Just because your partner isn’t saying “no,” Hugo Schwyzer writes, it doesn’t mean it’s a “yes.”
Note: As with many articles about sexual violence, particularly those that include anecdotes, this may prove triggering for some.
“Sometimes I say ‘yes’ when I’d rather say ‘no.’”
It’s been nearly 25 years, but I can still remember the beautiful Berkeley fall afternoon when I heard those shattering words. Katie and I were sitting in a coffee shop just off campus. What had started as a “friends with benefits” situation had blossomed into a sophomore year romance with this dark-eyed dance-and-philosophy double-major. Katie and I had been sleeping together for more than two months—and saying “I love you” for about a week—when she summoned up the courage to bring up this one very painful truth.
At first, I didn’t know what she meant. She spoke so softly I had to lean across the table to hear her. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” she said, “but sometimes I really don’t want to have sex. Sometimes I do, but not as often as you want it. And sometimes I want to tell you ‘no,’ but I can’t bring myself to do it. So I try and send you signals, hoping you can just tell how I’m feeling. But that doesn’t work, so it’s… it’s just easier to say ‘yes’ or just say nothing at all.”
My face flushed. I felt nauseated. I thought instantly of the previous night, where we’d grabbed what I thought was a hot half-hour when my roommates were both gone. Katie had seemed so passionate when we’d been making out, but then gotten very quiet once all our clothes were off. I’d told myself she wanted to have one ear cocked for the sound of a key in the door. I hadn’t considered—or hadn’t wanted to consider—the more obvious possibility: she was trying to tell me that she didn’t want to have sex.
I looked out the window. I couldn’t meet Katie’s eyes. My gaze fixed in the distance, my voice trembling, I asked what seemed the only possible question: “Are you trying to tell me I raped you?”
I was in my first women’s studies course, and just the previous week we’d been reading about sexual violence and the law. In class, where I was one of only three men, I’d felt rage thinking about all of those cruel assholes who didn’t understand that “no means no.” But now a dark and unseen possibility was opening up: not every “no” could be spoken. Maybe, I realized, sometimes even a quiet “OK” could be a “no” in disguise.
Katie started to cry. “Oh God, Hugo. No. Not rape. It’s just… I wish you could tell the difference between when I really want you and when I’d just rather be held.” She began to cry harder. “Fuck. It’s all my fault,” she wept. “I can’t expect you to be a mindreader. I’m so sorry.”
I begged Katie not to apologize; the responsibility was all mine, I insisted. I came around to her side of the table and held her. But something had changed for both of us, and the relationship was never the same. The one time we tried to have sex after that conversation, we were both so tentative (and I had, not surprisingly, a difficult time getting hard) that we gave up halfway through. We broke up two weeks before Christmas.
♦◊♦
Most “good guys” take a woman’s firm “No!” for an answer. (Those who don’t are best left to the ministrations of our criminal justice system.) But lots of men are like the guy I was at 19—assuming that while “no means no” anything short of a firm “no” is either a “yes” or a “keep at it, boy, because you just might get a ‘yes’ soon.” Call it male sexual legalism, the first rule of which is “All that is not expressly prohibited is assumed to be permitted.” That legalism can turn many men into accidental rapists.
While the legal standard of rape is increasingly well-defined (and what happened with Katie fell well short of that legal definition), common sense suggests that at its most basic, rape is nonconsensual sex. Too many of us, men and women alike, define consent as the absence of a clear “no,” rather than the presence of a clear, unmistakable, eager “yes.” The opposite of rape, in other words, is mutual enthusiasm.
The root of consent is the Latin consentire, which means “with feeling.” Consent is not just about words “no” or “yes”—it’s about the unambiguous presence of desire. That’s a very different and challenging standard. No, I didn’t legally rape Katie. But her reticence and my sexual legalism conspired to leave us having sex that at least some of the time fell well short of the standard of consent we should all want in our intimate lives.
I’m not putting all the blame on myself, or on men alone. It’s not fair to expect men to read minds, or even to perfectly intuit subtle body language. As I tell the teens with whom I work, a precondition for being ready for a sexual relationship is having the courage to say a firm “No” to the people you love. Overcoming the training to be an acquiescent people-pleaser is hard-but-necessary work, and because of the way we socialize girls, difficulty with saying “no” tends to be much more common among young women.
