In a recent chat on Slate, a reader asked advice columnist Emily Yoffe what she should do about her friend, who had had a one-night stand that she later said was rape. The reader stated that the friend had been "beating herself up over drinking too much and going home with a guy she met at the bar" but that she later decided she had been date raped; she called a rape crisis hotline, who told her that a woman can't give consent when she's intoxicated. The friend wants to press charges against the guy, and the reader wanted to know what she should say or do to help/stop her friend. Yoffe summed up the incident as "a poor way to address one's alcohol and self-control problems. Since her first version of the story is that she was ashamed of her behavior, and since you have seen her knee-walking drunk on other occasions, it sounds as if she wants to punish the guy at the bar for her own poor choices."
"I think cases like the one you are describing here—in the absence of any evidence she was drugged—where someone voluntarily goes home with a stranger in order to have a sexual encounter, makes it that much harder for women who are assaulted to bring charges," Yoffe wrote. "Tell her that she needs to think very long and hard about filing a criminal complaint against this guy if there's any way her behavior could be construed to be consensual. Say you understand her shame, but you're concerned about her drinking, and if she addresses that, she won't find herself in such painful situations."
I think Yoffe missed the mark on this answer, and I think readers and other responders missed it as well. Many immediately began blaming the woman for her alcohol consumption, writing, for example, "I have very limited sympathy for a grown woman who goes to a bar alone, gets sloppy drunk yet again, blearily agrees to go home with someone she just met there, sleeps with him, and then days later says she was raped." The same writer said the woman should be more proactive: "She could have controlled her drinking at the bar. She could have asked a few friends to come with her, she could have asked someone to keep an eye on her. She could have slipped the bouncer a $20 and said 'if you see me drunk trying to leave with someone tonight, please stop me,' she could have pulled enough sense out of her drunken brain to say 'no' herself when this guy asked if she 'WANTED to go back to his place.'"
There are a lot of problems with this discussion about one night stands, date rape, drunken behaviors and consent. The first, though, is that the original poster never asked her friend whether she said "no" during the encounter. I think the assumption was that the friend didn't say "no," but I'm not sure it's a fair assumption. I see two red flags from her friend's behavior: (1) she was beating herself up over her decision-making; and (2) she called a rape crisis hotline. A lot of women who have been date raped feel shame and ashamed after being raped. Victim-blaming is part of our culture, and many victims initially blame themselves for what happened to them. Few women want to have been raped, and so many may try to rationalize it away in some way or another just to cope. And the letter-writing "friend" said she believes her friend has a drinking problem and has had one-night stands before; but it doesn't seem that she normally calls rape crisis hotlines after such adventures, just this particular incident. So it seems her friend understands that her other one-night stands were just drunken attempts at sexual gratification. Maybe this one was different, and it took her a while to wrap her mind around how: he was more forceful, he scared her, he bullied her, he wouldn't take no for an answer.
Or, maybe not. Maybe the letter-writer is right and this is a girl who just got drunk and regretted it the next morning, regretted it more than usual for one reason or another that had nothing to do with the guy's behavior. Either way, it's an important lead-in to a big discussion/challenge in the rape victim advocacy arena: the issue of drunken consent. This is an issue that polarizes women from each other, women from men, and men from having a thoughtful understanding of what rape is.
First, let's state the obvious: a drunk woman can consent to sex. I've done it many times myself. I think most women have, and we look back on those times, you know, rather fondly. I could talk about just last night, but I won't. So for rape crisis centers or advocates to say that a drunk woman cannot give consent to sex, as the letter-writer described, is ... I don't want to say it's ridiculous, but then, I do. I understand why they say this: there's so much woman-blaming and woman-hating out there and its necessary for prosecution. But it's polarizing because it's just not true.
Second (and this is something some people miss): A person can drink to a point in which they are no longer able to care for themselves; if someone is passed-out intoxicated, they cannot consent to sex. For a person to consent to sex, they have to be able to say and decide "yes" or "no."
Third: A person can change their mind at any time as to whether or not they want to have sex. So, consent to go to a person's home is not consent to have sex. It's also not consent to steal from them, murder them, kidnap them, take home videos of them, etc.
