There are oh so many myths about rape that I would like to kill, bury, and then dance on the grave of naked, but I think the number one myth is that rape is something that “Just Happens” to victims (more likely women), like it is a force of nature. In order for rape to happen there has to be a rapist around- a rapist who doesn’t happen to wear a sign, I might add. Weather is a force of nature: we can’t stop it, all we can do is take steps to deal with it. But, at least with weather, we have a fairly good chance of knowing when it’s coming. And, (barring the recent example of Katrina) we don’t generally blame people for being ill-prepared when weather systems happen.
But yet, women are supposed to simultaneously to distrust all guys, all the time, and to flirt and be friendly with them. We are supposed to be able to “cut loose” and “relax” and be ever vigilant and all-knowing. And the guys responsibility in all of this is….nothing, near as I can tell. Telling guys to be responsible, and ask a woman if she consents to sex, and not have sex with a clearly inebriated women is apparently an overly arduous task akin to being castrated.
This line of thought, (expressed fairly clearly by the testosterone-for-brains Peter Hitchens) is victim-blaming at it’s very worst. Melissa did a very good job at taking down this annoying article, but I’d like to take a different approach to it.
I was raped once. I am not going to go into too much detail about it, because it is simple not something I’m comfortably giving out to the void. But, one thing I am willing to say is that I was stone-cold sober: there wasn’t a drop of liquor in my body that time.
On the other hand, I have been drunk, many, many times. Stupidly drunk; falling-down-due-to-miniature-localized-earthquakes-drunk. And I have been slurringly drunk with a guy before as well- and sometimes when I have gotten stupidly drunk, I have become amorous and tried to kiss the guy, or make-out with him. And you know something? Every time this has happened, I have not been raped, nor have I raped anyone else. The guy, possibly someone I’ve already had sex with before, stops the activity, because he knows that I’m not in my right mind, or he says “no” to me, and I immediately stop (because I know my horny-ness is not his problem. Alcohol use is not an excuse to rape either). I have not been raped, nor raped, because a RAPIST was not present. It’s not just something that happens, like a sunburn when you don’t wear sunscreen, there has to be an active party.
And I have also seen guys use alcohol to get a girl drunk, so they could rape her. My freshman year, I was invited to a Frat party, and I went along to see what all the fuss was about. I did everything “right”: I went with a bunch of girlfriends, I did not drink, I did not even accept soda in an open cup. And, I still get made fun of my fraternity friend who invited me that not for being overly paranoid.* V was a girl from my floor that went that night as well. V was not used to being on her own, drinking, and she maybe weighed 90 pounds soaking wet. She said she wasn’t going to drink that night; and so asked for a glass of punch. The “gentleman” she was talking to got her a glass, which was spiked. Now, I don’t know for certain: perhaps the “gentleman” didn’t know that the punch was spiked, perhaps he thought she knew it was spiked, perhaps he was taking advantage of the situation at hand. But, in any occasion, he should have quickly seen that she was getting very, very drunk; and yet he kept giving her alchol. If anything, as her BAC rose, he seemed to increase the frequency of the drinks. By the end of the night, V could barely walk, her eyes were blurry, and the words that came out of her mouth were nonsensical. This is when the “gentleman” (who was not drinking, I’d like to point out) decided was a great time to make out with her, and started groping the hell out of her. She was not responding to his “overtures”- if anything, she seemed a little fuzzy. When I started to see him lead her up the staircase to the rooms, is when I decided to intervene.
“Come on V”, I said, “Let’s go home…it’s getting kind of late. Come on, up let’s go outside and get home, not up the stairs”. I managed to wedge my way between the two of them, as the gentleman said “she’s fine, we’re just going to go upstairs and talk where it’s quiet”. I gave him my best “bullshit” look and lead her to my car. If looks could kill, the look that “gentleman” gave me would have been the last thing I ever saw. When we got home, I held back her hair as she vomited for about an hour straight. The next morning, she remembered almost nothing of the night before.**
There is almost no doubt in my mind that “gentleman” would have raped her had I not interceded. I’m sure he saw the liquor as making it easier for him to do so, but that still doesn’t change the fact that if he wasn’t there, V would have been at no risk for rape (as demonstrated by when he was gone, she wasn’t raped). Had he raped her, it would not have been her fault under any circumstance: nothing of V’s actions made her culpable, or responsible. If one says otherwise implies that a rapist has no volition of his own.
