In response to the post Alas, a blog: Isn’t it Good We Have Men To Tell Us What To Do several commenters have argued that certain scenarios aren’t rape because the person who claims to be a rape victim had the power to get away from the person trying to use them. They go even further and say that those of us who disagree with them are robbing girls and women of their power.
This approach to understanding what is and isn’t rape feeds into dangerous myths about rape and can lead to boys and men taking the attitude of “if she doesn’t leave when I know she could have, what I do to get sex from her cannot be rape as long as I don’t use overt physical violence.”
The intent may be to empower girls and women to get out of bad situations but by combining the discussion about how to escape wih discussions of the definition of rape the result is to blame the victim who didn’t respond to exploitive behavior properly and to let the rapist off the hook.
The denial of an exploiter’s control that doesn’t involve overt physical violence actually disempowers victims in those types of situations by making the victims responsible for the actions of those who victimize them.
The patient who doesn’t realize how her doctor can use the dynamics of the doctor/patient relationship to facilitate rape is likely to wonder what was wrong with her that she didn’t run screaming into the street when something first felt off kilter.
The ignorant response is to decide that she had low self-esteem or other problems which led her to consent to actions she didn’t want. But the truth is that she never consented to those actions. The problem which leads to unwanted sex does not belong to the person who didn’t initiate sex. The problem belongs to the person attempting to get sex.
The key to breaking abusive control is to acknowledge it, not to deny it.
This type of control is why states such as Minnesota make it a crime for counselors or pastors to have sex during counseling sessions and why “it was consensual” is not a valid defense. This doesn’t treat those counseled like they are infants, but protects them from a very real and systemic danger. It reduces the danger and reduces the number of attempts to coerce sex out of patients.
That’s good for patients and it is good for ethical counselors. It is only bad for unethical counselors who want to get away with sexual exploitation.
The same abusively controlling patterns can exist in personal relationships and the key to breaking those patterns is to acknowledge them and not to blame the victim for being controlled.
When we go to the doctor we need to drop our defenses and our normal boundaries and we expect the doctor to uphold his or her sworn duty not to abuse patients.
Often when it comes to rape we expect women to drop their defenses (don’t view all men as potential rapists) and to keep their defenses on high alert (if you don’t react as if your life depends on it, you consented) and be fully responsible when it comes to sex.
No wonder so many rape victims feel crazy even when people aren’t calling us liars or delusional.
That leads to nonsense like this:
A study which reveals many sexually assaulted women may have had too much to drink rather than been drugged has sparked a debate over how much the victims themselves are to blame. […] And it is argued that these women are behaving irresponsibly and putting themselves at risk of being sexually assaulted or raped.
Again while the intentions might be good (wanting fewer rapes), the message that comes across is that rapists of intoxicated women are not to blame for their decision to rape and that men who are around women who drink don’t need to act responsibly.
It is the potential victims who are at fault if they are raped. This is flat out victim blaming and also ignores all of the rapes committed when the victims are not intoxicated. This shows apathy at best toward men’s treatment of women under the influence. The responsibility for rape does not belong to the men willing to exploit women as it should and the implication is that men who exploit drunk women are never rapists.
Abstaining from alcohol is no guarantee of safety from sexual assault as the polygamist Warren Jeffs case shows:
In court documents, prosecutors say the bride, identified as Jane Doe No. 4, objected to the marriage and later begged to be released. The Associated Press does not identify victims of sexual assault.
The ceremony at a Nevada motel in 2001 was “one of the most painful things I’ve ever been through. I just want to move on with my life and forget it happened,” the woman testified.
She said she refused to say “I do,” take her groom’s hand or kiss him. Finally, she relented, submitting to a “peck” and then locking herself in the bathroom. “I felt completely trapped and defeated,” she said.
If we truly want to empower women we must stop making them responsible for other people’s actions directed at them and we must stop blaming them when their exploiters succeed at reaching their goal.
The full responsibility for rape must always be put on the rapist whether he uses a knife or manipulation to control the person he wants sex from. To call a rapist who uses tools other than brute force anything but a rapist is to disregard the harm done to that person’s victim.
(crossposted at my blog, Abyss2hope)
Note: Comments are limited to feminists or those who can be respectful of feminists’ efforts to fight sexual exploitation. If you only want to excuse or minimize the behavior of those who harm others, make the person exploited responsible for their own exploitation, call those who label their experiences rape liars, or tell us that we should be focusing on more important issues, please do so elsewhere.
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Excellent post.
It is easy to blame the victim without realizing that you are blaming the victim. For example, saying, “Why didn’t you just leave? I would have,” is blaming the victim even though you are saying what you think you would have done. It is one thing to ask the question of someone willing to talk about and examine their experience with the intent of understanding what they saw their options to be. It is an entirely different thing if those conditions aren’t met.
This approach to understanding what is and isn’t rape feeds into dangerous myths about rape and can lead to boys and men taking the attitude of “if she doesn’t leave when I know she could have, what I do to get sex from her cannot be rape as long as I don’t use overt physical violence.”
This is a key point. The victim isn’t a mind reader and can only go by how she interprets the situation. The fact that so many people don’t understand this is baffling to me. I have no idea how to communicate it and that frustrates the hell out of me.
um, yay to the post and yeah to what Jake added as well. part of the “why didn’t you” style of auto-blame is built into our hope/insistance on the possibility that we can avoid such a fate ourselves, perhaps through some higher preparation or awareness. sadly, no . . .
