I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Hey, i'm watching an hbo documentary showing footage of the collateral damage in Kosovo caused by the gutless air pirates Clinton and Clark. Wanna discuss, Gene, why they had to do it from 8-miles high? Because lying, gutless Bill had no political capital and he knew if more than 1 or 2 US pilots died, he'd be in deep shit, that's why. So, the civilians had to suffer. Don't talk to me about Iraq, fuckface.
Wait a minute. My mistake. It's really "Spider-Man".
Please accept my apologies.
And this has what to do with the blog entry in question? Ya know, there's a time and place for this particular discussion - even if you're so far off base with your comparison it isn't even in the same ballpark as funny - but, um...this ain't it.
Unless you think "no" really means "yes," and any discussion is moot.
"lookout b\'low me "
wad the fuck you talkin bout?
If rape cases get any harder to prosecute, who knows what Easterbrook will do next time he's allowed anywhere near an NFL cheerleader? (Re: his weekly Tuesday Morning Quarterback column on ESPN.com's Page 2, which features mondo cheesecake and leering.)
Damn skippy. The bar needs to be lowered, not raised. Allow prosecution unless she explicitly says, "Yes."
I apoligise for feeding the troll, but: I get HBO, all the channels and I like documentaries, so I always check them out--and I don't recall any such movie.
He's lying, folks. What a surprise.
It amazes me that people like Easterbrook still feel comfortable saying these kinds of things.
I am always puzzled by the "well maybe no doesn't really mean no crowd." Here's a tip: if no really wasn't supposed to mean no, the lady in question will subsequently make it clear and you will get what you wanted and save yourself a whole lot of trouble. What is so hard about that logic? Nothing, unless, of course you're looking for a post hoc justification for having used force.
"Well, look fuckwit, if there's any ambiguity just ask her."
Man Atrios, you're talkin' crazy now. "Ask her", you are some kind of nutty.
Does this mean we all think Kobe Bryant is probably guilty?
Let's just extend the "no means yes" logic beyond rape cases. If a panhandler asks you for spare change and you say, "sorry, no," it's ok if he knocks you down and grabs your wallet, then forces you to go to an ATM machine around the corner and withdraw another $500. Because you really meant, "yeah, take all the money you need."
Damn skippy. The bar needs to be lowered, not raised. Allow prosecution unless she explicitly says, "Yes."--
Don't you mean raised, not lowered?
It's people like Easterbrook that make me pissed off. In other words, stupid people.
I'm sorry, but when someone either says no in a manner that clearly relates to the overall sexual conduct, or else is not in a position to give conduct (under the influence, for instance)...
...YOU STOP. You can whine and complain all you want after you've stopped...but you don't keep doing what your partner has said no to after they've said no to it.
Hear hear! Atrios, you hit it right on the nose. I don't understand what's complicated about this issue. I think if it were easier to rape or date-rape men, we wouldn't be having these discussions, because OF COURSE we treat men with respect. (Sort of the, "If men could get pregnant, the pill would be free and abortion would be legal" argument.)
There's a certain inflection in the voice that betrays the true meaning of the word. It's really not hard to pick it up.
"No" said with obvious distress or pain= No means NO! Stop it you fucking asshole! This is rape!
Does this mean we all think Kobe Bryant is probably guilty?--
I have no idea of the facts of the case. One of the hardest things about rape cases is the "he said, she said" nature of it, unless it's a violent rape, or there are corroborating witnesses.
So what if one of the participants says "yes" at first, but then says "no" after penetration? How late is too late?
i have no opinion on kobe's case. obviously if the prosecution's version of the facts are true, he's guilty, but that's a big if and I have no idea.
Hear hear, for the original post, Atrios.
" the bar means lowered allow proesecution unless she specifically says "yes"."
No, this is a matter of responsibility. People have the responsibility to say no, as long as they are of sufficient cognizance to say no (if not, no is implied) This does not mean drunken sex is rape, this does not mean men have to say "can I please have sex with you" this is a bar set too low, under this almost everyone is a rapist. If someone is in a sexual situation, and she doesn't want to have sex, she should say "no", or something the equal to "no". Theres such a thing as willful participation, I'd wager somneone helping you undress isn't outright saying yes, but all the same it certainly implies it. what about if she helps you put the condom on? at what point for you does it stop being rape if she doesn't explicitly say yes? This standard is too extreme, and puts too much of the responsibility on males. Sex is an equal thing, and men have the responsibility to stop if told no, but women have the responsibility to say no, men don't have to try and talk
their partners out of sleeping with them. Be realistic
People like you are why men won't vote for us anymore.
So what if one of the participants says "yes" at first, but then says "no" after penetration? How late is too late?
Then you stop.
It would probably be difficult to prove rape if consent was given, penetration happenned, then consent was revoked. Morally, it might be construed as rape if penetration continued, but legally that would be difficult to prove.
But the "civil", thing to do (see post on civility below), i.e. gentlemanly thing to do, is to stop and pull out. Drag, but it's the right thing.