*Side Note- I was underage at this time, as was V, my friend, and I’m going to say a 1/4th of the people that night. Everyone underage was required to wear an armband signifying this. We were never denied liquor. I don’t think the bracelet worked.
**I almost hate to tell this story, because it does fall into some tropes that I don’t like- namely how passive V was. She didn’t even consciously make the decision to drink- she just didn’t know what alchol tasted like, nor how to recognize that she was getting drunk. But even if she had gone to the party with the intention of getting rip-roaringly drunk and break lose as her mark of independence, it still wouldn’t have changed the fact that if she would have been raped, it was still the rapist’s fault.
“I have not been raped, nor raped, because a RAPIST was not present.”
That’s awesome. Dead on. I may get it tattooed on my forehead.
I’ve read about this article all over the feminist blogosphere. I haven’t been able to convince myself to read the actual article itself.
This may turn out to be an argument over the definition of inebriated. I won’t argue that if someone is drunk to the point that the can neither consent nor object, it is clearly rape. Had the guy trying to get V alone had sex with her, it would have been rape.
However–Failure to fend off a horny drunk girl who is an active participant isn’t automatically rape, although having sex with her is a terrifically bad idea under most circumstances. There is enough trouble with forced, against-her-will rape–Calling “I was willing but changed my mind the next day when I sobered up” rape trivializes the real thing.
Everyone keeps saying that “this trivializes the real thing”: acquaintance rape trivializes the real thing, rape where the girl consented to making out but not sex “trivializes the real thing”, rape where the girl was drunk “trivializes the real thing”. The fact of the matter is we cannot consent to anything while drunk. One is not allowed to drive, one is not allowed to sign contracts, or get a tattoo: we recognize in other fields that drunk = not capable to consent in other fields, why not sex? And rape is sex without consent, end of story. That doesn’t “trivialize” rape: that puts it right where it belongs.
And I don’t think “fend off” really is a good choice of words. It’s not exactly a Herculean task to not have sex with a drunk person, horny or otherwise.
The only place I’m willing to give it ANY leeway is when both parties are drinking: neither is in their right mind, so deciding who was the responsible party is neigh impossible (unless there is a clear disparate: one drink vs. passing-out drunk).
And that’s another myth I hate: the “changing mind” myth. Women don’t claim rape, as a general rule, because they consent to sex and feel like screwing over a guy. Again: willing doesn’t mean able: in order to have sex, there needs to be consent; in order for consent, there needs to be a functioning brain.
I have not once heard a “she cried rape because she just changed her mind” story that A) didn’t end with her getting caught, as people who would lie about such a thing are generally not the sharpest tools in the shed, or B) didn’t involve some sort of external pressure to lie, i.e. being afraid of punishment from a boyfriend/parents/whomever, and making a stupid decision in a moment of panic.
Amanda Marcotte was right when she pointed out that if you want to pretend a regrettable sexual experience didn’t happen, it’s generally counterproductive to make a giant fucking legal case out of it, especially when rape victims don’t exactly get sugar-coated treatment from the authorities.
I have not been raped, nor raped, because a RAPIST was not present.
This is great and should be said more often.
I was in almost the exact situation as your friend once. I went to a party with a guy friend and his friend freshman year of college. Other than my friend and the other guy, I didn’t know anyone else there, and I proceeded to get ridiculously drunk. Not because I intended to get that drunk, but because I didn’t know how alcohol would affect me and just plain drank too much. However, I was lucky in that once my friend passed out and another guy was trying to get me alone, the other guy I went with (who I had never met before that evening) intervened, got me home safe, and left me at my dorm room door with my roommate, completely unharmed except for a pounding headache. And so I was not raped, although I very easily could have been, because I got lucky and one person there was responsible and nice and not a rapist. And while making the decision to go to a party where I knew almost nobody and consume alcohol was maybe not the smartest thing I ever could have done, it also wasn’t consent to rape or anything else.