Abyss,
YES! YES! YES! The simplistic argument of seemingly equal agency of action that commenters put forward in Maia’s post flies in the face of contextual and structural issues. The Warren Jeffries case is a perfect example, of course the young girl “could” have gotten up and “left” the room but what about what happens later? What about being shunned or ridiculed by friends and family? What about deciding to leave the room means leaving everything you know as a way of life?
You know what, I don’t care if Sailorman or his ilk want to call it rape… A rape by any other name still leaves a person with the feeling of being violated.
What’s so difficult about listening to rape victims instead of rapists? Thats’ what it comes down to. Second-guessing them with blame bullshit doesn’t do them any good at all, but it does make the second-guesser feel all empowered and shit. The whole tactic of, “But why didn’t you?” is designed to point out the questioner’s superiority without saying, “I’m superior.” Instead, they ask, “But why didn’t you do this blindingly obvious thing which I can see with my perfect hindsight ability?”
I’m male, in my early forties. More than twenty years ago, when I was at university, the rape preventation group on campus ran a number of campaigns to increase awareness of date rape, with the basic message that “No means no” (there was more to it, of course, including the notion that a forced “yes” is a “no”). I fully accept that the only valid consent is that which is freely given.
What’s troubling me is the idea that the consent I think is freely given may not be. If my partner agrees to sex every so often, only because she’s worried I’ll leave the relationship if I don’t get some now and then, have I raped her? Does it matter whether I know that’s why she’s consenting? If I’ve never said or done anything to suggest I would leave? Many of the posts on these threads lead me to believe that, if I’ve ever had sex under those conditions, I’d be a rapist in the eyes of many of the folks here.
As I said, I’m in my forties, and a stable, committed relationship, and am confident we can work through our own issues of consent without intervention from the blogosphere. I’m more concerned about my children (one male, one female). How can I prepare them to safely navigate the more subtle issues around consent?
M., may I suggest that you should be using (and may in fact already be using) “enthusiastic participation” as your standard – that is, don’t have sex with your wife (or anyone else) unless they’re actively and enthusiastically participating in the sex?
If you only have sex with someone who is enthusiastically participating in sex with you, you’re pretty much guaranteed to avoid being a rapist, by anyone’s standards. (I’m ignoring statutory rape, but obviously that’s not a concern in your circumstances).
Well, I’d say if you can’t bring that up with her then your relationship isn’t as stable as you think it is.
I have argued in the past that people who have had bad things happen to them should have adopted various risk minimization/avoidance behaviors, and might have avoided what happened to them if they had.
However, failure to adopt such behaviors does not absolve the thief/rapist/etc. from their primary responsibility for what happened, or mitigate what consequences they should suffer. I parked my car on the street near then-Comiskey Park in Chicago to see the White Sox play one time instead of a patrolled parking lot. A thief smashed in a window and stole my speakers. Should I have parked in the lot? Sure, and my wife had a few words for me when I got home. But was I responsible for my speakers getting stolen? No, the thief was.
I’ve run into this with kids. A Scout found a flashlight on a trail. It worked fine and probably had not been there long. Both he and his father had a hard time when I told the kid “Turn it in to lost and found.” The idea was that if someone had been so foolish as to lose their flashlight, they deserved to not get it back and the kid deserved to keep it. I can just barely understand an 11-year old kid’s attitude, but when the adult took the viewpoint that the person who dropped the flashlight deserved to lose it permanently because of their neglect, I was just dumbfounded. What will that kid think when he hears of someone that gets raped or mugged when walking through a bad neighborhood? That they deserved to do so because they walked through the neighborhood?
Strangly, people seem to have far less problems identifying a crime when it is about money. No matter if someone was conned, robbed or stolen from: While we may hear “they gave the money to that Nigerian scammer, of their own free will”, or “if they weren’t drunk, they wouldn’t have been robbed at gunpoint” or “they were wearing their wallet in their rucksack, they asked for it”, those arguments won’t somehow make the con man, the robber or the thief innocent of any crime. Although I have heard people lament that getting warned of scammers and thieves is “disempowering”. However, much of those either profited indirectly and legally from the crimes, or had read too much propaganda.
Also, these “could have walked away” argument does not take into account human nature and the effects of socialization. Between “it’s OK” and “get away by any means possible” is the vast realm of “WTF?” where one feels that something is wrong but is not sure if one “gets” the situation correctly, or what the appropiate protocol is. (Even Milgram writes that these reactions played into the results of his experiments.)
M.
If you didn’t leverage her fear or weakness in some way you wouldn’t be a rapist.
Where the perception disconnect happens is when the person asking thinks “I’m just asking” when using blackmail, physical contact, physical positioning (blocking the person from leaving, for example), incapacitation or other methods to get sex. The “I’m just asking” is used to minimize and rationalize something far more complex and involved.
To show a key difference, I’ll take your example of someone agreeing to sex because of worry of being left. Someone with a rapist mentality exploits that as a lever to get sex and then dismisses the power of that lever. Someone without a rapist mentality would reassure the other person and not see the partner’s fear as a useful tool to get the other person to do as they wish.
