So How Do We Talk About Rape?

[rax]

Lately I've been working on talking about things when I think it's important to talk about them, even when doing so makes me uncomfortable. I've also, very recently, been trying to be more frank about what I don't know, and willing to be publically uncertain. So here's a post that contains a bunch of things that make me uncomfortable to share, and that I have absolutely no idea what to do about. As such, it might also contain a lot of things other people have said before or said better; I might be totally off base or missing something obvious. Please let me know if so.

I roll with a pack of genderheads, and sometimes conversation turns to rape[1].I usually refrain from talking about my own experiences. Frustratingly, not talking about my experiences makes me feel like I am silencing myself; I often am actively preventing myself from participating in conversations. However, when I do come in and bring up my own experiences, I feel both silenced and silencing. If a conversation is theoretical or about a specific issue of policy or behavior, and I say "This one time that I was sexually assaulted, the following things happened," conversation often shifts radically to be centered around my own personal experiences of sexual assault. Everyone is so sorry that I had to deal with that, and I have no idea how to respond. How did it happen? What have you done about it? Who did it, so I can be mean to them? That's not actually what I wanted to talk about. I didn't share the anecdote because I was looking for sympathy; I gave you details because they were relevant. I wasn't trying to win the argument, I was trying to relate to the issue the only way I know how, as someone with personal experience. At best when this has happened I've felt like the thread of conversation got lost in people tripping over themselves to make sure I knew they thought what happened to me was terrible; at worst I've felt like I accidentally used "I've been raped" as a thought-terminating cliche, winning an irrelevant argument, and felt guilty about bringing it up at all.

At the same time, when someone says "I'm sorry that happened to you," I do appreciate it. And I've gotten used to it. I don't know what it would feel like to be talking with a group of friends and just be frank about my experiences and have everyone take it for granted. What if it actually felt really horrible? I don't want to take rape and sexual assault for granted, I don't want that sort of statement to be just part of the scenery, and I don't want my experiences glossed over as if they aren't important, either. If this sounds like I want it both ways, it's because I do; I want every assault to be treated as unacceptable but I want to be able to discuss them calmly and impersonally. I have no idea how to do that.

At this point, anyone sufficiently on the Internet to read this post shouldn't need me to tell them that rape happens to many people, regardless of age, color, creed... There are various blog posts and forums and LJ communities where survivors (I'm pretty sure that's the right term? I'm not really a part of this community) get together and discuss their experiences, and anyone who wants to have an absolutely depressing and reality-inducing evening can go and read them. Hopefully you already know that a number of the people in your social group have been victims of rape, and most likely some of them have been perpetrators, too. You'll note I didn't list gender; for the most part these collections of rape stories are very gendered. Partially this is because rape itself, as a cultural phenomenon, as an exercise of power, is gendered. What we know both anecdotally and statistically suggests that this is true: The lion's share of rapes and sexual assaults have male perpetrators and female victims.

I recently read something someone I didn't know wrote that said something like "No discussion of rape is complete without referencing the Ceretapost." (I don't remember exactly where it was, or I would reference it.) This sort of bothered me. I don't know cereta , and I think that her original post --- about men and rape culture --- was valuable and worth reading. The comments made me really upset, though. I didn't read all 4000 because, well, I have a job, but there were a few themes I picked out, that I've also seen other places where this topic comes up in conversation:

• The idea that women shouldn't have to feel unsafe walking alone at night, because most rapes are committed by friends and acquaintances. Yes, thank you, I know this; what I'm concerned with here is a feeling of safety, something that can't just be rationalized away, because most is so, so far from all, and even if I'm not likely to be raped, I may very well be harassed.
• The idea that considering men dangerous or as potential rapists first is bad. I really want to agree, but I have a lot of difficulty doing so. There's a part of me that thinks this is one of the ways sexism hurts men and that I don't want to be part of perpetuating that in the name of feminism, and a part of me that looks at the other part and says "Are you crazy? Can you really afford to give men the benefit of the doubt like that?" The answer is, I don't know.
• A small number of people came up with things like "What about men raped by women, or same-sex rape? Where does that fit into this?" To which the answer was "That doesn't fit into the topic of this post," with a side of "You're derailing." Now, a couple of those posters actually were derailing, but is the idea derailing? I don't know. Having been raped by a woman, and raped while not everyone around me considered me a woman, I feel left behind by this argument, actively pushed out of the conversation. At the same time, I just said above that I wanted there to be room for serious conversations about specific elements of rape issues that weren't focused on my experience. So shouldn't I be glad that this conversation didn't apply to all of my assault experiences, not angry at being excluded? Isn't it important to have these conversations that happen in broad sweeping gendered terms, even if they leave some people or experiences out? (I think part of the problem with that is that the same people get left out, time and time again, but I don't have a good solution for that, or even know if it's true.)

