It may be comforting to believe that all rapists are bad people, but in truth, rape most often happens between friends, lovers, acquaintances and pals.
We see it all the time in the movies and on TV.
There’s a guy and a girl, and you know they’re gonna end up together. They have a super-hot dynamic that consists of witty banter, challenging each other, and doing things to really piss each other off. They may fight, but they also watch the other walk away with a combination of both longing and disgust.
Eventually, there’s the scene where the two of them hook up. They’re arguing, and it’s intense. There’s a lot of sexual tension. They watch each other, connecting through their eyes. They’re both fired up and have flushed cheeks. Maybe she bites her lip…
He steps forward, grabs her arms and tries to kiss her. She says, “No, stop. I can’t—”
He interrupts, “You can. You know you haven’t stopped thinking about this since we met.”
“I have,” she says. “It’s just…” She turns away from him. She’s torn.
He spins her back around, pushes her up against the wall. She turns her head, but she doesn’t pull away entirely. He takes her face in his hands, his body pressing into hers, turns her lips to his, and kisses her forcefully. She pushes him off for a moment, then she gives in to the passion, kissing him back and wrapping her arms around him, maybe her legs too.
At this point, they may move to the bedroom and have the best sex of their lives, fueled by conflict and heat and challenge. Or maybe she walks away, conflicted but breathless.
Either way, we know they’re going to end up together.
One thing we know for sure is that she’s not going to press charges against him for sexual assault.
But what actually was it that happened between them? Regardless of whether she walks away or consents to glorious sex, she said “no” and he didn’t stop. In fact, he pressed her against the wall and held her arms. Or maybe he did something more forceful, like in the scene below between James Bond and Pussy Galore.
It’s a scene so common I bet you can think of 5 or 10 movies and TV shows where it happens. Moonlighting, 9 and a Half Weeks, Boardwalk Empire, An Officer and a Gentleman, Goldfinger, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and almost every made-for-TV movie and soap opera.
And it has everything to do with Alyssa Royse’s article, Nice Guys Commit Rape, Too, where the author tells the story of a guy she knew well—a guy whom she believed was a nice guy—who was accused of raping a woman by penetrating her while she was asleep.
How are the two things related? Because the forceful kiss is an easily-relatable example of how our society actively teaches people about consent in a way that is incredibly dangerous.
She says “no”? Nothing to worry about. Just push her up against a wall. He says he doesn’t want to? It’s okay, just take off your top and press your breasts into him.
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My husband and I recently watched an early release of the film Save the Date. In this sexy, fun, edgy drama, Sarah (Lizzy Caplan) goes through a big break-up but quickly becomes interested in a new guy, Jonathan. When Jonathan (Mark Webber) goes to her house for a date, it’s clear the two are interested in one another. Sarah acts adorable, Jonathan acts adorable, they flirt, and she makes eyes at him. He smiles and says something like, “I really want to kiss you right now.”
Save the Date – IFC Pictures
She replies, “Then why don’t you?”
“Because you just went through an awful break-up”
“I want you to kiss me,” she says.
And he does. And it’s hot.
I turned to my husband and said, “I believe that may be the first time I’ve seen a model for sexy, healthy communication about consent in a film. I mean, maybe ever.”
Now, I’m paraphrasing the dialogue above, but he told her what he wanted, how he felt, and was considerate of her emotional state. She replied, communicated directly and clearly what she wanted, and he gave it to her. And it was sexy as hell.
But Save the Date is a rare exception among thousands of forceful TV and movie kisses. And it’s the direction we need to be moving in. As Jamie Utt explains in his piece Want The Best Sex of Your Life? Just Ask!, enthusiastic consent is hot because it helps us know what will turn our partners on, and makes very clear the fact that we are desired.
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Since the publication of Nice Guys Commit Rape, Too both here at GMP and at our content partner magazine, xoJane, Alyssa Royse has experienced a lot of fallout. She’s been called a rape apologist by people like Ally Fogg, and been told that she is making excuses for a rapist, by GMP’s own Matthew Salesses.
The truth is, Alyssa Royse is not apologizing for her friend having raped a woman. In fact, she puts blame squarely upon him many times, including saying, “what happened to her was wrong. My friend raped her.” But there is a misunderstanding in some of the response pieces and many of the comments, about the way in which responsibility can be divvied up here.