Soullight, I am reminded of a game I used to play with an old boyfriend:
Hey! No! Stop! Don't! Stop! Don't! Stop! Don't... Stop... Don't... Stop... Don't stop... Don't stop... Don't stop ...
In all seriousness though, communication around sex is messy. There's lot's of ambiguity. There is a responsibility on the part of an unwilling partner to unequivocally communicate "No". And there is also a responsibility on the part of the other partner to stop when an unequivocal "No" has been issued. AND, as in all things, one must be aware of the power dynamic when judging to what extent an unequivocal "No" could reasonably be communicated and received.
I guess you're hoping that blog entry will get you some pussy, but don't count on it.
How late is too late?
It's never too late. I don't care if you've got blue balls and she said yes at first. When she says "no" or "stop", her wish is your command. Several of my good friends have been victims "date rape", and it's a shattering experience. Go talk to Rosy DePalma if you need to get off afterwards.
yeah, being an anonymous weblogger is all about the chicks
"In all seriousness though, communication around sex is messy. There's lot's of ambiguity."
Communication with strangers is generally ambiguous, period. Which is why, when you're with someone you've just met, you take all of that person's words at face value. Hence, no does mean no. Is this idea that hard to grasp?
NTodd, I agree with you in principle but the reality is very messy. Date rape is one of those areas that truly is ambiguous (depending of course on the level of coercion used and the strength of the refusal). I'm not saying "she deserved it" or "if she didn't fight back then she consented". I'm just acknowledging that perceptions may differ between parties, especially in the heat of the moment, especially when alcohol is consumed, and especially when there is a power dynamic operating.
Imagine being a 19 year old girl on a date with a guy she really has a crush on. He puts pressure on her to have sex, and though she really rather not have sex on the first date she wants to please him, so she weakly says "no, I'd rather not", but at the same time her body language is ambiguous. The guy takes this as consent and goes for it. She feels betrayed.
Should she have been more forceful with her refusal? Probably, but understandable why she wasn't. Should he have been more attentive and stopped? Probably, but understandable why he wasn't. Was he an asshole? Maybe. Rapist? Maybe, but hard to prove.
I say this as a gay guy who has had the unpleasant experience of being on the receiving end of a date rape.
I'm sort of embarrassed that I once took Greg Easterbrook's critiques of environmentalism and Mickey Kaus's views of welfare reform seriously. Even when I disagreed with them, I thought of them respectfully as critics honestly grappling with difficult issues. The last few years have exposed them for what they probably always were--opportunistic hacks.
Now Nick Kristoff is another story. Well intentioned, but desperately wanting to be seen as fair and balanced. See his generally good column today on the Plame Affair, which unfortunately also reeks of faux even-handedness.
He puts pressure on her to have sex, and though she really rather not have sex on the first date she wants to please him, so she weakly says "no, I'd rather not", but at the same time her body language is ambiguous.
If she says "no, I'd rather not", then you have to take it at face value, regardless of the "ambiguous" body language.
Easterbrook at TNR. That Marty P. sure is smart. Building a virtual Athens over there. Where the hell do these dimwits come from? I'd have to go to a really low level dive of a bar to hear that kind of talk around here. If he has trouble with "no" it's amazing that he can type the rest of his stuff.
And for the record I'm not saying date rape is OK. I'm just saying that issues aren't always clear-cut, and one has to be careful where one draws the line. Setting the bar too high means that a lot of people get coerced or physically threatened into having sex they don't want, without having any legal recourse. Setting it too low means that a people who were merely being irresponsible assholes get accused of a very serious crime.
Shlomo,
It isn't that what you are saying is totally wrong, the question is how much of this really an issue in practice? Are there really thousands of these "ambiguous" cases going to court? Does it really warrant endless columns by fuckwits like easterbrook?
If so, then fine (even though his column is still fuckwitted), but until you can point to a bunch of these cases it just says more about the author than the issue.
NTodd, I would argue that body language is a legitimate form of communication and that if the words don't match the gestures, then the communication is ambiguous.
Again, I'm not defending date rape, I'm saying that there are about 1,000,000 shades of gray when you're talking about sexual communication.
Are you arguing that every 19 year old college boy who "took advantage" of a semi-consenting date should be charged with a crime as serious as rape? Even if you're right on moral grounds, you'd never convince the powers-that-be that that should be the legal standard. Legislators and judges were once 19 years old, and many of them have teenage children.
I'd rather see girls (and boys) educated on how to set firm boundaries, and go after the really creepy guys that use physical force or threat of economic reprisal.
Atrios: in general, I would agree that most of the cases that come up have reached a level of unambiguity that my theoretical musings are irrelevant.
There was, however, a case a few years ago where a Harvard undergrad was accused of date-rape. I know he was expelled, and he may even have been convicted (can't remember). But at the time, I thought the situation was ambiguous. He and the girl had gone on several dates and were even sleeping in the same bed when the "rape" occurred. In the middle of the night he penetrated her without her consent. I'm not saying this is right, but I would argue that the girl's communication was less than clear-cut. This is the only publicized example I can remember, but it stuck in my mind.