I recently had a personal conversation with a good friend after having talked about one of my assault experiences. She felt strongly that I should push my friends to terminate connection with my assaulter, and to call my assaulter out on their behavior. I did not and do not want to do this; I do not feel the energy spent in making a big deal out of it is actually worth what little I might gain. After all, even if 100 people walk up to this person and tell them "You raped rax  and you're an asshole," I'm not going to be unraped. So I'd rather just let it slide and get on with my life. At first, I thought my friend was bringing it up on my behalf, and I tried to explain that it just wasn't worth it to me. After a while, I understood that it wasn't just about my experience --- it was also about her anxiety and her anger that someone could hurt me like that, and feeling of powerlessness in the face of horrible things happening to people she cared about. She expressed that she wished she knew who in her life had done such things so that she could call them out and ostracize them, and that it was difficult to not be able to, knowing that people she associated with regularly had gotten away with rape. And I feel bad, now, to be contributing to that; to some extent, it's like I'm defending and protecting them by not revealing them, even though what I'm trying to do is defend and protect myself. Oh, cultural systems of power, how clever you are at preserving yourselves!

So what do I want from people when I tell them this has happened to me? Mostly I want them to keep seeing me as a person, not as a "victim," not as someone needing physical or emotional protection, not as a shrill man-hater. Really it depends on context; I'm not averse to expressions of sympathy but if that takes away from the conversation, can we save it for later? Also, it's important to keep in mind --- but it's the sort of thing that I might forget if I didn't write it down here --- that not everyone's desires and needs in this space will be anything like mine. Maybe some people really want and hunger for that sympathy, that focus. Maybe some people feel very strongly that it should go completely unremarked, as if saying "Many years ago, I ate a sandwich." All of these things and more are valid, and I don't know how to handle them any better than anyone else, except when it comes to myself, really. [2]

So, given this, how do we talk about rape? How can we normalize these conversations so that we can be comfortable and make real progress? How can those of us with experiences share our experiences without centering them and without denying the trauma they contain? How can those of us without experiences express our opinions and participate in the conversation? How can we silence no one?

[1] I'm going to use "rape" here as shorthand for "rape, attempted rape, and sexual assault" both because it's convenient and because having a four-letter word to cover that seems valuable and maybe "rape" should be it? I don't know. I could write a whole post on that too except no thank you I have spent enough time on this already.

[2] What I do know is how I'd like you to respond to this post: Please, please don't comment and tell you how sorry you are that I was raped. I consider it safe to assume that you are displeased. If you really want to tell me anyway, send me a private message or an email. I'm much more interested in talking here about how we talk about rape and handle these conversations than in the particulars of my experiences or how terrible they must have been. Thank you.

Comments

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

You seem to be indicating that, in the case of a woman and a man involved in sexual activity, the woman need give no express indication to the man that she does not want to participate in that activity yet may consider herself to be raped nonetheless.

My issues with this are severalfold:

First of all, you're suggesting that all women should live with the expectation that they do not have to say no if they don't want to have sex. This idea seems to me liable to create many more heterosexual rapes than it could prevent. Words remain a far more effective means of communication than telepathy.

Second, you're turning all heterosexual sex into potential rape. That opens up a cultural ground we shouldn't set foot upon: if a woman can decide that she was raped after the fact when she did not say no at the time, and that woman is fully supported in her decision, she actually loses some of her power to control her own body. Instead of, "I made a bad decision," a self-controlled thought that leads to determination to say no next time, she may instead think, "I am a victim," which leads to any number of psychological problems.

Third, we have enough issues with sex in this culture. If, as I mentioned above, all heterosexual sex becomes potential rape, that is a backwards step in our progress towards doing away with those issues. I can't imagine the numbers of men and women who would develop neuroses from not knowing whether the sexual activity they'd participated in constituted rape. How many would wonder if the sex about which they fantasized was of rape? How many would blame and guilt themselves for that?

