Rape and Feminism, Page 2

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In continuing my analysis of the responses to the blog article Nice Guys Commit Rape Too I draw some examples from my own experience, and so I thought it might be helpful to provide some background, to understand the perspective this is all written from.  If you happen to be someone who knows me in real life, and you’d rather not learn too many details about me, well, I won’t hold it against you if you choose to skip this page…



I was raised by a sex-positive gay/bi mom who was very politically active, including in the gay rights and sexual freedom movements in the 60s.  I lived in a fairly liberal neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay Area and had reasonably progressive teachers in school.  I never learned many of the things which apparently so many grow taking for granted; for example that being a "man" required a certain "number of notches on the bedpost".  I learned about sex in detail probably by age 6, definitely by age 7; I clearly remember very explicit fantasies from at least that age.
I knew from an elementary school age that I wanted to be monogamous (as in, one committed life-partner), but I decided I'd prefer a (sexually) open relationship, because sexual fidelity implied to me (still does) that the relationship is based primarily on sex, which to me diminishes the emotional and intellectual meaningfulness of it.  At the same time, I hoped my first experience would be with the woman who would be my life partner, because that just seemed romantic.

I grew up taking it for granted that women were people.  Not that they were "equal" to men; that both are simply people.  The phrase "equal to" implies that men are automatically the standard to be judged by.  Further, it suggests that there some kind of inherent differences between the genders (other than the obvious physical differences), which, though different are "just as good" as each other.  The term equal brings to mind "separate but equal" which as we all know was always a myth.  Once school became integrated that phrase became meaningless, because there was no separate.  They were all just schools.  Likewise, I find it demeaning to suggest that women are "equal" to men, when the much simpler truth is that all people are people, regardless of skin color, language, or whether your reproductive parts go inwards or outwards. 
For the first years of life I wasn't really aware of the existence of sexism.  It went without saying that humans came in various shapes sizes colors and with different sets of sex parts, but that all of them were in fact humans, end of story.
I was eventually made aware that there were some people who believed that women are inherently inferior in some ways, and that they are somehow less "people", or at least a totally distinct class of people.  I have had men express things to me when out of the presence of women, things which I found offensive or demeaning (to which I normally politely disagree, and leave it at that) which clearly demonstrates that some people have gone through life with a completely different perspective.  This is why feminism is still needed.  But I always defined feminism exactly the way it was said on the bumper sticker I put on my first car: "feminism; the radical notion that women are people."

Growing up largely with a single mom, who was sex positive, somewhere on a spectrum between gay and bi, and totally open about everything, meant I never got many of the screwed up ideas that seem to be so common in America.  I went to a small alternative high school and made friends with progressive minded kids of both genders.  I was never given the impression from anyone, family, friends, media (I mostly watched PBS and cartoons, sometimes ‘Roseanne’), that my "masculinity" would be judged by my success at sex.  I learned that some people had certain expectations for gender roles, but this was as a purely intellectual knowledge, much like I have heard of Christian Scientists, but as far as I know I've never actually seen one in real life, and I am not 100% convinced that they exist.  I spent a reasonably significant time around openly gay people and gay culture where, obviously, there can be no sex based gender roles in a relationship.  All interpersonal roles have to be defined by individual personality, as there is no easy physical difference on which to base them.  No one person can be expected to be the one to ask the other out, no one is automatically the one who pays for drinks, neither can be expected to be the one who “makes the first move”.  People are just people, and they behave in whatever ways work for them.  Back in the "normal" world, while I was aware that defined gender roles was once the norm, and that there were still some backward people - probably mostly in the South and the Midwest - who still do, I honestly believed that this was almost universally a dead tradition, one that had been buried with the success and cultural acceptance of the women's liberation movement.

