Alyssa Royse believes that society’s relationship with sexuality is at least partially responsible when good men and women commit rape.
I am used to getting the call in which a reluctant voice says, “I was raped.” I used to carry a pager and get that call at all hours, racing to emergency rooms to counsel women through the byzantine maze of emotions, doctors, cops and—for lucky ones—lawyers that were soon to come.
However, I was not used to getting the call in which a dear friend of mine says, “I am being accused of rape.” And I was certainly not used to saying, “did you do it?”
It seems like a simple question to answer. But he, like many people, struggled with it. He didn’t answer. So I asked the question from another angle, “What did she say happened?”
“She said I raped her,” he answered.
“Well, then you probably did. What exactly happened?”
This is where this particular story becomes much more general. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is a scene whose generalities are probably repeated every night, somewhere. And they rarely happen in the tidy confines of a dark alley, with a stranger who is clearly a “rapist” and a woman who is clearly being victimized. More often than not, rape happens amongst people who know each other, and the rapist is not someone carrying a villainous cloak and look of ill intent. The rapist is just a person who may genuinely not realize that what he’s doing is rape.
My friend, for instance, was genuinely unsure, which was why he called me. At the time, I was fresh from giving a rousing talk at SlutWalk, in which I very clearly stated that the only person responsible for rape is the rapist. I said that no matter what a woman is wearing or doing, no one has the right to touch her without her explicit consent. It was a great talk.
But it cannot undo generations of training in which the goal of getting dressed and going out is to get the guy or get the girl and hook up or get lucky. In this training, we are taught that in order to get the guy, we have to look sexy—and sometimes have sex. The training has also taught men that the reason we dress up and look sexy is to “catch him”. We even use those words, as if our bodies themselves are the lure, and our sexuality the hook.
In this particular case, I had watched the woman in question flirt aggressively with my friend for weeks. I had watched her sit on his lap, dance with him, twirl his hair in her fingers. I had seen her at parties discussing the various kinds of sex work she had done, and the pleasure with which she explored her own very fluid sexuality, all while looking my friend straight in the eye.
Only she knows what signals she intended to send out. But many of us can guess the signals he received.
This is not a “some girls, they rape so easy” story. I promise. This is a “some signals, they read so wrong” story. And the fault is not hers, it’s ours—all of ours—for not explaining what these signals DON’T mean, even if we don’t know exactly what they DO mean.
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On the night in question, there was drinking. A lot of it. I wasn’t there, but there was probably some drugging. There was music and dancing. At some point, people started clustering off into smaller groups, some of which turned sexual. My friend and this woman fell asleep together. And by all accounts, when she woke up, he was penetrating her.
Which is to say that she was asleep when he started to penetrate her. She did not consent prior. Anything said after the penetration beside the point, so I’m leaving it out on purpose. It is the mixed signals of everything leading up to this moment that are the point of this story.
In my mind, this was rape. Because being hot, flirty, frolicky and drunk is NOT consent. Putting your penis in a woman without her consent is rape. Being drunk was not an excuse for either party. The responsibility was not on her to say “stop”, it was on him to ask if it’s okay before he did it. This part is simple.
To some of you, it may sound ridiculous when I say that my friend is a really sweet guy. He was devastated at the allegation of rape, and even more so at my confirmation that it was rape. We spent a week or so exploring how this could have happened. Not excusing it, but trying to understand it. With him, the conversations were painful and beautiful, and he understood. He claimed it, at least to me, and learned a hard lesson: he had committed rape. That “nice guys” can do that.
Still, the fact that he is a nice guy doesn’t make it okay. Ever.
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Within the community at large, there were much harder discussions centering on how it was that he thought penetrating her while she was asleep was okay, but any discussion of her behavior leading up to it was taboo. Any suggestion that her behavior may have led to—NOT JUSTIFIED OR EXCUSED—the rape was met with screams of “victim blaming” and “rape apology”.
But to run from this part of the discussion is to let the problem stagnate and fester.
There are two simple truths here:
1. She had every right to do everything she was doing and fully expect to be safe from rape. (She was right.)
2. He believed that everything she was doing was an invitation to have sex. (He was wrong.)
The problem is not that she’s a “slut”. The implications of that word make my brain shrivel when sprinkled with the salty insinuations that so often accompany it: that a woman who exhibits a fondness for her own sexuality is somehow inviting anyone who sees her to have sex with her.
The problem isn’t even that he’s a rapist.
The problem is that no one is taking responsibility for the mixed messages about sex and sexuality in which we are stewing. And no one is taking responsibility for teaching people how the messages we are sending are often being misunderstood.
Just to be painfully clear, the ONLY thing that counts as consent to have sex is the word “YES”, accompanied with any form of “I would like to have sex with you”. But we need to stop denying that we sell sex as the reason for everything—from what car to buy, to why to work out to what clothes will help us “get ahead”. In our world, sex is the end game. Period. Anything shy of sex is quitting, or worse, losing.
We use other’s people’s assessment of whether or not we are “hot” to feel good about ourselves. After all, the question we ask when we get dressed is “how do I look,” not “how do I feel?” And “look” in this case is meant to mean, “will other people find me attractive?”
Magazines and web sites feature an endless barrage of “How to get your guy or girl to do _____” and most of it is based on using looks and/or sex to get something. We walk a really fine tightrope between seeking validation and sending out signals that are easily misinterpreted as an invitation.
To continue ignoring these truths is going to keep getting us in trouble. Not because we need to change how we walk, talk or dress (personally, I love putting on a corset and leather pants to go out), but because we need to teach people that anything short of verbal consent is not an invitation to stick any part of your body on or in any part of anyone else’s body.
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To a large degree, my friend thought he was doing what was expected. And while he was wrong, weeks of flirting, provocative dancing and intimate innuendo led him to believe that sex was the logical conclusion of their social intercourse. Many people watching it unfold would have thought that, too.
Of course they would all be wrong. But if something walks like a fuck and talks like fuck, at what point are we supposed to understand that it’s not a fuck? Our binary language of “yes means yes” and “no means no” doesn’t address the entire spectrum of both spoken language and body language, which mean different things to different people.
I would love for “no means no” to work, but it doesn’t.
How do I know it doesn’t work? I know because my friend raped someone and didn’t even know it. I know because on any given night, people who think they are having drunk party sex with a partner who wants it are actually committing rape. Rape, although clear as hell at the ends of the spectrum, often exists in the dark murky world of mixed signals, confusing messages and alcohol. It happens to “good girls” who didn’t ask for it, and it happens at the hands of “good guys” who honestly didn’t know that’s what they were doing.
But it’s still rape. We often try to call it something else. We give it the name “date rape,” as if that’s softer and gentler. My friend didn’t commit actual rape, it was “just date rape”. Nope. That doesn’t fly. Rape is rape. The question is, why is it happening?
In order to get to that answer we need to first abolish the idea that all rape is about power and violence. It’s not. Some rape begins as the earnest belief that sex is going to happen, and that it should. The confusion starts with misreading socially accepted cues. Like, for instance, the cue that says, she’s dressed in a way that I find sexy, and she’s flirting with me, so that means we’re going to have sex. That is not an illogical conclusion. A lot of times, that’s exactly the case. But not always.
The confusion about when social intercourse turns into sexual intercourse is real, and we are all, in large part, to blame for it because we don’t address the underlying mythologies and mixed messages about what sex is. Without letting anyone off the hook for committing rape, we have to look at how we are all accomplices in making women’s bodies and sexuality a prize and something to which some men feel entitled, especially when they’re wrapped in pleasing packages and smiling in an inviting way. So while the individual rapist is solely responsible for the rape he committed, we all—as a society—are responsible for the culture that created the confusion.
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We need to change the emotional algebra with which we interpret social cues. We need to go from “sexy = sex” to “someone else’s sexuality doesn’t have anything to do with me”. We need to teach people that sex, as awesome as it is, is not the goal. We need to teach people that we each have the right to express our sexuality any way we want—in our movement, our dress, our language—and that it is not an invitation.
Just because someone has a sexuality does not entitle you to use it any more than someone else having a car entitles you to drive it.
Nice girls get raped. Nice guys commit rape. And it can happen the other way too. I have known men who felt violated when a date touched them in a sexual manner that they didn’t want. And certainly, if a guy wakes up to a woman “riding” him without his consent, that’s rape too. Whether or not it would be perceived as such is a much larger question, much less why. I know from experience that there are many men who feel they have been violated but don’t even know what to call it, because they have been led to believe that they are supposed to get—or at least want—sex all the time. But the simple fact is that consent needs to be the first order of business when having sex. Otherwise, well, it’s not sex, it’s rape.
Rape is what happens when we aren’t allowed to discuss sex and sexuality as if it were as natural as food, and instead shroud it in mysterious languages and grant it mysterious powers and lust for it like Gollum after the ring. Rape is what happens we don’t even understand what sex and sexuality are, but use them for everything anyway.
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My friend ended up leaving town. He left for a lot of reasons, but this was certainly a major part of it. And when his name comes up, there are knowing glances—disdain and remorse and a sort of sadness because he “was such a nice guy”. I don’t expect to hear from him again. I haven’t heard from her either, though we were never friends and I’m sure that my willingness to explore the nuance was seen as excusing him.
What happened to her was wrong. My friend raped her. But I am still trying to figure out why. And no, it’s not as simple as the fact that he put his penis in her. It is a lot more complicated than that. And we need to talk about it.
Photo: Parody magazine cover courtesy of the author
About Alyssa Royse
“I think the harsher reality that we need to face is that we are all capable of most things, whether we want to think we are or not. I think that is much harder than simply otherizing bad things as the domain of “those” people. I do believe we need to do just the opposite, and humanize the actions that seem monstrous, so that we may understand what the root cause is that enables some humans to act like monsters. That allows for both prevention and redemption, both of which are vital.”
This part may as well have been taken directly from my own thoughts. Trying to explain that everyone is capable of truly awful behaviour without seeming like you’re trying to excuse, deny, or belittle it is difficult, and I greatly admire what you’re trying to do with this post, and this discussion. I believe it’s something we – all of us – really need to talk about, so it’s great to see the responses this article is getting.