Another problem with date rape concept is the whole issue of when consent is granted or revoked. If she grants consent prior to penetration and revoks it subsequently, she may "remember" having never granted it in the first place. Which is kind of tough shit for the boy who thought she was having a good time and is then accused of rape.
Does this mean we all think Kobe Bryant is probably guilty?
I could give a shit. The only people who should care are the defense and the prosecution.
But I find it amusing to contrast all the outrage this case elicits to the snores of indifference over the sexual battery Ahnuld subjected over a dozen (and counting) women to...
I don't really know the facts on the Kobe Bryant case. And I agree with dave, it doesn't matter to anybody except for Mr. Bryant, the girl, their attorneys, and the courts.
On the subject of Arnold: clearly sexual harassment and sexual assault. Not much ambiguity there.
NTodd, I would argue that body language is a legitimate form of communication and that if the words don't match the gestures, then the communication is ambiguous.
I agree that body language is a form of communication. What I am arguing is that if the communication is ambiguous, you don't assume that means "yes". You back off and clarify, you don't just proceed full steam ahead.
I guess what I'm saying is that I don't expect the courts to fix all of our human failings.
If you want to argue that date rape is unethical and immoral, I'm all for that. But I think the criminal courts already have plenty of work to do, they don't need to be deciding cases that involve activities that occurred in a bedroom late at night, without any witnesses, and where the relevant issues are intent and interpretation of intent.
I guess what I'm saying is that I don't expect the courts to fix all of our human failings.
They're not going to fix all failings, but they are there to determine if a criminal act has been committed. Rape, date or otherwise, is clearly in the courts' demesne.
NTodd, how will such cases be decided? By always assuming that the alleged victim is telling the truth and the alleged perp is lying? The other way around? Extensive and expensive psychological testing of both parties?
I've met enough self-deluded people in my life to suspect that not every person who alleges wrongdoing in such a case is telling the complete truth or accepting responsibility for all of their actions.
I'm talking about the truly ambiguous cases where everybody agrees that there was a date and an agreement to end up in somebody's bedroom before the stories start to diverge. Obviously I'm not talking about instances where there's plenty of evidence (e.g. a pattern several accusers). As Atrios suggests, a case that is as ambiguous as what I'm talking about rarely makes it the courts.
Should we educate boys and girls about these issues? Absolutely. Should we bring every such case to the courts. I think that would be a waste of resources.
NTodd, how will such cases be decided?
Certainly is hard, isn't it? That's what courts are for: to figure out how to answer hard questions. What you're advocating is that date rape, because it's so hard to figure out who's telling the truth, be ignored by the courts completely. Great, so somebody who has been violated and suffers from the aftermath is SOL because this is such a hard thing to determine? No way.
It's imperative that guys (and yeah, it could go the other way, but whatever...) realize that if there's an ambiguity, don't make assumptions. If you do, you will end up in court if the other person feels violated. You might not go to jail, but you will suffer the consequences. Bottom-line: don't put yourself into ambiguous situations.
Look, if you are going to trash Easterbrook, do it correctly:
Greg Easterbrook says
"no" means the same thing as "yes"
when sex is sought for.
Cheesecake and leering.
Were they responsible for
his views on date rape?
Effern, nice. Why didn't I anticipate the Haiku defense?
NTodd, we might just have to "agree to disagree" here. To the extent that there is even much disagreement between us.
But, to close my end of the discussion, here are a couple of reasons I am personally sympathetic to the rights of an alleged perp:
1) I have a good friend who is a psychiatric nurse who was once accused of molesting a patient. Thing is, he's gay and his preference is uniformly for bald, paunchy, middle-aged guys. I would submit that his having actually molested this women is highly improbable. His co-workers and administrators thought so too, but an investigation was still required (and probably rightly so given the context). He was cleared, but it was a "shattering" experience for him.
2) I have a family member who accused a priest of raping him when he was 20. Before the alleged rape ever occured this family member had already established a pattern of blackmail and sexual predation. He hasn't changed much in the intervening years, he is still as manipulative as ever. It's highly likely that he set the whole thing up. He still won a settlement though.
So, on the basis of personal experience, I can't assume that every person who is accused of rape is actually guilty, and the prosecution of cases which have a high degree of ambiguity carries a high risk of injustice.
NTodd, we might just have to "agree to disagree" here. To the extent that there is even much disagreement between us.
Okeedokee. No worries. 
I can't assume that every person who is accused of rape is actually guilty
My last comment: I think this is why the courts need to get involved. Get a disinterested 3rd party to make a presumably just determination so everybody can get on with their lives. I would also think that this would mimimize the number of false accusations.
NTodd, OK, handshake....
Whether 'no' can then turn into a polite reach-around, or even a consensual bj is not the issue.
It's the fuckwits I keep meeting who think that, as they yelled incessantly at Frankinegger HQ last weekend, 'Women are for F*king.' The many men who are now insisting that fondling in the workplace is not only acceptable but in fact sought and expected by women. 'C'mon honey, it's hours before I can get drunk again, and I don't want to file these papers, so sex me up, wontcha?