At the same time, I was also painfully aware that rape exists.  I was very conscious of it being most commonly an act perpetrated by men against women, and that when it occurs it is usually very traumatic for the victim.  Combining feminism with knowledge that rape ever occurs, and my detestation for the deliberate harming of others for personal gain, I felt it was extremely important that in any heterosexual relationship the male go out of their way to be absolutely sure the female actively wanted any form of interaction between them that might have current or future sexual implications.  In other words, I found it offensive for men to try to pick up or "hit on" or ask out women. At all.  In order to compensate for the problems caused by our antiquated system  - where the female passively waits to be seen, the male seeks out the female, and she accepts (or rejects) his advances - I thought it completely inappropriate for any male to actively pursue sex with any female.
 
And - not surprisingly - given this outlook, I was that stereotypical "nice guy" who's many female friends turned to when they wanted to complain about how their boyfriend was a jerk.  The girl I was best friends with in high school was totally aware that I was in love with her.  She went through a series of boyfriends, one of whom just wanted her for status (she was blond and cute and popular), one of whom was gay (it turned out he was dating her as a way to spend more time with me!), and one of whom was a generally decent guy, but who was not especially considerate or thoughtful.  Throughout all of them she spent lots and lots of time with me, we talked about everything, she admitted to me personal things which she didn't tell anyone else.  We would hold hands when we walked sometimes, slept in the same bed on several occasions, made out a few times, and even got to "second base" once or twice, but, even though she was sexually active with others, for me any form of genital stimulation was strictly off-limits, and I never made any attempt to encourage it, no matter how much I wanted to.  With my other female friends - many of whom I would frequently sleep next to, platonically - and other crushes, I never made any suggestion (verbal or physical) that anything sexual should happen, and neither did they, and so, even though I would have enjoyed it, it never happened.  I always assumed that everyone else was aware of the societal dynamics as well, and that it would be obvious to anyone that females should always be the ones to initiate.

Although I grew up in the liberal Bay Area, I grew up in a poor part of it.  So while I was exposed to a lot of progressive ideas, I also was exposed to a lot of working class / poverty culture as well. “Cat calling”, for example, wasn’t too uncommon.  When I was young I thought it to be very disrespectful, and it reinforced my feeling that male sexuality was too aggressive.  It was a long time before I really started to pay attention, and notice that some women actually would stop and talk to those guys.  In retrospect it’s obvious why the guys do it: a positive response, even if 1 in 100, confirms the strategy.  The only way it would ever stop happening is if no woman ever responded positively  (stopping to talk, giving their number, etc).  Then again, perhaps there is no legitimate reason to stop it - you don't have a "right" for people not to talk to you in public.  I may not like someone asking me if I have found Jesus, and a person on a Manhattan sidewalk may not like it if I smile at them and say 'good morning' but that does not make these things a form of harassment.  There are those comments clearly meant to deliberately make the listener uncomfortable in their outright vulgarity, but most of what one person sees as harassment another might consider a genuine compliment.  There are no other situations, other than the direct, intentional insults of "fighting words", where a person has any reasonable expectation to not be spoken to by stranger in a public place.  But as soon as that speech in some way involves sexuality, even indirectly, many people feel it should be a special case, not subject to the normal rules.


I didn't lose my virginity until 21 - one of the latest in my social group - and then only at the very strong persistent requests of the other person (a long-time friend whom I had spent many nights with cuddling platonically).  On the night in question she began by asking me to touch her all over, instead of just putting my arm around her as I usually would when we slept together. Eventually she asked if she could kiss me.  Eventually she began asking outright for sex.  I was somewhat unsure if that was a good idea - it was late, we were friends, not lovers, she had likely taken at least a little of some form of intoxicant.  I don't know this for sure, but most of my friends did regularly in those days - although she was entirely lucid, and capable of normal speech, movement, and functioning, and showed no particular signs of mental impairment.  None-the-less I felt this might be a factor to consider. Perhaps the factor making the situation the most strange was that her roommate (with whom I also occasionally slept next to platonically - I guess I was a bit of a cuddle-slut) was actually there asleep(?) across the room.  But my friend was rather persistent, eventually suggesting that if I were “too logical” to have sex with her, I might do her a favor and call up her old boyfriend who might be willing regardless of the reasons it might not be advisable.  And I thought to myself "what the fuck are you thinking, self?  Here you are, a 21-year-old virgin, you’ve wanted to have sex with an actual female for the past 14 years, and here is this incredibly sexy (oh my, she most definitely was) woman, with whom you share a mutual respect and caring developed over years of friendship, and she is literally begging you for sex; and you are going to turn down this opportunity because the conditions aren't ideal?  What the hell is wrong with you?" 