The much-abused concept of consent is actually well analyzed in the legal & philosophical literatures. Rape is hardly the only or even relevant kind of sexual imposition. M. might want to reflect on the ways other than rape that a sexual relationship can go wrong. See, e.g.:
Scott A Anderson, “Sex Unde Pressure: Jerks, Boorish Behavior, & Gender Hierarchy,” Res Publica, vol. 11, no. 4 (Dec. 2005): 349-369.
Sarah Conly, “Seduction, Rape, & Coercion,” Ethics, vol. 114 (Oct. 2004): 96-121.
She writes:
“{p. 107} For an offer to be coercive, … it must do more than constrain the options of the chooser. It must do this illegitimately. …{p. 108} Can a person legitimately threaten to break off w/ someone if she refuses to have sex … Can he legitimately do this knowing that her pain at his prospective departure will be the determining factor in her decision to have sex w/ him?
“Clearly, … one person may break up w/ another. Clearly, … one may threaten the other person in a relationship w/ a break-up if things don’t improve. Can the specific area of improvement be sexual? It is not that a romantic partner has a duty … to provide sex … At the same time, the absence of this duty in a romantic relationship is a function of the fact that such relationships are open ended. Just as being in a relationship does not, per se, give one any duties, … one can, w/o stepping out of bounds, make the relationship dependent on various conditions that suit one’s own needs. Often the things [that] are asked are those we are so familiar w/ we may think of them as simply constitutive of there being a relationship, but they may in fact be conditions set by one partner for another. Person A may say she wants person B to communicate more if they are to stay together. Person B may insist that Person A remain faithful & that, w/o this condition being met, person B will leave. We don’t look upon these demands as being coercive, but rather as the sorts of conditions most people set on relationships, as a legitimate attempt to craft the relationship they want, even if that requires finding a different t partner. This may be manipulative, in that the intent is to make someone {p. 109} do something she wouldn’t otherwise do, but it seems manipulative in a way [that] we accept in dealing with others, where introducing a system of rewards & sanctions to get others to do what you want, in this less than ideal world, is sometimes necessary & often goes by the name of compromise. … It would be much nicer if we didn’t pressure one another to change behaviors, as it would be nicer if we never even wanted the other to change. In the real world, though, this happens, & we recognize that this sort of trade-off is an unfortunate need when people of different desires try to stay together. Relationships are founded on odd precepts, & if one of the partners is unilaterally responsible for making the continuance of the relationship conditional on the relationship including some particular activity, that is in itself legitimate.
“… [I]n relationships, one has obligations as well as rights. You owe more … to your partner than to a stranger [or] a friend … Does this mean that, in a romance, there is, as well as the right to ask for sex, an obligation not to break up if this causes the other really great pain?* It is not true generally that the threat of great pain is ipso facto coercive in the illegitimate sense … The interesting question is whether in personal relationships … there are restraints on the harm you can threaten another with. Should this be the case, then it might be that, whereas you could threaten one person w/ a break-up if she refuses to have sex, you could not legitimately threaten a more vulnerable person who would be devastated by this, & if you did & if she have sex w/ you on that account, it would be rape.
“This seems unlikely. We all have an obligation to … avoid fortuitously harming our romantic partners. However, a break-up over sex is not likely to be a trivial matter; if it were, one wouldn’t be threatening a break-up over it. Imagine [that] your partner is an alcoholic, & his alcoholism is making you miserable. You have tried to help him, but nothing has succeeded. Can you leave, knowing that your departure may make him miserable …? I think so. You probably, as a partner, have an obligation to try to help in certain ways …{p. 110} But you don’t have an obligation to stay in a relationship, as a romantic partner, when that is not working for you. … [Y]our obligation is not so great as to cause you to give up on a satisfactory romantic life. … Thus, too, in the case of sex: you can make the demand that, for the relationship to continue it needs to be a sexual one, & if the partner refuses this condition, you have the right to leave.
“Are such conditions always legitimate? No. … [T]here are limits to what you may demand & limits to what sanctions you may threaten if even your legitimate demands are not met. Demands placed w/in a relationship should have reasonable bearing on the health of the relationship, & should not be inherently immoral, & sanctions offer for failure to meet even reasonable demands are limited. I am assuming, however, that engaging in sex, all things being equal, is not immoral & has a reasonable bearing on the relationship, & thus that meeting its absence w/ discontinuing the relationship is … a justified response.
“So, it does seem w/in a person’s rights to want sex to be a part of a romantic relationship & also w/in that person’s rights to tell the partner that, if there is no sex, he will decamp. This does amount to a demand, indeed a threat, insofar as the fear of losing the relationship is an incentive to have sex & the one intends this fear to motivate the other to have sex, just as the wife who says she’ll divorce if her husband is unfaithful again intends to motivate him to change his ways. When you enter a relationship, however, you lay yourself open to the possibility of being hurt in various ways. One is that the other person may tell you you’ll be dumped if you don’t change, & that may place you in a painful dilemma, that is, doing something you don’t want to do or losing the relationship. This can be true if you are asked to be faithful, & it can be true if you are asked to have sex. Just as one person has the right to ask, the other one has the right to decide not to do any of the things she is asked. But no one has the right to insist that a relationship cause no pain, & no one can claim to have been coerced just because the prospect of pain changes behavior.”