Too many times men are being insensitive by not raping bored women. The least they can do is feel up the fat girl. And if pornography says it is OK, then women should periodically dance in their nylons and halter top on their desks, because they want to. Every woman is a slut...even the ugly ones.
I kid you not. The Barbarian Party.
NTodd, OK, handshake....
Back at ya.
Now let's go make fun of some winger idiots...
The whole Easterbrook-Lithwick debate can be summed in an old joke:
What's the definition of "making love?"
It's what a woman's doing while a man's fucking her.
Kobe should go for the Limbaugh/Schwarzenneger defense: Sure, I did it. But I'm not guilty by reason of refreshing honesty.
The two women I know who were victims of acquaintance rape did not even have the ability to give consent. They were too drunk. One of them was so drunk she didn't even realize she was having sex at the time. The other was aware but semi-conscious and not able to communicate.
In the former case, a guy who'd previously pressured her and been rebuffed while she was sober raped her when presented with the opportunity. In the second case, the perpetrator actually planned to rape her beforehand and told others about his idea. He knew that she became helpless when drunk and so he offered to give her a ride home when she was hammered. He raped her in the car.
I never do it until they beg me. And they have to ask more than once.
All of the discussion I have heard about the Kobe Bryant Rape Trial is that it is all just a one man and one woman issue. It is not. It is a racial issue. There is a history of white women screaming rape after they have engaged in a sexual relationship with a black man. After the initial exhileration their racist instincts take over and what was at one point a private mutual gratification attempt becomes a lynching. LYNCHING! This is a classic lynching made possible through the media.
There are many examples in our national literary history, but start with "To Kill A Mokingbird". The fact is white people are not conscious of the history of lynchings in America. Even those that may have watched explicit depictions such as "Rosewood" can not make any personal connection to something that is so pervasive in the black experience. Subconsciously there will be a tendency to repeat these events over and over when we have any one individual make claims that an entire nation can listen in on.
As a woman, I always feared someone would discredit prosecuting the crime by making false accusations. Turns out rape is like every other crime in that regard.According to FBI statistics the rate of false accusations for crimes is 12%.
Speaking of Kobe Bryant:
http://www.jacksonkatz.com/bryant.html
i refuse to care ahbout this distraction til it is over.
He's got a point.
No still means 'NO', but there are indeed times when 'NO' does not mean 'NO'.
Before meeting my better half, I often chose not to be too aggressive in persuing women simply because I wanted them to come to me. Not in an egomaniacal way, but rather that if they came to me I'd know they were truly interested and I was tired of the guessing games and opening lines.
I wanted them to endure that for a change.
But not to be a sexist here, women do tease. They say no a lot, only because they want to see how much you want them. I've seen a lot of guys proposition a women, be told no, then as they walk away have the women mock them for being too little a man not to try a bit harder.
I call these types bitches who don't know how good they could have had it when they meet a guy willing not to push it.
But a distinction needs to be made between the aggressive types who don't care if no means 'NO' and those that do, but think the woman they're with is one of the above types that sometimes mean 'yes'. To the first type of guy, they know that no means 'NO' but don't care cause they think they can get past it with either their money or escape.
The second type may simply lack common sense. They should know that, even if they think the women is teasing, they should still defer cause such women are usually trouble in more ways than one.
The tone of the article is such that the author fails to make this distinction clear enough for us to realize what he or she is really going through.
Then again many conservatives are exactly that, rapists and perverts who lust for power because it gives them an advantage over women.
I understand the reasons for the post, but I think we need to be objective here. Just like we do when it comes to Clinton. He was an adulterer. He was a nice guy with a weakness for women. But we made allowances for him because we knew the truth. Can't we try to do the same here first too?
Let's wait till we know the truth here before judging ok?
Be well.
MYOB'
.
Everyone knows the difference between playing hard to get and outright refusal of sex in a sexual situation. The analogy MYOB makes between being a guy getting rebuffed in a bar and ambiguity in a sexual situation doesn't hold up. Lots of people like teasing, and lots of people like to be teased, in courtship and in sex. But I don't see how teasing in a bar says anything about any actual future consent to sex.
I guess I just don't understand it when people say it's hard to tell the difference. To me it's almost like being unable to tell whether someone is being serious when they say "I'm going to kill you!" Sometimes they're serious, and usually they're not, but I can't think of a situation I've been in where it was ambiguous.
I understand better the situation Shlomo is talking about, where someone maybe doesn't protest or make their feelings known, because they're timid or afraid or want to be a "good girl." That's a much dicier situation. And it's not hard to imagine some dumb, clueless kid failing to pick up on whatever unspoken signs of someone not being totally into what's happening.
Legally, you can't prosecute these people. They have plausible deniability.
But ethically, the standard is just like any other standard--can you look at yourself honestly and live with what you've done? If someone can look back at what happened, and think, "wow, i had every indication that this was consensual," then it's hard to think of how they could have done things differently. If someone is too imperceptive to pick up on signs of lack of consent, then it's a huge tragedy, but I don't know what could have been done differently. But if someone is faced with a situation that is ambiguous, and recognizes the ambiguity, and goes ahead, thinking that if it's -really- a problem their partner will say something--I think that's pretty clearly a shirking of responsibility. Because the cost to them if they're too cautious is so low relative to the cost to their partner if they're too aggressive.