Side note: how long before what constituted rape became so ambiguous that we started "protecting" women from rape by creating new social or legal restrictions on sex?

Fourth, and last for right now, if we accept that a woman may determine herself to be/have been raped without having said no, we do indeed take into account that the man may have pressured her into sex in such a way that she felt unable to refuse. However, there's also a possibility you're overlooking that she may be forced later by other social pressures into believing and/or saying that she was raped.

I'm aware that I'm not addressing rape or sexual assault in which a woman attacks a man or one member of a sex attacks another, and I ask pardon in that; I am entirely willing to discuss it, but the example given above made me think of a general case involving male attacks against females.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I think that you and cshiley may have had different mental pictures of what was going on in this hypothetical situation. I think that it can clearly be rape, or at the very least have a lot of the same psychological interactions, in a situation like this:

Person A approaches person B and starts having a conversation. The two chat pleasantly, and then all of the sudden person A starts fondling/kissing person B. Person B starts to panic: sweating, trembling, being unable to form words, breathing heavily. Person A says "Oh great, they're into it!" and that's totally a misreading.

When this happened to me, Person A even asked at some point "Is this OK with you?" I tried so hard to say no, but it didn't come out. The experience did, in fact, give me tremendous determination to say no next time (not that it stopped the next person when I did say no, but at least I did) but I don't think calling that rape lost me power to control my own body, I think having a panic attack lost me control over my own body. Saying after the fact "I didn't want that" and working to be able to say it more clearly the next time actually gained me control in a way I think was productive even if I wish I hadn't had to do it in that way.

This particular situation might have been solved by the "enthusiastic consent" model --- you aren't just stopping if you hear no, you are only going when you hear yes. I've found this helpful when I've explored more twitchy or challenging stuff with partners; I don't think it's a solution to rape culture but it's something worth keeping in mind.

In terms of whether something like the situation I described should legally be considered rape? God, I don't know. Maybe this is an issue of separate, overlapping conversations where how people feel about things could be the same but what we do about them could be different?

How many would wonder if the sex about which they fantasized was of rape? How many would blame and guilt themselves for that?

Some of us are already there.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

I don't think calling that rape lost me power to control my own body, I think having a panic attack lost me control over my own body.

This, yes.

Trauma theory says: our response to terror is not just fight-or-flight; it's fight-or-flight-or-freeze. When we're both terrified and trapped and out-matched, we tend to shut down, go limp, and "play possum," in the unconscious hope that this will get us hurt less.

In some cases, we're completely right.

In other cases, freezing means that a person is not able to say "no, stop" even when s/he wants nothing more than for what's going on to stop happening.

I agree with angstnokami that we need to stay aware of the fact that if "rape" just means "one of the people involved in this sexual encounter regrets it afterwards," that that has all sorts of really unfortunate consequences. I just think it's really complex, and I'm hard-pressed to find any statement you can make about rape that doesn't have at least one person whose experience is the exception to it.

[sylvanstargazer.livejournal.com]

i don't know that "one of the people involved in this sexual encounter suffers PTSD afterwards" would necessarily be unreasonable, though.

i think we can make lots of generalizations about rape, including: having sex with someone who did not say yes and stay communicative and an active participant during the experience (unless otherwise communicated ahead of time), is not acceptable. i think the "unfortunate side effects" is that less sex would be had, and especially by men, which seems to be deemed by our culture an unacceptable cost. i think the sex that was had would be better sex, and we'd have fewer traumatized people in the world.

i have met a number of men who act traumatized, who talk about their early sexual experiences with 18 or 20 year old babysitters, or girlfriends who threatened them with rumors if they didn't participate. They would never once think of themselves as raped but were still suffering because they were. i have known a woman who woke up to a strange guy having sex with her, and didn't call it rape, but she has panic attacks. i hate that we are afraid of letting these people call what they experienced rape because it might unfairly burden straight men who want to have sex (it burdens a lot of other people, too, but they never seem to come up in the conversation of "but what if she regrets it!").

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

i don't know that "one of the people involved in this sexual encounter suffers PTSD afterwards" would necessarily be unreasonable, though.

As discussed elsewhere in this thread, that leaves out the people who AREN'T traumatized by the experience. It's probably relatively rare but it does happen. And the people who push nonconsentual sexual encounters are still in the wrong, even if the person they had sex with isn't damaged by the experience. The next person they force or coerce might be.