So let's say you're Guy and you're at the bar with Girl, who is five glasses in and suggests going back to your place. "We'll have a good time together," she teases, and it seems pretty promising. "You'll just have to give me a ride to my car in the morning." Now it seems super promising. "Okay," Guy says. "But it's a little messy." So you go and you drive down the road, and the girl starts to sober up and realize that maybe she needs to slow down a bit, here. What was your last name again? Maybe she's seen a lot of police dramas. Is this guy going to murder me in my sleep? So now she's in Guy's car, she's torn, she's finding herself in a bad spot and is hoping that she didn't royally mess up. "So describe your place," she says, trying to make small talk and get some information she probably should've gotten earlier. "Where do you live, exactly?" Guy says he lives on the East Side. Girl opens her phone and starts texting a friend. Dude! Had a few drinks tonight. Met a guy named Charlie. Lives on the East Side. If I die tonight, tell the police so they can find my body. You know, something to play it safe. She's doing what she thinks she should be doing: taking chances, living it up, telling a trusted friend where she'll be. Guy and Girl get back to Guy's place and Guy offers Girl something more to drink. Well, Girl thinks, it's gone okay so far.
Everything up to this point is fine, but this is where things might get dicey. Coming home with Guy does not mean Guy can have sex with Girl. Coming home just means his chances of that happening are better. If Girl passes out, changes her mind (she sees his naked women posters everywhere, or a cockroach, or he's just not doing it for her or whatever) says she wants to slow it down, etc, then one of two things will happen: Guy will be Good, or Guy will be Total Asshole. Good Guy will say, "okay, I totally understand, it's late anyway. You can sleep on the couch and I'll drive you to your car in the morning." Total Asshole would say "Oh, come on, you came over here drunk, you said you wanted to have sex, I still want to have sex," thus escalating the situation into what could become a date-rape scenario in which a girl calls her best friend the next day, ashamed about what happened, says it was just a one-night stand, and then later calls a rape crisis hotline and decides it was rape.
Still, a lot of people would still be quick to blame Girl in this scenario (the same people would most likely blame Guy if Guy and Girl had consensual sex and Girl stole his wallet, etc, even though, in that situation, Guy would be the victim). That's what many readers and commentators of Yoffe's column did. Why? There seems to be this sense of "but what's a guy to do?" in these scenarios, or of "an accusation of this one night could destroy this guy's life." Few people get upset at the guy's judgment here, at his inability to control himself when he's drinking, his inability to adapt to the situation or his inability to understand consent. Many people seem to think Guy is the victim. Guy is not the victim. Guy is generally stronger, has a higher tolerance for alcohol, and has the ability to do right or wrong.
Now, a generally Good Guy might find out that he can turn into Total Asshole one night of his life. He's angry about something, just broke up with his ex, he finds a drunk girl who seems gung-ho, she backs off, he gets aggressive, one thing leads to another, they have "bad sex," girl decides to just call a cab, he thinks it was just a regretful one night stand, but she starts to see it as something much worse, and soon she's calling him a rapist. Guy no longer cares what Girl feels. Guy's whole life could be ruined if Girl decides to press charges. Guy doesn't understand that rape, even date-rape, is a traumatic experience for a woman. Guy holds on to his Rationalization Thoughts that allowed the sex to occur in the first place. In his mind, it wasn't rape, anyway. He now has his own trauma to deal with, and that trauma is called Girl. But Guy is not a Monster. Guy is just Guy who, like girl, got drunk one night and now is worse off for it.
I think that for men and women to all come to an understanding of what date rape is, we need to have an open conversation about it that doesn't involve victim-blaming and doesn't necessarily make every man accused of date rape into a monster (there are definitely predatory monsters out there, and if women don't come forward about date rape, it makes it impossible to stop predators.) It should be a conversation based on respect, on treating others morally, on actually explaining to men what the emotional and long-term effects of nonconsensual sex are. Nonconsensual sex is a big deal. It brings shame (why wasn't I smarter than that?), it brings worry (what if I'm pregnant/got an STD?), it brings a realization that you cannot always help yourself (anybody could out power me, I can't trust anybody). The fear and the loss of control one might feel after being date-raped can change a person, and a person's health, fundamentally. Date-rape is not "a bad situation," to make the most of, as Rick Santorum has said. It is a violation into a person's physical body and emotional health. It is a lack of empathy and morals. It is forcefully taking control of another person's body and sexuality. It is the loss of control over one's own sexuality.