I wholeheartedly agree. It is comforting to tell ourselves that people who do bad things are fundamentally different, but it is generally more useful to recognize that any of us *could* do bad things, and to try to understand why most people do not.
There are far fewer sociopaths and psychopaths than there are rapists. When we ignore the fact that well-meaning people can do horrible things, we just make it that much harder to prevent them from doing so. The stigmatization of rape and rapists is useful, but only to a point. When it gets in the way of reducing the number of rapes, we need to rethink our strategy.
This is the exact same situation, being discussed at feministe.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/09/19/is-it-rape-if-you-dont-mean-for-it-to-be-rape/
The difference is that the victim is male, and the perpetrator female. Suddenly the consensus is “I’m not going to say he wasn’t raped, but I’m not going to call her a rapist either”
It is easy for female feminists to say that all rape is the fault of the rapist, when they know that they will never be accused of rape because of their gender.
The intent of the perpetrator matters, and you can rape by accident. What we need is graduations of rape, just as there are graduations of murder, 1st degree, 2nd degree and manslaughter. None of these deny that someone died, but they matter greatly when deciding what to do with the perpetrators.
Killing someone by accident in a dojo is totally different to killing someone with a gun over a drug dispute.
It is odd how changing “pronouns” changes opinions. So much for equality! Some have a great deal to learn about and some just refuse to learn. It’s called bias and then prejudice.
I think that Feministe post illustrates one of the things that makes discussions about rape so difficult. The author says (in reference to an “accidental rape” question submitted to sex advice columnist Dan Savage), “That… doesn’t happen. Or, it surely has happened because we live in a wild world and weird unusual stuff happens, but it doesn’t happen nearly as often as rape apologists would like you to believe.”
The author seems to be torn between addressing the facts of the specific situation (which could possibly give rape apologists an excuse to dismiss rapes that occur in similar-but-different circumstances) or denying that such a thing could possibly happen.
We need to recognize that every situation is to some extent different, and judge each case on its own merit. Rape apologists are going to apologize for rape whether they think they have a good excuse or not. We shouldn’t let what we fear they might say cloud our judgment.
i did not deny that such a thing could happen. Quite the opposite. I said that it can and does happen. And that what we need to do is reconcile why and how, rather than just writing it off as “he’s an asshole and she’s a blameless victim.”
Oh no, I wasn’t attempting to imply that *you* meant that. I’ve seen that attitude in a couple of places in the comments here (although not nearly as frequently as is typical in these conversations – good job, other commenters!).
No, I thought your post was a good model for how to examine the specifics of a particular situation.
Rereading my comment, I see where the confusion arose. I was referring to the author of the Feministe post, not Alyssa.
It isn’t the exact same situation. In the first situation, they are not a couple, they have not slept together, they have no history. In the second, he indicates she should do something during the night as he’s done (according the poster) many times before. In the first scenario, we have no indication she said that sleep sex was on the table and he began the action while she was asleep. In the second, it had been on the table (night time sleepy sex anyway) and he appeared awake and engaged in the action and he initiated it.
So, apples to oranges, no matter the gender.
Is it still a violation? Yes. He was asleep, felt like she’d done something without his permission. She and he should get some intervention like…a therapist, a doctor that specializes in sleep issues, and really let him take the time to heal from it cause it clearly was a violation to him.
I think it’s seriously messed up that there is a belief that men can’t be raped by women. It’s clear that they can.
The feministe article is rape, it’s pretty fucking weird how much those feminists are tryign to explain it away and take the blame away. If the genders were swapped I HIGHLY DOUBT they would act the same way. In fact I’d bet 5bucks that they would crucify him if she got on him. If he was asleep, he can’t consent, if she maneuvered onto him or did anything then she has raped him, full-stop. Here in Australia I believe you need to be fully conscious to consent so even couples that say it’s ok to wake each other up with sex are committing rape.
From that article “It doesn’t make her a bad person or a rapist (she was awake and reasonably believed he was awake and consenting),” Uh, it does make her a rapist whether she intended it or not. Chances are quite a few rapists probably don’t realize there’s no consent there but it doesn’t change the act. There are varying degrees of rape, intention plays a role but doesn’t change the hurt the victim feels although I do think those who make a genuine mistake shouldn’t be punished as hard as those who purposely do it.
I disagree Archy.
The man may have felt rape, but I don’t think it would qualify as rape by the woman’s motives based on the observable evidence she had.
What this is is a cluster fuck. I’m not saying the man is wrong to feel traumatized or violated.
But, additionally I would say that the woman should not be prosecuted or put in jail. The legal (and I suppose moral) question is based on the observable evidence, would the average mature non-dysfunctional person have pursued the sex and not seen it as rape.
I think anybody in the women’s shoes would have done so. Maybe if she knew the guy had a habit of sleep walking or something she would have had the red flag to investigate more.
In both cases the perpetrator reasonably thought that there was consent. That is the important thing, the reasons why the perpetrator thought this are irrelevant.
(If the perpetrator thinks that short skirt = consent, then that would be an unreasonable belief. But neither of these cases involve that level of stupidity)
Nope. According to the Alyssa’s article, “Which is to say that she was asleep when he started to penetrate her. She did not consent prior.”
In the Feminist article the writer (from the original Stranger column) said they had engaged in the behavior before and she believed him to be awake.
Not to say that what happened in the feministe article wasn’t also a violation, but they aren’t the same thing.
Actually, in the Savage article, the woman only states that the man rubbed up against her, which woke her up, and she assumed he was awake. There does not appear to be any prior agreement to sleep sex, so the situation is comparable to the one from Royse’s article. In both instances, the sleeping person did not verbally consent to sex and later told their partner that they felt violated.
The difference between the two cases is not only the sex reversal, but also the context. We have more information about what happened in the Dan Savage column both before and following the event. In Royse’s article, we do not know what happened before or following the event, so we do not know what exactly caused the man to think it would be okay to have sex with the woman while she was asleep. That context matters because if, for instance, the woman had initiated sexual contact to wake the man up out of his drink/drug-induced slumber, he may have thought she would not mind if he did the same to her, which is what happened in the Savage column.
And I do find it interesting that your response to the Savage article is that the man, the one who “feels” violated, is the one who needs help, not the person who assumed he was awake and decided to have sex with him without bothering to check.
From the article “After a little while, he pulled my hand, motioning for me to get on top of him to have sex, as he has done many times before.”
He pulled her hand motioning for her to get on top of him as he had done in the past.
Which does not excuse the fact that he was having a sleep incident and did not want the sex (as he woke up he wanted her to stop). Thus he was violated.
Thus if he has a sleep issue, I’d hope he goes to a specialist. I suggested they BOTH go to a therapist because she did something that she also needs to deal with and work with. Or fine they both need a separate therapist, or one together. Or if he doesn’t want a therapist, that’s AOK with me. I’d suggest they both get support since her action, even without ill intent, had a very negative impact on him and she needs to be a part of the process of healing it. If it even can be healed.
“She and he should get some intervention like…a therapist, a doctor that specializes in sleep issues, and really let him take the time to heal from it cause it clearly was a violation to him.
If he wanted to press charges? I’d have no issue with that. He needs healing of whatever kind he desires.
Prior consent doesn’t male any difference if the genders were reversed.
As Alyssa wrote, if the woman says she was raped, she probably was. The same is true in the other situation.
Jacobtk – I saw a dead horse over in the corner. It got flogged to death. I can’t tell if it was a mare or a stallion. Best not look too close, because the sex of the horse will change the view of the flogging and who should be flogged – and of course the dead horse will be flogged all over again in the hope of changing reality.
He was forced to have intercourse against his will . He was raped, no doubt. Calling it anything short of rape is just an attempt to minimize the perception of the damage done to him. You may have a point about her not being a rapist, but it was certainly rape.
This is an interesting idea, that there can be rape without a rapist, that the rape exists based on the way the victim feels, regardless of whether the other party is at fault or not. I think that could be a very useful way of thinking about some situations (not necessarily this one, though). However, it is very much at odds with the way most people talk about rape. You said, “Calling it anything short of rape is just an attempt to minimize the perception of the damage done to him.” I don’t think that is the case. I think it more likely that most people attempting to label it something other than rape are doing so not out of a desire to minimize the victim’s pain, but as a way of protecting what they see as an innocent person from condemnation, and possibly prosecution. After all, I’m pretty sure most legal definitions of rape would be incompatible with the idea of “rape without rapists”. To the conventional way of thinking, if a rape occurred, then there must be a rapist, and society has a moral and legal obligation to find and punish that person. In that conceptual framework, if you don’t believe that there is someone who should be punished, your only recourse is to deny that a rape occurred. That may not be the most useful way of thinking about it, but I’d be willing to bet it’s the most common way.
This is an interesting idea, that there can be rape without a rapist, that the rape exists based on the way the victim feels, regardless of whether the other party is at fault or not.
Sorry – but rape is defined by physical action – if physical action is absent there is no rape, and people can be as upset as they like but it’s just them not being happy!
It also goes into the silly territory which we had recently – “It’s verbal rape”? Sorry Words Can’t Be Used To Commit Physical Acts – and besides when it’s written ( as in the Chris Brown debacle ) It can’t be called verbal because — well — It’s Written and not Verbal!
It’s a great example of why feelings aint used to define rape – reality and physical action is! It’s also a great example of why media is bad and courts good – not perfect but far better at dealing with reality and truth!
Well, obviously it’s no good for legal definitions. The point I was attempting to make is that I think there is (in some small minority of situations) some value in separating the issue of how the victim feels from whether the other party is actually culpable and deserving of blame. The incident in this Feministe article seems like one of those rare situations. The man feels violated – raped, and it’s not appropriate to tell him that he’s wrong, that he shouldn’t feel that way. But at the same time, it doesn’t sound like what the woman did was unreasonable or deserving of punishment. It resulted in him feeling violated, but she had no reason to expect that outcome. In cases like this, we need to recognize that terrible things can happen between two people that can’t be blamed on either of the people involved. It wasn’t her fault, and it certainly wasn’t his fault, but it happened and we ought to take it seriously.