Conly adopts a moralized concept of coercion, in which things that otherwise would be deemed coercive aren’t, because they’re morally okay. (Thus, she’d say that morally justified sanctions for murder aren’t coercive.) This doesn’t change the substance of her analysis, since it’d be a minor matter to rephrase her conclusions to reflect an unmoralized use of the term.
>Strangly, people seem to have far less problems identifying a crime when it is about money.
It tells you a good deal about not just our beliefs about sex and gender and power, but about money.
KH quotes Conly: “But no one has the right to insist that a relationship cause no pain, & no one can claim to have been coerced just because the prospect of pain changes behavior.”
The key to making this statement true is a strong emphasis on JUST. The prospect of pain can absolutely be used as a tool in coercion and frequently is used that way.
This is an over-generalization based on assumptions about the character of the person making the threat and the motives for making the threat. Threats can be trivial to the person making the threat because they are not about having a relationship that is mutual in any way, but are attempts to overwhelm the other person’s will.
In coercion, pain is a given to the person being threatened no matter how they respond to the threat. Get hurt if you give in to the threat. Get hurt if you refuse to give in.
Those who use threats to coerce often use a bait and switch approach. When luring someone into a relationship they may agree that sex isn’t required or will never be demanded if the other person isn’t eager, but once the other person has made an emotional commitment, suddenly the rules change. Sex becomes a deal breaker and must be given immediately.
There is a huge difference between someone sitting down in a neutral location to discuss personal needs and wants with another person in order to express personal deal breakers and someone who blocks the door while announcing the same deal breakers.
Any analysis of coercion that ignores this difference is deeply flawed.
Unfortunately coercsion is really hard to define since it has the component of obvious, person a, person b in it meaning that what may not be obviously coercsion, may not be from person a’s perspective however does seem so from person b’s. Its unfortunately a really hard thing to judge in any case where you weren’t present at the event in both people’s heads.
Unfortunately I don’t have a solution to this, however in a criminal court I would tend to side on the side of reasonable doubt unless we had the obvious box ticked or it was clear that the receiver of the event could not reasonably defend against the event (clean your room or I won’t drive you to x, is a coercsion however it has an obvious out making it hardly criminal and more social , clean your room or I will kill you (with the capability to back it up) is a criminal coercsion)
Note: I think I spelt coercsion wrong each time, sorry for the errors.
“however in a criminal court I would tend to side on the side of reasonable doubt ”
Inasmuch as we are not against the idea of reasonable doubt, this would be one of the reasons why many of us think the idea of only using the word “rape” to mean “a rape that could lead to a conviction” is more than ridiculous.
My view on sex is that it is immoral (harmul) any time it occurs outside of a relationship. Permanent relationships are essential for survival, and regular touch is an indispensible component of emotional bonding. Frittering sexual contact away on casual relationships is wrong regardless of consent, so the men who may or may not have coerced, guilted or tricked their partners into sex are guilty of misconduct no matter what they’ve done, in my view.
On the other hand, withholding intimate touches within a relationship is also wrong. M is not wrong to require sex from his wife to be happy in his relationship with her, even if she is not always in the mood. If not sex then certainly regular loving touches are necessary. I cannot imagine expecting M to remain loyal to a relationship where such contact was absent, so in my view he has a right to her touch, a right she should be encouraged to honor if she wishes to keep him. The reverse of course is also true.
Chris:
You don’t need to get into both people’s heads the way you seem to be implying. This promotes the idea that rape can never be proven beyond a reasonable doubt if there were no witnesses to the rape and maybe not even if their were witnesses.
If the alleged rapist is saying the sex was consensual, what people need to look at are 1) the actions (including words spoken) taken by the alleged rapist, and how that person responded to the alleged victim’s actions, that relate to whether true consent was given or could have been given 2) evidence of power imbalance (including physical strength or isolation).
When the evidence of consent is “she smiled at me” a jury and others should understand enough to know that smiling is not consent to sex. Neither is “she let me inside her house after our date” or “she’ll sleep with anybody” or “she didn’t leave when she could have.”
In fact all of those should be red flags that add to the alleged victim’s credibility.
Someone who asks for sex and then who says, “I don’t want to rape you” cannot get true consent during that interaction because of the threat implicit in that statement. Same goes for asking for consent when the other person is pinned or physically restrained.
On alcohol use, a key question is why the person wanting sex didn’t ask when the other person was sober or less intoxicated. There can be evidence that alcohol was used as a tool in committing rape. If the person accused of rape can’t tell whether the alleged victim was too drunk to consent, that person had a duty to assume consent could not be given. A person who is drunk into incoherence cannot consent through body language or moans.
If an alleged rapist was given the duty to see a drunk woman home or comes upon a drunk woman with no one else around, consent is out of the question.
Behavior, beyond holding a knife or a gun or threatening to murder someone, can reveal rapists and other sex criminals. Often the rapist’s rationalizations (directly or through a defense team) can give that person away as a rapist.
You don’t need to get into both people’s heads the way you seem to be implying. This promotes the idea that rape can never be proven beyond a reasonable doubt if there were no witnesses to the rape and maybe not even if their were witnesses.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to prove rape or we wouldn’t be having this discussion. A rapist is likely to give a distorted version of events. That sex occurred can be established forensically, but evidence of sex is not evidence of rape. Not every victim says no. Not every victim resists or receives defensive wounds. As I understand it, some rapes have been entirely videotaped, then scrutinized for hours by juries without proving lack of consent.