I think we all know that feeling in the general case, where we try to weasel out of a responsibility with a "you should have told me" or an "I didn't know" excuse. I think we know it feels weasely.
And most things people call evil are not grotesque atrocities committed by sociopaths, but the failings of mostly good, morally lukewarm people being weasely.
If they had ever said "nein" then I would have stopped...
Strangely, #1's complaints about Kosovo match exactly Cap'n Flightsuit's battle plan for Afghanistan. Of course, Bush's aerial cowardice--using a leaf-blower when a rake was needed--only allowed bin Laden to escape, so it's nowhere near as bad as what the Clenis did.
But if I'm not mistaken, we air-bombed Kosovo because the Republicans had their panties in a twist about the Balkan "quagmire," and they just couldn't stomach the thought of an Ivy League-educaed drug-taking draft-dodger sending our boys off to die. The Balkan "quagmire" was also why rock-ribbed coward GHW Bush wouldn't stop the genocide when it was at its worst. Poppy preferred to cower behind the term "civil war", as though rape camps were just some thing Gen. McLellan invented. Even the Iron Lady couldn't talk him into it.
No definitely means No.
As I read in a comment by someone else recently, "No means no, but it doesn't mean you can't try again later to see if she changed her mind."
I agree with NTodd that the ambiguity of acquaintance rape cases is for juries to decide. I served on a jury twice (neither case was for a sexual crime) and there was a lot of ambiguity in the cases. We didn't have a videotape available of the crime so we could be absolutely sure of guilt or innocence. But we in the jury had to make a decision. That's why there was a jury at all...to make a decision in the face of ambiguity. If there wasn't ambiguity, then probably therwould be no reason to bring something to trial. It is not just acquaintance rape cases that are ambiguous.
If you're worried about some guy getting a ten year sentence for a 10 minute mistake or something, most people get very little jail time for rape. See some statistics at:
http://www.rainn.org/statistics.html
Also aren't the courts already taking into account different degrees of rape as they do with homicide (i.e. first degree murder vs manslaughter)? Don't judges take the circumstances of a crime into consideration when determining sentences?
It does hold up.
Sorry Melissa, but men are not that easy to figure out if you're a woman.
So you don't understand the difference?
It's called animal instinct.
Men are dogs. We are rogue roaming dogs with at most, 3 primary instincts.
1. Seek food.
2. Seek shelter(or safety from predators)
3. Fuck everything and propogate the species.
I've spent a lot of time in front of the TV with my children watching National Geographics Explorer(it's one of the very few shows I let them watch)
The human instinct is not a whole lot more evolved than it was a million+ years ago, and is not a whole lot more evolved than that of the common dog.
Hence the derogatory reference.
Why do guys like sex so much more?
Not because they are any different than women, but nature dictated that men be roving spigots of sperm while women, who are the primary mating engine, need to be in a paraticular biological state to become pregnant.
Because of this 'that time of the month' condition required by the female of the species, men must be able and ready to go at a moment's notice. Hence the always horny attitudes.
It's nature. I'm sorry but I was evolved this way. Control over one's instincts allows a man to move beyond such rote glandular attitudes, but it's difficult.
Some men have a more difficult time at it than others. And some don't try to control it at all unless one of the previous two instincts is put in serious peril because of it. This is why men sometimes choose their stomaches and/or safety over sex.
I hope this helps Mellisa?
If my wife were here she'd show solidarity and just give you permission to tell me to fuck off on a tree and leave both you and she alone(it is her time of the month).
Be well.
MYOB'
.
I think guys like Easterbrook are just upset that the law constrains them from being sufficiently aggressive in their sexual encounters
LOL! If you'd ever met Easterbrook, you'd know how far-fetched that sounds.
Believe me, the guy is about as "aggressive" as a jar of mayonnaise.
My view on this issue is that the rate of non-reporting - something around 80%, IIRC - is a far greater problem than this one. Of all the people I've known who were raped (two immediate family members and my partner), none gave even the slightest hint of consent and none reported it due to the attendent shame - precisely because *too many* people think that it is somehow partly the woman's fault to begin with. Nobody wants to be accused of rape being their 'fault' simply because its a convenient defence.
In the case of my partner, it was date rape - no drugs or alcohol involved, just a dumb 18 year old football player who felt that going out for dinner automatically entitled him to do whatever he wanted. And he continued to feel this well after the incident. Worse still, when the incident finally came to light many of his friends felt the same way - that there was a sense of entitlement.
As a male I think we're far, far too quick to make excuses for our behaviour. The idea that words and conduct can be ambiguous and therefore ignored is exactly the attitude that *does* have to change - because for every woman that will be teasing, there are probably two or three that sincerely mean it. "She said no, but her body language was slightly ambiguous" - what sort of defence is that? If her body language is slightly ambiguous, *ask*. Don't assume. Honestly, it's laziness - if you're not sure just ask. Two, three words tops.