But guys have work to do also. Too many play what I call the stoplight game. Traffic signals, of course, have three colors: red for stop, yellow for caution, green for go. Good drivers are taught to stop on “red,” which functions as a “no.” But of course, even at the busiest urban intersections, no light stays red indefinitely. If you wait long enough at a stoplight, every red will become green. And when all we do is teach young men that “no means stop” when it comes to sexual boundaries, we often send them the message that if they just wait long enough (or pester, push, nag, beg, play passive-aggressive games) they’ll get the “green light” they’re so hungry for.
In both traffic and the bedroom, the most misunderstood light is yellow. Though driver’s ed classes teach that yellow means “slow down,” most of us see it as a warning to speed up to get through the intersection before the light turns red. Sexually speaking, the yellow means what it ought to mean on the road: “slow down, son.”
♦◊♦
Most of us are good at saying “no” to something or someone we don’t like. Most (sadly, not all) find it easy to flash the red light at a creepy guy who doesn’t interest them at all. But it’s tougher to say “not yet, I’m not quite ready” or “slow down” or “maybe later” to someone to whom you’re genuinely attracted. Reflecting on the sex Katie and I had so often, I realized that she often felt rushed and pressured to go to intercourse every time. She knew how to tell me when she wasn’t in the mood to do anything sexual at all, which was when she could “flash the red light.” But on those not-infrequent occasions when she wanted to make out and “fool around” but nothing more—she had no vocabulary for that. And over and over again, I took her reticence as a sign to “try harder” rather than to slow down. The blame for that rested on both of us.
Determining what another person really wants isn’t as easy as it should be. It’s further complicated by the reality that many women (and more than a few men) want to make their partners feel good—even if they don’t desire sex itself. Distinguishing between the desire to be desired, the desire to please a partner, and the desire for sex itself isn’t easy for any of us. Sometimes we need to do more than talk about what we want—we also need to clarify for ourselves and our lovers why we want it. That’s not easy, but it’s essential. We deserve that clarity.
Katie and I lived on different sides of campus; we each walked home separately from that devastating conversation in the café. I remember the guilt and the sadness I felt on that walk, but I also remember the determination I felt. I liked sex—I loved sex—but I knew I’d rather never have it again than have it with someone who was only doing it to soothe me, to please me, or because she couldn’t find the words to say “no” or “not now.” To the best of my imperfect ability, even at my most promiscuous, I have sought to live up to that promise I made to myself on the long walk home through the Berkeley streets.
I knew I hadn’t committed any crime. But the sense of sadness—tinged with disgust—at what Katie and I had conspired to allow to happen made me feel very much like an accidental rapist. Years of working with other men around issues of consent and sexuality have taught me I’m not the only one to have felt those feelings.
We all deserve better.
—Photo kainr/Flickr
.
trim down club
The Accidental Rapist — The Good Men Project
“he in retrospect — either while talking to her in the coffee shop or in that article here — ‘rapes’ her for making that explicit to him…” I disagree with this. The author seemed deeply shocked and aghast, sick in the pit of his stomach, to learn that his partner had not only not been enjoying but not wanting sex. Going back through the whole catalogue of sexual memories with a person and having to ask, “What about then? What about then? Should I have noticed this or taken that as a sign?” to me would warrant a sort of… Read more »
Yeah, well, there were times when my wife wanted to visit her family and I didn’t really feel like it, but I did it anyway. There have been times a girlfriend has wanted to go shopping while we were together and I didn’t really feel like it, but I did it anyway. Likewise, I know there have been things I’ve nonsexual things I’ve wanted to do that my wife or subsequent girlfriends didn’t want to do, but they did them anyway. A relationship–or, at least, a healthy or healthy enough relationship–is, in part, about compromising and occasionally giving in to… Read more »
Are you talking to me?
I just had to chime in and give a male perspective here. There have been plenty of times that I haven’t been in the mood for sex when a girlfriend did. What did I do? I’d have sex anyway, of course. Why? Well, if I love the woman, I want to give her pleasure. But there’s a second very important reason…..I don’t want to look like an emasculated wimp who can’t sexually please his partner There’s a ton of social pressure on men to be DTF 24/7 robotic f*ck machines. Don’t get me wrong…. I’m not complaining because I do… Read more »
I agree with smilingpistachio… it was rape, but only in his imagination or wishful thinking… She clearly wasn’t hot for him (at least at that time and place and in that situation) and he in retrospect — either while talking to her in the coffee shop or in that article here — “rapes” her for making that explicit to him… “maybe”, “ok” or no protest from a receptive partner often means just what it says: well, it wouldn’t be my greatest desire or fulfilment, but there is that natural or social pressure that sex is supposed to be fun etc.… Read more »
This article is yet another example of male-female rape being mansplained.