And also, while I haven’t seen or spoken to R in several years, B (R’s friend and my safe ride home) still keep in touch and are fairly good friends.
antigone – what’s most saddening about the story you describe is the lack of education, both practical and social. You’ve got a party full of people (excepting you) who have no idea what attempted abuse looks like, because sex ed (when it exists) inexplicably fails to cover that in spite of it being every bit as important as STD/pregnancy prevention. You’ve got an 18-year-old woman who does not know what the effects of alcohol are like. It takes a rapist to rape, for sure, but it takes an entire morally bankrupt society to stand by and let it happen right in front of them, to any young person unlucky enough, because they don’t have the nerve or the arse to educate their children about things that matter.
Also, what Kyso said – the only one I’ve ever heard of involved the girl converting to fundamentalist Islam and then trying to persuade everyone else who was at that party 6 months previously to come lie for her in court, pretty please. These things happen but they are incredibly rare compared to rapes.
The only place I’m willing to give it ANY leeway is when both parties are drinking: neither is in their right mind, so deciding who was the responsible party is neigh impossible (unless there is a clear disparate: one drink vs. passing-out drunk).
Very reasonable. Julie Bindel has been known to claim that if two people get very drunk and have sex, clearly the man involved has raped the woman involved and should be locked up. (Julie Bindel being the most hetero-centric faux-lesbian on planet earth, she does not trouble herself to mention how this works if sex involves something other than one man and one woman).
Oiy, this Bindel sounds like an idiot. Aside from the fact that it is completely heterocenterist, it also reinforces sex as something men do to women. It kills the woman as an active participant, also capable of raping.
Re: sexual and social education
I sort of hit a weird place growing up, between growing up with conservative paranoia and liberal empathy. As kind of a side-effect, I truly do believe that “I am my sister’s keeper” action; not as a legal morality (that’s the government being everyone’s keeper) but as a individual-to-individual case. I’ve knocked on my neighbor’s doors when I hear yelling and shattered glass (and once, I pulled the woman into my place while the cops were called). I keep my eyes open at parties. I ask the neighborhood kids about bruises they get (it’s not as pointed as one might think, it tends to be “that’s quite a bruise, did you get it at your baseball game?) And, I have been called, many, many times (probably rightly) a busy-body. But, since it kept V from getting raped, and my neighbor from getting further hurt (that night), I’ll keep it.
“The only place I’m willing to give it ANY leeway is when both parties are drinking: neither is in their right mind, so deciding who was the responsible party is neigh impossible (unless there is a clear disparate: one drink vs. passing-out drunk).”
I heartily disagree with this. The best friend I ever had was actually a former roommate (and extremely close friend in her own right)’s 50-odd year old mother, whom I worked with for four plus years in my early twenties. One night, on the anniversary of her having lost a nephew very special to her, I brought a bottle of wine over to her and her husband’s house. She and I sat in the kitchen, drinking that bottle and then another, while her husband popped in and out at various intervals to refill his glass of whiskey. Once my friend was nodding a bit, her husband gestured to me behind her head that he had weed. I knew he smoked (as did I at the time) and I knew she did not and vaguely disapproved, so I surreptiously nodded my assent to smoke. My friend went to bed and the son-of-a-bitch held me down, covered my mouth and raped me for what seemed like forever. Just because I was drunk and he was drunk, and what’s more I had stuck around to smoke illict substances with him, does not mean there was EVER the slightest chance I would have EVER consented to have sex with this disgusting old man who doubled as my best friend’s husband and roommate’s father. The thought quite honestly never crossed my mind. Regardless of the fact that he was drunk – it doesn’t negate the fact that, as Antigone says, HE WAS A RAPIST. Getting drunk doesn’t make you more inclined to rape. It may, in some cases, cause confusion and result in missed signals, but drinking does not turn men into rapists. Alcohol could never excuse or be the root of rape. The selfish, ego-consumed wants of a rapist are all that lie at the root of rape.
Quite simply, there can be no standard of pardon or understanding. There are too many people and too many stories in this world for there to be any one absolute judgement, exception or standard. Everyone has tragedies in their lives, some worse than others. We simply can’t make blanket statements and judgements about anyone or anything. Human experience, by defintion, is simply too complex.