Is a lesser charge such as ‘sexual mischief’ a reasonable compromise? Without esablishing that a rape occurred, the charge would mark the defendant as a risk for misconduct, and mark the victim as a whistleblower. If the rape was a result of ignorance and immaturity rather than genuine intent to harm, it might never be repeated. If the rapist is a sexual predator, he’s unlike to know when to stop, and it would be useful in making future rape accusations stick.
Is CJ’s post a joke? If so, that’s about the sickest joke I’ve ever seen.
I don’t know what you mean by that! Haven’t you ever been spontaneously caressed by a lover? Hasn’t an unexpected hug ever made your day? Ever held onto an angry, troubled child and held them close to you until they calmed down? These can be viewed as ‘violating our boundaries’ but touching keeps us sane, Bean. It makes us real to each other, we feel each other’s happiness more and we feel each other’s pain more!
I’ve never gotten angry on Alas before. Christ. In a culture that celebrates sex between strangers, encouraging loving touches between husband and wife is sick??? If that isn’t the most ass backwards thing I’ve ever heard… Bean, if you have kids, I’d just like to remind you that they can’t legally give consent to be hugged. Just a warning.
CJ, your statement about a husband having a right to sex could be seen as giving men the right to force sex on their wives and not giving wives the right to say no. You may have meant to encourage loving (and mutual) touches between husband and wife, but that isn’t what you said originally.
CJ:
The difficulty isn’t because actions can’t be proven in a court of law but because many people, including cops, prosecutors, judges and juries, hold onto dangerous rape myths to the point where they ignore or refuse to believe the evidence. Many other crimes don’t have witnesses but we would never say they shouldn’t be prosecuted.
Being coerced or forced into sex without the use of a weapon or fear of death is not ’sexual mischief’ and labeling any type of rape that way increases the danger to potential victims and masks the trauma of rape.
Funny, CJ was all about marriage being about loyalty and fidelity on the teen mother thread, and now is ready to give the green light for a husband to go outside the marriage for sex if his wife isn’t in the mood.
CJ, here’s the problem:
The jury shouldn’t be looking for proof of “lack of consent”. They should understand that the reason they are hearing a rape case is because there wasn’t consent. A crime occurred. What they are deciding is whether the accused is the guilty party. Yes, there were two rape trials this year involving videotape (digital? maybe) recordings of the crime. When a woman is unresponsive to cigarette burns, the idea of looking for “lack of consent” is ludicrous. A rational person understands that even a smiling statement of “I consent freely” is meaningless when someone is being tortured. And yet, oddly, when the torture is sexual, people get this wrong.
CJ:
That looking for proof of lack of consent has it backwards, the jury should look for proof of consent instead. Without consent being given by the alleged victim, it’s rape.
CJ, your statement about a husband having a right to sex could be seen as giving men the right to force sex on their wives and not giving wives the right to say no.
It could be looked at that way I suppose. I’m sorry Bean. I did say ‘if not sex, then certainly regular loving touches are necessary.’ My honey might not always tell me what’s on her mind but if her touch is tense or withdrawn I can tell when she’s upset at once, and there is no way I can be confused about whether she’s willing to have sex.
Lubu: Funny, CJ was all about marriage being about loyalty and fidelity on the teen mother thread, and now is ready to give the green light for a husband to go outside the marriage for sex if his wife isn’t in the mood.
I said nothing of the kind, and I believe in monogamy completely, thank you. I said touching forms very strong emotional bonds. When you consider where and how we want these bonds to be formed and where and how we don’t want them to be formed, the relationships where touching must be encouraged and the relationships where touching must be forbidden are as clear as day.
Kaethe: The jury shouldn’t be looking for proof of “lack of consent”. They should understand that the reason they are hearing a rape case is because there wasn’t consent.
She says. If he says differently, and the material evidence is inconclusive, what can a judge do? I can’t find solace in a justice system that can put someone in prison on the strength of one person’s word, so matter how much I believe he did it. I suggested a stepped penalty so we CAN address it in Law somehow, even if proof doesn’t exist.
For example, a judge can rule that an accusation of rape, even without proof, is sufficient for forbidding sexual contact between the accuser and the accused, for I don’t know, a year, for life, whatever seems appropriate. Or, banned from sex with anyone for whatever period of time. Any sex in that time frame will be illegal. The specifics would vary with the seriousness of the alleged rape. A second accusation by another accuser, or circumstances that are aggravating, like obvious injuries or use of a weapon, would apply harsher penalties that increase with each offense, until the cumulative effect destroys his ability to commit the crime.
Only if rape cannot be proven. If it can, he’ll rot of course.
A rational person understands that even a smiling statement of “I consent freely” is meaningless when someone is being tortured. And yet, oddly, when the torture is sexual, people get this wrong.
What can I say to that? Welcome to the Golden Age of sexual liberation. A sadist can record a violent rape and torture, label it a BDSM fantasy, and our Justice System can spend ten years and ten million dollars trying to decide whether a crime was committed. That’s our enlightenment.
Abyss2hope: That looking for proof of lack of consent has it backwards, the jury should look for proof of consent instead. Without consent being given by the alleged victim, it’s rape.
What tangible proof of consent could be brought forth that could not, itself have been coerced? Kaethe spoke of a “smiling admission of consent” on digital as suspect.
