photo by roni river
Rape is an unwieldy word. It is pointed, weighty, the air of a threat seems inherent. Images of back alleys and shadowy figures are inevitably conjured. Date rape has it’s own precise picture as well, the backseat of a car with a nice looking guy — crying, screaming “no.” So when I gritted my teeth and barred sex because I feared saying no, when I dissociated because I silently didn’t want it, or when I drunkenly stopped saying no because just letting it happen in that hazy sloppy moment seemed easier, in my mind I was not exactly raped…or date-raped.
These are gray-areas of consent–they are instances that a lot of women I know have had but it seems they don’t get addressed, or re-visited and processed. Often chalked up to simply having a bad night.
But while it is “gray”, the yellow and red-lights were on, but in those moments I had no way of communicating this. I didn’t have the tools, the language or the self care. In those gray-moments there was a mumbled or nodded consent, but I don’t think consent is actually the opposite of rape, enthusiastic consent is.
It seems odd that I would feel I didn’t have the tools, after-all I was minoring in gender studies and well versed in feminism. The issue of consent and rape was feminist battle-ground during the 80′s and 90′s — the camps were split. Many feminists spoke of the intertwining and glamorization of sex and violence. Others, like Katie Roiphe, called the issue hysterical, pointing to the lonely, unvisited “rape crisis centers” that had been erected on every major college campus. It seems the battle was caught up in semantics: what rape is or isn’t and what the rape statistics really were.
But I had seen what feminism was getting at, I had seen it friends who agreed to sex they didn’t want. I had seen it when a gray-area-experience was brought up to a group of girls who would give no response or roll their eyes, as though claiming date-rape were an annoying trend (and going against some unspoken “party code”.) There seemed to be an unspoken rule that shouted “We are girls who like sex, date rape doesn’t happen to girls who like sex!” While feminism fought to define it, the issue had not yet been solved.
Studying feminism taught me to own my sexuality, but no one taught me to talk about consent. I was left trying to find ways that I could own these gray-areas…shamefully convincing myself I had control in the situation.
Feminists sometimes throw around the word “rape-culture” but to say that we have a rape-culture is to discount that we actually have a violence-culture on the whole. Psychologist Dr. Richard Schwartz offers: boys are torn from their Mother as they become older (around age five), for fear of “sissifying” them, then are shamed for showing anything other than aggressiveness and anger. Women are raised to be compliant, nurturing beings, groomed to be care-takers. This leaves women little ability to take care of themselves, obsessed with the needs of others and with an unrelenting drive to be likable and attractive to men. With this in mind I wonder if I ever had a chance of saying no, of communicating a lack of enthusiastic consent?
It seems that for many (myself included) with murky gray experiences floating in their past, it becomes easy to tuck these dark little pieces of life away. The memories do find their odd times to resurface, laying awake at night, driving in your car…and the sudden feeling of weirdness about what had happened, pangs of guilt and an unshakable dirtiness. If there is anything in your sexual history you feel uneasy about…that is a sure sign it is worth looking at.
Consent begins with radical honesty. It begins with allowing people who we trust in our lives, with whom we can be vulnerable and honest. The more we can say what we feel in the moment, honest about our experiences and emotions, the more we can break that cycle of feminine over-nurturing or masculine suppression of emotions.
Because open intimate honesty is rare, I think it is important in any sexual or romantic relationship to be aware of enthusiastic consent and lack there of. It might set the bar pretty damn high but that, after all is the point of being a sex positive, sexually self aware person. I think it is okay to have either no sex or an enthusiastic fuck yes to sex. Would you really want anything less?
This post was inspired by a thread among bloggers about enthusiastic consent:
Not just Consent, but Enthusiasm
12 Comments
This post really speaks to me Rabbit. About one particular sexual partner.
He was 28, I was 16, and I thought I was the big bad mature adult who had sex when and with whom she wanted. I realise now why I’m so uncomfortable thinking about my experiences with him. He had all the control, and while I never once said no I still wasn’t enthusiastic. If I was with him he we were out somewhere with his car being my only ride home, and my mum had no idea I was seeing him. So I guess carrying on was much easier than refusing sex in an awkward situation.
I’d never thought about the difference between yes ( or more likely no refusal) and and enthusiastic fuck yea when it comes to sex. Even though I employ this method in my day to day dealings with people so I don’t make anyone uncomfortable and make them feel like they have to do something they don’t!
Very interesting article. Why is communicating about sex so difficult for people period?
Ms. Constantine, I can very much relate to your story! I also dated college aged boys at 16 and can really relate– almost verbatim to your post. Those are the hardest to process, because consent was always there….and yet going back to that time for me, I know something was wrong…Thanks so much for sharing, I hope others who have been in that situation can also begin to become curious and process similar feelings. I also like that you employ enthusiastic consent in your everyday work and dealings, what a fabulous idea!
Kevin,
It is complicated because of how we are raised, we are not really taught to access our feelings and preferences in the moment, much less be honest about them. This goes back the the quoted material from Richard Schwartz in the piece. Personally I think it is always out of fear that women don’t say no, whether it is something ingrained in them, or they sense that in the situation it would be safer to NOT say no… or it could be triggering older memories of similar situations. Thanks so much for reading!!