Date rape is a big deal. It's not something that any woman should be blamed for. It's something that needs to be discussed. But it's also something that needs to be more nuanced than it is. Men accused of date-rape aren't necessarily monsters, but they need to be told that what happened last night wasn't sex. They need to be aware that they need to do some soul searching. They need to be aware that there are consequences for their actions, that they've traumatized another human being. They need to make amends. And if someone actively preys on vulnerable women, drunk women or poor women, they need to be held accountable. This is not a survival of the fittest world. It's a civil society where the strong look out for the weak, and where laws protect those who need protecting.
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Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
And the drunken asshole guy must also be aware that it isn't consensual.
You are putting too fine a point on it.
Yes, that is very true, and it applies to all kinds of rape. It's interesting how many people think it's OK to blame the person who is raped, and then people wonder why women don't report these crimes. People really shouldn't wonder about that. I see it as self-preservation after having been violated already, particularly in situations where the rapist is an acquaintance and the woman was overpowered by someone much much bigger and stronger than she is.
Seems like the story becomes as convoluted as it can be in order to force any conversation about the issue into the murkiest of water.
If she did not want to have sex, if she said no, if he took advantage of her state of mind and body, then it is rape, not a question.
If she wanted to have sex, maybe, but was drunk, but not too drunk to forget what she wanted, maybe, if she thought she would have a chance to change her mind, but didn't, but was too drunk to stop him from doing something she thought she might have wanted but doesn't remember if she did or not, but he was not drunk enough to know that he should not take advantage of a woman who is too drunk, or not, to know if she wants to do what she said she did want to do, but forgot if she was not too drunk to ask if he was too drunk to know better, good fucking GOD!
Whenever we try to establish a paradigm for this kind of behavior, in my opinion, every woman who was ever dragged from her car and forcibly raped by a stranger is marginalized a little bit more.
Not sure how the people who are so sure it should go one way or the other arrive there?????
' how a feminist can view it as a (drunk) man's job to ensure that the woman is sober enough to consent to sex is beyond me.'
Someone in the comments thread mentioned the issue of the police being called and how that changes the discussion. I think it may be easy for someone who no experience with a situation like this to conjecture about what an appropriate response would be for the woman who was raped.
"They need to be aware that there are consequences for their actions, that they've traumatized another human being." This is the heart of the matter in my opinion. A woman who has been raped, beaten and brutalized by a man has in fact been traumatized. Under those circumstances, it should be easy for people to understand how some women choose not to relive the trauma of what they had to endure as they file charges and to have their case go to court.
Some women choose to process what has happened and recover from it without going the route of involving the criminal justice system. I do not think it is appropriate for anyone to judge someone who chooses to do that.
Each woman has to choose what is best for her and how best she can move on and heal after having been raped.
This is not a new or original idea, but I have long advocated for more use of sexual misconduct misdemeanors, which are more like speeding tickets than felonies. If there was a way that anyone who felt violated could bring charges in a discrete way, have a judge hear them out, and then have it be dealt with via community service and a fine, at least that might make more victims speak up and more perpetrators think twice. There already lots of grey areas in the law(s), depending on where you live. http://www.arte-sana.com/articles/rape_statutes.pdf
Unfortunately, the two options in this scenario seem to be 1) blame the victim for getting drunk and 2) calling one drunk party the victim and the other a criminal.
Look, I'm not blaming anyone. The whole damned thing could have been avoided with a little more judicious use of alcohol. You're splitting hairs. "No!" means no. Period. Game, set, match.
BTW, it works in reverse, too, you know. Back in the day, there were a few times that the beauty I brought home to the apartment turned out to be a real zero.
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──▀ ♡❀Լ♡Ɣخ❀Լ♡Ɣخ❀Լ♡Ɣخ❀
Sex is not an inherently devastating experience, only redeemed when it's done in the context of love or at least mutual respect. It's just another part of life. I've been more upset from a bad day at work than by my "date rape" incident. I've had truly bad sex with one or two bar pickups in my day, where I found it wasn't working but there was no graceful way to back out, and it was just part of the hangover. This is not to be compared with forcible rape, a horrendous crime.