I don't have a problem with Easterbrook's suggestion that 'no' sometimes means 'maybe later', but his assumption that 'maybe later' means 'yes' borders on the absurd.
There is no end of advice for dealing with a somewhat recalcitrant female. Much appreciated.
DB
Impressive psychic powers, man!
1. If you respect the person you're having sex with, you'll be attuned to their wishes and there won't be anything ambiguous about it.
2. Men don't universally enjoy or desire sex more than women.
Lots of people eagerly defend Kobe Bryant - to the point of newspapers printing the name and photographs of the woman who accused him of raping her, and to the point of sending her death threats - even though it's obvious none of these people has any idea whatsoever whether her accusations are based in facts or not.
Lots of people eagerly defend that preposterous brain-fried junkie Rush Limbaugh regarding his self-admitted trafficking in huge quantities of illegal addictive narcotics.
Lots of people eagerly defend Arnold Schwarzenegger against allegation that he has sexually molested women, habitually, literally for decades, again completely disregarding the truth of falsity of the accusations - their position is "even if he did manhandle and even rape one woman after another, it's OK anyway, beacuse he is a movie star."
What these three cases have in common is the utterly revolting moral position that celebrities can commit no crimes. All offenses from trivialities like prescription drug abuse all the way up to abominable crimes like battery and forcible rape are legal for them, simply because they are rich and famous. If a person of average income possesses illegal drugs, or batters and rapes a woman, then these are crimes and he deserves jail, but if the exact same acts are committed by a celebrity then he should be let to go free, just because he is a celebrity.
I don't approve of course, but at least I can understand how the celebrities themselves could entertain the notion that they are above all the laws. What boggles my mind is the fact that tens of millions of ordinary citizens, hand-to-mouth wage slaves with less of a chance of attaining celebrity themselves, should also buy into this proposition. You understand they are saying "Go ahead Mr. Movie Star or Mr. Sports Hero, feel free to choke and rape our sisters, wives and daughters, it's OK with us because we admire your fame so deeply; if our sisters, wives or daughters subsequently accuse you before the law, we'll defend you against their accusations." I honestly can not think of any other culture in World History where the ordinary populace has displayed such cringing, groveling worship of fame and power.
It is unmistakably, undeniably clear that this is the true conviction of tens of millions of Americans. Those tens of millions of my fellow citizens are depraved, contemptible swine. This is what Americans believe; no wonder all civilzed persons the whole world wide despise Americans and hold us in contempt.
Women have widely varying sex drives as do men. Please don't overgeneralize and assume that all women are less interested in sex than all men. It's more of a bell curve situation and there's definitely some overlap, especially when aging is taken into account.
If you are in an ambiguous situation and there could be adverse legal consequences for one choice, why not just pick the choice with no jail time? I mean, no one will put you in jail for not having sexual intercourse; the most that can happen is the girl gets pissed because you stopped pursuing her. But at least you are not looking at a possible prison sentence. Conversely, if you pick to have sex and she was serious, you may get a long vacation playing "wife" to some big ugly guy named Tiny. Is she really so hot that being rectally reamed by Tiny is an acceptable price to pay? Playing it safe is a much better choice than dancing with Tiny.
Besides rape being under-reported; it's also usually under-punished. The one case of "date rape" I have personal knowledge of was pled down to a non-sexual charge (I'm led to believe that's very common), to avoid my friend's having to testify, prosecutorial expense, higher burden of proof, etc...led to no jail time; but at least he was forced to subsidize her subsequent counseling (though she had to jump through all kinds of trauma-inducing hoops to make sure that happened).
Sorry, MYOB, but fuck that "we're evolved this way" shit. I thought we were supposed to be more evolved than our simian cousins. I thought our society and our education system were supposed to count for something. I thought, especially, that the renaissance/enlightenment idea of FREEDOM was supposed to count for something.
If freedom means anything, it means the individual's sovereignty over his/her own body. Surely that sovereignty extends to whether you can stick your dick in someone else without their consent. If you're not sure about the consent, if you're not sure what "no" means, if you think she's a tease...tough shit. go look at the unablogger or something, jack off and get over it.
Pseudo-darwinian-psychobabble as an excuse for violence against women is beneath contempt.
Oh, and MYOB,
if your wife, or Melissa, objects to your apparent apologetics for sexual predation, or at the very least boorishness, on the part of males, I'm sure it's just because it's their "time of the month."
Jesus.
MYOB's argument is the well-known naturalistic fallacy. Something's being natural doesn't make it right OR wrong. Obviously.
I've known plenty of women who I'm sure could outstrip MYOB's sex drive, or that of almost any other man you care to mention. Personal experience is not the best evidence, but it beats nature shows on National Geographic.
But anyways, if rapists want to cling to some idea that they couldn't help it or whatever, then we'll just do our best to lock them up for a long long time. Civil society cannot stand if violence goes unpunished.
But I don't think anyone's seriously arguing for that, are they?
