist or a rape victim/survivor; what I am trying to point out is that our language, the way we talk about intercourse, the way we think about intercourse through language and metaphor, is structured such that intercourse, overwhelmingly, is framed as a form of invasive violence. Given that this is the case, in a situation such as the one Brooklynite envisions, where despite their best intentions two people end up having sex that one of them doesn’t want (in this case, the woman), why is it so hard to imagine and to name the sex they had as the invasive violence it is strucutred as within our culture?
This doesn’t mean the man should go to jail; it doesn’t mean that, if what we are talking about is a true instance of miscommunication, the couple should not try to work things out. It does mean, though, that both the man and the woman need to recognize that a violation took place and they should not shrink from the full implications of what it means that a violation took place. I come back to something I said in an earlier comment: to the degree that male heterosexual desire is structured in patriarchy as the pursuit of sex, it is predatory, and unless one consciously works against that structuring, it will remain predatory even in circumstances where there is miscommunication. Indeed, it would seem to me that part of resolving the miscommunication would be redefining the desire so that it is not predatory.
It is also the case, however, that unless we bring this framing consciously to the front of our awareness, we are likely to be unaware of it; it is that deeply ingrained in our culture. More to the point, we are likely to be unaware of the ways in which we act in accordance with these underlying metaphors. (For a good book on this, one which Beneke makes us of in Men on Rape, check out Metaphors We Live By, by Lakoff and Johnson.)
Oops! The last paragraph of my last comment should have been deleted before I posted it. Metaphors We Live By is a book worth reading, though.
Sailorman:
I’m sorry, but this is nonsense when you are trying to tell women who have been raped or nearly raped that they are wrong to refuse to change their viewpoint because you disagree and want to debate away the harm that was done to them. It’s more than nonsense, it’s offensive and supports those who see nothing wrong with being a predatory boyfriend.
Your refusal to see all forms of rape doesn’t mean the rapes you deny never happened. Certainly no one would argue that a murder didn’t occur if the defendent were found not guilty by reason of insanity.
If it’s rape only if there is a matching rape statute then there was no such thing as rape before the first rape law was written and nobody can be raped in a place where there is no clear authority with a rape law.
Sailorman, I think you are missing the point. The point is about defining rape. What should/can be addressed through criminal law is another, though related discussion.
You can define rape from two different perspectives. The current culture defines it from the perspective of the rapist. Did he think he was raping? Did he know that he was raping? The problem with this is that it encourages men to be callously indifferent to the needs and desires of the women whose bodies they want to use. Men just have to ignore a woman’s humanity to a point where they truly do not know that they are raping. The boy in BB’s scenario is ignoring the girl’s humanity to the point where she just becomes a vending machine that needs a few manipulations to get out of it what he wants. This is at the core of the rape culture.
It should be up to the victim to define rape. If she felt raped, then it was rape, regardless of whether it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in the court of law, regardless of whether the rapist thought he was raping or he couldn’t really care less what he was doing, regardless of all the people who think that she didn’t do enough to stop him so it isn’t rape. When our culture allows her to decide whether she was raped or not (not just allow her to *feel* raped while denying that she was), then we will be able to move beyond the rape culture.
In what other context would his exact behaviour not be a problem? If she doesn’t give in, it is still a problem. Just because one’s attempt at stealing wasn’t successful doesn’t mean that the attempt itself is not a problem.
And I would say that getting people to agree to sex by haranguing them is always bad. I’m surprised that you don’t think it is.
Many people here have made the suggestion that we need multiple lines, not that “we don’t draw lines at all” or that “every type of rape should be treated the same so it doesn’t really matter”.
Besides the change I made to the sledding scenario to parallel BB’s scenario, another change would have to be made to match this: “The boy moves on to pressure all of his girlfriends.”
So we’d have to add, “The 17-year-old boy moves on to pressure all his friends one-by-one to let him push them down that dangerous hill until nobody wants to be his friend.”
Do we see him the same way if all his true friends end up dead or injured?
We know the pattern isn’t likely to repeat because we recognize that harm was done when the first boy died, but as long as people deny the harm done by the boy/man in BB’s scenario the pattern can too often continue uninterrupted.
I am a rapist, by your definition.
There are many reasons that a person could decide to have sex with her/his partner. One reason would be a desire to have sex that is independent of her/his partner’s desire to have sex. But plenty of people give contingent consent to sex; that is, they consent because, although they don’t particularly desire sex with that partner at that moment, they desire to fulfill their partner’s wish for sex, and their desire to fulfill their partner’s wish is more important to them than their desire to avoid sex with that partner at that time.