Alyssa’s guy friend is 100% responsible for the rape he committed. In saying that society is also partially responsible, we aren’t now making Alyssa’s guy friend less responsible. Responsibility is not a pie to be divided. Instead, these are overlapping responsibilities. The space where they meet is what we need to talk about.
Alyssa’s guy friend AND society are responsible. It’s not an either/or, it’s a both/and. Below are two wildly crude diagrams I just scribbled on my legal pad. I hope you’ll forgive the elementary school-quality of my artwork and handwriting.
On the left we have our either/or pie. In this model, when we give some responsibility to society, we are taking some responsibility away from the rapist. This is wrong. It is a false binary.
On the right, we see how the two different forces come together to create a rape. Alyssa’s guy friend entered that situation with problems, clearly. His ideas about sexuality were deeply flawed and his ability to empathize with another person was probably also lacking. Along comes society, with James Bond (the model of successful masculinity) and Pussy Galore and every other forceful kiss that leads to super-hot sex, and it overlaps with this guy and his issues, and what we’re left with is a grey area of consent that leads to a woman being raped.
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Matthew Salesses may be right. Alyssa’s guy friend may have never actually been a nice guy at all. He may have been a guy that seemed nice but was actually really bad. I don’t know him, neither does Matthew. But I’m more likely to believe Alyssa that he was generally a good dude. A good dude who had a very messed-up idea about consent. A good dude who raped a sleeping woman.
See, he can be both. No, seriously, he can.
Let me tell you another story. I had this guy friend in high school whom we’ll call Rob. Rob was a cool guy that everyone liked, not a jock but very popular. He came to me one afternoon, confused. At a party he’d hooked up with a girl named Maria, whom he’d gone out with a few times. They were making out heavily, rolling around, and engaged in heavy petting. He was cool with her putting her hand down his pants, but when she lifted up her skirt and pulled over her underwear, he got nervous and said, “No, I don’t want to do that.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked, flabbergasted. He’d had sex with girls before.
“I didn’t want to have sex with her right then. I don’t know.”
“But why not?” 17 year-old me couldn’t quite grasp it. I mean, he wasn’t a virgin, wasn’t a born-again Christian who was waiting for marriage. And he liked Maria.
“I just didn’t. But she sat on top of me anyway and, like, shoved me inside her.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I pushed her off and said I didn’t want to.”
It was disturbing, but also confusing to me.
I don’t think Rob felt like he was raped, but it definitely seemed fucked up . And while he didn’t go out with her again, he wasn’t exactly mad at her. He just felt weird and sort of irritated about it. I’d guess that if you’d asked him if he’d been raped, he would’ve said, “no way.”
But if you ask me, she raped him. Did she know she was raping him? Almost certainly not. Did she set out to rape him? Definitely not. In fact, I asked her about it a few years later. She told me that she regretted it terribly and felt like a horrible person. She was 16 when it happened and had been fed a story her entire life about how all guys want is sex, and how guys will screw anything that walks. She also had a profound problem with insecurity and only later did she realize that her main sense of validation came from being sexually desired.
Maria simply couldn’t conceive of a guy saying “no” and meaning it. Not a guy like Rob, at least, a guy whom she knew had hooked up with, and even had sex with, a few girls from our school. She also thought it would make him like her more if she were sexually dominant, like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, whose no-panties leg-crossing scene was considered the sexiest thing ever in the 1990s—when in reality, it is disturbing and intrusive.
Is Maria a bad person? I don’t think so.
Did she do a bad thing? Absolutely. And in my opinion, it was rape.
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Does this story sit with you differently than the story of Alyssa’s guy friend and the girl whom he penetrated while she was asleep? Why or why not? Be honest with yourself here.
If it does, it’s probably because of a number of factors. First, in our society, a woman raping a man seems impossible. I mean, if he didn’t want to have sex, why would he have an erection?
Also, don’t guys always want sex?
The truth about male sexuality is that contrary to what we’re taught, guys do not always want sex. As much as Rob desired Maria and was enjoying their make-out session, he didn’t want to have sex that day. His desire may have given him an erection, but an erection does not equal consent.