That’s what I mean by “rape without rapists”: that we don’t have to find someone to blame to be able to take the pain caused to the victim seriously. Sometimes bad things happen and they’re nobody’s fault. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t bad.
(Because someone will inevitably ask, I would feel the same way if the genders were reversed. I think there are some other details that others in this thread have pointed out that make the incident from the Feministe post different from the one in Alyssa’s post.)
While still agreeing with most of what you say, I’ll quibble with the closing sentence:
Indeed, that has been pointed out, but I think people are misconstruing or mischaracterizing what is *known* to be different. The key details available in the Feministe account that differ from Alyssa’s are that in the other case, it’s described quite clearly that the woman (the violator) did not know the man (the violee) was asleep, and believed based on the totality of circumstances (relationship, prior sex signals, etc.) that she had his consent. The assumption by those saying it’s very different in Alyssa’s case is that the man (the violator) knew the woman (the violee) was asleep, and had no reasonable basis to assume any sexual consent on her part. However, that simply isn’t demonstrated in Alyssa’s account. It’s one possibility, but the description given allows for the possibility that like the violator in the Feministe story, this man did not realize she was asleep, and might have believed, based on the totality of the circumstances, that he had her consent. So, the difference isn’t in what we know about the violator’s state of mind, it’s that Alyssa’s story *does not* give enough detail to know how comparable these cases are. Assuming the worst (as I think many have done) would make them obviously different, but assuming the best would make them very similar. I see a greater willingness (but not unanimous) to believe the woman violator about what she believed the consent situation was, than I do to consider it as even possible that the man violator might have been honestly mistaken about the consent situation. Maybe it’s because one story involved an established couple and one was only a few dates in, or maybe there’s some other reason for why an honest mistake resulting in violation strikes people as possible in one of the cases, but not the other.
I’m not arguing that this case (Alyssa’s) was definitely rape, or that it definitely wasn’t. I’m arguing that the details given are incomplete enough that either could be the case, and if this was a prosecutor’s case and I was on the jury, no way would this be enough for me to vote to convict. As for the woman’s feeling of being violated or raped, I don’t dispute that *at all*, but like you and many others in this discussion, I don’t believe harm and culpability always occur together.
@ MediaHound
“Sorry – but rape is defined by physical action – if physical action is absent there is no rape,”
There is physical action. Someone is having sex against their will. What makes someone a rapist is not just physical action, but intent.
Intent? Sorry NO!
It is possible to kill someone by accident, but through negligence so it’s manslaughter. If you do it with intent it’s murder.
Rape is an oddity in legal terms. If you end up having been through a set of actions with or without intent you are seen as guilty. So, as an example, a couple are both asleep naked and spooning, they are both asleep, dreaming and having quite naughty and highly sexual dreams, he’s erect – she’s equally aroused – they both manoeuvre and it slips in – you have TWO rapists and no intent!
It’s interesting, you can break a speed limit deliberately and be found innocent – rushing to the emergency room with a heart attack in the back seat is like that. You can break the speed limit by total accident and end up in prison – as has happened when a batch of speedometers for a particular car manufacturer were found t be faulty … and even though calibrated at the factory the accuracy drifted very badly to the point of criminality.
Intent is a fascinating thing to prove because it’s possible to break the law with absolute intent and be100% innocent, or Guilty and the same goes for breaking the law with no intent. Rape and Intent should not be assumed to be bedfellows – because they are not!
We weren’t given enough details in the Alyssa’s story to KNOW how different the situation was.
True, they hadn’t had intercourse before. They did have an established relationship, and they possibly got in bed together naked.
We have no indication that she didn’t rub up against him in her sleep, or move an arm to touch him.
We have no reason to think she did “lay there like a dead fish” against him when he started. And if any of those things did happen, we have no way to know whether she did them while half-conscious and later couldn’t remember, or if she was 100% unconscious and acting out a dream. I have had partners do both.
I would say the same things regardless of whether it was male or a female. I would also still point to everything leading up to the moment in question. It is CLEAR to me that men can be raped by women. (Next post, I think.) It is also clear to me that in this case, the woman has some of the responsibility for the situation, without absolving him of any responsibility for the final fateful act. As I said, he shouldn’t have done it. But we need to ask why he did, without resorting to calling him a monster. Because there were some seriously mixed signals here, which he clearly read to mean something other than what she intended, but which many people would read the same way he did. So why did she send them? Why did he read them the way he did? Why don’t people want to share the blame?
So to be clear, in your opinion, the woman in the Feministe example is a rapist?
I think the example in the Feministe article is really different than this one. If the roles were reversed in the example in my story, then the woman would have committed rape. I admit I only read the Feministe piece briefly, but if I remember correctly, they had an existing relationship and she thought he wanted it, was signaled onto him, which would seem like consent. That whole situation is much less clear to me because of the existing sexual relationship. If my fiance did that to me, I would probably do the same thing. If he was someone I didn’t have a prior relationship with, no fucking way. But as I’ve said before, we’ve given each other explicit consent to at least try and wake us for sex if we’re in the mood…. I think those two cases are apples and oranges. I do not think the gender or either party is relevant.
Memetic defence and denial?
I’m sorry, but I really don’t think people would think that if the genders were reversed, even with prior examples of consent.
If a woman insisted she was violated, there definitely wouldn’t be people accusing her of “gas lighting” her mate or telling him to “dump the manipulative b*tch.”
It’s one of those issues with “Gas-Lighting” that it has been genderised and gets used to control perceptions.
It’s also nicely evocative of Victorian Heroins in Corsets with terrible Monsters in Top Hats, Capes and Twizzling the end of some bizzare form of moustache as he emits dark maniacal cackles of glee.
And the male equivalent is? Maybe a pussy who needs to man up? It’s so hard getting out from under those heavy handed petticoat laden media tropes.
Gas-Lighting = Term originates from stage melodrama of that name circa 1938. Psychological and social manipulation where a person is repeatedly told and required to accept that reality is not reality so that the abuser can exercise control – causes subject to doubt personal reality, perceptions and ultimately sanity. It can be deliberate or caused by the abusers personal views and innate views about reality. It can occur in any situation where an imbalance of power and opportunity occurs – be that in issues of sex/gender, race, sexuality, disability, age etc. Gas-Lighting behaviour and language has been linked to Sociopathic and Psychopathic behaviour. Monopolization of the term in gender politics is mass Gas-Lighting and even linked to global warming due to hot air created. Mass Gas-Lighting of gender has been described as the largest plumbing infrastructure exercises ever undertaken. Many are now ignorant of how to operate Gas-Lighting equipment safely, and do make silly mistakes which tend to blow up in their faces. Worse still ignorant use of Gas-Lighting and ignorant focus in only one area of the subject has and does cause abuse by Gas-Lighting to remain undetected, leading many to conclude Gas-Lighting is the worst form of illumination there is as it’s misuse causes more abuse than it’s actual usage.
The idea should not be to equalize to the level of dumbness of others. A race to the bottom is not the way to go.
The story as told on that Feministe is not one of rape. Rape has a moral cognitive component that ties closely to intent of those involved.
But Alyssa argues that this man committed rape, even though he thought that he had consent…
In both cases the perpetrator “reasonably” thought that they had consent.
I have to disagree. The man in the first instance claims that he thought he had consent, but we don’t need an admission of criminal intent to show criminal intent. Denials of criminal intent doesn’t immunize someone from the truth. You can’t reasonably assume that someone has consented when you know they are asleep and unable to consent. I think the legal term is known or should have known. It is what society believes is reasonable not the defendant.
In the case of the woman, you can make an argument for reasonable doubt as she claims that she thought he was awake, but like I said there is insufficient information to assert that she was not negligent. The biggest piece being that he had to throw her off to stop the rape.
Well are we talking legally or ethically here? Because you seem to be using different standards in different comments. I don’t think most of the people here are making legal claims about what happened. I’m pretty sure most of us aren’t lawyers (let me know if I’m wrong here, people). This site is the Good Men Project, not the Law-Abiding Men Project. It seems to me that the relevant question is not whether these people’s actions were legal in a narrow interpretation of the law (and we don’t even know what the relevant laws would be, since we don’t know where these people are), but whether they were moral and ethical. And that may not be the same thing.
From a moral standpoint if you know someone is asleep and you didn’t get permission for sleep sex, it’s rape. I would normally say that it would be rape regardless because the person is unable to revoke consent, but I remember a woman saying that she didn’t mind giving her boyfriend oral when she was busy because in 5 minutes he was happy and she was doing what she needed to do. She also said it was just something you did for the person you love. I can see how someone may care enough for their partner to want their partner to have sex, but not necessarily caring if they personally benefited.
In the other case if she thought based on their prior sexual experiences that she had consent and he was awake, it would be moral. I don’t believe that we have enough to make that determination. Like I said, do they normally skip foreplay, does he normally wake her up for sex, what was he doing to make himself an active participant, etc.
I do wish that people would get down from the Moral High Ground – get off High Horses and deal with the flip sides of the coin and a bit of reality!
Rape is when your doing without consent – and rape is pretty well defined (even if sexists in some places) – so the area that is still of HIGH importance is the big C word Consent. When is Consent Black – and When White and when is Consent Consent and when is Consent Not Consent.
Rape is Rape is a silly slogan because it made everything rape. Only men can stop rape was equally stupid because it meant lesbians had to have a man handy just in case things got out of hand in the bed room – sort of summon the butler to stop rape in progress.
Does anyone have any idea of a good slogan for consent? Rape is just not Sexy or an easy sell. How doe you make Consent sexy and easy to make the latest hottest thing everyone just has to have?
Everyone is so bigged down in the mud of the Rape Tropes they are like an SUV in a swamp – engines can be revved up and smoke can come from exhaust and tires spinning on what ever… but it’s going no where!
I think that sleep sex could happen as a favor given by one partner to the other, as you describe. However, I’d like to introduce another possibility that you may not have considered: in some situations the sleeping partner might feel that they *had* benefited from their partner having sex with them while they slept. While they probably wouldn’t get much in the way of physical gratification from the experience, they might get quite a bit of psychological gratification from it. There are people that get turned on by far stranger things, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some sleep fetishists out there. I think it would be similar to people who get turned on by hearing their partners talk about their sexual experiences with other people – in both cases they’re getting off on a sexual encounter that their partner had that didn’t involve them (consciously, at least, in the case of sex while sleeping), but in the case of sleep sex there would be no risk of jealousy to contend with.