Essentially, your definition defines rape based on the way that the amorous partner expresses her/his wish for sex. If I say to my date, “I want to be in a sexual relationship, and if you don’t want the same thing as me, I think we should see other people,” that’s just a nicer way of saying, “have sex with me or else I’ll leave you.” The partner in either case has a choice about how to respond to that ultimatum, and the fact that the consequence of saying no is the end of the relationship doesn’t make it any less a choice. It’s bizarre, then, to define that ultimatum as a crime based on the way it’s phrased.
If I wanted to move to Bolivia, and I told my boyfriend, “I’m moving to Bolivia, and if you don’t want to come with me, I think we should break up,” if he said yes, would we view that as kidnapping? If I wanted to be married, and I proposed to my boyfriend and said, “if you’re not ready to be married yet, I think we should break up,” and he said yes, would we view that as a forced marriage? No, we’d see both of those things as part of the give-and-take that happens in relationships.
In fact, people are encouraged by mental health professionals to express their wants and desires to their partners and to get out of relationships that are not meeting their needs. It is not illegitimate for someone to desire sex as part of a romantic relationship, to ask that their desire be fulfilled. I don’t think this is an issue of men using women’s bodies; I think it’s an issue of individuals deciding what they need from a relationship in order to feel content in it.
I think that we as a society need to make it more clear to women (and some men) that they have the right to say no to things they don’t want, and that they shouldn’t seek to prolong relationships with people whose desires are incompatible with their own. But I also think that it’s wrong to criminalize (or label as immoral) situations where one partner lays out for the other what s/he needs from the relationship in order to be happy and the other partner consents to make her/him happy.
Anna, in your scenarios (Bolivia & marriage) both parties have made independent decisions based partly on what the other person wants which is not at all the case in BB’s scenario. And in both of your cases both people have time to consider their decisions. One person is not keeping the other in total isolation until the deed is done.
Now if in BB’s scenario the boy stopped pursuing sex once she said no and let the girl take as much as she wanted there would be no rape. She would be taking action that he consented to.
More than teaching people that they have the right to say no (I said no repeatedly so that wasn’t the problem), we need to teach people that other people have the right to say no to them and that they have no legal right to ignore the other person’s wish not to have sex.
They should be taught that it doesn’t matter how much was spent on dinner or whether she acted in a way that made him think she’d do it with him or how long they’ve been dating or whatever excuse someone can come up with for taking sex that hasn’t been freely offered.
As long as we deny that BB’s scenario is rape we are saying he had the legal right to ignore what she wanted and what she was truly willing to do. Rather than calling it moral rape, we should call it legally-sanctioned rape. That boy can’t rape a stranger without risking jail time, but he can rape his girlfriend and be 99.9% secure that he’ll face no criminal charges.
All those who blame the girl in BB’s scenario, even partially, compound the trauma of that rape. That isn’t theory, it’s reality.
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I’m really disappointed at the way this thread has become a replica of the previous thread. I apologise that I haven’t had time to respond earlier to the unproductive comments.
Sailorman please don’t comment any more on this thread (or any other posts I write about rape). I have found your comments really disturbing throughout. If a rape survivor decides she doesn’t want to play lawyer with you that is her right.
Something about the nature of this discussion has really disturbed me. The scenario of BB does not explicitly say that she said anything that indicated that she consented . Many people have read it to read as if she did verbalise some form of consent. I find that really interesting (and disturbing) . I believe it’s consent whether or not she said ‘Oh go on then’, because there’s still coercion. But other people disagree. Many of those people also seem to have assumed that her verbal ‘no’ was later replaced with a verbal ‘yes’, despite lack of explicit evidence, to this.
The assumption that if non-consent wasn’t clear, then consent must be there is obviously very deeply engrained in our society.
Having read the comment and re-read the example I’m surprised people are defending this as ‘morally wrong, but not criminal’. Perhaps we can debate whether it is best to call what he did rape, statutory rape, or sex with a minor, but what he did was clearly wrong, clearly illegal and he should be put in jail.
On the broader question of Maia’s definition. I’ve one worry. I read her as saying “Lots of women have unwanted sex. This shouldn’t happen. So I define rape as unwanted sex in order to support women who have suffered this in the past and help prevent it happen in future”. I’m obviously sympathetic with her reasons, but there isn’t any thought in the justification for this about was rape is or should be. It’s just being used functionally as a rhetorical strategy. To draw an analogy, it reminds me of people who call copyright violation ‘theft’. In that situation I worry that copyright violation isn’t theft as most people understand it – and this is an attempt to mislead – and that there are real differences between copyright violation and theft which this deliberately blurs for no good reason. Unwanted sex is obviously bad, but can’t we deal with it by calling it unwanted sex, rather than rape?
The assumption that if non-consent wasn’t clear, then consent must be there is obviously very deeply engrained in our society.
