Rape me
Rape me my friend
Rape me
Rape me again–Nirvana/Rape Me
“No means no.”
And it obviously does..should.. mean no, but it’s not the sum total of what rape is. Or isn’t. Sometimes you don’t have to say no for it to mean no. Children under a certain age or some mentally disabled people, for example, are a statutory no.
It seems like it’s really simple, doesn’t it? If someone doesn’t want to, then don’t force them to.
Most of the time, it’s clear. Except when it isn’t. At a certain point, for some people, in certain situations, I think it gets a little hard to tell where the line between yes and no is.
Rape isn’t about sex, but at a certain point sex can turn into rape. I’m not really thinking about the cases where clearly it’s not a sexual thing even to start with, and when it is very clearly an assault. I’m thinking more of the situations many of us have been in where things are starting to get going and there’s that point where you’re either going to say no or yes…and maybe the line gets blurry. Maybe you changed your mind, maybe you realized things were going further than you were comfortable with.
There’s a range of what might be date rape scenarios that I’m not comfortable demonizing a guy for. Scenarios where there is a pretty strong element of “yes” at least to start with or where maybe the no isn’t stated either at all or not very clearly.
There’s kind of a spectrum, isn’t there? Maybe you’re both a little (or a lot) drunk and things are going fine. You are both having a great time. Then for whatever reason, you don’t want to anymore but he still does. Or maybe you do want to, but you know it would be a bad move for whatever reason. Maybe you would if you knew him better but this is only your first date and you wouldn’t even have gone this far without the assistance of all that tequila. Maybe you suddenly come to your senses and realize that he’s not Mr. Right but Mr. HellNo.
So you say no. Or you kind of mumble something like no. Or maybe you mean to say no, but just pull back a little bit. Maybe he doesn’t hear you, doesn’t want to hear you, doesn’t understand the pulling back. Maybe he thinks you were being playful. But you want to avoid it becoming an overt rape so you go along with it instead of making your no more clear. Or maybe you just don’t want to go through the argument about being a tease. Maybe it wouldn’t have ended in a physical assault because he’s a nice guy. Maybe it would have because your instincts were right. He might not even realize there was a problem until you don’t want to see him again. Ever. Or he might realize that he got away with something. You may never really know.
These are situations that are problematic in a lot of different ways.
The victim blaming ways: why was she so drunk? Why was she making out with him? She shouldn’t have been such a tease. She can’t expect him to just stop when she’s gotten him all excited. You know the drill if you’re female and sexually somewhat less pure than snow. We can go on the record as being very much in favor of being aware of our surroundings and not putting ourselves in danger–but let’s also go on the record saying that doing stuff that’s stupid doesn’t mean you deserve to be assaulted.
I don’t know if men understand the effect of the inherent power shift that takes place when one person is physically stronger than the other. I don’t know that they understand how that changes everything unless they have experienced it. Some men *have* experienced it. I would hope that they are more sensitive to the gradations of a possible no because of the experience. I would also prefer that no one ever go through it at all.
I’ve never been a guy, so I’ve never been in a position where I could just physically overpower someone if I wanted to. Not that most guys do, but I’m not sure that they understand how the fear of it impacts a girl who is deciding how far she wants to go when a guy is starting to get a little grabbier than maybe she is comfortable with.
If a girl decides to just go with it when she doesn’t really want to just to avoid the possibility of a struggle…should the guy realize that? I think he should be aware of it as a possibility. Even then, some people actually do like a little bit of power role playing in sex. How in the hell are you supposed to know what to do when hormones are raging?
I guess my point is that if I’m internally conflicted about this all as an almost 50 year old woman who has been through my share of near misses, I’m not sure we can always expect a 16 year old or 20 year old to get it.
No definitely means no. We’re all pretty clear on that.
What about the times where there isn’t a no but there could have been?
It’s something we need to talk about more.