[kiya]

When I was assaulted, it was the culmination of a long sequence of events in which he pushed over boundaries. And the assault went:

He asked me over to his place for a movie. I went, like a little idiot. He stripped naked, pinned me down, and tried to forcibly remove my clothes. I panicked, shut down, tried to curl up into a little ball to protect myself.

I never said no. I never had space for it.

"I made a bad decision" would be a lie; I never had space to make a decision about sexual activity. (And, furthermore, I had been carefully taught that I had to say "yes" for sex to happen; nobody had given me any guidance on what to do when dealing with a guy who didn't give enough of a damn about my consent to ask or even give me space to volunteer input.)

Your response to cshiley does not appear to have space for me to exist.

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

After I read the responses to my comment, I called a good friend to ask for perspective. Was I in the wrong, or were those who replied? A little of both, that person noted.

We talked about the trauma theory that gaudior has mentioned, though not in those words. I had not been aware of the fight, flight, or flee reaction, though now it makes perfect sense, especially as I have been hit in the past, right before which I became perfectly still, hoping that my attacker would lose interest. Rape is more serious and harmful than any physical attack I've experienced, so I can understand that the freeze reaction would be that much stronger in such a case.

Even before the aforementioned conversation, I did not mean to belittle you or your experience or recriminate any victim of sexual assault. I have no doubt that your experience was horrible. I'm sorry to have given the impression that I didn't care.

I meant to say two things, namely that we don't have enough terminology to differentiate between different types of sexual assault, that calling everything that goes wrong between two people in a sexual context rape is too general; and that misunderstandings take two people, not one -- both (or more) participants in any sexual situation need to be made able to communicate before the fact. Regretfully, that doesn't always happen, but even so blame shouldn't be assigned 100% on any party.

My terminology may be flawed; I admit that. I'm not sure there shouldn't be a different term for what you experienced than "rape," but since there isn't, then yes, you were raped.

However, I do not appreciate your attempt to turn a theoretical discussion into an emotion- and event-based one.

[kiya]

I am quite familiar with this particular theoretical discussion; back when I was trying to deal with the aftermath of my assault the going conversation on the subject was all about whether or not date rape was really rape, or whether it should have a different word.

When the theory invalidates someone's experience, the theory needs to be fixed. Period.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

I meant to say two things, namely that we don't have enough terminology to differentiate between different types of sexual assault, that calling everything that goes wrong between two people in a sexual context rape is too general; and that misunderstandings take two people, not one -- both (or more) participants in any sexual situation need to be made able to communicate before the fact. Regretfully, that doesn't always happen, but even so blame shouldn't be assigned 100% on any party.

I am not sure if this is what you mean to say, but I am reading this as a zero sum argument. That is, that you are arguing that if assailant cannot be held 100 percent responsible for the assault, using your terminology, that the rest of the responsibility falls to the person who was assaulted. Read in this way I find the argument flawed. Some of the responsibility might be argued to fall elsewhere; with society in general, with whomever designed or executed any sexual education the assailant participated in during the course of their schooling, with the assailant's parents/guardians, etc. I don't think someone physically incapable of communicating is in any way at fault for being unable to communicate or for that lack of communication being interpreted as consent, whether the lack of ability to communicate is due to freezing or being incompasitated in some other way. The way that I am interpreting the above appears to me to indicate that you do place some blame on the person who has been assaulted.

Perhaps this is not the argument you are trying to make?

I find a paragraph below similarly problematic. I will reply to it as well briefly.

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that blame may not be 100% assignable merely between the parties involved in the sexual situation, but no, I don't agree with you that the victim is entirely blameless.

It is really hard to talk about this without delving into personal experience, so I'll do so with the caveat that I'm saying what follows to illustrate a point, not for sympathy.

I lived alone with my mother, a schizophrenic at that time entirely untreated, between the ages of 7 and 16. She had kidnapped me after my father was awarded custody in their divorce, and there was a warrant for her arrest because of it, so we lived incommunicado, and I did not attend school or interact much with other people of any age. I came out of that experience with chronic PTSD and severely flawed to nonexistent social skills. (And before you say it, yes, they're still flawed, though not to the same extent.)

In the years following, those flawed social skills have caused me extreme difficulty. No one has ever taken me aside to explain that in such-and-such a situation, you do this, and in this other situation, you do that. I have been in every case expected to pick this information up on my own, as my own responsibility.