We might also ask why he didn’t stop her before she forced penetration? Wasn’t he stronger than her? It doesn’t matter. His “no” should be enough to make her stop. But it wasn’t.
So what do we think of Maria? Should she have been tried in a court of law? Should she have gone to jail and been put on a sex offenders list?
God help me, I have no clue.
There are a number of factors that make Alyssa’s guy friend different from Maria: First, and foremost, he was an adult. And the situations were different.
But what else? Alyssa’s guy friend is a man and Maria was a young woman?
Maria got a clear “no” when she proposed sex, but did it anyway. Alyssa’s guy friend put his penis inside a sleeping woman with no warning at all.
Both seem equally bad, for different reasons.
But are either of these people “bad people”?
I don’t know what the rest of Maria’s life has been like. We’re in our mid-30s now, and I know she is married and has a family. Even at 19, she was hugely regretful of how she’d violated Rob, so I assume she never did that again. And while I know nothing about Alyssa’s guy friend, I believe Alyssa when she says that he was truly remorseful about committing rape. I looked in Maria’s eyes and saw her pain and remorse, and I do not think that Alyssa’s guy friend’s maleness makes him exempt from feeling the exact same way.
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So, does saying Alyssa’s guy friend is a good guy and a rapist excuse his rape? Certainly not. As we said before, I believe a person can be guilty of these types of rape and be good. Would I trust him alone in a room with me? Probably not. Would I set him up with my little sister? Absolutely not. But would I say he’s all-bad? No. Or at least I would say, “I don’t know.”
I understand some critics’ fear that saying Alyssa’s guy friend isn’t necessarily a bad guy might cause people who have raped, or will rape in the future, to think it’s okay. I think both Matthew Salesses and Ally Fogg believe that saying a rapist could be a nice guy might minimize the act of rape he committed, and I respect that. I understand it. What would happen if a person thought he could rape a woman and then walk away as a good guy? That would be a dangerous precedent to set.
But I also think it’s dangerous to continue framing rape as a “bad guy thing” for many reasons. First, when we say “only bad guys commit rape”, we’re disengaging any guy who thinks he’s a “good guy” from having a conversation about how he can help prevent rape. And we’re also disengaging all women from that conversation.
That’s why our understanding of who rapists sometimes are needs to change. First, we need to have active, engaged conversations with everyone—young people especially—about consent. We need men like Jamie Utt speaking and writing about sexy ways of communicating desire, boundaries, and limits. We need mainstream media examples of healthy, sexy conversations about consent—like in the film Save the Date—to be replicated everywhere, and we need the forceful, non-consensual kiss to no longer be an example of what’s hot. Let James Bond and Pussy Galore’s scary sex scene die with Sean Connery’s reign as 007.
And we need to be able to recognize the nuances of humanity. That a good person can do a very bad thing. That people can see the harm they’ve caused, feel great remorse, seek help and make real change to become a good person once again.
If we say “only bad guys commit rape” we’re actually creating a more dangerous society for both men and women. We need everyone to recognize the fine line we dance when we engage in sexual acts with another person. We need women to realize that guys have as much right to sexual autonomy as women. We need good guys and girls to realize that even if you’re not trying to hurt someone, without clear, direct and specific consent, you could still rape them.
Because the truth is, as Alyssa Royse said, the majority of rapes don’t happen in dark alleys where predatory men wait for a victim to pass. They happen between friends, between lovers, between partygoers and schoolmates. Rapes sometimes happen when someone thinks their partner really means “yes” when he or she says “no”. They happen when girls are taught that guys are sex-obsessed animals. They happen when people aren’t taught the communication skills that educators like Jamie Utt, Alyssa Royse, Cliff Pervocracy, Scarleteen, and others are trying to teach.
They happen, sometimes, when good people do bad things.
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For articles and resources on enthusiastic consent, please visit the pages below:
Want the Best Sex of Your Life? Just Ask! by Jamie Utt
Driver’s Ed for the Sexual Superhighway: Navigating Consent from Scarleteen
The “Yes, No, Maybe” Chart – A Tool for Talking About Consent by Jamie Utt
A Concise Kink Worksheet by Cliff Pervocracy (a consent tool for the Kink community and others)
Lead photo: Flickr/pheezy
About Joanna Schroeder
Are we really still having a conversation about why he came to the thoroughly considered conclusions that his actions were okay while he was heavily intoxicated by both alcohol and other drugs?