And so, after confirming with her that she had been taking her birth control (I knew she had it, as a month or two before I had given her a ride to the clinic to pick up the prescription) I gave in, and it was awkward and weird, as it generally is someone’s first time, but most especially so when you are trying not to wake up your other friend sleeping 5 feet away, since, while she most likely wouldn't judge either of you for it, it might be pretty annoying to be woken up by it.
But it wasn't terrible either, and it had basically no impact on the way we interacted the next morning. Neither of us really regretted it.  The next night we shared a bed again, and this time nothing happened, but then in the morning - this time with her entirely sober, and her roommate gone to work - she seduced me again, and it was much better for both of us.  That was the last time we had sex, and likely neither of us would have ever regretted it, if she hadn't gotten pregnant... its very likely that she wasn't always consistent about taking her contraception pills (I never asked), but even if she was, sometimes it just doesn't work.  She didn't want to tell me about the pregnancy, but she didn't want to tell her parents even more, and I ended up driving her to her appointments and paying for the abortion, as well as of course talking to her about it to the extent that she wanted to talk about it (which wasn't much).

Some people might look at that situation and say I raped her, because she was mildly intoxicated - even though whatever she may have been on was something she took voluntarily, even though she was still entirely lucid and competent, and even though she very explicitly and deliberately initiated the sex.  Others might say that because I was totally naive and inexperienced - I was a virgin, and she was experienced by then - because she was persistent, almost to the point of insistent, and essentially was insulting me for my resistance (this was not the first time someone accused me of not having normal human feelings because of my aspy tendencies toward logic), that she took advantage of me.  The truth is we were two consenting adults, who were young and kind of stupid, and also horny and attracted to each other, and what people do in that situation - at least people who have not been taught their whole lives that sex is evil - is that they have sex.  End of story.


That first experience followed the template I believed was ideal for male/female relations, that the woman should be the one to take charge, as a way of compensating for the existence of rape and female repression, and that no man should ever be sexually assertive. It continued to be the model I have followed for the rest of my life.  I have never once in my life been the one to initiate actual sexual contact for the first time with a new partner.  I always wait for her to do so, either verbally, or (much more often) physically.  At the most, in one case it was me who suggested we share a bed (though I explicitly suggested it be for cuddling and nothing else - this was the woman I eventually married, and my second and only sex partner for the 7 years following that night), though in 8 "first time" experiences of intercourse with new partners, as well as 3 of "everything but intercourse", every other time sharing a bed has been the woman's suggestion as well. The most physical contact I have ever initiated with someone new is hand-holding and cheek kissing.

I always believed that women appreciated being respected in that way, that it was a refreshing change from all the aggressive dominate alpha-male types who actively pursue sex and consider a "no" to be a "yes that will just take more work". 

And so, when over the course of my first 28 years of my life only 3 women ever expressed any explicit interest in engaging in sexual activity with me, (I got married late into our relationship, so for most of that time I didn't have a ring and there was no way for anyone to know I was in a relationship unless I told them - and if I did, I might also mention that it was an open relationship, if my partner didn't make a point of mentioning it first, as she did frequently and proudly), I took that to mean I must simply be unattractive and personally not desirable to women.