My view: traditional lifestyle had something. Sex outside of marriage was wrong, consent was irrelevant. Monogamous relationships. Sex within marriage can be rape of course, but if you cannot prove rape, you can end the marriage. Then any further sexual contact would automatically be illegal, and add evidence to the charge, possibly enough to make it stick.
This, to me, gives the crime of rape the minimum fuel to flourish.
Bean, I get your drift. Creepy adults pawing children as if it were their right is… a trifle unsettling. But I was referring only to regular contact between the closest of family: parent and child, husband and wife, or steady lovers. Touch lets me know how she feels, and I always know if it’s appreciated. If a small touch, like a hand hold or hug is rejected it lets me know something’s wrong before I blunder ahead into something really intrusive.
Regarding the ‘even if she’s not in the mood’ part: I see how that looks, but if Maddox needs a hug are you able to give her one anytime, or do you have to be in the mood? Pay attention to your mate’s needs. That’s all I’m saying.
CJ, if you’re on the jury for a robbery case, and the accused’s defense is, “she said I could take it”, would you throw up your hands in despair and say “well, there’s no proof she didn’t say that?” For what other crime would you find it a tossup whether in fact a crime was committed?
The jury has reasonable doubt. Innocent people have been convicted on eyewitness testimony of every crime imaginable. I understand that. DNA or other physical evidence is not always available. I understand that. The police might very well have the wrong person up on a felony charge, say Grand Theft Auto. But if the only witness to the crime says her brother pushed her to the ground before driving off in her car, are you still going to debate whether it was really stealing?
This is weird. It suggests that after a criminal report is filed a rape victim might very well voluntarily have a sexual relationship with a rapist. Or is this intended as some sort of sexual restraining order? And while I’m questioning, why would the use of an (unproven) weapon make the penalty harsher than just the (unproven) rape?
You seem to be unclear about how this works. If a criminal complaint of rape is filed by the victim (a minor in both of this year’s cases) then the police investigates. They find a tape, and now they have one more piece of evidence. Without knowing what you’re directly alluding to in your reference, it would seem to be the case that no one involved in the making of the film alleged any actual rape or torture.
CJ, you misunderstood me. My “smiling admission of consent” was pure hyperbole. Because the two tapes mentioned both contained TORTURE. There was no possibility of consent, the victims were UNCONSCIOUS. Abyss2hope and I are saying the same thing, the crime has taken place. The jury is not charged to find some possibility of consent that will let the accused off, the jury is charged with deciding whether the accused is the one who did the crime.
I think what you mean to say there is that the IDEAL of a traditional lifestyle had something. Since the reality of traditional marriage has never been all that pretty. Prostitution flourishes when women are denied employment rights, STDs have killed many a faithful wife and child, rape appears to be much higher when the worst punishment a rapist faces is being required to marry his victim, and since in traditional societies women are denied the option of ending a marriage, let alone child custody, physical abuse and rape have to be weighed against starving and losing one’s children forever.
If you think a traditional lifestyle was any kind of help to women you should spend more time reading history, not to mention some of the blogroll.
CJ, I understand what you’re trying to say, I think. My mother was married in ’51, and once she comented to me on the topic of marital rape “It would never have occurred to me to deny your father.” Upon reflection she added, “It would never have occurred to him to force me.”
A mutually loving relationship is a wonderful thing. It’s the mutual that makes it. It’s no good having a loving wife and a rapist. “Not tonight, dear, I have a headache” is not to be construed as a crime for which marital rape is the just punishment.
Kaethe: CJ, if you’re on the jury for a robbery case, and the accused’s defense is, “she said I could take it”, would you throw up your hands in despair and say “well, there’s no proof she didn’t say that?” For what other crime would you find it a tossup whether in fact a crime was committed?
She’s saying she wants the object back now, so that’s all I need to know. If he has the item and can’t produce a written agreement to transfer ownership, I’d make him give back the object. If he doesn’t have the object and she can’t prove he ever had it, beyond her word that he took it, I can’t see how I can find him guilty.
If you think a traditional lifestyle was any kind of help to women you should spend more time reading history.
I was referring only to the tradition of sex being exclusive to marriage, not any other particular of the olden days.
This is weird. It suggests that after a criminal report is filed a rape victim might very well voluntarily have a sexual relationship with a rapist. Or is this intended as some sort of sexual restraining order? And while I’m questioning, why would the use of an (unproven) weapon make the penalty harsher than just the (unproven) rape?
It was just a thought, not a graduate thesis. I was referring to date rape though. And women have continued to have sex with men who have raped them, in their case having put the event on the same plane as borrowing the car without asking. Not every incident of rape is a life-altering event. I’m not excusing any rape, of course. I mentioned the weapon because it’s objective, it can be identified, it can be linked to the accused, and it puts the crime on a different level.
I thought if you want to allow the free collision of drunk unsupervised teens to keep occurring AND pin a tail on rapes when they happen, it might be a way.
“I was referring only to the tradition of sex being exclusive to marriage, not any other particular of the olden days.”
Since many people call prostitution “the oldest profession” I’m not quite sure which fairy-tale you’re getting this “tradition” from.
If you think sex only belongs inside marriage, whatever. But it get’s really annoying when you pretend that was the norm throughout history. Especially when you use your beliefs about what is moral to justify ignoring much of what was the norm throughout history.