My original beef with MYOB was that he was saying that the ambiguity of women playing hard to get in a bar was comparable to being in an extremely intimate sexual situation. No, there are very different dynamics at work here, not least of which is that one is public and the other private.
The defendant is paraded around, and the plaintiff's identity is protected -- this inequity summarizes all that's wrong with this case. Why shouldn't the plaintiff be identified and in that capacity at least be made accountable for her part in this situation? She is someone who chose to confront Kobe in a sexually-charged and adult way, but can now benefit from being able to hide behind a curtain, point the finger and cry rape. At the very least, she should have to endure as much public scrutiny as Kobe. If the laws were structured that way, perhaps she wouldn't have been as careless in the first place. And she certainly couldn't have been as calculating.
Billmon,
"Believe me this guy is about as 'aggressive' as a jar of mayonnaise"
So was Marv Albert. Well maybe not mayo......rye?
Anonymous:
You seem to have an incredibly intimate knowledge of the facts in this case. I suppose you'll be on Kobe's witness list?
Please. You don't know anything about how "careless"or "calculating" this woman was or wasn't. Nobody else here is talking about pronouncing judgment on the Bryant case. We don't know. That's what trials are for.
And the "plaintiff" in this case is the State of Colorado. That name hasn't been hidden from anyone. Neither, really, has the alleged victim's, which suggests she has been, in actual fact, plenty "accountable," in the form of death threats, etc. She'll be cross examined by the best payed lawyers in the biz. If she's full of it, she'll pay in spades. If she's not, then her attacker should.
"If the laws were structured that way, perhaps she wouldn't have been as careless in the first place"
This only makes sense if she knew she would be raped or was fairly certain she would be raped - or, if you accept that it is a scam, was certain she could get into a situation where the charge could pass a cursory review.* She may be lying, she may be telling the truth, but the structure of the law does not prove the truth or falsity of her claim.
Or are you saying anytime a woman and a man are not under maximum observation, he will without question try to have sex with her regardless of her desire to have sex? If so, the mass extermination of men would be a rational course of action, since men are obviously a threat to society. You may be a brain-addled serial rapist wanna-be, but I personally can be alone with a woman for fairly long periods of time and do nothing more than occassionally glance at their tits; Tiny is the circuit-breaker on my scrotes.
* to wit, if she and Kobe were in a crowd of 30 people in a public place, claiming rape would be prima facie ridiculous; for the charge to hold any water a modicum of privacy is required.
i'll admit, i love easterbrook's TNR columns, and thus was very much excited when i found out about his blog.. but easterblogg? and come on, are you really a good blog if your readers don't get an opportunity to post comments? just gives me the bush blog feel... ewww...
hmmm.... sorry, i meant, "TMQ" columns... sorry this crap fire's me up.. must have been the horns losin'.
What if she says "yes" and later (much later) says she "really meant no"? Is it rape? I asked several feminists this in college and they said, "Yes."
I have a problem with this because it means the guy has to be a mind reader, but the feminists' response was that, "Men really shouldn't initiate sex. That's a relic of patriarchy. Only a woman should initiate sex."
I think we carry the "no means no" argument too far. How can a mute woman ever avoid being raped? Obviously, body language matters. To say the spoken word outweighs everything else in the communication strikes me as unreasonable. Intent matters. And reasonable people can determine intent. That is why these cases are characterized as "he said, she said" cases...notswithstanding the comments at the Jackson Katz site that somebody linked to.
Let me assure you that I do not condone in the least any violation of a woman's body. But there is a great deal of ambiguity in the exchange. There are various degrees of bad behaviour with regards to sex. I am sure many of us have done something in a moment of passion that caused pain to our SOs.
I think as a society we make a mistake when we treat all bad behaviour as 'rape'. It makes it harder for the guilty to accept their mistake...and more importantly, it makes it harder for the wronged to confront the accuser.
Sam,
I don't see how one could say we, as a society "treat all bad behavior as 'rape'", unless by "society" you mean "a couple of Andrea Dworkin papers. I'm more inclined to believe that we treat a significant amount of genuine rape as mere "bad behavior."
Yes, I've encountered the extremes of feminist theory. 10 or 15 years ago when I was in conservatory & occasionally reading musicological journals, there was something of a tempest caused by some feminist musicologists. I wish I could remember the names...there was a semi-famous book called "Opera, or the Undoing of Women," there was a theorist who postulated that the entire evolution of Sonata-Allegro form was built on the model of the male orgasm; her centerpiece was a characterization of the retransition and recap in the first movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony as the "primal, triumphant cry of the rapist." A wee bit over the top, I would say, though interesting...
The excesses of theorists, however, don't devalue the truth of the history of patriarchy, or the realities of the society we live in. The plain truth is that an awful lot of men are conditioned and encouraged to believe that the enjoyment of women's bodies is their right, and the woman's consent is incidental. The belief that 30 years of the women's movement has erased 5000 years of patriarchy, and that our social concern should be shifted from the rape victim to the accused rapist, is to me as dangerous as all the other memes that hold that progress has eradicated all inequalities, racial, economic, social, etc...and that "reverse discrimination" is where the real threat lies...