I also think you mischaracterize the story that the advice columnist responded to. The so-called rape victim, who had a history of drinking, didn't claim that she was forced, she claimed that the guy "must have put something into her drink." In other words, it was not her fault she was drunk after all. That was what the columnist was responding to, her denial that her drinking was at the core of the problem.
Why are my avatars from Salon all deleted. $90.00.
- bebop-o
-GoodCelery!
= 2 X $45 = $90.00
I feel violated too, ay.
I know the topic gets EP.
SEXSEXSEXSEXSEXY.
This is what I pops offs.
Why force a nasty tryst?
This reminds me . . .
`
a male married
on honeymoon
he ask for love
She said yes
But no wake
I so sleepy
`
The topic is serious
I just never violate
Congrats on a EP
`
Two beers and
some of us do
snore the Zzzs
`
I read and hush
`
a bartender
admitting his best friend
is total (drunk) schmuck
`
an elderly editor
his mind starts failing
begins to tell truth
`
editor uses stats
and proves nuns
sleeps with pope
`
`
Funny Status Updates
Important distinction, men accused of date-rape, or even rape, are not monsters at all. I think you mean, men who have committed date-rape are not necessarily monsters. Not everyone accused of a crime has actually committed the crime.
What if the man she went home with was just as drunk, or even more drunk than her? Has she committed date-rape? Isn't the stereotype that men wake up next to a woman they would never have consented to sex with sober? Do we have a date rate epidemic of women taking advantage of drunk men to get sex they couldn't get otherwise? Men and women both go to bars to get drunk, get loose, and meet someone to go home with with. This isn't behavior exclusive to women, while men at bars are simply predators looking for the drunkest woman around.
No doubt, if the guy was stone sober, there is something profoundly disturbing about all this, but I don't think it contributes much to the discussion to operate on the belief that a drunk woman cannot consent, while a drunk man must be a criminal.
Based on the known facts, no rape occurred. We can make assumptions either way that lead us to believe it either occurred or did not. These assumptions are without much value.
Responsibility for our actions doesn't disappear when we are drinking . We cannot set out to absolve ourselves from wrongs done under the influence by claiming we were under the influence. This person did not "get her drunk" and take advantage of her. We only know what we are told but that is not a situation referred to in this piece. She was drunk, he was drunk, no one claims to have dragged her into his car. She didn't go "I blacked out" and couldn't remember what happened. She is an adult, she was under the influence and I am NOT saying that absolves the man if he did force her but, we have only her belated claim to base a judgement on and that isn't enough to convince me that it was a "date rape" .
Believe it or not, stereo typing men can be just as wrong as stereo typing any other gender, sexuality, religion, or race. Men cannot be pigeonholed into all of one or the other. WE are not all monsters who force ourselves on the infirm or intoxicated. We do not all use force, we can even be victims of sexual assault ourselves. When we do not remember we must say so in court, when we accuse based on false or missing information that we decide "must have been what happened" then we are not meeting the standard (at least in my eyes). If the woman here was forced then by all means prosecute with vigor, if it is a case of regret/remorse then I don't think that should be enough to ruin another persons life. What we do not know is the truth. We got only one side and then we seek to make a judgement of another. Nothing is to strange to be true.
If one has to make a story such as this so complex, or nuanced, to provide a menu of excuses for the person claiming to be the victim, chances are one is on the wrong track. There are probably many bases for regret in this tale; however, none of them are what is suggested by this post.
@ DH Austin - "If he was passed out and she did him, then regretted her own behavior, can he file a rape charge against her?" That would be rape, yes. A date rapist can regret having raped. I never advocated that filing charges was the best solution to these things but that is certainly something he could try and do.
"Whenever we try to establish a paradigm for this kind of behavior, in my opinion, every woman who was ever dragged from her car and forcibly raped by a stranger is marginalized a little bit more."
And whenever we blame the victim for being date raped, it makes it that much more okay for guys to disregard a woman's wishes for their own.
@ Neilpaul - I agree with you that "Once the police get called, the prospects of a nuanced discussion evaporate entirely. There is nothing more likely to (rightly) provoke flinching defensiveness than the prospect of state prison and a life-long label as a sex offender." I do wish there were more alternative options. I think every victim should be able to decide for herself (or himself) the best course to take for her recovery and hopefully his (her) contrition.