All I can do is remember that it’s what fails to make us bitter, given its best efforts, that ultimately makes us better.
Let me clarify: in the case were both participants were inebriated, and facially willing. In your case, of course, it is rape- you weren’t even facially willing, and this did not constitute consent.
Antigone, I’ve rescued more friends than I could possibly keep count of. Trust me, they DON’T mind.
I am still confused. Months have passed and all the time I’ve been blaming myself for getting stupid drunk, but just realised that HE should have been decent enough not to have sex with me in my condition. Here is what happened, please tell me what you think (I have never been one to always be on the woman’s side so I can see it both ways). Let me know if you think it was rape or not.
I was at a weekend convention for work. I didnt know anyone except my coworkers, and on top of that was really stressed out because Finals were comin up and I should have been studyin rather than working. The night before I flew bck home there was a party where everyone gets to say bye and get to know each other better. I met this guy who was cute and we decided to drink tequila. I was 21 and he was 39. Turns out, the two of us ended up drinking the entire bottle of tequila – equally, even though Im petit and 5’2 and he was an exfootball player. I woke up the next morning in his room, saw the empty bottle and could not remember too much. Bits and pieces. I tried to remember whether we had sex and could not. I was not sore or anything so figured we both just passed out. The next day on the flight home, I passed out on the plane prob due to too much sugar in my blood from the alcohol. I was hungover and sick for 2 days.
Two weeks later I found out Im pregnant and hes the only one it could be. I call him and ask what happened that night. He said, “you know, you told me you didnt want to have sex b/c we didnt have a condom but I said dont worry I dont have any diseases – but you said no b/c you didnt have birth control, but then I guess the passion took us over and we did it anyway.”
When I told him I was pregnant and needed him to pay half for the abortion, he asked why I didnt take the morning after pill and then said he’d get back to me he had to check his pay check out on Friday. Ofcourse, he never called me or answred my calls so we never spoke again. I know it was an ass of him not to get back to me but what I want to know is, If I cant remember is that my stupidity or did he rape me?
I’m not sure: based on the description, my inclination is yes. He never asked you for your consent: you never said “yes”. To me, one should get affirmative assent, not just assumed consent.
At the very least, he’s an ass for not respecting your wish for a condom. Based on the description HE remembers, that sounds like rape: the condom was the condition for the sex. When he says “passion took us over” it sounds more like passion took him over. But I don’t know, I wasn’t there. Legally, you’re not going to get it prosecuted. But, you should keep badgering him for half the abortion money.
Having sex while drunk is not the dumbest thing in the world someone could do. You shouldn’t feel shame, even if it was just a mistake in the heat of an inebriated passion. Your situation is one of the reasons we have abortion.
Ugh!
The situation you describe is just out-and-out rape, if it’s accurate, and having been to too many sleazy frat parties it sounds hella accurate to me.
Giving a spiked drink, even if “only” alcohol, and then leading someone involuntarily intoxicated to have unresponsive sex with them is rape just as much as dragging someone kicking and screaming into the bushes. There’s no legal question about it, leaving aside the fact she was underage.
It’s not like when a girl and a guy both get drunk together willingly and have sex, and one or both of them doesn’t remember what happened and may or may not have regrets, a situation that Saavendra’s sounds like. The unfortunately problem with that is it’s impossible to prove what really happened if the only two witnesses were both blitzed out of their minds and can’t reliably remember what happened. Which creates a huge problem if one willing, drunken participant claims it was a drink-spiking type situation.
That said what kind of asshole blames the girl for getting pregnant and then stiffs her half of the abortion? Any dude in his right mind would be wiring over the whole amount.
I lost my virginity to a guy who had sex with me while I was drunk. I don’t remember this, at all. I was informed the morning after by my so-called “friends” who did nothing to stop it. I would NEVER EVER allow a guy I do not know, or care for take my virginity. I was gone out of my mind and don’t remember a thing. I knew he hadn’t been drinking that night, though. What he did, I consider rape and if no one else does then, okay.
If you did not say “yes” it is rape. Period, end of story.
I appreciate the responses. Makes me feel better and that people understand my situation. Maybe I can let it go now. Thank you Antigone and U!