It’s things like this that make talking about sexual ethics so tricky. Human sexual preferences are incredibly diverse, and it’s easy to forget that there are people who will enthusiastically engage in sex acts that someone else might find repulsive or pointless. The various battles over sex that have pitted feminists against each other for the last few decades are a great illustration of this dynamic in action – some people just cannot conceive of the idea that sex workers could enjoy their jobs or that BDSM can be consensual.
“While they probably wouldn’t get much in the way of physical gratification from the experience”
Why is everyone assuming that a person would continue to stay asleep for the entire duration for sex? Unless you are extremely intoxicated, that would be enough to very quickly wake up most normal people. If it was possible to sleep *through* sex, then alarms clock would be pointless, and there would be no possible way to wake up a person until they woke up on their own.
This undermines the repeated refrain through this comment thread that being asleep makes it impossible to say “stop”. It is impossible to say “don’t start in the first place”, but it is entirely possible to withdraw consent (or withdraw what the other person mistakenly thought was implied consent)
I understand criminal intent and you are correct. Where the questions come into play at least in my state there are three levels of criminal intent. The lowest level is negligent. Was what she did sufficient due diligence. I don’t know the details of their history so can’t say. Assuming that she’s telling the truth, Julie brings up so interesting points like he’s motioned for her to climb on top before. We don’t know under what circumstances that’s happened before though. Do they normally not have foreplay? Has he woken her in the night for sex before? How long were they asleep? How was he an active participant? Is she equating an erection with consent?
She also never stopped having intercourse with him. He stopped her from continuing so there was a point where he was awake and didn’t wish to continue, but she failed to recognize or ignored it until he threw her off. Let’s be clear for those who say that she stopped when he wanted her to stop, it means that she didn’t try to climb back on top, but it more difficult to rape someone who is awake. That calls into question her intent.
What I’ve learned over the years and what I believe:
Human beings assault each other. Sometimes they do it without realizing (though it seems hard to understand) that they are assaulting someone. Gender doesn’t matter, nor does age or experience. Humans hate realizing they’ve hurt people (or wish to escape justice) so they justify what they do/did often erasing the experience of the victim. Gender plays a role because we have mythologies in place that state one gender is unassaultable and one gender can’t assault (which is not true). Victims of assault need to be supported and offered resources for healing (including the criminal justice system). People who intentionally assault most certainly need some form of punishment, and in my opinion, counseling. People who unintentionally assault need deeper awareness of what it is they did and why it was assault (and potentially punishment) and yeah, I figure counseling couldn’t hurt there.
Communication and education around consent, sex, shame, violence, aggression… that would probably be helpful.
Also, what I’ve learned from watching online dialogue? It’s likely no matter what one says, if someone disagrees with you they’ll decide you are wrong without really dialoging. Also, that the more of an intellectual exercise this becomes (X and Y and wallets) vs this real human person, the worse the conversation becomes (in my opinion).
Of course, I figure people are guilty of this (myself first among them) because it’s just such a terrifying conversation to have and as I’ve said before, it’s a crushing indictment of our culture that we can’t have real conversations about sex without this particular thing happening.
No one should be raped. No one. And that’s all I’m gonna offer other than I feel very sad for all the players involved in both cases, and that I hope they’ve found resolution and understanding in themselves and have perhaps found a way to connect honestly with the partners discussed, if not for forgiveness then for the deep acknowledgement that things went very very badly.
I don’t agree with you Julie. I feel this has been one of the best conversations on the topic of rape I’ve seen on line in quite some time. People are integrating the concept of nuance without abandoning the notion of responsibility and degrees of culpability.
Well I’m glad you feel that way. Perhaps I’ve grown too cynical.
Julie – Cynical is the new black – it’s not so much Vogue as necessary. It’s also now a recognised synonym for wise and experienced.
Ellisa – it’s odd because the discussion is actually so much being re-said and repeated. Maybe this time the difference is that some are listening and not just preaching or saying all people of a certain group are wrong?
Yeah, it’s really aggravating and depressing when jerks like tha– wait a sec. I brought up a scenario involving X and Y and wallets, so she’s talking about…? Well, shit.
What I’ve learned, Julie, is that I can agree with 95% or more of what you say, but if I address the other 5%, because it’s more interesting and thought-provoking than saying “ditto” to all the parts I agree with, you are prone to thinking that I’m not really dialoguing. I’m not sure what really dialoguing sounds like, if not what we’ve been doing.
My “intellectual exercise”, which you contrast with a more empathetic approach, was not only an extension of a scenario you brought up first (the wallet thing), but you of all people ought to relate to why I’d attempt to frame it in a gender-neutral way, given the proclivity of the GMP commentariat to cry foul every time a misdeed is presented as though only one gender is capable of committing it or being a victim of it. X and Y were clunky, but should I have written it out four ways with gendered names and pronouns, every possible mix of man and woman, and maybe a few more to cover people who think all gender is a performance and they are neither man nor woman? I don’t believe it’s more respectful or empathetic for you to assume that whatever intellectual picture you’ve constructed about these real human people is the right one, because given the absence of many potentially relevant details in the OP, your reaction to this story is as much an intellectual exercise for you as it is for me, even though we both care about real people. At least I recognize and present my hypotheticals as such.
And for the record…I agreed with 95% of this comment of yours I’m replying to, but the indirect swipe at my unwillingness to engage in real dialogue because I’ve decided you’re wrong, and using my hypothetical (which was an extension of yours) as an example of replacing empathy with intellectualization…well, that struck a nerve. If I’ve somehow missed someone else in this thread having the kind of back and forth you describe and bringing up X’s and Y’s and wallets, then my apologies for thinking your comments were directed at me.
Marcus.
I’ve already owned that I started the wallet thing. I did that and I pointed it out that I started it in another comment. So it’s not like I don’t know that. That was me and I shouldn’t have. Going down that academic rabbit hole is what has led to me thinking about this whole conversation missing the mark, due to intellectualizing. And I’m commenting about intellectualizing things for me, for my own fault in that as much as the MANY others that I’ve seen in the thread, comments I’m not even involved in but that I’ve read and reacted to. I’ve stated, in as many ways as I know how and in several places, that I agree that there are issues of high risk, poor communication, boundary violations (in this scenario and the Feministe one, that women can rape men, that this dude isn’t scum, that I’ve explored my own empathy about him, that there are issues around consent and not having levels of crime as you’ve stated…. etc etc etc, over the course of several comments which I’m even sure you’ve read. everything…I’m not gonna post it again because at this point I feel kind of physically ill, triggered.
As for dialogue? One thing that I don’t necessarily see in the thread is questions back and forth, asking for clarity, perception checking, and including asking about emotional tone etc before moving on. I am not doing this. I’m just responding. We are having a dialogue, but it’s been hard for me to read the back and forth as anything more than scoring points off each other (and I’m saying I’m doing that too). Perhaps it’s because it’s online and I can’t see you, read you, or have a more intimate back and forth, and it’s just paragraphs trying to lay out “proofs” (my words not accusing you of that) of what I mean, why I mean it. This is what I mean when I say we aren’t “in dialogue.” And perhaps that’s mincing words, but I have a very different experience in real time with these conversations (with people who disagree with me and me them) than I do online.
I will say that you’ve struck several nerves of mine, Marcus and I reacted badly, for some reason, to your point of view, which I perhaps I am misinterpreting, but I’m just not sure any more. I don’t feel understood. I’m sure you don’t either. I’m still reacting badly right this minute. I have no idea what you are agreeing with or not, or where we stand, and there are so many words and so little understanding (it seems) that I’d have to take a whole hour to piece the conversation together and figure out what the heck is going on. If we need to clear that up, we should do it offline.
I have an idea. I’m gonna develop an app. When you go on a date with someone, you can check the app to see if she (or he) has given consent and then you can give consent as well. Then the app sends the dual consent registration off to a 256 bit encrypted server in Fort Knox. Don’t worry about the gold, we’ll move that somewhere else. Any sexual contact without dual consent registered on the server is a felony. And each consent registration is valid for 2 hours before consent has to be re-registered.
Now if you will excuse me, I think its almost time for the two minutes of hate.
In all seriousness though, by the same logic of the article and all the comments, I’d say the man was raped first. How else can you describe all the flirting, twirling of the hair, and sexual confessions with direct eye contact if not a coercive attempt to manipulate his decision making abilities? How is this different to a man emotionally coercing or wearing down a woman into having sex?
Where do we draw the line?
It’s articles like this, those coming from voices aiming to seemingly reconcile the “war of the sexes” that make me glad I chose to GMYOW. This wouldn’t happen to me because I demand sober, explicit, planned consent for any interaction with a woman. Clinical, and not very romantic, but at least I’m legally safe.
Well – in so many ways it’s a brilliant marketing opportunity. Bravo – do you need investors?
I had a quick look at domains to see which may be available for brand identity. The obvious iConsent is a none starter – I think Mr Jobs&Co may already have been looking at cornering the market!
Interestingly HeConsented – SheConsented – WeConsented – TheyConsented and Shockingly iConsented are all wide open for domain registration – which is interesting and also quite revealing.
It would indicate that consent has not until recently been seen as marketable – and I can see the insurance industry wanting to get in there fast. Personal Insurance against Litigation – get free access for a year to The Consented website and service to protect yourself from false allegations where consent is the issue.
Hell I can see fathers and mothers buying it like hot cakes for sons. It’s not often you spot a market like that and such a good fit with a demographic! Pity it’s too late to get it on the market in time for Christmas – but next summer for College intake 2013 is certainly achievable. It would be east to service on the Amazon cloud for minimal outlay, but massive capacity for global sales and expansion. You may have thought an app was a joke, but actually it has clear market possibilities.