No – the conversation has moved well beyond that. Please Do Try To Keep Up. P^)
I don’t know. The argument seems to have been reduced to “Alyssa believes her friend thought it was okay for him to have sex with a sleeping woman and Ally believes he knew it was wrong but did it anyway.”
From either side you have the assumption that he was able to consider his actions.
But I will Try To Keep Up, Thanks.
As I said – It has all moved on a long way from limited views and ideas of Good Vs Bad etc. But then again, It seems that the bigger conversation has been going on, even if some just keep on attempting to make it Binary and One Dimensional. Even bad people exist in Three Dimensions.
You seem to be missing my point, as it was neither about limited views or ideas of Good Vs Bad.
But after the condescending “Please Do Try To Keep Up” comment, I’m not particularly interested in continuing on, so we’ll just let it go.
Well Drew – there is that thing about Humour from different countries. Some assume good faith and practice it, others don’t. It’ all a matter of choice. Anglophone does not mean just the USA.
P^)
Ah. Well then, I’m the one guilty of missing a message.
Mea Culpa, sir.
I’ve had trouble mustering the courage to post this comment.
A lot of people flat-out refuse to consider the possibility that the man in the original story honestly did not realize his actions were wrong until after the fact, or imagine that in just the right (wrong?) situation they could make a similar mistake. I don’t have to use my imagination for this.
I am also a rapist. Here is my story:
Sometime over 20 years ago (the details are fuzzy), when I was in my 20′s, I was in bed with my then wife. It was early; the lights were on or there was daylight, and she was asleep. She was apparently having a sexy dream, and was aroused.
I decided it would be playful for me to penetrate her. I assumed that she would awaken in a mental state of arousal comparable to that of her dream, and she would be interested in sex.
Instead, when she awoke she said “Don’t ever do that again!” I realized from her tone that I had made a serious mistake. I have never done anything like that since, with her or anyone else.
We never discussed the issue again. About 10 years later I asked for a divorce, for completely unrelated reasons.
To my recollection no intoxicating substances were involved in this incident.
I think I was capable of making this mistake because of my ignorance regarding issues of consent. My Catholic sex education (again, memory faded over 35 years) was limited to plumbing, and “sex outside of marriage is a sin.” In college orientation discussion of the subject may have been limited to “don’t rape.”
I would not have performed this act if I realized it was rape. I believe that education on the subject of consent would have convinced me not to perform this act. To my recollection I had never heard, or read, any discussion on consent before this incident.
I realize that I am probably below the 50th percentile in ability to grasp social concepts that others assume “should” be obvious to everyone. Still, I cannot be the only one to have ever made a mistake like this.
Do you think you would have made the same mistake if she hadn’t been your wife? If she had been a woman with whom you had NEVER had sex… who had NEVER give you permission to penetrate her before… with whom you were not in a relationship with… would you still have thought it was a good idea to penetrate her without permission, for the VERY first time that you are penetrating her? I don’t think it’s likely that you would have. And I don’t think it’s likely that anyone would have.
Did you truly believe you had her consent to penetrate her? Or did you think that because she was your wife and apparently “aroused” that you didn’t need her consent? To be clear, what you did was still wrong – marriage does not mean you are entitled to sex at all times without your partners permission. (Unless of course, there’s been some kind of prior agreement that this behavior is okay.) However, I can more understand how that mistake was made because of prior consent and sexual activity with your wife. It was still rape, it was still wrong, but I find it less difficult to believe the claim that you really didn’t know that’s what it was.
I’m not debating that the man in Alyssa’s story might have been confused. It’s possible he would not have associated what he was doing with the WORD “rape”. But I find it difficult that he would not have realized it was wrong in some way. I find it difficult that he would not have realized that, at the least, that he was being selfish or inconsiderate. I find it difficult to believe that he truly felt he had permission to penetrate her, for the first time ever, in her sleep, without her consent, or request, or participation, or awareness. I think it’s much more likely that he decided that he didn’t need her consent, that it didn’t matter whether or not she consented.