And you know what? That is correct. To no one but me is it most important that I acquire these skills, and since this is the nature of individuality, so it should be.

So here is the parallel I build on the above: If it is true that a person is responsible for his or her own social skills, does that not include, to some extent, acquiring education on how to act or react or communicate in sexual situations? Aren't both parties to blame when there is a situation involving a misunderstanding that leads to rape, for neglecting to educate themselves on how to handle such a situation, at the very least? Because it is most important to those people involved in the situation, not to someone else or to society, to avoid rape.

[eredien]

However, I do not appreciate your attempt to turn a theoretical discussion into an emotion- and event-based one.

I think part of the point of this whole discussion is that it's really hard to seperate out the "theoretical" of discussions surrounding rape from the "emotion" or "event-based" discussions surrounding rape.

Rather, I see it as a series of open questions, among them these:
- whether there are or can be such distinctions
- whether it is good to have such distinctions
- whether it is useful to have such distinctions
- a question of who makes the distinctions, on what basis or grounds.

I think that you and lilairen may be running into the question of if there can be a distinction between theory, emotion, and event on some of these questions; I think you are each coming down on different sides of that question. I won't presume to answer the question of why you may be coming down on different sides or what on what grounds or basis you are distinguishing, because I don't know.

and that misunderstandings take two people, not one -- both (or more) participants in any sexual situation need to be made able to communicate before the fact.

This would be ideal, yes.

As I understand it, it's your understanding that both people need to communicate before the fact, and if that doesn't happen it's partially the fault of both people that the rape occurs for not communicating clearly. However, that doesn't address the point that I think lilairen is making, which applies to situations where people *can not* communicate clearly (panic attack, druggings, mentally disabled people, the very elderly or very young, people with severe mental health problems, those in institutons, etc.)?

I think your position leaves those people out because it's assuming that everyone has the ability--and associated responsibility--to give or withhold consent, but not everyone does at all, and of those that do have that ability, not every one of those people has it all the time.

If I've misrepresented your understanding in the above, please post here and let me know so I can come back and reconsider.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

The second half of this articulates the thing I was objecting to much better than I did. Thank you.

[kiya]

Precisely this, yes.

I would add: the ability to have a discussion purely in theoryland about such subjects (rape, racism, heterocentricity, transphobia, whatever) is a pretty sure sign that the person in question doesn't have to wrestle with the problem on an intimate personal level. "This is just an abstract, theoretical conversation" not only doesn't play with actual life stuff, it can't; as soon as real people with actual experiences come into play, the theory needs to be tested against reality, and if reality conflicts, the theory has to go.

And part of the cost of being those people with actual experiences is being told by the people with the theories that those experiences are atypical, exceptional, don't count, didn't happen the way they were reported, or, as in this case, that mentioning those experiences is a sign that we are too emotional to have the conversation in the first place.

I am glad that other people took up the conversation, honestly, and were competent to express the points that I felt needed to be made; I am not someone who is well-suited to teasing out alternate interpretations of theories that appear to me to be primarily about making space to blame victims of crimes for allowing themselves to have been harmed.



Looking at some quoted phrasing, meanwhile, there's an interesting and relevant question:

Who determines that people are "participants in a sexual situation"?

I know in my own experience with assault and harassment, the "sexual situation" was something that was created externally and inflicted upon me from the outside. I was not a "participant in a sexual situation" any more than the victim of a pickpocket is a "participant in an act of commerce".

I'm entirely willing to grant that participants in a sexual situation have some level of reasonable obligation to communicate about their boundaries, but that still does not cover situations in which nonparticipants are dragged into such a situation. This isn't even getting into the question of whether or not those nonparticipants are capable of expressing consent clearly - it's noting that one person's sexual desire does not obligate anyone else to perform.

The idea that someone can unilaterally create a "sexual situation" that conveys obligations on other people is one I think ... dangerous.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

I think it's absolutely ridiculous to go from "if a person doesn't say no, they can still have been raped" to "all heterosexual sex is potentially rape."

I think that everyone should be expected to say yes to sex. I think everyone should be prepared to say no to sex. I *also* know that this is a totally unrealistic assumption.

But frankly, the absence of a no does not mean yes, and saying so doesn't mean all sex is rape. (absence of no also doesn't mean no. It can get really complicated.)