Considering what actually Kaethe said, that sentence kind of like saying, “yes, I understand that child labor used to exist, I wasn’t talking about that, I was talking about all these new protections for teen criminals simply because they aren’t legally adults yet.” As if one change wasn’t connected to the other.
As if women being legally considered property throughout much of history wasn’t connected at all to actual sexual behaviour or the morals that were preached.
CJ:
A large part of this seeming lack of trauma is the denial of rape by the rapist and by society at large. The trauma is there but according to many it is self-manufactured. So the rape victim can start questioning the reality of what she experienced even before she’s gotten over the shock of being raped by someone she cared about or loved. In my case I got raped a second time before I realized the first time was no misunderstanding or accident.
Make no mistake that first rape was life altering and traumatic. My rapist did a nice number and put the responsibility for raping me on me. It was also his way of showing me how much he loved me.
Yet people say it is nothing more serious than borrowing a friend’s car to run an errand. Bull.
I lived in a traumatic fog for weeks. Just because my family and others didn’t see it didn’t mean the trauma wasn’t there. That numbness and internal chaos gets labeled as lack of trauma is the problem of the observer, not the rape victim.
And because people don’t see trauma, they say it couldn’t have been a real rape that should be punished the same as rapes committed by strangers. Because it can take time before the fog lifts, reporting rape even a day after the rape is assumed to be a lie by many people who don’t have a clue what they are talking about or the harm their assumptions cause real victims.
Yes, but why are you saying that? It’s completely off-topic and really irritating. It’s like someone coming into a thread about how important it is to get regular exercise and saying, “But, but, people have to sit down sometimes, right? We can’t always be exercising all the time, right? It’s not possible! It’s dangerous!” No one was arguing that physical contact is a bad thing, or that it is not common to intimate relationships. The other commenters in this thread aren’t a bunch of feminist stylite hermits. They’re anti-rape activists, and the topic of the thread is rape.
And women have continued to have sex with men who have raped them, in their case having put the event on the same plane as borrowing the car without asking. Not every incident of rape is a life-altering even.
Oh good lord. I missed that in the first read-through. Thanks for pointing it out abyss2hope.
CJ, if not reporting rape and even continuing a relationship with the rapists was proof that the person being raped “put the event on the same plane as borrowing the car without asking” then we would probably be able to dump the vast majority of rape victim’s into that pile.
The real shitty thing about rape, and sexual assault in general, is that it tends to be done by people we know – often people we love.
I bring up what my brother did quite often not because I think it was anywhere near on the same level as what many women here have gone through, but because it’s such a fine example of this very thing.
Honestly, WTF was I supposed to do? I don’t know about your family, but one does not rat out one’s siblings in mine. At least not for the big stuff. (Unless, like the time my older brother broke the front door window, there’s unhideable evidence).
People generally don’t want to get friends and loved ones in trouble, even when it’s us they are hurting. It’s not always easy to see at the time that this is one of the things we need the end the friendship/relationship over. And even if we do, doing so often means losing our entire support base, either because they’ve seperated us from our friends and families, or because they are well loved by them as well.
And then there’s the shame. As abyss2hope points out, victims of rape are often made to feel like it’s their fault by the rapists. When the rapists don’t do so, society often does the job for them.
Even at 13 I knew that there were certain things I wasn’t supposed to do not just because boys couldn’t be trusted but also because good girls didn’t do those things. I don’t just mean not going to play in the park alone because a bunch of teen boys had attacked elementary girls recently, but also because of stuff like my Mom suddenly making a fuss over not only what I wore, but how I wore it. One memorable evening we spent the night passively/aggresively fighting over whether the strap of my oversized swimsuit coverup/tank top would be allowed to fall off my shoulder. This is the person I was supposed to feel most comfortable going to about my little brother hiding in my room in order to watch me undress. Is it no wonder that for quite a while I choose instead to make it a habit to check under my bed and in my closet every time I went to change clothes?
I have nothing to add, except that the past several comments have been quite good.
Piny: Yes, but why are you saying that? It’s completely off-topic and really irritating.
Well, I made an observation after M’s post that it’s good to encourage regular sex and touching between lovers and I was accused of promoting rape.
Abyss, I agree that rapes are traumatic, life-altering events. As someone who knows, I get it. I have boundaries of my own to protect, it so happens. It just appears to me that some events are being called rapes that ought not to be. I’m not disagreeing with you here, I’m trying to understand.
Clarify for me please: two lovers are having consensual sex, and she stops being in the mood at 8:30, but he’s still in the mood and they keep going until 9:00. Is this a rape? The read I’m getting here is: Yes, always and absolutely, it’s rape.
But I’ve been on the other side. I’ve been the one who wanted to stop first, and when I was younger the sex always ended when I wanted. There was no danger of being called a rapist when you’re the first one to quit, but I can’t say it did our relationship any good. Since then, I’ve developed the ability to adjust my moods to her moods and consider her needs before my own, and even if it is sometimes a chore, it has been a big success overall. Why am I a monster if I want the same from her?
If she said to stop and he didn’t, then yes, it is rape. If she isn’t in the mood but waits patiently until he is done, or even if she isn’t so patient, and she lets him continue until he successfully uses her body to reach orgasm, then I wouldn’t call it rape, but I would call him an asshole.