For advertising it even has the old “If You Loved me You Would ” game to play with. Imagine it – horny guy naked in bed — Nymphomanic all over him and begging – he pulls out his smart phone – shows her iConsent.com and says “If You Loved me You Would “. Comedy – Sex – Product – Safety … an it takes a well established social trope and uses it in a new and clever way!
It has legs and meets all the tick boxes for investors – including a 100% untapped market . Where’s an angel investor and venture capitalist when you need one?
It’s even more interesting to consider is anyone reading this is wondering if I’m seriosue or not? Is this a Joke – or do you think I believe it is a legitimate business opportunity? That will really sort the wheat from the chaff! … and do notice the lack of smilies.
Oh and Kink – BDSM is a wide open market sector too – and of course it could all be linked to social media for updates! Forget status updates – Consent Updates are better – new not known in the market place. 100% wide open again.
Been looking further – when you do a net trend search for pronouns and consent the patterns show males are expected to gain consent and it points at 100% – so it’s definitely a boy oriented market. The she should get consent stats are about 1% of boy – so not sure if the female market is of any value, there consent is an add on and accessory not communicated as a requirement. Age demographic for USA gives you around 50 million – globally it’s worth $billions.
Sell App at $9.99 – you get three free consents – after that you charge at 50 cents – or have a mega bundle $25.00 per year all in. Estimate 200,000 students who will buy – or be bought (buy via website – get code – down load app – input code activated) – parents will overestimate and will young bad at maths males – that gives you $5 million in first year – quite possible in a virgin market no competition and a product driven by basic human need – sex.
I’m sold this is a legit business – GMP should grab it quick – calling Lisa Hickey and Tom Matlack – have found a way to fund GMP for at least 10 years and make it a market leader … and I’m NOT JOKING!
I’m deadly serious! Lisa and Tom know me emyther address.
I wonder who were the wheat and who the chaff?
PS Forgot to mention the obvious spinoff into a pseudo dating site where your preferences are listed as I consent to…. Again the spin off in to just BDSM is massive.
Possible unique apps – iSlave – iMaster – iTop iDominate – allows market segregation on the same basic platform. Nice – saves money but allows USP all over. Just change the graphics and it’s the same back end all the way. Scoring also a option – have a trust meter. iConsented – and scored them at 6 out of 10 when we started – after I would give them 9 for style – 6 for imagination and pain – 8 for trust!
I’m sold. When do we start developing?
Sorry not familiar with US holidays etc. Sping Break – when is it and is it a target date to get to market?
Here’s my opinion as a guy who thought hes a nice guy.
I think saying hes a nice guy after all is not fair. Not fair to really nice guys out there. There are many many nice guys, who think they are nice, and wont have sex with a sleeping women because they know its a rape, and they only want to have sex with a willing women with consent. There are.
Your friend, is a rapist, and hes not a nice guy. I’m a nice guy, and I wont rape, and I wont have sex with sleeping women.
Unless you’re friend is really drunk that night and really don’t know shes asleep or not ( and reading from your article , its seems he didn’t really drunk ) , then shes really nice guy.
BUT NO, nice guys do not rape ( if hes rape than hes not a nice guy ), and there are many many nice guys out there who don’t commit rape.
If you saying hes a nice guy because hes nice in other part of his life, than a serial killer who live like a normal person and good to other people around him/her ( who is not his murder victims ) are nice people. No.
I think your post gets at one of the problems with the way we talk about a person’s moral character. Our language makes no real distinction between a person’s innate qualities and their actions. (Whether such a distinction actually exists is debatable, but many people would claim that it does.) We can use the phrase “nice guy” (or “good person” or any number of other equivalents) to mean somebody who goes through life with good intentions, trying to do good things, or we can use it to mean somebody who exclusively *does* good things.
What the original post seems to be trying to say is that this guy thought of himself as a nice guy in the first sense – he believed that he generally tried to do the right thing, treat people with respect, etc. What I think you’re pointing out is that he failed to be a nice guy in the second sense – he failed to actually follow through on his intentions in this case. However, does that mean that he wasn’t a nice guy in the first sense? Not necessarily. I think you can debate whether he ought to be *called* a nice guy based on his actions, but there’s still a useful distinction to be made here.
Maybe a better title would have been “People With Good Intentions Commit Rape Too”.
In the spirit of telling someone I agree instead of pointing out the parts I don’t…Morgan, I have consistently read your comments in this discussion and thought, “Yeah, that’s what I meant. I wish I’d managed to say it as good as that.” If there were thumbs up buttons on comments here, you’d be getting a lot from me.
Thanks, I appreciate the feedback!
I should spend more time pointing out the comments I agree with as well. It’s so easy to fall into that trap of only commenting on the things I want to dispute.
I’ve been pretty impressed with most of this conversation, actually. It’s been amazingly civil compared to most other conversations about rape that I’ve seen online. (I suspect that a good portion of the credit for that ought to go to whoever is doing the comment moderation.) I usually don’t bother to get involved in these kinds of conversations because it just seems so hopeless. But here, even some of the people that I initially thought were trolling have wound up contributing a lot to the conversation.
Maybe a better title would have been “People With Good Intentions Commit Rape Too”.
yes, agree, maybe that’s a better title. The title said , nice guys commit rape too. If we believe that nice guys commit rape too, then all guys in the world are rapist. Why not choose the title, ” nice guys and girls commit rape too”? because clearly we know that women can rape too, they can having sex without consent from their male partners. But we know that not all nice girls are rapist, like not all guys are rapist.
And it goes back again to the famous feminist theory, “nice guys syndrome”. There are no really nice guys in the world, only jerk and rapist. Guys who are jerk are jerk, and guys who thought they are nice guys are not really nice guys.
That’s why I feel offended by this article. This whole nice guys syndrome theory by feminists makes me want to vomit.
John – one trick is to seek a title that is about the subject of the piece or the reason and stimulation for the piece and not the people/person.
It could just as easily have been called Contradictions In Rape or Rethinking Rape – because the author has changed their views from All Rape IS Violence to stating that the Violence meme has to be removed. This piece is really about how the Author changed and not about rape per se – or that there is apparently a rapist out there on the lose and wearing a hoody saying “Trunst Me I’m A Nice Guy” .
It is a nice way to re-brand the nice guy trope into false flag for rapist.
It’s one of the memes around rape and it is tiresome – the word rape gets used – red mist descends – brains stop working even at an editorial level (They are editors not super human and immune to silliness, bias and worse) – it becomes about men a pair of scissors and a cookie jar. It becomes about control and putting people in their place- it gets very abusive.
You could be a serial rapist – the nicest guy on the planet – a eunuch – even Jesus Christ come back to say Hi – but it won’t matter. For some the word rape means all men are bad and they express it in any way they can – directly – indirectly – passive aggressively – and of course it’s lose- lose because anyone male or female who says “Hold On there” gets shouted down, treated as bad and also Black Washed.
Black Wash is the Same as White Wash, but the people doing it claim they have no colour prejudice as a false way of hiding their gender prejudice. I love people who say they are not prejudiced because they are the same as people who claim they lack imagination – it takes about 10 seconds to show the world they are wrong. Getting the person to see it can take a life time. P^)
The most useful thing about this thread has been to see where the prejudices lie and how they get made manifest.
This is really driving me nuts…..
In my experience once we’ve done the deed, in any of it’s permutations, the rest of the relationship is foreplay in preparation to pleasing each other & myself again.
Trust me; neither your dick or cunnie is so special that it being touched, by someone you have already gotten naked with , is that big a deal- if you are naked again.
Permission for sleep sex indeed… Why the fuck would you be in bed with someone you don’t want to have sex with?
For the record any woman who wants to play Pearl Harbor with me on December 7th & with whom I have slept in the past calandar year, has my implied & explicit consent to do so…
There have been so many good and meaty comments that I can’t respond to all of them – partly because I can’t find them all.
The biggest thing that I’m left with is the idea that any of us are defined by one action. I know that the title of the piece was controversial, and all the reasons for that controversy make perfect sense to me. But I did choose it for a reason. One of those reasons was the nuance of NOT calling him a rapist. While I admit freely that this was a rape, I do not think that this one act – especially given all the gray areas – needs to (or even can) define the entirety of him as a person.
While not rape, or even close to it in any way, I am reminded of one of my “worst” public parenting moments. There was a lot of context, and although I stand by my decision, let’s just say that it left A LOT of people staring at me, shaking their heads and saying pejorative things about me as my young daughter was wailing inconsolably in a public outdoor space. (We were skiing, she was throwing a temper tantrum about not being able to go down a hill I knew she could, I didn’t indulge her drama, talked her through it and waited for her at the bottom of the hill while she screamed for half an hour. I asked passersby not to intervene. She took he skis off and walked down. A brilliant solution, that she made on her own, with a positive outcome.) Anyone judging me by that one action would declare me a bad mother. “I don’t care how great she thinks she is, if she can let a kid be that scared, she’s a bad mother.” You can hear the voices, right?
There are a million ways that this analogy is “unfair” to victims etc, I know them, but if you step aside from those, it is an example of why judging someone for one instance is dangerous. And what happens if you take both the bast and the future out of it.
I feel very much that same way about instances of rape that happen in this manner. I think they are real, terrifying for the victim and have the potential to teach a vital lesson to the person who commits the rape. I do not think that makes them a rapist. My actions on the ski slope that day did not make me a bad mother.
Someone who causes a car accident while driving drunk may forever be “that guy who got a DUI” but will not be considered a murderer by most rational people.
I think the whole of our character is judged and weighted by the sum of its parts, all it’s parts. And that good people to bad things sometimes. We have to admit that and deal with it in order to really unravel the WHY of that fact.
WHY do so many people misread flirting as an invitation. Or even witty banter with eye contact as flirting? That scale is different for everyone. Why?
I chose that title because I knew it was a big open question that would mess with our perception that good people do good things all the time and bad people do bad things all the time. Simply put, if we believe that “other” people do bad things, then we don’t think it’s “our” problem. And in this case, it clearly is. Also, if we believe that bad acts are the sign of an irredeemable character, we will write of the need and potential for change. We will burden the bad actors as “bad people” and that doesn’t inspire them to change either.
