That Zkicak article was pretty fascinating. Basically, I disagree, in that it's important to maintain that rape is still defined as non-consensual intercourse, but the situation she describes is one that could have produced completely different reactions in different people. Most women have probably had something similar happen to them, and for some of those women, it would have been catastrophic, and I can see the need to prosecute rape no matter what the outcome for the victim. OTOH, being that "victim," and feeling annoyed and used and angry, doesn't usually mean wanting to go through a trial, with lawyers, and families involved, having your morals questioned, watching everyone pity or despise you, making sure you never forget about this huge, important Thing That Once Happened. Hm. I guess this is what several of us women keep saying, that sexual assault is universal enough to be fairly mundane.

I agree with the above. It is fairly mundane. There seems to be an enormous spectrum of nonconsentual sex without nomanclature and when it happens, that sort of undistinct bondary crossing is almost as disturbing as the sex itself. I don't think "gray rape" is the new "date rape" and I don't think it's restricted to all the ladies being tossed around "hook-up culture" like so many ill-fated salmon. What about coupled women who wake up to find their partners having sex with them? You would be hard pressed to find a girl who has not had some version of gray sex happen to them and not really been willing to villify the individual who did it because something got lost in translation or the act was extremely brief and/or unexpected.

For some reason, thinking about this issue last night got me thinking about douchebags in bars and that made me go online and watch the existing episodes of that VH1 "Pick-Up Artist" show so I could hate on it more intelligently. But instead of hating on it, I was kind of impressed by it.

I totally despise the guru guy, but the method they're teaching (aside from all the silly lines and ridiculous techniques) is basically about teaching men how to read nonverbal cues from women, the most important being knowing how to walk away from a woman who doesn't want you. Does she cross her legs away from you? Does she slouch and tilt her chin toward her friend? If any of these things happen, stop pursuing her and find someone else to hit on.

One of the problems with denying consent is that a lot of men see that denial as a challenge to escalate the situation and, if necessary, manipulate or make it ugly. And when a woman sees that her date/partner/skeeze-in-a-bar is not responding to her negative unspoken feedback, that can feel really terrifying. I know the feminist response to The PUA is supposed to be horror and dismay (and I have felt horror and dismay about, say, the PUA messageboards online), but I can't help but think that teaching a man how to let a woman go if she doesn't want him is a step in the right direction.

Of course, the PUA lingo is that she hasn't "earned" your company, she doesn't "deserve" you, but if it keeps assholes from relentlessly hounding women, good on them.

I'm having trouble understanding what's grey about this. If a woman says, "No," then passes out, and you then have sex with her,surely that's rape. What's confusing about this?

At some point along this "spectrum of nonconsensual sex" women are deciding not to call a violation rape, is what I take away here. I think that Stepp is arguing that vaguely defined parameters surrounding dating and sexual propriety has led to an atmosphere in which women have internalized a notion that "when both parties have been drinking heavily, responsibility for what happened falls into a gray area." (Quoting from above because others have said things more economically than I can paraphrase). I'm curious about Stepp's solution, and I have an idea about what her thesis will be (I know, that's unfair of me to say).

The Zkicak article is fascinating. On one hand, I could understand why she might not want to assume the mantle of victimhood that is typically associated with rape. It's a heinous crime and maybe, psychologically, there is a reason that a woman is a lifelong victim of rape in a way that she is not a lifelong victim of, say, burglary. She writes that she ran into him later in life and he was apparently "still a douchebag"—to mean that he is still penetrating drunk women after they say no repeatedly and resist? There's a part of me that wants to applaud her refusal to let him mar her forever but I also feel angry she didn't report him, if he did go on to make it a serial habit.

Wild movements in the currency of both "douchebag" and "rapist", I think.

At some point along this "spectrum of nonconsensual sex" women are deciding not to call a violation rape, is what I take away here.

That's just entirely beyond me. My lay understanding of rape has always been that it was exactly equivalent to the performance of nonconsensual sex.

It seems as if all the work is being done in "spectrum." But it isn't a spectrum, really, is it? It's hard to think of a more obvious binary set of choices than "Yes" and "No." If there's some confusion as to what was "said," then that confusion needs to be clarified before we characterize what happened. But that's not a novel point of inquiry.

I find it bizarre and disturbing that there could be any confusion on this point.

You know what I think is going on here? It's a confusion between what's rape, and what you'd have a shot of successfully prosecuting as rape. The conduct described is, unambiguously, rape, but because of the evidentiary problems (availability of third party testimony that the woman voluntarily went to be alone with the man under circumstances where sex wouldn't be unlikely, the fact that her testimony is about a period during which she was drunk enough to be coming in and out of consciousness) prosecuting it would be somewhere between difficult and impossible, and the cops would probably laugh at you if you tried.

People seem to take that "Under the circumstances, there's no way you could prove it was rape beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury," and confuse that with meaning that "It's ambiguous as to whether that conduct, assuming it did occur as described, constitutes rape."

Please visit our ongoing discussion about Consent and the irresponsible and misogynistic PUA industry and the MRA community at Lady Raine's blog on wordpress or on my blog:

eqwithdenise.wordpress.com

Thanks
Denise

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