I wouldn’t necessarily even call him an asshole, depending on how the situation unfolds.
I think it’s possible for partners to have sex in absence of sexual arousal, and that such sex results in a few benefits, if not sexual pleasure for one partner:
1) One partner gets a release.
2) Both partners get to be physically close.
But this can still meet the enthusiastic participation standard. If it’s not enthusiastic physical participation of the hump/writhe variety, but instead is enthusiastic emotional or intellectual participation of the “come here honey, I love you” variety, then I think that’s okay.
So, not speaking for anyone else, but for me this boils down to:
*if one partner isn’t particularly aroused, they must be the one who has control over the situation (can realistically say no or stop at any time)
*the less aroused partner is participating enthusiastically, even if it’s not in a physical way
*the less aroused partner can stop at any time (I thought this was important enough to mention twice)
The power dynamic in this situation will, of course, vary based on what the power dynamic is in teh relationship in general. If relationships are abusive or largely inequable, it may be impossible for the less aroused partner to be in control or to be able to stop when he/she wishes to.
But I think this sort of mutual understanding is possible.
And I suspect it’s for want of it being acknowledged as “not rape” that CJ is hanging around, poking at our definitions, and beating the “loving touches” dead horse.
If either partner is using the other partner’s body for “release” than that person is an asshole. Sorry. But then maybe it’s a straight thing. Shit, from a lesbian perspective all I can picture in CJ’s scenario is me dry humping my GF’s thigh until I come. And that, without any doubt, would make me an asshole.
hijack on sexual compromise:
Shit, from a lesbian perspective all I can picture in CJ’s scenario is me dry humping my GF’s thigh until I come. And that, without any doubt, would make me an asshole.
really? I don’t think that would necessarily make you an asshole at all, even speaking from the point of view of the GF.
Not that I’m trying to speak for her, but speaking as someone whose leg has been humped many a time.
During the period in my life when I had a female partner, on those days when I had to get up and go to work in the morning and was too tired to participate, and my partner did not have to go to work in the morning and was all revved up with no place to go, we saw the humping-the-leg-type activity as a great compromise. Seriously – in our world that was a very workable solution.
Personally, I never felt like my partner was being an asshole for wanting sex, or for wanting sex with me, or for wanting sex with me when I was too tired.
I’d have looked less favorably on other solutions – i.e. nagging, pushing, aggressively demanding, etc.
I guess I’m saying that sexual arousal and sexual pinnacle are not the only forms of voluntary or even enthusiastic participation in sex.
If I’m not interested in sex as such, but I am interested in cuddling / my partner’s pleasure, why does that make my partner an asshole?
I’d change your analogy to lesbianism around a bit — is one’s partner an asshole if the less aroused partner is licking / touching / vibrating her to orgasm at a time when the less aroused partner isn’t interested in getting off?
And if there’s not a problem with that activity, why is it different when the less aroused partner is offering P-I-V rather than a hand job?
Is it because we construct women as passive participants in P-I-V sex? Thus if they give a hand job to a male or female partner, that’s not constructed as the other person “using their hand” – but if they engage in P-I-V sex, that is constructed as “using their body?”
Well, look at how you wrote this: “they keep going”. As presented, that would not be rape. As written, the female is an active participant.
But I’ve no idea where you’re getting this “always and absolutely”. There are more than a few voices raised to say “no way” and others that are saying “only if she says it was”
I agree that “enthusiastic participation” doesn’t necessarily connote “horny as hell and up for anything” — if some part of me is thinking “let’s be done with this so I can get some sleep” but I am giving it my best shot anyway because house guests are about to descend on us and we won’t have another chance for a week, I want my husband to have a good time and not try to read my mind. (I might even talk myself into a more enthusiastic frame of mind as time goes on.)
If I can jump back up to the beginning again…
To some extent, I think there’s a false dichotomy here. I think too many women are conditioned to be complaisant and to believe (maybe without ever thinking about it) that saying no is “not nice.” We are all taught socially acceptable ways of letting the other person down easy, of saying “sorry, I can’t today” instead of “I really don’t have time for you.” If she’s trying to be nice and he’s making a power play, we know who’s going to get what he wants. Saying that a woman has the absolute right to say no in whatever terms are necessary to make him understand is in no way the same as saying that rape by bamboozlement or emotional blackmail is somehow not really rape.
To extend Inge’s money analogy a bit, I can read up and learn about all the tricks con artists use (I can’t imagine how this could be viewed as disempowerment — I think it’s the opposite), but if I still get taken, the con artist is still a thief, no matter what suspicions of his motives I might have had or should have had.
Lu:
The problem is that 99.9% of the time the boy or man involved does understand she doesn’t want to have sex. It isn’t a matter of the rapist’s failure to understand, but his failure to respect and his rationalizations for doing what he knows she doesn’t want him to do.
Her mind has not been changed through bamboozlement, but bamboozlement can be used to hide the fact that he doesn’t care what she wants in order to get her to stay long enough for him to knock down her defenses.
As long as the responsibility for prevention is not placed where it belongs — on the potential rapist — all the talk about empowering girls and women to avoid rape lets rapists off the hook. This is doubly true if those who take this approach say rape between people who know each other is simply a “he said, she said” situation that should never go to court.
Not only is he not responsible, he gets a free pass for committing rape. And that in no way empowers girls and women.