Many years into my partnership, my wife cheated with a stereotypical "womanizer".  He was a guy who said to his wife, when she asked him to stop sleeping around, "you knew who I was when you married me" - that didn't refer to any explicit conversation about the terms of an open relationship, it meant "I cheated before we got married, why would you assume I would stop after?".  He told me this directly, and he was boasting about it.  Later he seduced my wife.  And she found it incredibly sexy and exciting.  She told me before it happened that he had been aggressively hitting on her, and that she had been very turned on by it.  After she gave in she described it as "the best sex of my life". It’s not as though our sex life had been lacking in the physical aspect.  In the early years nearly every time lasted for an hour, if not several, and frequently started in bed (or on the sofa, or table) and ended up on the floor, tangled in blankets and each other.  Apart from my first experience, we both had basically no experience with sex, and we both enthusiastically learned with each other.  We tried different things and learned what each other liked so well that we would consistently take turns having orgasms, 2-4 times each, and then, when we were both too tired to continue, we would deliberately synchronize them so that we would both be fully satisfied at the same time and could get some quality sleep.  We were able to do this more often than not, for most of our relationship
We experimented with a number of things, but it remained true for the most part that, though we both tried to be open about our thoughts feelings and desires, she was almost always the one to make any specific suggestions about trying something new for the first time. At her request we tried sex in semi-public locations, amateur porn, anal (with both of us as receivers at different times), role-playing, and light bondage.  Some were one time experiments, some turned out to be fun.  About the only thing that I was the one to introduce was a vibrator, which was 100% for her enjoyment (and that was definitely one of the things that became a regular part of sex for us). 
What was missing wasn't the quality of the sex itself.  Nor was it any amount of love or respect or romance - I remained deeply in love with her all the way up to and into the divorce process, and I went out of my way to make sure she knew this both verbally and by my actions.
What was missing, that this guy offered her, was the chance to feel dominated.  She, like myself, believed in principal that feminism dictated an egalitarian approach to relationships.  She wasn't the sort to just say that intellectually, she actually did choose to be in a relationship with one of the "nice guys".  But, perhaps on a deeper, more primal level, she wanted to experience being "taken" by the caveman.  (Fortunately, this was apparently just a phase, or something she wanted to experience at least once (well, three times at least...), because she ended up with a different partner, one who is a genuinely nice guy, and who I have the utmost respect for.)
That incident finally made me realize that, no matter what politically correct things we want to believe, or think we should believe, reality does not follow our ideals.  I realized that my way of being passive and allowing women to make the first move came across at least to some, probably to many, as anti-masculine and that this was unattractive.  I realized further that some, probably many, perhaps most women do actually desire to be actively pursued. 
While many women complain about the jerks they date and claim they wish they could find a "nice guy", they really want their partner to be the dominate one.
Although I am now aware of this, I still find it impossible to put into practice.  I still let my partner make the first move in any new relationship.  I'm still uncomfortable asking for sex directly, even in an established relationship.  When a partner once said the words "rape me" during sex, it creeped me out so much I couldn't continue at all.  I knew she had rape fantasies, and intellectually I didn't (and don't) see anything wrong with any fantasy.  I knew she had dabbled a little in BDSM, and control specifically, and that she preferred to be the submissive one.  I found nothing wrong, in principal, with role playing between two fully consenting adults.  But when she actually said those words during the actual process of having sex, it instantly brought to mind everything I had ever learned about sexual assault and victimization and no matter what I tried to tell myself to stay in the mood, my brain had shut down all areas of arousal and that was the end of any form of sexual activity for the night.  Even if it is purely for pretend, I just can't be that guy.


Back when I was still with my (now ex-) partner, some of the issues of morality and consent from part 1 of this essay came to play in my own relationship.

