Thoughts on Rape

My alma matter recently started a blog where people can anonymously share harrasment, rape, etc. experience: http://untilitszero.tumblr.com/

Reading the accounts, a few things stand out: 1. The number of women who refuse to use the word "rape" for what happened to them, even if it clearly falls under that category. As one woman put it, "According to the legal definition of rape, it falls into that category. But I don’t like the word rape—it has too much weight, too much blame, and far too much victimization implicit in it.". As another woman put it, "I hate the idea of being a victim. I want to claim control—responsibility?—back. So I say that he was an asshole who sexually assaulted me, or a hook-up gone wrong, because to use the word rape would be far worse.", or as yet a third woman put it, "
And in spite all of this I have struggled with the term “rape” to describe my experience. I never reported what happened. The word rape, the process and mystique around it seems like a crude weapon that hurts the rape victim more than anyone else. Anyone who has ever pressed rape charges is a much braver person than I am." In our society, the rape victim is dichotomized, treated either like a victim whose experience was so terrible that the only emotion one can feel for her (or him) is pity, that her life will be a wreck forever, a feeling of mercy so overwhelming that it dehumanizes her, turning her into an object to be felt sorry for rather than a subject to be related to and sympathized with. On the other hand, there is the rape victim as slut, as she who deserves it. This coin of the dichotomy rears its ugly head in too many of the stories, where women felt that the assualt was somehow their fault, that they had not resisted enough, that they had put themselves in a situation of vulnerability and therefore they somehow "deserved it". A lot of this seems to be related to two factors: 1. Lack of clear consent guidelines 2. Use of alcohol

In many of the cases, the women resisted to a certain extent, but were not sure if they resisted "enough" for the case to be constituted as harrasment or rape. To quote one woman, who, it is clear from her account, was actually raped:"I honestly don’t know if what happened to me can be construed as rape. I never once actually said the word “no”. I wish to God I had.I don’t consider this rape, because I never once vocalized my desire for him to stop. Regardless, almost the entire time, I didn’t want to continue. I honestly could not tell you why I didn’t say stop; maybe it was the alcohol. I still sometimes blame myself, and I’m still too ashamed to tell my mom. I’m her perfect little girl and I can’t possibly do anything wrong. I still hate myself for being so fucking naive about the whole situation. To this day, I have not had sex again. I refuse to unless I am in a committed relationship; I will count that time as being my first."


A lot of the doubt experienced by victims stems from the current paradigm of consensuality in our society: Unless there is active, physical resistance, it is not rape. A woman must resist enough to prove she didn't really want the intercourse, as if the assumption is that sans such resistance, she does want it in some form or another, to some degree. This paradigm is harmful, not only because it makes women who did not phyiscally reisst or not resist "enough", feel that the assualt is somehow their fault, or even feel that what happened to them can not be categorized as assult, but also because it sends men the message that a) women want sex, as a de facto postion, unless stated otherwise b) if a woman resists a little but not a lot, its not rape/a part of her wants it. This leads men to classify their actions as consensual, when they may not be, and gives rapists a way to justify their actions: As they go through with it, they remind themselves that she really does want them, that her protestations are simply a show - if she didn't really want it, she would resist them more strongly. Lest you think I am exaggarating, I will quote from a would-be-perpetrator who stopped himself from assualt: "She began politely refusing without ever saying “No.”

“It would be weird,” she said.
“This is my parents’ house.”
“Someone could come home.”

She was probably sending clearer messages than I remember, but I wasn’t trying very hard to figure out that she meant “No,” but to find holes in her excuses.

I got tired of listening to her excuses. I picked her up (she is a very small person) and carried her down three steps from her kitchen to the basement.

She did not fight back.

I must have been hearing “No. Stop,” but at that point in my life, I believed that to be what girls had to say, according to society. I honestly thought she wanted me to continue.

I put her down on the floor (carpeted) and put myself above her. She still did not fight, even though she had a clear shot at my testicles.

Then I looked at her.

I couldn’t believe myself. In an instant it became clear to me that what I had been previously thinking of as entirely normal was obviously horrifying.

I apologized and left.

I can’t even imagine what she felt.

She has since forgiven me (she says), and she has never told our mutual friends, and for both facts I am eternally grateful."