Aside from the cases below, I know of one specific case where the woman felt, unquestionably, that she had been raped. Given that rape is about her consent, she *was* raped. She had a lot of psychological difficulties from it. The man unquestionably did not intend rape and did not believe he had raped her.*

Better communication would help prevent this (I'm all over communication) but it's very hard for people to even agree that it's possible. It *is* possible, it *does* happen, and acknowledging reality is a better way of addressing it than pretending it doesn't exist. Right now, our narratives of the situation are either that he's an evil rapist, or she's changing her mind and attacking an innocent man. Neither is true.

Also... huge numbers of people have rape fantasies. I am not particularly concerned with adding more fodder to that, even though not everyone gracefully copes with their own internal life. I can just as easily construct a just-so story about how my theoretical models free everyone to fully experience their fantasies. We should normalize rape fantasies and acknowledge that taboo fantasies are OK.

Finally, when it comes right down to it, I don't believe that people often decide later because of social factors that they were raped. I do believe that people often realize later that they were raped, or that the icky feeling they had when they had sex constitutes rape.** I think that nonconsensual sex is rape, and people can tell if they're consenting. They may not have the words, but somewhere inside they know. I also believe that in situations where someone is too disconnected from themselves to have that feeling, then it is by definition rape. It does a lot of damage to a psyche to accept that an experience was rape! It's not a fun walk in the park. Accusing someone of rape is also not a joyful experience; the accuser is often ostracized as much or more as the accused.

Please observe that this is theoretical and that policy is a different story; just as I believe a rape can happen without the rapist intending it, I also believe that not every rape can or should involve prosecution. I definitely believe that we should be able to talk about it without losing ourselves in hyperbole.



* However, it was still his responsibility not to have raped her, even though he didn't know he was doing it. It's complicated. That's why this conversation belongs in the *theoretical* space.

** This icky feeling can happen when someone has decided to have sex but doesn't want it. People do this for all kinds of reasons. I think this is a result of some situational coercion, and is rape, and is not something we should prosecute but is something we should work on. Most people wouldn't call those scenarios rape, but I don't have another word for nonconsensual sex. It'd help if we had different words for the verb (to force someone to have sex through violence, threats, or coercion) and the noun (an instance of nonconsensual sex).

Outside of the theoretical space, our culture is still stuck on step one: that it is ok to not want sex. Heck, sometimes we're stuck on step zero: that it is ok to want sex.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

someone has decided to have sex but doesn't want it.

I wouldn't always call that nonconsentual. I've had sex with people where I wasn't into it. Where I started the evening planning to have sex with them but they did something that irritated me or turned me off such that I would really rather have been somewhere else but I went through with it anyway. Because, really, bad sex with someone I'm not into isn't the worst thing in the world. And it's easier than trying to explain why I changed my mind and then either lie next to them in angry silence or find another place to spend the night. This is absolutely definitely not rape. But it was sex I didn't want. And the icky feeling was that I had put myself in that situation, that I hadn't thought more about how much I REALLY wanted this person beforehand, that I hadn't made other plans in case I changed my mind, etc. It was a useful learning experience and in the future I knew myself better.

[kiya]

Other forms of consensual but not desired sex I'm familiar with:

"There's so much stress in our relationship I'm feeling completely disconnected from sexuality with you, but sex is a big bonding thing for me and maybe that will help us get back on track." (It didn't. I felt like crap afterwards. Also sort of like a blow-up doll.)

"You're clearly feeling awful right now, and I know this sexual thing would help, even though I don't really want to do it. However, I will do it because I really want to help the feeling-awful." (This is usually fine.)

"Our particular kinky relationship agreements permit you to initiate sex under this set of circumstances, which does not necessarily include me wanting you to at that moment."

Probably some others.

Heh. One of my husbands could probably include something along the lines of, "It's a stupid hour of the night and I need my sleep but we're trying to have a baby and she's ovulating right now." His desired sex includes less three in the morning. :P

[q10.livejournal.com]

can you elaborate a bit on your concept of the connection between wanting and consenting? i think there's a lot going on in that part of the analysis and it'd be very instructive if we could see a bit more of it.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

plymouth and lilairen bring some important bits to this too. Let me think; this is further afield from what I've already considered in detail.

I would normally say that "of course someone knows if they're consenting unless they're drunk or something" but I've been repeatedly educated in the concept that no, people do not always have good self-insight. These people are probably more likely to get into adverse situations, because you can't communicate effectively if you don't know what you think about something.