Additionally, it obfuscates the need to REALLY address the predators, the people who’s pathologies make them a true and persistent danger. You cannot lump the guy in this story in with the Ted Bundys of the world. It’s foolish, wrong and totally counter productive.
Lastly, because it’s come up a few times – he left because he found a better work / life opportunity. He was not run out of town, though I don’t think he was necessarily sad to leave. There are people who miss him, just none who have forgotten this incident.
Alyssa – Insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Some wonder why people have been driven to distraction and walked away calling others mad and insane?
Thanks for the additional clarification, Alyssa. I agree with your reasoning about why we need to get away from the notion that only “bad people” do bad things (and that if a person does a bad thing, then they must be a bad person). I’m of the opinion that it’s generally much more useful to label actions than to label people.
I would add that separating people into “good people” and “bad people” is doubly unhelpful, because in addition to blinding us to the ways in which a good person can wind up doing bad things, it also blinds us to the possibility that people who have done bad things can reform. This attitude is particularly endemic in the United States, where we incarcerate record numbers of people in inhumane conditions, yet continue to have high rates of violent crime. If you want to stop evil, it is not enough merely to condemn it. You have to give consideration to how and why it happened, and try to address the root causes.
I agree Morgan, all kind of people, can do stupid or evil things. Take the feministe article, well a unfortunate situation like that can happen to everybody, me, you, Alyssa, Tom ect everybody. But people dont turn into monster like magic because of that. No matter how hard some people desire it so they have a excuse to lynch somebody. Its not how it work. If we really want to look from my POV, the real monsters of the society is the one who radically condemn people based on few or summary information. Yes they are monsters and YES good people can rape (male or female) and YES evil people can change. The only kind of humans who doesn’t change are the one who are dead.
Anyhow, going back to the Alyssa article, well yes a good guy/girl can rape, and still be a good guy/girl. But you NEED to know the dynamics. What if the situation was like in the feministe article, were who tough he had consent, but she was sleeping? to seriously evaluate the situation, this kind of info need to be posted. But if the purpose behind this is to show the world, that humans can commit atrocities in extraordinary situations, and still be good people. Well yes ok. I already knew this but as I can read for to many is a out of this world concept.
There are many, many excellent points made by the writer of this article, and by the responders to the article, but for me the crux of the matter here is this: the guy initiated sex with a sleeping woman. This choice demands further examination. Why would he even WANT to do this? Why would anyone want to have sex with a person who is not responding? It’s akin to necrophilia. Or preferring to have sex with a lifesize doll. It seems pathological. I think this man needs to be asked: Why did you even WANT to have sex with a sleeping woman? (Asking him why he thought it was OK is also a good question–but a better, more revealing question here would be: Why was it more attractive to him than initiating sex with a woman who was fully conscious?) And, granted, it’s weird that he wanted to do this with a woman he didn’t know very well, but it would also be just as weird, in my opinion, if a married person (man or woman) wanted to have sex with a spouse who was asleep.
In some of the responses, I saw mention of the term “sleep sex.” What is this? Isn’t having sex an impossibility if BOTH parties are asleep? (Unless we’re talking about the very unlikely situation in which both parties suffer from somnambulism–the ability to perform activities while being in a sleep-like state of “low consciousness.” ) In “sleep sex,” does the party who’s awake initiate sex with the other party, who’s asleep? And soon enough, the sleeping party awakes, right? And at that point, he or she might be able to either give consent or to object. (And I say “might”–because maybe the person would not be fully awake until it was over. And, at that point, the person would either think, That was fun. Or: I’m angry. Or maybe a confused version of both responses.) I think initiating sex with a person who’s sleeping (even if the person is a spouse) is fundamentally a violation–and you’re risking having to deal with the rightful indignation of a spouse who might ask, What the hell do you think you’re doing?? I think consent by two (or three, or whatever) FULLY CONSCIOUS parties must be given before sexual activities begin. Without this, it’s, at best, very creepy–and, at worst, rape.
So, yes, maybe the writer’s friend is a “nice guy” to talk to–but his judgment and his proclivities really need to be called into serious question. Essentially, he wanted to have sex with a sleeping woman. This, to me, as I said, points to a larger pathology. There is NO WAY I would set this guy up on a date with any woman (or man–if he swings that way, too). He likes (and perhaps prefers) to initiate sex with unresponsive people. Why?? This is what really needs to be looked at.
Sleep Sex – Where a couple agrees that they can wake each other up with a sexual act and they have sex. Like for me, if I really trust someone I may allow them to wake me up with a bj and overlook the fact it’s legally rape as long as I wakeup and they ensure it doesn’t go on too long without me being awake to enjoy it. It’s not meant to be about fucking a lifeless person, but waking them up into pleasure, the first thing they notice is pleasure. Call it kinky but I’ve always wanted to have it done to me to see what it’s like under my explicit “consent” beforehand.
Before he gets asked that, could someone please ask him if he knew she was sleeping? Many people seem to be assuming that, but it’s sure not clear from the article. It’s clear that “by all accounts” she awoke after being penetrated, but realizing something too late would not be the same as knowing and not caring. For comparison, consider the case discussed at Feministe (linked somewhere in this thread), where a woman thought her boyfriend was awake, initiated sex with him, and only discovered her error after he awoke and found himself being violated. She doesn’t dispute what she did, but didn’t intentionally do it. What is it in the author’s account (here, not the Feministe story) that makes you so certain about what the man knew and intended *as he did it*? Also, given that sleeping is not literally like being dead, and there are in fact varying degrees of responsiveness people have while sleeping (including full-on conversations they don’t remember, in some cases), how are you so certain that what he was after and got was sex with a corpse-like unresponsive person? If there was some response that he mistook for being awake and consenting, wouldn’t that need to be looked at, too? (I’m not saying there was, but I fail to see how you rule out the possibility based on the details described in the article.)
Alyssa, if this isn’t lost in the deluge of comments…do you know whether your friend *knew* the woman was sleeping when he penetrated her? Did he mention whether he thought she’d consented and only later realized his mistake, else he never would have tried it? The answers don’t change whether or not she was violated, and obviously he’s the one who violated her, but they seem pretty relevant to judgments about the whole “nice guy” thing. Also, you seem to intentionally omit what-happened-next details that you appear to know, which is your call, but I’m curious whether you could say if they have any connection at all to his impression of consent or lack thereof. For example, if she said “No” as soon as she awoke and he just kept on going, that paints a pretty different consent picture than if she enthusiastically got into it, and only later (perhaps when they both sobered up) realized how terrible a violation it was the way it got started. I’m not asking for details to make it less of a violation, but the “nice guy” aspect seems to hinge a lot on his state of mind, and those details have been left to the readers’ imagination, which because the subject is rape, has a tendency to assume the worst as though it’s already fact. Thanks for sparking an interesting discussion.
She did not say “no” and stop him once she was awake. She reported, and I have no reason not to believe her, that she was confused and afraid and it was already happening and she didn’t feel like she could. There were people in the room who saw it all happen, as well as everything leading up to it. She did not, by any reports, show any enthusiasm, though I’m afraid that feels like something of a red herring to me, as initial consent is really the primary concern here.
He says, and again, no reason not to believe him, that had she said no, he would have stopped. He thought that’s where everything was heading.
And you’re welcome. I have been fascinated by all of this response. (The only time I’ve gotten so much response to anything before was when i wrote about pubic hair, and the time Burning Man messed up their ticket sales.) But this is what I do. I talk about sex and relationships in any way I can. I have been gratified by the response, however heated. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen so civilized a dialog about so uncivilized a subject.
Perhaps you all should tell me what you want me to write about next. As long as you guys are willing to engage, I’m willing to do what I can to provide grist for the mill.
Female perpetrator, male victim of adult rape to balance out the discussions around rape.
Alyssa – I’ll tell you the same as I would others – you are now getting in to and even gone into territory in revealing Privileged info that does not belong to you – Stop There Now! You work in rape crisis, you grasp privacy and confidentiality. The story is not yours it belongs to others.
So its her fault that she felt like she couldn’t say no? Its ok to rape her because she didn’t fight? You are a sex educator and as a sex educator you should know that there are a lot of rape victims that don’t say anything or fight because there is more to fear than “flight or fight”… there is also “freeze.” And because the woman who was raped froze (like a lot of people do when faced with a confusing and overpowering threat) that makes it ok for him. Stop blaming her for what he did.
Rosie, I said MANY times that he was responsible and that she was not. I stand by that. I said many times that he was wrong, and she was not. I also stand by that. I do not see how I could state that more emphatically. Or more frequently.
What I am asking is what else went into the situation besides just those few moments. That is why I discussed rape culture, mixed signals about sexuality in our society, alcohol, and the very real possibility that we have created such a thoroughly messed up world when it comes to sexualized messages that we “allow” women to be violated and don’t even know that it’s rape. I also stand by that. If we just stick with the “he’s bad” line, then we will never fully analyze the situations that perpetuate sexual violence against women. We will never figure out why some men don’t know when they’re crossing the line, and some women don’t feel like they can speak up. And vice versa. It’s like saying “they died because they have cancer” without having the courage to look at what’s causing cancer, and take it one step further to say that your habit of smoking might cause your cancer…. and then as a society taking responsibility for educating people about the dangers of smoking.
It is an imperfect analogy, I know that, but it’s the best that I could come up with right now.
As I said MANY times in that piece, what he did was rape, it was wrong, and to do so was a choice that he made. She did not cause it. But I also said that we need to step back and take a real look at the world we have created and how we market and accept the sexualization of women’s bodies and create an environment in which this kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME. I am not blaming her. I am blaming all the rest of us. She only bares the same responsibility as the rest of us in this one.
Every time you try to shift the blame from him to society at large you are excusing him. Every time you say she sent mixed messages, you are excusing him.
Her last message was not mixed, by the way. Her last message was “I’m sleepy.” I don’t know how any person can misinterpret that one – unless it is a willful misinterpretation.
I don’t believe for a second that he didn’t know he was raping her.
Its not a reasonable ignorance – especially for someone who is friends with a sex educator and who attends events with group public sex.