Some nights I would have trouble falling asleep, while laying next to this woman I was very attracted to and still in love with (after years of living together), particularly if it had been several days since we had last had sex together.
I still didn’t feel entirely comfortable with male sexuality, because of the cultural issues of dominance and sexism, and as a result I still didn’t feel comfortable asking for sex outright.  So, on those nights, my solution was to wait for her to fall asleep, and to get up as quietly as I could, go to the living room, and sleep on the sofa.  As it turned out, she didn’t like waking up to find me gone, and so she suggested, as an alternative, that I should wake her up for sex if I needed to.
Separately from that, on multiple occasions she actually woke me up with sex - by oral and the traditional kind, which I had told her was just fine with me.  Only once (that I remember) was I too sleepy to appreciate and asked her to leave me alone instead.  And in addition to those, there were several instances were we both woke up, still sleepy and groggy, and had sex before either of us had said a word to the other.
All of this seemed entirely natural and normal at the time.  We had various relationship conflicts, like any couple does, and we would discuss those and work them out, but neither of us raised any objections to anything regarding consciousness and consent.
Then there was one rather strange occasion where she woke up in the middle of the night and more or less pounced on me more aggressively than she ever had, moved against me with lustful intensity (I honestly don't know if I was inside her or not, as I was barely awake) for just a few minutes, and then, just as abruptly as she had begun, she lay back down and went straight back to sleep.  In the morning she didn't remember it having happened at all.  I see no other explanation than "sleep fucking" (she supposedly actually had sleep-walked as a child, I have no idea if there may be any connection)
  
Perhaps what she intended by "wake me up for sex" was not interchangeable with "wake me up with sex", (sexual contact, not intercourse), but given that she never objected nor clarified, and given that she herself did the same thing to me, I feel it was a reasonable assumption for me to think my interpretation was accurate.  If not, it was not an issue of power, assault, self-entitlement, or objectification, it was simply an issue of communication.  She never told me she had a problem with it (this was not remotely regular, but it was more than once)… until several years after our relationship had ended - that being after she read some blog or editorial about the Julian Assange case. 
Half a dozen years after the events in question, and 2 years after we were no longer together, she asked to meet up, for what turned out to be her informing me that she had decided retroactively that she actually had not been ok with it, and she wanted to be sure I knew that there was something wrong with me for not having known better all along.

At the same time she informed me she had reclassified those events in her mind retroactively, she also brought up that there were times when I requested sex a particular way which she had previously expressed a lack of interest in.  Not that she had never been interested - she in fact was the first to suggest it, and I was willing to try it, and that first time, and several subsequent times, she enjoyed it, all the way up to orgasm and reporting satisfaction.  Then at some point, for whatever reason, she decided she didn't want to anymore.  I never pressed the issue any particular instance, but I figured that maybe since there had been times she was into it, maybe her not wanting to was temporary, and every once in a while (maybe every few months) I might ask if she would be willing to try again.  She usually said no, and that was the end of it.  Occasionally she said yes.  I never insisted on it, I never made conditional statements such as "if you don't agree to this, I will...", and I absolutely never forced her in any way. 

But she had decided - again, only many years after the fact - that my persistence in asking was somehow itself a form of coercion.  I have no idea how she justifies these beliefs in light of the context I just described, because when I offered to express my own experiences of the incidents she was describing, she informed me that any attempt whatever to explain my point of view amounted to attempting to justify rape, and that if I thought rape was justifiable, I should be either in therapy or in prison.  So that was the end of that conversation (as well as any attempt on my part to maintain a friendship with her).


It turns out that the idea that merely asking someone to do something more than once is a form of coercion – as long as the topic is sex – is not unique to her.
Here are some more comments taken from the blog post that inspired this essay:

missingmuse says:
If I said “no,” or “that’s’ uncomfortable,” or “maybe later,” or simply try to move away from you AT ALL, it means no. GET AWAY FROM ME! DO NOT CONTINUE TO PUSH ME!!!
If you needed to pester me for more than thirty seconds or ask more than once, I DON’T WANT TO FUCK YOU. This is not “pity sex,” it’s coercion. Coercion makes you a rapist. Got it? Good…
MissMeow says:
Missingmuse, I kind of love you. Thank you so much. Coercion IS rape. If you make me say no more than once, you are trying to force me to have sex with you which is rape. Period. Again, thank you.
[Italics mine]

The phrase “no means no” does in fact imply that once someone has said "no", any form of request, suggestion, bribe, begging, or seduction becomes attempted rape.
Yet what maybe extremely annoying to one, could easily be seduction to another.  Seduction is, by its nature, an attempt to receive consent from someone who is not giving it readily, but might possibly change their mind.  Think about the song “Baby its Cold Outside”.  Both partners want the same thing, and express as much.  But one is worried about what the parents and neighbors will think, and therefore they need just a little convincing to follow their own desires rather than expectations, and follow through with what they want.  Just as someone can give consent, and later revoke it, one can also withhold consent, and later give it.  The entire purpose seduction is to encourage that transition.  If both partners were clearly expressing a desire for sex, seduction would be unnecessary.  If there were absolutely zero possibility of the potential partner changing their mind, seduction would be pointless.  And if the intent were rape, instead of receiving consent, seduction would be extraneous.