And okay, I will allow for the slim slim slim possibility that he really was that foolish and that screwed up that he truly felt he had her consent. If that truly was the case, then I still fail to see what benefit Alyssa’s story serves. I understand that she wants to open up the discussion about why men rape, but in by opening up that discussion in THIS context, she’s simply giving rapists yet one more potential excuse for their behavior “I didn’t know! I’m a nice guy!” That may be true for a small percentage of rapists, but what does making that claim it do for the rest of them?
Lilith,
I read a comment elsewhere from Alyssa that read: “There are many women who have been victimized by men who didn’t realize that what they were doing was wrong.” Perhaps she originally did not intend to focus exclusively on the scenario of her friend, but the conversation took on a life of its own.
That said, in reviewing comments from earlier, I seem to have had one of your comments in mind when sharing my story.
In my case, I was naively trying to initiate sex in a playful way. I wasn’t trying to use her unconscious body for my pleasure. I hadn’t discussed consent while sleeping or otherwise with my Ex or anyone else. I simply didn’t know any better. I wish I had known better. I didn’t intend to cause harm.
Between the lack of specifics regarding the friend’s scenario, and my difficulty in recalling my mindset from my younger days, I cannot be certain what I would have done in that scenario, I can, however, create my own hypothetical in which I had been engaging in what I interpreted as foreplay with a woman, then I could possibly have been sufficiently horny and inebriated to overlook that she had stopped responding just prior to beginning coitus.
Perhaps we don’t talk enough about the risks involved with using intoxicating substances. “Don’t drink and drive” gets hammered into us, but experienced drinkers still misjudge their level of impairment when impaired. Less often discussed is the similar impairment of our ability to empathize with others or consider the possible consequences of our actions when the consequences have not been spelled out in PSAs.
I think it’s safe to say that Alyssa spent less time vetting her protagonist than she would have, say, shopping for the next Jane Roe.
HTML fail. Jane Roe
(A comment preview feature would be nice.)
Arium, thanks for sharing your comment. I know it probably did take a lot of courage, especially considering the knowledge that people would probably attack you for it.
I think you’re so right that we don’t talk enough about the risks involved with using intoxicating substances. What is it about being drunk and high that makes people more likely to rape, when they wouldn’t have otherwise? We must explore that.
In Vino Veritas. Because people lose inhibitions, because when inhibitions are lost, people act without thought. Because if the core cultural messages are “I should have this” we take what we want. Because they can use “I was drunk/she/he was drunk” as an excuse. Those all come to mind. I guess we should also look at people who have been really drunk and really high and HAVEN’T raped, assaulted, stolen, driven.
So what kept those particular core inhibitions in place?
I’d say if we could identify that, we’d have more luck teaching it to more people.
The few times I’ve been really drunk “I’me drunk, so I can get away with it” has never come to mind. The only time it does is when I’ve been buzzing (IE not drunk) and I’m considering doing something out of character, I consider “I was drunk” could be a fallback excuse. I also think that core cultural message isn’t one sent to young men, and it has only been sent to young women over a very short period of time. The cultural message to men is “you must earn, and continue to earn, anything you want”. And I’m sure any guy here will support that assertion.
That said, I do agree with the loss of inhibitions. I believe when drunk, people act on their bass desires (not cultural ones), and sex is one of those desires. They do what feels good, or what feels unnecessary in the moment. They don’t consider the consequences, unless those consequences are understood at a base level and make the action not worth it. Drunk driving is an example of this, it has become less problematic since police crackdowns and increased penalties made increased the consequences beyond acceptable levels, that it registered even at the base emotional level. All laws are like that, but there will always be people who ether don’t respect the law, or who see the risks as worth the outcome, especially while they’re drunk (or in a crowd/mob), and this applies for any crime.
That’s my 2c
In light of this post I feel the need to share a story as well…I am a rape victim, and here is my story…
A year and a half ago I was seeing a guy and we had messed around, but never actually had sex. He was very good to me, very great guy, but I did know that he had ‘been around’ prior to us starting to see each other and it made me uneasy. I wasn’t completely ok with it, but he drew me in, we had been friends for almost a year and I had had a crush on him for months. My recent relationship had ended so I had a chance to start seeing him.