I agree that the factors you mention would affect the ethics of the situation quite a bit. I’ve been acting under the assumption that if there were those kinds of extenuating circumstances that Alyssa would have mentioned them, but I could be wrong about that.
I can vouch for the fact that a sleeping person can respond as if awake. I’ve never sleepwalked, but I have had conversations while sleeping that I didn’t remember when I awoke (or I woke up briefly and didn’t remember the conversation after falling back asleep; apparently my eyes were open in some of these cases). And of course drugs and alcohol can further complicate matters.
It is entirely possible that someone could appear to be conscious and consent to something that they had no memory of on awakening, especially if they had had a lot to drink. If that is what happened in this case (which seems unlikely but theoretically possible), I think the guy in question would still bear some responsibility for engaging in such risky behavior with a relative stranger, but would not deserve to be called a rapist.
Marcus – gaps is gaps and people wanting then filled is just Prurience – I’ve already told Archy he can’t have extra details cos it’s none of his business.
“And, granted, it’s weird that he wanted to do this with a woman he didn’t know very well”
But surely you must realize that a LOT of people, of both genders, want to to have sex with people they don’t know very well. So often, in fact, that the term “one-night-stand” is actually a term. And if there is something that common which you can’t understand, you must realize that you personally do not have to be able to understand why any particular desire is desirable for someone else in order for it to be a normal part of the human experience.
On a separate note, I can verify from personal experience that it is possible for a sleeping person to initiate sex with another sleeping person. My partner did this once to me, and I woke up before she did. It was really weird. And it also happened.
Neither of these comments are in any way directed at the story in the blog post, they are directed specifically at your comment.
Mediahound posted a comment that i got as an email, but cannot find here to respond to. Too many comments, my computer isn’t loading them all. But let me respond.
He said:
@Alyssa Royse – Hi there – I’ve been doing my usual thing of verifying content, and of course I’ve had to look at that speech you mentioned. I’m seen as an odd ball – and I’ve been been called an anally retentive scholar because to do things like checks facts and if there are references to external claims and materials I often go look and check. Some even call me MRA which I take as a compliment – me being a Meddling Rational Archivist to likes to keep reality straight and well ironed.
You referred to “Rape is a Violent Crime” and you said this and reference this repeatedly. The “##### is a violent crime is significant. It means that it’ always true – it’s basic grammar and semantics.
I know some get lost under the Big Rape Tent issue, but I’m one of those people who looks at the poles and ropes and pegs in the ground used to hold it all up. So I’m interested in why the change from one frame to another frame? From the 100% position to something that is clearly not as 100% and is definitely less than 100%.
I’m struck by the fact that in this piece you state “In order to get to that answer we need to first abolish the idea that all rape is about power and violence.” – that is also a whole new frame. Hell – where is that coming from – 2 new frames – even 2 news frames.
That is a pretty spectacular 180 – the same as in 2011 you were stating that you were raped because a rapist raped you and continued with the view that if someone calls it rape it automatically creates a rapist, but until someone does it’s well not rape and there is no rapist. It sort a goes into the realms of quantum mechanics. P^)
It seems that in the last 18 months or so you have changed so many views and ideas that you were very vocal about in 2011. But I’m most intrigued by that shift in the Violence Issue.
One time all rape is violent and then suddenly violence is gone – I’m also most intrigued as to who has been the biggest influence in changing your mind and the frames you keep using? Who have you been reading and listening to?
I’m finding it fascinating watching this whole issue of rape in the USA play out across the net and modern media. I’m not sure if you can add to that analysis, but it does seem that the changes you have shown in the last 18 months are significant and linked to that.
My response:
I hope this posts, because there are so many comments they’re hard to find.
I don’t see any incongruencies there. In this story, I said that what my friend did was rape. And that when you get right down to it, he is responsible for his actions, not her. We could go into definitions of violence of you want….. But in the instance that you are pointing out, the question, I think, is what started the rape. People like to think that rape STARTS as a quest for violence and control and power. What I said in this piece is that it doesn’t always start there, but that somewhere it turns into that.
If we are going to prevent rape, we have to get over the idea that all rape is done by the hands of “bad men” who wear signs saying “I’m a bad man.” But that it can happen by men and women, who are not wholly bad people, but that situations go bad. That does not alleviate responsibility, nor does it make the sexually using of someone without their consent less “violent.” After all, not all violence involves weapons and bruises.
Further, I said that she had every right to behave how she behaved and not expect to get rape. Also consistent with everything I’ve always said. However, as a society, we have to accept that sometimes things don’t work the way we think they should, and that often our signals are misunderstood.
The reason that the woman in this article was raped was because someone raped her. I did not question that. What I did was ask why. Not excuse the why, but ask the why. Ask what was misunderstood, what lesson was not previously learned, what game was being played and supported, and by whom. Asking why something is so is not the same as suggesting it is not so.
My stand on such things really hasn’t changed.
Also, I would add that most people live a lot of life in 18 months. Although my opinions have not changed on this issue, it would be scary to me if people’s stand on things didn’t change as they had new experiences and got new information. If my stand changes, I will tell you how and why. It has not, in this case.
Have you looked at the work of “Loretta Ross, Yulanda Ward and Nkenge Toure”. I fear some may be re-inventing the wheel – again.
Oh – and if I take your response as valid, it has to mean that this rape was violent, because if you say all rape is violent, Period, it means this one has to be. See where the dissonance is coming in? Why the change? Tell us about it!
“we have to get over the idea that all rape is done by the hands of “bad men” who wear signs saying “I’m a bad man”
Just because a man doesn’t look like a bad guy doesn’t mean hes a nice guy. Hes not a really bad guy, but don’t put him in the same category as the other guys who don’t rape , a real nice guys. I’m a nice guy and I don’t and wont rape.
Hes a rapist, and hes not a nice guy, why its so difficult to acknowledge that anyone who commit rape is not nice ?
Because I do not agree with that statement. Simple.
That’s not a fair answer! People want to fight and probe and get down and dirty. You can’t do that – It’s not allowed.
.. and it will also traumatise many who’s parents said “Because I Said So”! P^)
I guess it comes down to whether niceness is defined by what you try to do or by what you succeed at doing. The point of the article is good intentions aren’t enough to ensure good outcomes, that he’s a person who tries to be nice, but wound up doing a terrible thing anyway. Whether that really makes him a “nice guy” or not is semantics, and kind of beside the point.
Any label like that is subject to interpretation. Niceness isn’t a badge that you get to wear as a symbol of what kind of person you are. It can mean multiple things, and just because someone doesn’t fit one definition of the label doesn’t mean that they can’t fit another definition of it. Obviously he’s not a “nice guy” in the same sense as Superman, Gallant, or Dudley Do-Right, but that doesn’t mean that the label can’t be meaningfully applied to him.
“Of course they would all be wrong. But if something walks like a fuck and talks like fuck, at what point are we supposed to understand that it’s not a fuck?”
Allow me to answer this question as it applies to this situation.
AT THE POINT WHERE THE PERSON IS ASLEEP
Hi there,
It would be interesting to read some advice and tips for parents on how to teach our children about how to express themselves and their sexuality, and how to give sex education. My children are still very young, but I am trying to promote the message that how you feel is most important, not how you look.
People keep asking for more details. I left them out for a reason, and at least part of those reasons is to protect the people involved. But the rest of it is far more theoretical – it is the UNDERLYING societal questions that I wanted to talk about. That you have all been so gracious in talking about. Each case really is fundamentally different, which is why we must understand the foundations of rape culture and sexually based aggression rather than focus on technicalities. (I think, ironically, that would actually lay the groundwork for revamping the legals system as well, something that I do think needs to happen.)
Here is another article which more closely parallels the original story (but with the genders reversed):
http://www.genderratic.com/p/1899/this-is-what-sexual-entitlement-looks-like/
Read the entire genderratic story (which has the genders reversed to show how rapey it would sound coming form a man) then click on the original story.
I haven’t seen any feminist reaction to this story, but I’m willing to be if it were jezebel or radfem hub, some excuse for the woman would be bandied about.
I’m confused about what “mixed signals” the girl sent. Did she snore in a sexy way?
You keep talking about how you thought she was into him, and how so many other people observing the two thought she wanted sex… and maybe you are right that sex would have been consensual if only your friend had bothered to ask. But he didn’t bother to ask. He just took what he wanted when she was incapacitated.
Quite frankly, the fact that you are even bring up her prior behavior is reprehensible because the bottom line is that the girl was not capable of giving consent at the time sex began and that is very clearly rape. You are making excuses for him by saying “he didn’t know.” Ignorance is no excuse for speeding or murder – so why would it be acceptable for rape?
Being naked in bed with someone who has flirted with you sexually for weeks is a pretty clear sign that they probably wanna have sex with you at some point, or they are at least into you. The signs were there to show interest, but her being asleep means there is zero chance for consent.
We do have manslaughter charges though…
That’s exactly what I mean…. there is no way to confuse “sleeping” with “flirting.”
Fifty “yes” and one “no” is still a “no” – so no matter how many signals she sent that sex would be welcome, she still didn’t consent.
This seems so black and white to me.
I think you can be both “nice” and a rapist – but you can’t be “good” and a rapist. One of the men who raped me was extremely polite about it – but if a theft is a home invasion with shotguns in your face or a nimble fingered pickpocket it is still theft. A nice rapist is still a rapist.
Maybe there should be different variation of crime acknowledged in the legal system…
there are person who are nice and person who act nice. They are different. There are still many many nice guys in the world that wont and don’t rape.
And a nice rapist is not a nice guy.
This is a whole new dimension – the etiquette of rape.
So if the rapists is perceived as polite they remain nice and are just bad? Only rude rapists are not nice and bad? Does anyone have the statutes for those, or do I need to look it all up in Debrett’s? Medieval Edition?
I’m pretty sure Miss Manners never wrote about that one… it was one of the most bizarre and surreal events of my life.
A lot of the problem I have with nice guys is the distance between “nice” and “good”.
I’m even willing to accept the duality of people (ie: the purple heart winner who murders his wife is both good and bad because one event had nothing to do with the other).