@ Daisy Jane - A feminist can see that both men and women should be good people with good morals and the ability to not force one another to have sex. The drunkenness really is secondary. If someone cannot control themselves when they are drunk or forces themselves on others when they are drunk, they have a serious disease and should go to alcoholic's anonymous, at least.
@ Abrawang - You stated that "the woman had a history of getting very drunk and sometimes bedding guys in that state." But the woman did not have a stated history of calling rape crisis hotlines afterward. So that is a red flag.
@ Helvetica Stone - I think sexual misconduct misdemeanors are definitely an idea worth talking about.
@ Serineta - I wasn't really intending to talk directly about the case from the advice column, or really I guess I was using the advice column to some extent, but I was more concerned about the overall attitude taken toward the girl because she had been drinking.
You are making a great many assumptions -and generalizations - in order to strengthen your argument.
Since all the facts are at least third hand about a person you don't know at all, perhaps we should leave decisions about the probability of date-rape in this situation to the 'friend' who knows the drunk woman best of all.
if not, if she was mumbling and didn't make herself clear then it's not rape. even if she was laying there and mumbling to herself "I don't like this" because if you said yes, and then you changed your mind, it's up to you to make THAT as clear as your "yes" was.
It doesn't matter if he was completely three million sheets to the wind, it's up to us, to women to make ourselves heard and understood particularly when we've placed ourselves in a difficult situation. so she should have SCREAMED IN HIS FACE...NO! STOP! I DO NOT WANT YOU TO DO THIS! and MADE him stop.
if he was drunk, like she was, and heard her say no, then he's still responsible for what he did. so if he heard her say, "no", then I don't care if his mother died and his girlfriend was mean to him and he lost a winning lottery ticket. he's responsible for what he does.
I mean that's the caveat, isn't it? that there's no excuses for what you do when you're a grownup. you're an adult and presumably, you get drunk, you can handle it. and if you can't, you should be an adult enough to know you shouldn't be getting drunk. or like someone else suggested, you have to set up safe situations to protect yourself.
because if you're going to get yourself drunk and get it in your head to go home with a stranger, really, you'd better have some plan or protective action you do BEFORE you get yourself blitzed because you're a goddamned menace to yourself and the poor asshat who trusts that you know what you're doing.
we're grownups. there's no going back. If you say yes and change your mind. Then you have to say NO. And if you hear Yes and then you hear NO, then that's it. no excuses. no jeeze I had a bad day. no bullshit...I don't feel good about it today. you did it, you have to live with it. especially if you look like a total shit in your own eyes. thats the nature of learning how to live.
that was a rant. but I don't like this scenario, where someone has bad feelings about what they did, what they consented to and then makes someone else pay instead of learning something about themselves and pulling the plug on certain activities they participate in, like getting stupidly blitzed and going home with strangers.
I don't get that anyway...going home with strangers. what the hell is THAT about? are young people looking to die more lately? I mean REALLY...wtf?
In the case of a one-night-stand after a night of heavy partying, I have always held that my mistakes in that situation are mine. Been there, done that, got the Ozzy T-shirt to prove it. To me, it is a bad experience, but I did not feel victimized.
However, the point of difference is not feeling victimized. If someone feels as though they were raped, then chances are they were raped. If this woman felt there was something different, she has a right to explore those differences. But I agree that she needs to be sure, as would any woman, that the charges she brings are based upon the actions of the alleged aggressor and not an attempt to clear her own conscience for what might have been a stupid mistake.
Also, back in the 1950s, in high school, we guys would respond to guys who said, "Hey, she really wants me" with "If she really wants you, she'll ask you." We also need a world in which that is the case: where if a woman wants a man, she asks — and is thought responsible and competent and ethical, not, as the prudes used to say, "loose."
Suffice it to say that we live in a world full of darkness. We are lucky if not many bad things happen to us. The great issues of the day aren't going to be resolved on the pages of Slate. Or here either. There is such a thing as date rape. And of consensual sex. If one isn't sure which was which, the likelihood of conviction might be something to ponder.
One thing that is pretty obvious is that though any woman is free to make her own decisions, habitually going alone to bars, getting drunk and leaving with strange men carries a certain inevitability. It's similar to playing a roulette wheel. Avail yourself to danger and it will come. One would be better off finding a hobby, joining Occupy, or taking a tai chi class.