When I've been in nonconsensual situations, I've had a pervasive feeling of wrongness, even when I was too young to know what was really going on. I guess I theorize that this pervasive feeling of wrongness is the emotional state that underlies consent.

But it gets all wonky because yeah, you can totally consent to sex you don't really want, and that's not rape. But you can also consent to sex you don't really want and it really is rape; coercion is a funny thing. Consent has to be freely given to matter. A lot of unquestionably raped people have huge problems because they didn't fight to the end, or said yes because they were afraid they'd be killed (or because their bodies reacted to the sex). Obviously coerced consent is meaningless.

Situations can constitute coercion, too. Here it gets even more mucky, because I can certainly see how a person could put themselves into an emotional situation where they felt obligated to have sex they didn't want to have, without any significant coercive energy provided by the partner. Because people can be crazy.

Still, I think that pervasive icky feeling is really important and useful to sorting out when it was true consent and when it was coerced.

...Or maybe it's all in what the person believes will happen to them if they don't have that sex. If they believe the world will fall down upon them or violence will be done upon them or something similarly drastic, it's probably coercive; if they believe that it would probably be all right and if it does have consequences, they'd be manageable, it's probably not coercive.

I am definitely further out on the limb here, though.

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

I think "I think it's absolutely ridiculous" isn't an argument. Please either explain why I am wrong, or refrain from belittling my viewpoint.

Yes, it is very complicated. I agree.

Given that rape is about her consent, she *was* raped.

This might be an odd question, but would you please define how you are using the word "rape"? You seem to be using it to refer to an emotional state, whereas I'm using it to refer to a sexual situation involving more than one person in which one of those people says no and is forced into sexual activity anyway. I think this is why we're having communication difficulties.

I'm not saying, in our example involving a heterosexual man and woman, that either party is entirely without blame. The man should be able to tell when the woman doesn't want to have sex; sometimes he can't. The woman should be able to voice her refusal to have sex; sometimes she can't. What I am saying is that neither person is entirely at fault or entirely without fault, even when one of them suffers from the experience and the other doesn't.

I also feel that there is no safe space here for someone to say that s/he had sex that s/he didn't want to have, that it was unpleasant but didn't feel violating, that s/he doesn't feel that s/he's been raped, and that that's okay. You seem to admit that this terminology is flawed but demand that because we have no other words, we should call it rape. I object to that because saying it's rape attaches a lot of other associations and baggage to such an experience.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I also feel that there is no safe space here for someone to say that s/he had sex that s/he didn't want to have, that it was unpleasant but didn't feel violating, that s/he doesn't feel that s/he's been raped, and that that's okay.

I think I said pretty much that in my comment above in this same thread.

You seem to admit that this terminology is flawed but demand that because we have no other words, we should call it rape. I object to that because saying it's rape attaches a lot of other associations and baggage to such an experience.

I agree with this and would expand further upon it. A common refrain of anti-rape narrative is that "Rape is not about sex - rape is about violence, power, control." In a case where a person has sex they didn't really want but went along with and don't feel violated by it is most definitely about sex! If the initiating party has no idea the person they're having sex with isn't into it, they're most likely just there for the sex. Of course even in plain vanilla everyone's thoroughly enthusiastic consensual sex there are STILL power dynamics involved. But it's not ABOUT power.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't think that it was nonconsensual if you freely chose to go along with it (see above, somewhere) where the key part of that is probably the word "freely".

It's a really, really good meme to spread that rape is not about sex. It's important for changing the social narrative from "Oh he was just horny" to "He was a criminal". I don't think this culture is ready to step away from that meme.

However... I don't think it's entirely true. For instance, for some people, the sex and the control are the same. And I think a lot of rape comes from people just plain not giving a damn about how their partners feel. Is that about sex? Or is it about power, because the person is exercising the ability to disregard another person's personhood? Is this possibly another area where the experience for the sex-or and the sex-ee can be quite different, so that for one it's the sex and for the other it's about the loss of power/control/agency?

I dunno.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying, in our example involving a heterosexual man and woman, that either party is entirely without blame. The man should be able to tell when the woman doesn't want to have sex; sometimes he can't. The woman should be able to voice her refusal to have sex; sometimes she can't. What I am saying is that neither person is entirely at fault or entirely without fault, even when one of them suffers from the experience and the other doesn't.