Here's another conundrum that's always bothered me. Say a woman of 130 pounds has had five or six beers within an hours time. Drunk, right? O.K., suppose such woman now says "Yes" to sex. Date rape, right? She was drunk and unable to consent.
O.K., now put said woman behind the wheel of a car where she proceeds to run into and kill a car of others. She's not responsible, right? She was drunk and unable to make a rational choice about whether to drive.
Now you have conflicting legal policies. For instance, where a child would not be held liable, in some instances an adult with the mentality of a child would be held liable.
I'm not sure on the 'inablity to consent while drunk' rule but the policy behind that would obviously be to keep sexual predators from taking advantage of people whose judgment is hindered versus the policy of allowing people to escape liability of making the choice to get behind the wheel while drunk and causing injury. It should be obvious why a court would not want to make an equivalence of the two cases.
For all you straight men above. Take it from a gay man, if the lady says "no", you should believe her. If she meant something else it's time to talk, not plow ahead. She can let you know if she wants to. If you're wrong the results aren't going to be fun. Geesh!
Michael...in a sense you are making the point that I am. It is because we treat all 'rapists' alike that we end up with excusing a lot of bad behaviour (I did say this makes victims unwilling to confront the accusers...Someone very close to me was 'date raped' and did not take it to the police) Too often victims consider the consequences to the accused of the charge 'rape' and decide to not to pursue the charges.
The "No means No" idea is alright...but there is a problem in that we do not sufficiently distinguish between different degrees of assault and the "No means No" idea actually encourages us to make fewer distinctions than we already make.
Seeing all men addressed as 'fuckwit' pushed my button, so I'm going to tell a true story, but for once not give my e-mail so the flaming can happen here.
I have a "rugged" countenance and for the first 20 years after puberty did not realize that most of the women I dated wanted or expected me to rape them. It's funny to look back on but it was weird while it happened. One woman, for example, told me her life story, in which every boyfriend she'd ever loved had raped her, and believe me, there was no weepy Lifetime tv in the telling. Another, when my petting slowed, moaned "O ...please...don't make me..." That didn't work either so on the next date she took matters in her own hands so to speak. Another clue I missed was when a woman getting a backrub said "You're so strong...you could do anything you wanted with me...." Several frustrated months later she told me "Kissing comes last." And of course the ex who would actually dump a guy who wouldn't rape her.
So of course, at this point, I have to tell the guys- don't do it. Mess up here and you'll wear the brown helmet for the rest of your life. Having been raped is the get-out-of-jail-free card for every dame in trouble and there's a whole industry asking if she (took drugs)(shoplifted) because she was raped once.
And for the high-schoolers, remember that if Sally gets preggo she's not going to tell Mom and Dad she wanted to have sex, at least not out here in Christian (sic) Ruraltania. She's going to say she was raped and DNA testing will make you a "sex offender".
So the moral of my story is, keep your hands inside the vehicle and when you get to be 50 you can have a few laughs about all the times you didn't get laid. Which is a lot better than sex.
Ambiguity? What kind of asshole has sex with a girl who is only kinda sorta willing? This isn't supposed to be about getting past the first down marker.
If you can't get a girl to say something a lot more...colorful than "um, ok," then you're not there yet.
I don't like the drunk-girl "not in a position to give consent" line. If a drunk woman gives verbal consent and then the next day decides that it was rape, it could also be a lack of accountability on the part of the woman. Sometimes if a guy is having sex with a drunk woman, it's because the guy is drunk too. If she decides the next day that she didn't want to, why is it more the guy's fault than the girl's?
(Obviously my argument only applies to when verbal consent was given, and where the guy wasn't manipulating the drunkenness somehow.)
There needs to be room in here for women making mistakes, without it being rape. If drunk sex isn't against the law, and it's theoretically possible for a woman to irresponsibly reinterpret something after the drunken fact, then you can't say that sex after drunken consent is rape.
I've definitely been in the situation where I've had sex out of guilt or incapacity or due to stupid decisions earlier in the night, and regretted it later (even though my partner didn't), but it would be completely irresponsible and creepy of me to describe it as rape.
And just because it's fashionable, here are my Kobe thoughts. I think it's probably just a big misunderstanding between a stupid celebrity that didn't know better and a stupid girl that got in way over her head and freaked out afterward. I don't think he's a rapist and I don't think she's a calculating golddigger. I also think that if Kobe testifies that she got distraught halfway through and he stopped, it should be impossible to convict him, and if he's convicted anyway (knowing what I know now with the ambiguous physical evidence), then it would scare the hell out of me about rape laws sometimes being selectively way too easy to convict on rape, even though I know they are in practice too lax.
This would all be a lot easier if people would just stop practicing SEX WITHOUT LOVE!
Or, alternately, if we stopped making such a big deal about sex, and practiced more sex without love.
If you've never done this, I recommend finding a 'sex chat' room and logging in as the personna you want to have sex with, i.e., straight men log in as women etc, and get a look at your kind of people from the other side of the fence. I guarantee this will be a learning experience.
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