She: ‘No, I didn’t mean “rape”. What I’m trying to say is…’
He: ‘Darling, you don’t understand. Let me ‘splain to you: you were RAPED by me, although accidentally.’
Oh well.
Of course men should be more considerate of women and what they want. That being said however, this ex-girlfriend sounds like a very PATHETIC and WEAK people pleaser. A strong woman would be able to say to her partner (assuming he’s not threatening or coercing her), “Honey I’m not in the mood now.”
I take an issue with the part of the article that talks about men not being able to read body language-the fact to the matter is, that some men, for whatever reasons or scenarios, are desensitized to body language, NOT clueless or poor readers of body language: huge huge difference. If a woman tries to push a man off or cover herself and never says no or does not verbailize a no, it’s still rape, and this is something rape victims have to face. Women are raised in ways that bind them with invisible chains, very frequently emotionally abused and… Read more »
[…] Share this:TwitterFacebookTumblrLike this:LikeOne blogger likes this. This entry was posted in Attempted Murder, Domestic Violence and tagged Business, Crime, Hugo Schwyzer, Los Angeles, Oven, San Francisco, Sierra Madre Boulevard, Vodka, Ziploc on February 17, 2013 by bugbrennan. […]
[…] not want to find out down the road that his partners were unwilling. (I highly recommend reading The Accidental Rapist, an article that talks about how guys are somewhat trained to think anything that isn’t a […]
“The root of consent is the Latin consentire, which means “with feeling.” Consent is not just about words “no” or “yes”—it’s about the unambiguous presence of desire” 1. “consentire” is a verb, not an adverb, silly! 2. “consentio” and “consent” share a definition that “feeling” and “desire” are entirely absent from 3. “consentio” has another meaning which the english didn’t espouse: to plot, conspire. food for thought. 4. etymologically speaking, “consentio/ire” is of “con” (with) and “sentio/ire” (to hear, feel, or smell, ie. to sense). consentio does not mean “with feeling”, “with smelling” or “with hearing”. 5. if you don’t… Read more »
[…] said yes and later expressed discomfort myself. A while back I read Hugo Schwyzer’s post “The Accidental Rapist” and thought to myself, that sounds distressingly close to a situation that I’ve been in, and […]
[…] not want to find out down the road that his partners were unwilling. (I highly recommend reading The Accidental Rapist, an article that talks about how guys are somewhat trained to think anything that isn’t a […]
Powerful writing; thank you for sharing.
[…] The Accidental Rapist (goodmenproject.com) 0.000000 0.000000 Share this:Share on Tumblr Pin ItDiggEmailPrintLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. […]
Why people still make use of to read news papers when in this technological world the whole thing is presented on net?
Bernd
I’ve always told people that direct communication was way more practical than hints and body language.
And I was always met with the argument that people just should learn to read people better. And even though that is valid a LOT of misunderstandings could be avoided if we as people in relationships were more supportive of bluntly saying what is on your mind or heart.
@d’artagnan, also a lot of misunderstandings can be avoided if you *ask* what is on someone’s mind/heart.
One more thing. Responsibility for communication aside, there is still the subtle discourse operating that women are default people-pleasers, or should be. This makes it more difficult for them (us) to assert ourselves, whether that’s by enthusiastically engaging in sex (whore) or choosing to refuse it (prude, or cold). This seems to me to be the backdrop for this conversation. Once at least for myself I’ve addressed this tendency or expectation, I can feel freer to act as others have called for “woman” to do, with respect to speaking up.
[…] remarks surface issues that a lack of dialogue can foster. This article is an interesting perspective on what consent means and how even in the most common situations […]
I really enjoyed reading this article. I was raped by man who was and still is my best friend and I plan to this show him. My hope is that he might find some comfort and closure in realizing that he’s not the only person out there who has “accidentally raped” someone they cared about. I’d like to make clear that legitimizing a category of rape under the title-veil of “Accidental Rape” is not okay. Attempting to legitimize what really is and isnt rape is to go forth with the underlying assumption that women and their experiences are not to… Read more »
@ Lora Hughes
You were & still are best friend with a man you believe that had raped you.!!!
There is something wrong with that, specially when you are able to talk & show him this article to inform him that he raped you & hopefully he will find some comfort & closure in this article since he is not the only rapist. !!!hmmm.