Maybe the question at hand becomes how much of the definition of “nice guy” is the assumption that they do not rape because they market respecting women as part of being nice?
I really hate to bring religion into it, but I can’t think of another analogy – but if someone said they were Christian but didn’t believe in Jesus that would be very hard for a lot of people to swallow because Jesus is such a fundamental part of Christianity. This guy says he’s a ‘nice guy’ but he rapes people – isn’t that the same thing because not raping is such a fundamental part of being proclaimed a nice guy?
but if someone said they were Christian but didn’t believe in Jesus that would be very hard for a lot of people to swallow because Jesus is such a fundamental part of Christianity.
The USA and most of supposed Western Culture is based upon Judeo Christian Religion, Philosophy, Language, Legal Systems — It’s sort of Endemic and like Blackpool Rock has it written all the way through.
I have one friend is is extremely honest when asked about religion – he states he is an Atheistic Christian. That believing in God and Jesus thing covers-up so much, especially endemic cultural and social bias! Not believing does not take the garbage out – you have to do that yourself.
What I am curious about is what happened during those moments, were they fumbling about and she passed out without him realizing since they were both stupid drunk, or did they fall asleep together, he wakes up, he starts penetrating. Both are rape but I hold more anger for the latter vs the former. That’s the only acceptable reason I can see for someone not realizing someone is awake is when one passes out during an activity and a few moments pass but even then they should notice after those few moments. He’s still at fault but before she passed out he had messages and if they fooled around together, his idea was right. The key thing to work out is why he took those messages to mean he could have sex with her whilst she was ASLEEP. Did he not get taught that you can’t consent when asleep? How do we stop others making that mistake? (which is my entire curiosity over this, helping others to avoid the same mistake)
All to often, it does feel like the victim-blaming / slut-shaming allegations are about rushing to judgment – he’s bad, she’s good, lets move away from this uncomfortable concept as soon as we can. It seems to be that way with a lot of uncomfortable topics, we have a myriad of ways to try and push away those happenings in the world that trouble us.
But, there really is a place for stepping back and looking at the dynamics in play, without judging. To think carefully and clearly, and understand the forces that created this situation. Without doing so, we can only address the individual circumstances – but how can we break the patterns that create these circumstances without trying to understand them first.
Sometimes judging gets in the way of solving the real problem.
You make a lot of valid points here that I agree with… but they are all overshadowed by the fact that you are writing them in reference to a guy who had sex with someone while she was ASLEEP. Yes, our society has a problem with how to interpret “signals”. Yes, our society has a problem with how to clearly identify consent. Yes. This is true and these are all issues worth exploring in order to prevent rape.
But none of these issues have anything to do with the fact that your friend raped a woman while she slept and that is why all of your valid points are LOST on the one big wrong point. This was not about signals or mixed messages. There are NO signals that can be interpreted (wrongly or rightly) as “it’s okay to fuck me without permission while I’m unconscious” other than HER EXPLICITLY saying that immediately beforehand.
I don’t accept that he “didn’t even know” it was rape because SHE WAS ASLEEP. This was not “drunk party sex”. This does not exist in the “dark murky world of mixed signals, confusing messages and alcohol.” . SHE. WAS. ASLEEP. You do not send mixed signals or confusing messages when you are asleep. Any man that tries to have sex with someone who IS NOT CONSCIOUS is a rapist and HE KNOWS IT.
I appreciate that you didn’t intend to make this about victim blaming or slut shaming (and I do believe you when you say you are against such things) but by continuing to claim that this was a situation where consent was easily confused, you are giving ALLmen who rape women another excuse for their behavior.
Yes!!!! I very much agree with this, Lillith. I think our culture does have a lot of confusion about what constitutes rape. I was expecting a much murkier situation to be used. And my fear as you mentioned is that moving backwards in what we believe is “confusing” accidentally creates an atmosphere of justifying rapes that are not currently seen as confusing, as then being seen as confusing.
I’m not concerned about labeling the guy, or judging or whatever, but I am concerned with the message being sent out if/when our society chooses to deal with these issues.
Why limit to allmen and not just all people??
Why limit to allmen and not just all people?? Well I would give it 2 wild guesses:
1) The person doing it is ignorant of how to use the English Language and does not grasp in any way how what they say/write shows their inner mental/philosophical/political/social landscape so they do it from ignorance. (Expressio Unius Est Exclusio Alterius)
2) The person doing it is completely aware of how to use the English Language and fully grasps just how what they say/write shows their inner mental/philosophical/political/social landscape so they do it deliberately and are even aware that many will not grasp the deficiencies in how language is being used. (Interpretatio Cessat in Claris Definition)
I do love making wild guesses – and you never know, One day I may even be right! P^)
If rape is defined based only on consent, then man in this story committed rape. If indeed he is (or was) a nice person, then it’s worth examining how he construed the women’s behavior as consent. Her flirtatious behavior could certainly have given him the idea that she was interested in him, and he could hardly have been faulted for developing the expectation that she would agree to have sex with him, if he had asked. I’d defend the guy for politely expressing some confusion or anger if he had asked and been told “no”. But he didn’t ask. In my opinion he had to make some pretty flawed assumptions to believe that he had a full green light. What she did may have been confusing, but it wasn’t consent.
In the feministe story the context is different. The couple had a prior sexual relationship, and based on what we know she believed he was awake and that his behavior indicated consent, albeit non-verbal. Taking her at her word that he did in fact motion for her to start, isn’t that the way sex often happens in established couples? Maybe not exactly like that, but one reason that “consent” can be a tricky subject to discuss is that in practice it’s often non-verbal. Even if we’re really careful to be certain about consent early in a relationship, don’t we often relax that standard over time and with familiarity?
I really don’t get why so many people keep making comments that the guy “thought it was okay to have sex with a sleeping woman.”
Ellen, for example, says “Asking him why he thought it was OK is also a good question–but a better, more revealing question here would be: Why was it more attractive to him than initiating sex with a woman who was fully conscious?”
Did it cross anyone’s mind that maybe, I dunno, after waking up midway through a night of HEAVY DRINKING AND DRUG USE, just maybe he wasn’t thinking clearly? That maybe he didn’t sit back and think to himself “Hm, this woman is asleep next to me. I could initiate sex with her, but, even though we were getting pretty intense before, she never actually consented to sex. If I have sex with her, it will be rape, since none of the things we did before now actually amount to consenting to sex, especially when she is unconscious. Hmmm… yeah, I think I’ll rape her now!”
Do you equate every action an heavily intoxicated person does with the assumption the person thinks it’s okay? When a stone drunk person is pissing in a closet, does it cross your mind that they think pissing in closets is okay, and they planned to piss in the closet and we should ask them why they decided to piss in the closet instead of the bathroom? People do things all the time, when drunk, that they realize are wrong when they sober up.
What this guy did was rape, yes. But to extrapolate that “he thought it was okay!”, especially considering the fact that he called the author to discuss the issue afterward.. is just ridiculous.
I really don’t get why so many people keep making comments that the guy “thought it was okay to have sex with a sleeping woman.”
It’s called filling in the gaps to justify personal prejudice and dogma. It’s why you screen Jurors pre trial so that a number of the people here can be excluded. They can’t handle evidence and invent reality.
http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa63/aa63.htm
“Blackouts are much more common among social drinkers than previously assumed and should be viewed as a potential consequence of acute intoxication regardless of age or whether the drinker is clinically dependent on alcohol (2). White and colleagues (3) surveyed 772 college undergraduates about their experiences with blackouts and asked, “Have you ever awoken after a night of drinking not able to remember things that you did or places that you went?” Of the students who had ever consumed alcohol, 51 percent reported blacking out at some point in their lives, and 40 percent reported experiencing a blackout in the year before the survey. Of those who reported drinking in the 2 weeks before the survey, 9.4 percent said they blacked out during that time. The students reported learning later that they had participated in a wide range of potentially dangerous events they could not remember, including vandalism, unprotected sex, and driving.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-are-the-effects-of-a
“UNDER THE INFLUENCE of alcohol, the brain experiences impairments in the regions shown:
Frontal Lobe (A) Loss of reason, caution, inhibitions, sociability, talkativeness and intelligence ”
Its almost like, after consuming a chemical known to impair reasoning and intelligence, people are prone to doing pretty terrible things. Like rape.
I’d bet pretty much anything that, had you asked this guy the day before, he would have said he would never rape a woman because he knows right from wrong and how dare you even ask!?
But this is what happens when we, as a culture, subscribe to the Evil Rape Monster theory, where the only people capable of rape are Evil Rape Monsters Who Evilly Decide To Rape.
Maybe people would be more careful (especially when it comes to alcohol) if they saw rape, or sexual assault, or sexual harassment, as something that everyone, under the wrong conditions, is capable of.
These same references suggest the possibility that she could have actually been the one to initiate sexual contact, and neither of them remembered it. It is also possible that she, like the man in the feministe article, initiated it without waking up, in which case she also would not remember. In either of those cases, it is possible that, since he was also intoxicated and semi-conscious, he also has no memory of the actions she did to initiate it, or to make him think she was conscious when in fact she wasn’t. Nothing we have learned from the post or Alyssa’s comments suggest that this happened, but nothing suggests that they didn’t either – in fact, it is entirely possible, (unless there were some totally sober witnesses focused intently on the two of them), that neither of the people involved even know if something like that happened.
None of us were there. Unless we hear from him “I was fully aware of the fact that she was unconscious” we don’t know whether or not he knew she was unconscious.
In fact, we don’t even know if she actually was unconscious when he first penetrated her. We only know that she doesn’t remember it. Anyone who has spent time around anyone who drinks, or for that matter anyone with irregular sleep patterns, should know those are not the same thing.
The really interesting question to me is, why, even after the same points I am raising have more or less been raised already in the comments, why do people continue to insist with absolute certainty that there is absolutely no other possibility other than he knew she was not consenting. And why are they not only so completely confident about something they have no way to know, but why are they so seemingly self-righteously angry? Yes, I know, its is because rape is such a emotionally charged subject – but why is that true in the first place? That is going to sound like a stupid question, I’m sure, but I think that itself reflects on something deeper in our collective beliefs about sexuality and gender.