If a person asked you repeatedly for a dollar, and you didn’t want to give it to them, but they just kept asking, and you eventually gave in, would that make the transaction theft?  If someone persistently asked for a date, and you finally went out with them, would that make it kidnapping?  If someone really wanted to shake your hand, and your were reluctant, but gave in, would it be assault?  In any of those situations, if you really didn’t want to give in, if holding your ground was more important than stopping them from asking, what would you do?  Walk away?  Yell at them maybe?  End your friendship, or call on a boss, or the cops?  If someone gave in and did one of those things despite not wanting to, would we place the blame on the person being persistent, or would we expect any mentally competent full-grown adult to stand up for themselves?  In what area of life would we equate persistence, or even manipulation, with force? 
Under what circumstances does one person gain the power to actually control another’s mind?  Apparently anytime the thing being asked for is sex.  If its sex, people believe it is reasonable to say that a person felt they were obligated to give in just because the other person “asked more than once”.

The word "coercion" does not mean "request persistently".  
It means: "the unlawful act of compelling a person to do, or to abstain from doing, something by depriving him of the exercise of his free will, particularly by use or threat of force."  
Key words in the definition: “compelling”, and “force

Say you go over to grandma's house, and you ate just before you left, but it turns out she cooked for you.  She made something delicious, and she says you have to have some.  You say you really appreciate the effort, but you just ate.  Perhaps its something you don't really like anyway, but you don't want to say so and offend her.  She keeps insisting, and you agree to try some, but she says no, sit down, eat, you are so skinny, it is good for you, it is delicious, I have been cooking all morning, sit down and eat.  And its your grandma, and she is clearly not going to drop it, and so you give in and eat.  I suspect this scenario must be common, as it has happened to me more times than I can count by other people's grandmas.  Does her insistence make her guilty of assault?  Should she be prosecuted for violating you, since you didn't really want to eat and you ended up doing it anyway?  Granny never shoved food down your throat.  You consented to eat it. It does not matter how much “pressure” she put on you, you agreed to it.  Parents regularly pressure their children to go to a certain college, to pick a certain career, to live in a particular area, or to date or marry a particular type of person or individual.  Bosses pressure employees to work overtime, to take on additional projects, to move to different office branches.  Peers pressure kids to take drugs and skip school.  Pan handlers, street canvassers working for non-profits, and used car sales men all pressure you to give them your money.  A person’s spouse may pressure them to clean the house more, wear different clothes, work out more often, try for a promotion at work, or whatever.  All of these cases may even come with conditional threats - if you marry that bum, I won't speak to you anymore; if you don't move to the Albany branch you will be laid off; if you don't clean the kitchen I won't have sex with you - but even then, no one is forced to comply.  A person always has the option of saying “no deal” and walking away at any time.  And as long as that option is not taken away, they have the free-will and the agency to either give-in to the pressure, or to not give in (and accept whatever consequences the other party may enact).  So long as the threat/consequence is not a criminal act (assault, theft. etc) the person making the decision to give in or resist has absolutely no claim to having been forced to act against their will.  Your parents don't owe it to you to speak to you, your boss does not own it to you to employ you, and your spouse does not owe it to you to have sex with you.

Miss Darling says:

To clarify for you, “if a man tells a woman that he’s going to find someone else unless she agrees to have sex with him”, THAT is coersive sex. That man is not “trapped in a relationship where (his) needs aren’t being met”, his partner is trapped in a relationship where she/he must have sex with him when he wants, how he wants, lest they lose him. Sounds fun, right? That’s called coersion. Or you can call it just plain old abuse. Take your pick.