So true. I’ve been thinking about this lately in regards to the Joe Francis GGW article, because the assumption was made by numerous people who witnessed Francis assault journalist Claire Hoffman that she was his girlfriend so it was all right. There was nothing to base that speculation on, but the GGW crew and other people saw legitimized consent to his abusive actions where there was no observable reason to draw that conclusion. The sources for where these “yesses” being put into women’s silent mouths come from are hidden right under our noses.
Samantha, you make a great point that what all of us can agree is absolutely unacceptable, criminal even — such as a man assaulting a woman — magically becomes acceptable to far too many people if she’s seen as his girlfriend. Then it becomes her duty to stop him or to scream, “He’s not my boyfriend!”
polymath – that doesn’t make any sense
(although I know theft analogies suck)
If I leave my bike in my front yard overnight in Eugene, OR (which is practically bike theft capitol of the world) and it gets stolen, I made a pretty stupid mistake – but that doesn’t mean who ever stole it isn’t a theif.
If I do something stupid (possibly illegal) and someone blackmails me for it, the fact that I did something stupid or illegal – or even that I gave into the blackmail – doesn’t make the blackmail any less illegal.
It sounds to me you are operating under the assumption that it’s the responsibility of the person granting consent to make it clear if consent is given. It’s not – it’s the responsibility of the person doing the asking to make sure that consent is clear stated and freely given. Unfortunately, the cultural narrative that consent = submission, and that sex is something that men want and women have, makes this obvious truth really hard for a lot of people to grasp.
I’m afraid I fall into the “not rape” camp.
When I was a teenager myself I let this exact situation happen to me because I didn’t know how to say no in a way that would be understood or listened to. Yes the guy was a selfish asshole and nothing excuses his actions. Yes it was horrible. And yes I had to deal with feeling pretty slimed afterwards. But it was me who actively decided to let myself go along with (what seemed at the time) to be the easier way, me who dealt with the emotional and pyschological repercussions and me who decided that I really didn’t like the way I felt and that I would not let myself be used that way again.
Eight years later I hitchhiked home for three hours because somebody pulled a “cock or walk” routine on me. That was also my decision.
Neither guy was a rapist. They were opportunists, they were assholes, they deserve nothing but scorn. But neither one of them forced me. I always had the power to say no, even if I was callow enough not to realize it.
Men have the whole weight of the patriarchy behind them, whether they want to use it or not. In the original post’s situation, the girl gave in because she was helpless against any anger the guy might have had–she couldn’t go anywhere else, and couldn’t resist him. The fact that he didn’t use force doesn’t mean that that possibility didn’t influence her decision.
There’s no middle ground of pressuring–either a woman isn’t being pressured at all, or she’s faced with all the possible negative consequences the moment any pressure is applied.
Found this recent article on the subject:
Attorney discusses differences between drunk sex and date rape
http://www.advancetitan.com/story.asp?issue=11314&story=5455
Was posted on Fark.com:
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2360709
I have only red till comment 28, now I want to write my opinion, even though this post is from 2006.
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The question how to define rape has troubled me the last months, not because I felt raped, but felt like guys took advantage of my state of mind.
I repeatedly have very low self-esteem and depressions. I often feel like nobody would like me for myself and that I always have to comply so people deal with me at all. This extends into my sex life. I can only do pleasure to my partners but have problems recieving it, cause I feel like I have to work or otherwise they will be unsatisfied.
The problem with my situation and the situation described in this blog post is that the answer of the question: “Is it rape?”, depends on the knowlege of the alleged rapist. Does he see in what bad position or state of mind the alleged victim is and is using the circumstances against the alleged viction or does he not? Nobody knows!
Let me repeat: Nobody knows!
If the girl would ask the boy: “I don’t want any more than kissing. I would only do more because I am afraid that you don’t love me anymore or throw me out in the night if I do not comply. You don’t want that, don’t you?” Than any more sex that would happen that night would render the boy a rapist.
So I came to the conclusion that if I do things I don’t want to do, just because I decided for the other and in advance that he would throw me out, or didn’t love me anymore, than It is my fault.
Of course there are situation, where its obvious that someone knows the situation of a victim and uses it against her, like a police man finding an illegal immigrant “you don’t want me to report you”, but the girl boy story isn’t such a situation.
Of course I think the boy must be self-centered or stupid or very limited in understanding whats going on in people minds. He might even not understand himself very well. That’s all very common.
A measure would be to make all people emphatical enough that they sense the inner conflicts in others, but that would not prevent such events with 100% probability, because people err.
The only thing that would have prevented this terrible event with a probability of 100% is to make all people self confident and self sufficient enough that they don’t do things they don’t wanna do. That is incredible important.