We had been seeing each other (not in an official ‘relationship’) for about a month. On the night of my birthday, I got extremely intoxicated, blacking out most of the evening. He also got extremely intoxicated. When we got back from the evening we went to bed. The next morning I woke up, realizing both of our clothes were off and I was sore…I knew that I never said yes. I don’t even remember it starting! I just remember waking up in middle of it, towards the end I suppose…and then falling back to sleep. I thought it was a dream! Sadly, it was not. What makes it all worse…this was my first time ever having intercourse and I was 22. First time ever black out drunk, first time having sex. No consent, no condom, no remembrance of it happening, better yet enjoying it. Having to wake up the next morning and buy plan B. Thank God I didn’t get pregnant. Yes I know, 22 is old…but through high school I wasn’t dating anyone serious (and wanted the first time to be with someone who loved me) and then through college I was dating a guy who was very religious and celibate. So I was celibate. So I was waiting till either marriage with him, or a new relationship with someone who loved me. And with the first time getting black out drunk…alcohol scares me because my mother was an alcoholic. So I have always been very careful. This was the first and last time I ever let go and just ‘got drunk’. Never again.
I’m still seeing him, a year and a half later. I don’t know why I didnt just end it. I believed he didn’t know what he was doing. I believed it was a mistake and didn’t think it was rape because we were seeing each other so I must have ‘set myself up for it’. And after time of thinking about it I realized it was full out rape. But I really liked him, and we’ve built a great relationship that I don’t see ending. But that night still haunts me and always will. I cry and cry when I remember that I waited so long to have sex with that perfect man and it was just taken from me. I cant even remember it. Honestly, we should have never been that intoxicated, and now I know, I will NEVER get that intoxicated again because bad things can happen. Im even more scared of alcohol now.
So my point of telling this story…please take this seriously. Men and women alike. Do NOT GET THAT DRUNK because you have no control over what is happening after a certain point. It’s a horrible idea and leads to horrible things. So please, realize that you MUST have consent. When someone is asleep, they are a no go. Waking them up is probably even a no go because their still in and out of sleep…make sure they are 100% there. And don’t get so drunk that you cannot ask for consent or cannot give consent. If your planning to get that drunk, plan to say away from the opposite sex. And cars. And anything of value to you.
Just thought I would share…and I hope that it hits home with some people. I will always regret getting that drunk that night…because the one thing that was mine, that I had held back from everyone for all the years of my life, was taken from me. I would have never said yes sober because we weren’t ready, and I wasn’t conscious when it happened. So be sure you practice and preach consent. Please and thank you.
Whether a person is good or bad is determined by their actions. Hence people who commit rape are bad people by definition of their bad actions. It’s why you don’t generally hear people saying things like: “that child molester is a really good person.”
Language has a social function and by trying to challenge whether raping someone makes someone bad (which it obviously does) you lose the very understanding of the words within the dichotomy. More importantly, you also lose all ideas of redemption. A bad person can become a good person, a rapist can redeem themselves by doing right by their victim and accepting the seriousness of their actions, e.g. apologising to the victim sincerely and/or reporting themselves to the police based on the needs of their victim.
Issues of consent can be addressed without the challenging of useful dichotomies. For example:
“When engaging in sexual acts always make sure the other person is happy with what is happening and enjoying themselves. If you are not given consent, or have any reason to believe the consent given is not due to the happiness and desire of the person (e.g. drugs or alcohol abuse) then do not continue. Communication is important to any sexual encounter, not only for consent, but also mutual enjoyment. Don’t be afraid to ask the other person if they are okay with what you wish to do, or whether there is anything they would like you to do. Always be considerate and respectful of others, especially with regards to sexual encounters.”
I think we need to acknowledge that people are good or bad on a scale. Somebody who commits rape because of poor decision making, and feels remorse afterward, is not nearly as bad a person as someone who knows they are committing rape at the time, and doesn’t care, and will do it again. This distinction is important because the poor decision maker would choose not to rape if they were accurately informed about consent. Rapes by this kind of rapist can be prevented by education. Perhaps we should say not that this kind of rapist is still a ‘good’ person, but that they WANT to be good. That desire to be good means that they can be deterred.
