There is a gray area

Warning: This post is about rape and contains some explicit language. However, I think it is appropriate given the subject.

Two recent posts at What Would Phoebe Do and Nobody Sasses a Girl with Glasses prompted me to write this post. They are both worth reading, as are the comments. They are both referencing this article at the City Journal. What is weird, and maybe it is just the blogs I read, but only women seem to be commenting on it. My guess is that most men don't want invite accusations of sexism in the response, but I thought a male perspective might add something.

This article is arguing that the Campus Rape Industry, the author's term, is propagating the myth that around 1 in 4 college women are subject to rape or attempted rape during college. Rape hotlines have been setup based upon this statistic, but they are not receiving that many calls. The Campus Rape Industry then began focusing on why nobody is calling if there are so many rapes and attempted rapes occurring on campus. Their conclusion is that it is a problem of awareness about what constitutes rape, and also the stigma attached to rape victims. The author then goes on to say that the campus hook-up culture is to blame, and also that universities encourage this culture by offering sex workshops.

I agree that there must be some embarrassment and guilt associated with rape victims. It is a terrible crime, and has complicated physical, emotional, and psychological consequences for victims. We must work to allow these victims to feel comfortable reporting the crime.

But there are problems with the rape cases appearing in the news. I am only interested in the clear cases of rape, ie a sexual encounter physically forced upon an unwilling, unconsenting victim, insofar as the perpetrator is caught and punished and the victim receives all the help they need. Moreover, I am also only interested in cases where drugs such as roofies are used, also a clear case of rape, insofar as the perpetrator is caught and punished and the victim receives all the help they need.

However, I think there are gray areas that are being called sexual assault, attempted rape, and rape that are not so clear cut. Jezebel dismisses this as: "Ah yes, the old "gray rape" defense!"

I find this disturbing. Sexual encounters are, by their nature, intimate and passionate. Sex can be rough sometimes. Sex can be painful sometimes. The level of intimacy only exacerbates the possibility of misunderstandings, feelings of violation, and possible misperceptions of the intent of the other. Add to this that on college campuses, and most everywhere, a lot of sex takes place when both parties are under the influence of alcohol, and sometimes drugs, and the possibility that these misunderstandings will occur increases.

The article refers to a rape case at Harvard:
What can I tell you about being raped? Very little. I remember drinking with some girlfriends and then heading to a party in the house that some seniors were throwing. I’m told that I walked in and within 5 minutes was making out with one of the guys who lived there, who I’d talked to some in the dining hall but never really hung out with. I may have initiated it. I don’t remember arriving at the party; I dimly remember waking up at some point in the early morning in this guy’s room. I remember him walking me back to my room. I couldn’t have made it alone; I still had too much alcohol in my system to even stand up straight. I made myself vulnerable and even now it’s hard to think that someone here who I have talked and laughed with could be cold-hearted enough to take advantage of that vulnerability. I’d rather, sometimes, take half the blame than believe that a profound evil can exist in mankind. But it’s easy for me to say, that, of the two of us, I’m the only one who still has nightmares, found myself panicking and detaching during sex for many months afterwards, and spent more time looking into the abyss than any one person should.

The inequalities of the consequences of the night, the actions taken unintentionally or not, have changed the course of only one of our lives, irrevocably and profoundly.

This is one of those gray areas. Some people argue that a woman under the influence is off-limits even if she is consenting. This is true in the case where the guy is stone cold sober, and the girl is on the verge of passing out or is actually passed out. What if the guy is drunk as well? What if the girl is walking and talking and only visibly tipsy? There is a spectrum.

Let's say that same woman decided in her drunken state to drive home. Who would society hold responsible for her actions if she was pulled over? Her. If a guy, rather than walking her home to have sex with her, asked her in her drunken state to give him a ride home. Who would we hold responsible? Her. I find it problematic that in one instance we find her responsible for one decision, but him responsible for her decision in another. If she drove to give him a ride home and injured herself or others, then we find the idea that she blamed him for her decision offensive.

Miss Self Important linked to another article in her response, which she characterized as: "a girl gets drunk, calls up a guy, comes over to his apartment, makes out with him, undresses, and then decides while she's giving him oral sex to stop consenting to all this."

To clarify why she decided to stop consenting, he forced her head down while she was performing oral sex and she choked. When he released her head and she told him he said, "Yeah, that’s right, choke on it."

I have been in the same situation as the guy. In the throws of drunken passion I accidentally caused my partner to choke. When she told me, rather than being an asshole, I said, "Oh shit. I'm really sorry." It wasn't intentional on my part, and I was legitimately sorry. What the guy said was absolutely disrespectful, I agree. But when you drunken text message a guy at 2am and show up to his room drunk and get naked and give him a blow job, do you really expect he is going to respect you?

Likewise, I have been on the receiving end of disrespect during sex. One partner dug her nails into me and it really hurt. When I told her, she said, "Good." It is a similar situation in my opinion, and I in no way felt that I had been sexually assaulted.

Some may characterize this as saying she deserved to be raped. I don't think that is true. What happened is that he was disrespectful of a girl who consented to have sex with him. If he had responded to her leaving by physically restraining her and forcing himself on her, then that is rape. Feeling shitty because a guy treated you like a piece of meat and not a person is not rape. It is a product of going over to a guy's room, who she admitted she knew was an asshole, and having sex with him.

The fundamental issue I have with all this is that for some reason the definition of rape and sexual assault is being expanded to include times when the issue is drunkenness, miscommunication, and disrespect. I have unintentionally made my partners feel disrespected during sex, and vice versa, this is an unfortunate consequence of an intimate and passionate activity. You will never be able to get rid of it. Moreover, this expansion of the definition of sexual assault impedes awareness of the cases of actual violent, forced rape and roofie enabled rape. Calling sex that people regret rape is the worst thing possible for the awareness of actual rape.

The number of instances where people regret sex is only going to increase as the number of sexual encounters grow. This is a natural and unavoidable consequences of sexual liberation and sexual equality. While I am not arguing that we should return to prudish, Victorian morality that repressed female sexuality, I find it hard to argue against the idea that having pornstars and sex toy demonstrations will not lead to more sexual encounters, and consequently more regretted sex. It is my opinion, based on anecdotal evidence, that men can engage in mercenary sport sex sans emotional attachment without much difficulty. Most men don't really care if they somehow feel violated during a consensual sex act with a female partner. Whereas, I have heard many stories from women where they have a terrible emotional toll from the same, or similar, situations.

You can call it sexist or stupid, but I believe that women involve far more emotion in the sex act than men do. Men can separate the emotion from the act. Sure, some women can separate the two, but that does not disprove the general rule. Therefore, increasing sexual promiscuity will inevitably have more of an effect on women, even if we removed all violent, forced rape and date rape drugs from the equation because the emotional involvement of women during sex will inevitably lead to feelings of violation that somebody who is only focused on the physical act will not have.

Update: Cheryl Miller took issue with my post.

Her response
My retort