There is something wrong with that & if you can’t see it then understanding what constitute the definition of rape is the least of your problems.
Hey, not buying it: language is messy. I think what Lora was saying is in her case it was accidental rape, i.e. nonconsensual but also somehow at the time unclear.
Also, please, no need to attack. Especially in this sort of conversation.
People stick by others n forgive them for all sorts of crimes n wrongs. Cheating, rape, abuse, it’s up to the victim to decide for themselves who they want to know. Rape is a serious crime but from the sounds of it the rapist had no intention of raping, a fuckup in communication? I class people like that far different to people who willingly know they are raping. You can accidentally rape someone if you’ve both been drinking and the alcohol kicks in during sex for your partner past the point they’re able to consent, and reading various blogs there… Read more »
I was sexually assaulted by my boyfriend and we are still together. It required a lot of work and time to fix things, and we still have issues over it sometimes, but every survivor’s story is different. Please don’t generalize or accuse.
Did you really learn your lesson, Hugo? Did you really, truly understand that many women, particularly young women, have a difficult time articulating their boundaries, comfort levels, and consent, especially given the enormous pressures placed on them by society and by ignorant young men? You claim to have learned from your sophomore experiences. But didn’t you (by your own admission) to continue to sleep with co-eds long after you were made a professor? What is your excuse there? Did you not also admit to having sex with a women clearly not in a position to give consent- you know, that… Read more »
Yes, this!
[…] “What do I do with my penis during spooning?” There are creepy headlines like “The Accidental Rapist” and “Why Your Daughter May Be the Most Popular Drug on the Street.” There are […]
[…] am frustrated that many of my critics misrepresent my work. My column at Good Men Project on consent has been misread as both a confession of rape and a celebration of victim-blaming. My more recent […]
See, here’s the thing. I’ve been the girlfriend in this situation, and I will be the first to say – I should have spoken up. It is NOT the man’s exclusive fault, and it is NOT rape. But, as Hugo rightly points out, that doesn’t make it right or healthy. What I think is basically being said here is that women are told, even today, to basically “lie back and think of England.” Literally every facet of society tells me that I owe my boyfriend sex, just like how every facet of society tells my boyfriend that he owes me… Read more »
What we have is some partners who do not want to say no to sex, but want to imply it and be assured they are understood. I think it is more a case of poor communication than accidental rape. Considering consent can only be given by an emotionally mature person, perhaps these partners should not be engaging in sex until they can make plain what they do or do not want.
Isn’t what he did classed as coersion?
Your situation is a complicated one because it was her responsibility to give an answer, though it is in both party’s responsibility to pay attention to what their partner needs/desires instead of being blinded by their own. I had a boyfriend that didn’t listen to “Not tonight, please. Can we just ___ because I love spending time with you.” He laughed and said, “C’mon” or turned it around to manipulate me, saying I obviously wasn’t attracted to him and what could he do different. Even if I explained that it wasn’t a problem of attraction, it wasn’t something I wanted… Read more »
Rape doesn’t leave room for an option. Rape doesn’t give you the chance to say yes or no. Your girlfriend had the opportunity to say yes or no, but refused to act. You aren’t an accidental rapist. You did not accidentally rape her.
Samantha, WTH are you talking about? You people with your simple-minded concept of what “rape” should be annoy the hell out of me. You are not allies, you are assholes who deserve to be put in your pretentious corner. The author most certainly did rape her when he decided paying attention to her “NO” wasn’t an option therefore removing her option to not have sex with him. That’s rape, genius! She didn’t want to have sex and she didn’t act as if she did either hence your “refused to act” comment is nothing more than a bunch of victim-shaming BULL.… Read more »
pops, As a chronic people-pleaser who’s been in the author’s girlfriend’s shoes, I have to agree with Samantha on this point. If a woman is actively reciprocating, deliberately making the decision to continue having sex, it just plain isn’t fair to give all the blame to the guy. You can’t say “she wasn’t being enthusiastic in reciprocating, so she obviously didn’t want it.” What counts as enthusiasm? Does she have to be porn-star-moaning before it’s consent? Does she have to be smiling? What if she fakes both of those things in an attempt to please the guy? Labeling him a… Read more »
No, this concept of checking if your partner(s) is into everything that’s going on is not just reserved for men, so there goes your straw-feminist tropes. The idea of “enthusiastic consent” is for all partners to ensure that people they’re with are enthusiastically consenting/continuing to consent to everything that’s being done.