The woman in that example is not “trapped” in the relationship.  She can choose to leave at any time, and no one can stop her from making that choice.  Conversely, her partner does not owe it to you to stay in a relationship with her.  A person is free to leave a relationship anytime they want, for whatever reason they want.  Even once a couple gets married, most states allow a "no fault" divorce.  In a “no fault” divorce either party can initiate divorce, they do not need to prove any wrong doing, and it can not be contested (I know, I have experienced it first hand).  Those states that do still require a court case and a judge’s approval, where you need to specify a reason for divorce such as "he hits me" or "he is incapable of supporting the family" one reason considered legally valid for initiating divorce is the refusal of one partner to have sex with the other.  Given that in some places adultery is still considered a crime, this is entirely reasonable, as it is unreasonable to give one individual total control over another's sexuality, and then abuse that power by denying them any possibility of ever having it. In the example in the comment, it is implied that the woman can choose to never have sex with her partner, and he is morally obligated to not seek it out someone else who will.  In other words, she must have 100% control over if, when, and whether he has sex at all – with anyone.  If she decides she doesn’t want to, then anything other than him never having sex again is “coercion”.
Perhaps for this specific commenter sex is a ‘meh’ take-it-or-leave experience, but for the vast majority of normal, healthy adults never having sex again for the rest of your life - not because you don't want to, but because someone else doesn't want you to - would be unacceptable. 
Anyone who feels this is reasonable should restrict their search for a partner, if any, to those individuals who are self-professed asexuals.

 There has been a large effort - and a largely successful one - to include all sorts of situations which are not actual coercion as being instances of rape; ones which would not be considered assault if they lacked a sexual component.  This is done frequently by redefining the word “coercion”. Instances that may involve convincing, enticing, seducing, verbally insisting (key word: verbally), or setting up conditionals such as "if you don't, I will stop seeing you".  Regardless of what one party may say to attempt to change the other's mind, as long as they have the belief (or a reasonable person would have that belief in their position) that they could simply walk away, they have not been coerced, they have made a choice.  The only way a person can have a reasonable belief that they are not free to leave is if they are, or would be, physically restrained.

In fact, one could go beyond what might be thought of as seduction to outright manipulation, trickery, cajoling, and it still does not cross into the realm of “one person believed they had no choice but to comply”.  Adult human beings have free will.  In the real world there is no such thing as telekinesis, no such thing as telepathy, and no such thing as mind control either.  Even the best manipulation requires a cooperative subject.

If a person agrees to have sex when they don't really want to, whether it is for a partner's happiness (I've both done this and had it done for me), to prevent  a partner from leaving, out of pity, peer pressure, a desire to always be nice to everybody, a desire to be liked, or just to shut someone up because they keep asking so much, the only part that is relevant to the question of "was it rape?" is that they AGREED to it. 

The only circumstances in which a person is actually coerced are those in which the victim was held down by force, tied up, drugged, sleeping (without prior consent), had a weapon brandished at them, were physically struck or otherwise injured, or they were threatened with any of these things or some other immediate and credible threat, such as "I will hurt you if you resist" or "I will hurt someone you care about who is in the next room". 
Saying "I will hurt your reputation" or "I will hurt your career" are, at best, very grey areas - more sexual blackmail than assault. 
Accepting any sort of bribe or reward, such as getting a promotion, amounts to prostitution, not coercion.
Any form of saying yes when you really mean no, for whatever reason, is simply a mistake on the part of the person who agreed to something they really didn't want to do.
In absolutely no other are of life would a person who said “yes” but didn’t really mean it be considered a victim and the person who interpreted "yes" as "yes" to be a perpetrator.

A recurring example used in comments and blog posts in response to the original blog is that of women who "blacked out", and don't remember consenting. Some (though not all) take the lack of remembering as de-facto evidence that they were too intoxicated to consent.
It is possible that part of the confusion stems from a lack of understanding about what it means to "black-out", so I give any particular individual the benefit of the doubt, but given what it actually means, it is relevant to the greater discussion.