Another major factor in these accounts is alcohol usage - As a friend of mine recently said to me, "I'm not sleeping with anyone tonight - I am way too drunk for anything to be consensual". My friend was wise, but our culture encourages people to get to a point where their actions are not consensual, due to alcohol intake, and sees the settings in which the drinking happens as foreplay - parties are meant to end in hookups. Somehow, drunk sex is seen as being in a different realm than sober sex, that there are sexual actions justifiable while drunk that are not justifiable while sober. Our society needs to not hold this double-standard, but rather to stress that one is responsible for all sexual decisions, even under the influence. I find it strange that we excuse women who are licentatious while drunk, but not men who rape while drunk. It is a double-standard: If men are to be subject to the legal censure of drunk sexual actions, women must be subject to the same censure for their actions. Of course, societal censure is part of the problem - sober women who sleep around are merely considered sluts. Maybe if women did not have to get drunk to receive societal permission to have sex, these murky situations would not happen. At the end of the day, I think that if two equally drunk people fool around, provided there is no physical coercion (locking of the door, in my opinion, counts as such coercion, since it makes the person feel trapped, especially if they are drunk), I do not beleive it is rape merely because one of them is feeling violated - unless that person gave palpable indication, whether physical (which includes inactivity - if you lie still as a board, it should be obvious you do not wish to be there), or verbal, that they did not wish to have sex. If however, a less-drunk person has sex with someone so drunk they have no idea what they are doing or what is going on, I do consider that rape, even if the drunker person expresses no resistance.

One woman's account summed up perfectly the complications of being raped while drunk: "I went to an after-party for one of the big events on campus, and we were all playing drinking games... He warned me that the beer was ‘high gravity’ but I didn’t know what that meant I was not calculating for the high-alcohol beer, and so that night I ended up *totally* smashed, in his room, hooking up with him.

Up to that point, everything was consensual. However, it came out that he didn’t have condoms, and I never have sex without one. Though I’d stopped drinking, the alcohol kept kicking in stronger and stronger. I basically passed out on the bed, though I was semi-conscious—and then suddenly he started touching me again. Even though I felt assaulted, I didn’t care enough to stop him. I just didn’t have the energy. And when he asked “can I get on top of you?” I didn’t answer. But I remember all of it.

The reason I hesitate to call it rape is that I don’t think he realized that I wasn’t interested. I only said “I don’t think we should,” instead of “NO.” He tried to ask, even if he took silence for the wrong answer. Legally, no matter what I’d said, the amount of alcohol I’d had makes it rape, but I feel like that is slightly unfair—he was drunk, too…. I don’t know. I got myself drunk, with his help. I indicated that, with a condom, I was interested. But there was no condom, and it hurt … and I didn’t fight back. I didn’t report it, because I was confused about what to call it, so how was I going to start some legal shit if I didn’t even know for sure who to blame??"

Here, a woman voiced lack of consent - "I don;t think we should" - and still is saddled with guilt. Having sex with someone who voiced lack of consent is rape - even while sober, but because he was drunk too and our society gives a pass to drunk sex, she doubts his guilt, even though - given that she could not move and he was thrusting inside of her - we must assume she was much drunker than he was, leading to a power differential within the sex that is legally constituted as rape.

Perhaps we should not think of a black/white distinction - assault/not assault, rape/not rape, but of a spectrum of coercion and consensuality, with different places along the spectrum incurring different legal punishments. We should aim for a paradigm of positive consent - that is, consensual sex should hinge not merely from lack of physical or verbal resistance, but rather, should hinge on positive expression of consent - whether verbally (in an S&M case, a verbal consent before one starts engaging in the S&M scenario, and an agreed upon safeword. It is rape if that safeword is violated.) or physically. anything less than this should not be considered purely consensual sex. Of course, at which point on the lack of consensuality scale the law should get involved is another story.

I will close with two things: 1. The midrash asks how Esther could have slept with Achashveirosh, and concludes that she resisted. How did she resist? "Esther lay as still as the earth". The midrash assumes that lying still, completely unresponsive, is a form of resistance. So too, should the modern world - unless this stillness has been discussed/agreed upon beofre hand as something that turns one/both partners on, it should be taken as a sign that the person does not wish to be engaged in the sexual activity that their partner is trying to engage them in. 2. In an effort to destigmatize sexual harassment, I am sharing my own experiences: http://untilitszero.tumblr.com/post/4530545930/account-16