The depth of the harm a rapist causes is to be determined by the victim/survivor, and the intent of the rapist is irrelevant to how much harm they cause to an individual. But if you lump both kinds of rapists together, you prevent the rapists who want to be good from identifying themselves as rapists. The point of saying that ‘good’ guys commit rape is to say that ‘normal’ guys can rape. It’s not always a shadowy figure with a weapon and malicious intent.
Between the two stories, the legal question is quite easy. The guy and the sleeping woman: rape. Penetrating someone while unconscious is rape (curiously, probably even if they consent to it beforehand, e.g. “I want to wake up with you inside me.” But that’s a different issue.). Having sex with someone who says, “No,” when they are not intoxicated to the point of being unable to resist, where you do not use force or the threat of force – not rape. Good article. Just wanted to clear up that point.
http://www.lexisnexis.com/lawschool/study/outlines/html/crim/crim25.htm
Having sex with someone who says, “No,” when they are not intoxicated to the point of being unable to resist, where you do not use force or the threat of force – not rape.
Wait – what? Was this poorly worded or did you mean to say that having nonviolent, non-forceful sex with a sober person who says “No” is not rape?
Legally (at least under California law), under the definition of rape, the intoxicated person must be so intoxicated that they cannot “resist.” Intoxicated people are legally capable of consent. Cal. Penal Code 261. http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/cacode/PEN/3/1/9/1/s261
Having sex with a sober person who says “no” is rape (legally) if you use force, threats, or duress. Often, the victim will say no, but then not resist because they are afraid of being hurt. This is still rape under the modern definitions of rape. (It didn’t used to be. 50 years ago, many statutes said that the victim had to physically resist or was deemed to consent.)
Please be very aware that in most states this is not the case and intoxicated persons are not able to consent to sexual intercourse.
Also, having sex with a person who says “no” is rape. The end. It doesn’t matter if you use force, threats, or put them under duress. If they say no, and you continue to have sex with that person anyway, you are raping that person.
I don’t know where, you’re getting this, Tara, but what Sarah says about California law is true of most jurisdictions that have any legislation on the subject at all. I think there are few *if any* jurisdictions with a “one drink” rule, that any degree of intoxication whatsoever nullifies consent, which is a rather extremist view in my estimation. Ethically, one shouldn’t take advantage of somebody who is falling down drunk and out of control (much less passed out) no matter what the law is. But simply tipsy and disinhibited? Sorry, no harm, no foul.
I’m getting this from what we were taught in our SAPR classes, courtesy of the military. I happen to believe that there is a huge grey area, but someone who is just tipsy can also be led to make a decision that they normally wouldn’t make sober as well (pulling that information from personal experience with 5+ years as a bartender).
“someone who is just tipsy can also be led to make a decision that they normally wouldn’t make sober as well”
Of course they can, and often do. That does not make it rape. Doing something different from what you’d normally do does not equal lack of consent, or lack of ability to consent.
Are you kidding me with that right now? So, you’re saying that you would sleep with someone who was a little tipsy, and then the next day if they told you, “well, I wouldn’t have slept with you if I was completely sober” that you wouldn’t feel bad?
That’s skeezy. And gross.
If I was you, I would be more concerned about the person who uses a little bit of alcohol to excuse their own choices. “I was a little tipsy when I got behind the wheel of that car, so I can’t be held responsible for the outcomes” I don’t think so. Consent is consent. If your inhibitions are so drastically swayed by alcohol, perhaps that’s a sign to avoid alcohol instead of accusing anyone you have sex with while under the influence of it of raping you. Having sex with someone who is passed out drunk is rape, plying someone you know doesn’t want to have sex with you with alcohol until they are so drunk they lose that inhibition, that’s sleezy. Having completely and enthusiastically consensual sex with someone who’s “a little tipsy” and finding out the next day they regretted their choice… not my problem.