Blacking out, in the sense involving alcohol, does NOT mean a lack of consciousness. That would be "passing out". By definition someone in a black out is conscious. It also does not necessarily imply any particular level of lucidness. The only thing it means is that during that period of time, new memories are not being formed. A person can be entirely awake, entirely lucid, aware of who they are, where they are, and what they are doing, during a black-out episode. There is absolutely no possible way for anyone - neither the people around them, nor they themselves - to know that a person is not going to remember what happened as it is happening, because, by definition, you remember things after the fact.

If forgetting that you consented retro-actively invalidates your consent, then if you meet someone new briefly, and a month later you can't remember having met them, then that means them shaking your hand when you met was actually assault. It wouldn't matter that you voluntarily shook their hand at the time, and that there is no possible way they could have known whether you would remember it or not later.

The other option is that the validity of consent is based not on whether or not you remember consenting after the fact, but whether or not you were lucid at the time. That only leaves the idea that if a person is intoxicated, any consent they give becomes invalid. I'm not talking about when someone is so inebriated that they can not speak or walk. I'm talking about situations where a person does give explicit consent, but it isn't considered valid due to intoxication. That means that being intoxicated absolves the "victim" of any responsibility for their own actions. They may have given explicit consent, but it is still the responsibility of their partner to take care of them and override their choice.
And yet, somehow, even though intoxication completely absolves the "victim" of any responsibility what-so-ever for what they say or do, at the same time it does not in any way mitigate the actions of the "perpetrator" for theirs.

Given that this situation is almost exclusively one looked at with the perspective of female victims and male perpetrators, this view is essentially reducing women to the role of children, and men the role of caretaker. A parent is supposed to know a child's best interest, and ignore any contrary requests. A man should know that it is always in the best interest of a woman to not have sex if she has had any alcohol, and ignore any requests she may make for it. If both parties are equally drunk, it is almost universally assumed that the man is taking advantage of the woman.


The appeal of this view is clear.
From the point of view of a woman who has ever been in this situation, it changes it from a complicated grey area where she may have made bad choices and feel guilt about them, into a simple situation where she is a victim and the man was at fault.

If, for example, you one day left the house and forgot to close the door, and then someone came in and stole something with deep personal significance from someone else who lived with you, you would probably feel really bad about it.
But then, if a group of people came along, and they were adamant in insisting that you have a right to leave doors open, and that only burglars are responsible for burglary, that message would probably be very appealing. If it was a message that millions of people seemed to be taking seriously you might just accept it as reasonable.

And in fact, what we see, over and over, is people recounting stories in which at the time the incident occurred they didn't really think of it as rape, and they felt conflicted or confused or guilty, and it wasn't until later that they "realized" what had happened was really rape after all. Except that they didn't just "realize" it, they were told it, by the current mainstream view of what constitutes rape.

Given that about 70% of all rapes involve alcohol, and 61% of women in one survey admitting to saying "no" when they really meant yes, one has to wonder if wanting to personally be absolved of responsibility doesn't explain a huge proportion of the reactionary indignation so many have regarding the topic of "victim blaming".

This is no doubt a lot of the reason many conservatives are pushing back against the cultural and legal trends of defining all sex acts that lack “explicit verbal consent” as rape.  They are not really trying to "redefine" rape, as many liberal commentators have suggested, so much as restore it to what it meant until relatively recently.   This is the reason some want to legally define rape as "forcible rape", and why Representative Akin made his comment about "legitimate rape". 
Now it happens that his specific comment is totally untrue from a statistical and biological stand point, it demonstrates significant ignorance (or perhaps plain stupidity) on his part, and it was only said in an attempt to justify his abortion agenda.  However, the outrage was not over any of that.  It was over the implication that not all rape was "legitimate".  More specifically, that perhaps some cases which are called “rape” were not in fact remotely coercive, which, by default, means there was implied consent.  In no other crime, in fact no other area of life, would we make the assumption that a person who had not been threatened in any way and was being completely passive, was not giving de facto implied consent for what was happening to them.


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