This is the other paragraph I find particularly problematic. I would argue rather that if the man can't tell if the woman wants to have sex or not, if she is not clearly consenting, that he should take that as an indication that she does not until proven otherwise.

I find it particularly problematic that you believe that a woman who cannot "voice her refusal to have sex" is still not "entirely without fault". How is it her fault if she is not able to express consent and her lack of ability to express consent is read as consent? Again, we might choose to argued that the man in this scenario is not entirely at fault for not knowing the correct thing to do in a situation where consent is not being actively communicated. But even if we are making that argument that does not mean that the balance of fault, as it were, automatically transfers to the woman in this scenario.

I would also like to note that I'm not quite sure which example involving a heterosexual man and woman you are referencing here.

I'd also like to reply to this: I also feel that there is no safe space here for someone to say that s/he had sex that s/he didn't want to have, that it was unpleasant but didn't feel violating, that s/he doesn't feel that s/he's been raped, and that that's okay.

I think in my mind the main distinction between having unpleasant sex that makes one feel yucky afterwards and having sex that makes one feel violated is a question of consent. I've had sex that I've regretted, but it was sex that I agreed to, and in fact initiated. I've never had sex that I didn't consent to. The non-consensual touching and kissing I've experienced did feel violating, as did attempts to coerce me into touching I was expressly not interested in.

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

I would argue rather that if the man can't tell if the woman wants to have sex or not, if she is not clearly consenting, that he should take that as an indication that she does not until proven otherwise.

Yes. He should. And if he doesn't know enough to do that? And she doesn't know enough not to put herself in a situation where she might not be able to say no and regret it later? Who's at fault then? Everyone should be more aware of these issues. But that doesn't mean that they are or will be. I would argue that there is an element of personal responsibility there that we're trying to say isn't there.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

You are right, that wasn't a good argument. I apologize for my approach.

I do not understand how you get from "You can be raped without saying no" to "all heterosexual sex is potentially rape." For one thing, shouldn't it be "all sex is potentially rape"?

I believe that we should all live in the expectation that we will not have nonconsensual sex acted upon us. I believe that it is a reasonable burden to place on the sex-or to establish the consent of the sex-ee. (I observe that there's lots of different ways to establish that consent that do not involve the words "yes" or "no".)

I truly do not understand how this becomes "all sex is potentially rape". For one, all sex that has express consent isn't rape. All sex that has implicit consent is not rape. All sex that does not have consent is rape. The vast majority of sex seems to have express or implicit consent, and is therefore not rape, even in a context where most people are terrible about communicating verbally.

My definition of rape is nonconsensual sex. I'm aware that there's sticky wickets around "nonconsensual" and "sex" (and my particular sticky wicket is the whole "X can be raped by Y while Y is not raping X). In theoretical conversations, I'm not terribly interested in fault or responsibility; I think the conversation about "How to not be raped" is different from "who's at fault for rape" and very, very different from "how should people behave".

I think it is both a good and bad thing that the word rape carries such baggage. It's bad because it's really hard to talk about. But it's good because it's a really big important thing that people should get angry about. I think we should call nonconsensual sex rape because that's what I think it is, and I'm a big fan of calling a thing by its name. People get angry and upset when something they think is not-rape is called rape, and that's fair; but from my perspective, they are often whitewashing the thing that is not-rape.

Some things that rape is not, to me:
- Something that must be prosecuted
- Something that always has a bad guy
- An event that always has a the same effect on people: some people are profoundly affected, and some aren't
- Something that's easily legislated or criminalized
- Something that exists in a vacuum.

Also, so I don't have to make a whole nother post elsewhere: I think it is really, really good for people to learn to be assertive and say no. I want more people to be good at that, and I want more people to respect and encourage that behavior. Right now, the cultural feedback loops seem to run in the other direction. But sometimes, being coy is the correct survival choice, and sometimes people aren't able to be assertive when they maybe should be. Their choices for their behavior are their responsibility. However, even when their choices may contribute to a negative outcome, that outcome is *not* their fault, or their responsibility. The difference between "walking home half naked and drunk" and "walking home half naked and drunk and getting raped" is in the choices that *someone else* makes.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I believe that it is a reasonable burden to place on the sex-or to establish the consent of the sex-ee.

And in a lot of situations involving "implicit consent" it's because BOTH people are actually sex-ors.