Does your reasoning work in reverse? That is, if a guy who’s “a little tipsy”, say a slight buzz after two slowly-consumed beers, has sex with a woman and tells her the next day he wouldn’t have done it without his beer goggles on, then the woman should feel bad for raping him? Because if that’s not what you mean, I don’t see see why it should only hold true if the woman is the tipsy one. (Or what if they’re both a little tipsy?) To answer more directly, if a woman told me the next day after being “a little tipsy” but showing enthusiastic consent at the time it happened, that she’d never have had sex with me without the drink, the only kind of bad I would feel would be either hurt feelings or anger at the bitchy insult. I sure wouldn’t think I’d raped her because she had one drink.
When this kind of discussion comes up, one of the preconceptions women often battle to convince men is incorrect is that they (the women) are saying that if a woman consents and then later regrets sex, that’s rape. When they make progress and start getting past that hangup to where men are listening and there can be actual dialogue about consent, someone comes along to argue that any drink, even “a little tipsy”, removes a woman’s (but only a woman’s) ability to consent, and either asserts or implies that it is rape. Bye, bye, dialogue.
I have one question that might soften me a bit to your point of view, if I haven’t pissed you off too much to answer it. Are you expressing this view that even the slightest intoxication makes consent impossible as a personal standard that you adhere to and wish others would, too, or is it your view that it’s what the legal standard should be, such that people who violate it should be convicted and sentenced for rape? If it’s the former, I still don’t agree, but I don’t feel that threatened by someone “practicing what they preach”. It would be like being opposed to premarital sex, but without any legal consequence for others who disagree. If you’re arguing it as what you think the law is or should be, then I find it more objectionable.
BTW, violation of PC 261 applies to “sexual intercourse” which is defined elsewhere in the code as penetration of the genitals by a penis, but men can be the victims of what is called unlawful sexual penetration by women, under PC 289. The language about consent, intoxication etc. in 289 largely mirrors 261 and penalties are similar.
My first comment is awaiting moderation. Sorry
It may be comforting to believe that all rapists are bad people, but in truth, rape most often happens between friends, lovers, acquaintances and pals.
Agreed. It’s a rush to judgement that people are quick to make for whatever reason (personally I think they make that rush to judgment in order to distance themselves from it and make themselves feel superior but oh well).
Instead of attaching the stigma to the person it might be better to attach it to the act or else the badness of the act could get lost (and I think this might be why people are far more lenient and sympathetic to female rapists for example).
Eee! In the past few weeks, after spending a fair amount of time on this here website, I’ve come to the conclusion I’ve been the victim of rape on a dozen occasions and the perp on a dozen occasions. Wow. who knew? How do I feel in my anonymous place, my identity safe as do-gooders and lawyers try and convince me that I’ve been damaged in hideous and irreparable ways? Should I float accusations in the local news destroying a presumably innocent life? Or, on the other hand, should I be the person in the crime reports posting my birthdate, full name, hometown, and occupation peppering the web before my trial? Should I just turn myself in? America needs to know.
“They happen when people aren’t taught the communication skills that educators like Jamie Utt, Alyssa Royse, Cliff Pervocracy, Scarleteen, and others are trying to teach.”
Hmmm, the same Cliff Pervocracy who keeps telling people that if there’s no such thing as non-verbal consent, that you have to play a “mother-may-I” verbal permission-getting game for each and every sexual act? That’s the “communication skill” we need to be “educated” in? In other words, micromanagement of communication style by so-called “educators” who are completely tone-deaf to nuance or anybody else’s style of sexual play or communication besides their own.
I give a big “no thank you” to these so-called “sex educators” and the glorified version of the Antioch Rules they’re trying to pass off as the one and only model of affirmative consent. And, of, for the record, I’ve never played these stupid Antioch Rules games, and yet somehow managed to have the *common sense* to not put my dick in a dead drunk sleeping person the way “educator” Alyssa Rose’s “nice guy” friend did. Imagine that.
The problem I have with the first part of this article is with how it sends a conflicting message to what other women are saying. Where does the ravishing end and the rape begin? Does the acknowledgement that the line has shifted, so that what is now called rape was once called exciting, demonstrate some kind of support for rape? Was this always rape, or is this a shift what women think of themselves, of men and of social interaction (did the woman in the white uniform consider herself sexually assaulted, or was it an exciting, if somewhat unexpected, kiss?)?