What timing. I just flagged a post on Chicagoist yesterday dealing with this and we’re deciding what to do with it. And Slate just had a XX podcast in which the women brought up the fact that the definition of what is and isn’t rape isn’t black and white, but a murky, confusing, disturbing gray.
Thanks for this as it helps with the editorial conversation we’re having over the post I mentioned at the top.
Rabbit,
Thank you for this post. You touched on the ‘violence culture’ that I see everywhere. I also call it the ‘bully culture’. It’s everywhere, sold as many things from “tradition” to “national security” to “just the way things are”. Of course, the people making that sales pitch are the bullies. It permeates every facet of our lives from the cradle to the grave.
Your post here gives voice to the experience of many and shines a light on the very real impact as it lands across all of us. Mothers, sisters, daughters, friends, neighbors and people we meet every day of our lives.
Rape, covered up with alcohol, intimidation, peer and family pressure, threats, shame, fear and naivete. I don’t have anything good to say about this. I thank you for the post – very much.
-arvan
I agree with everything Rachel, but I think the words “grey rape” should be avoided. Rape is not “murky” or “confusing.” If your consent is not enthusiastic, and you don’t feel good about what happened, it’s rape. Plain and simple. Calling these things wishy-washy and “grey rape” falls right back into the Whoopi Goldberg category of saying date rape isn’t “rape-rape”. It’s offensive and needs to be done away with.
Sofia,
I see where you are coming from and I largely agree with you. However, I think this stance can be a throw-back to the failings of 2nd and 3rd wave feminism’s take on rape.
The first question that comes up with this is, if a woman has un-enthusiastic sex but she does not classify this as rape, are we to say that she cannot use her own judgment as to whether or not she has or has not been raped?
As I said this is an argument that is caught up in semantics. I like that you defined all un-enthusiastic sex as rape, there I am more inclined to agree with you. However, in discussion and even in feminist studies, rape is defined as “unwanted sex inflicted upon one by force.” This leaves a wide open gray area. What if there was no coercion or force involved, what if I was unenthusiastic but just kinda faked it because saying yes and getting it over with seemed easier? Because the definition of rape is murky, rape becomes murky and I think many women are left feeling confused and guilty about the lines of consent.
While the battle of semantics is entirely frustrating and harmful to all, I see why it is so controversial. After all a stranger with a gun to your head is not quite the same as a partner who you aren’t turned on by but decide to give in so he doesn’t sulk or argue. They are both expressions of aggression, but the emotional and physical impacts are probably different. So then it seems the social and legal impacts should be as well…which is why I think many people get into the argument of what rape is or isn’t.
I am okay using terms like gray-area because I think we as women should start talking about these truths, these experiences and get our stories out there, start talking about a solution. If in order to do that, I need to explain it in a way that won’t get caught up in that same old feminist argument of words, then I am okay with that. But my message at the end of the day is that consent is not the opposite of rape, enthusiastic consent is.
THANK YOU. I’ve struggled with my first time being a “gray-area” and how it affected the rest of my sexual experiences for a long time. I’m so happy to know that I am far from alone.
I am currently struggling with a situation in which I was sexually assaulted by someone I trusted more than 20 years ago. I keep wondering if it wasn’t really that bad; if I’m convincing myself that my out-of-body experience at the time meant that it was rape or if I am over-reacting. I am also feeling ashamed—not because of the incident, but because I continued to hold this person in high regard after the assault. I’m still processing it, but this article has helped me a little to realize that the issues of rape and consent are not always black and white. This is only the second time I’ve written about my experience and have yet to say the words out loud. Thank you for giving me one more little piece to the puzzle I am attempting to work out.
Michelle,
Thank you for your courage in sharing this. I am sad to hear about your experience, but it is good to hear you are working through it! <3
Jennifer,
Thank you too, for your courage in sharing this. I think the feelings you brought up are something many of us can relate to. Thank you for helping give a voice to all women who have experienced rape, or sex they feel unsure/gray about.
Ed Note: Trigger Warning
I’m coming on this late, but this post spoke to me.
I agree with you that there really are grey areas of consent, that it makes situations like those that have been brought up, perhaps easier to process and understand because these things can be very difficult to make sense of when they have happened to you- particularly at the hands of someone you care about. And it’s that particular sense of shame and confusion that give rape and the grey areas between rape and not rape an extra pointiness inside.
The last time I saw my ex boyfriend, we hadn’t seen each other in a while (I was trying to break up with him), and that couldn’t have helped his reading my body language, he fingered me and performed oral on me when I didn’t want it, when I’d told him before I saw him that I didn’t want to go there- and he had gotten me so physically aroused, my body really wanted that contact. But mentally, I still didn’t, I just got to a point where I had pushed his hand away so many times, and indicated (but not strongly enough, apparently) that I didn’t want it, and I just felt like he should have gotten the message by then…. In my mind I kept wanting to say no, but I felt like I couldn’t and then I felt like I needed to not let him see that I didn’t want it, and to just suck it up, because I’d fantasized about rape before and… afterwards I really felt like I had raped myself.
Later I started seeing his responsibility in it, and I tried to talk to him about it, but he just didn’t understand- honest to god, he thought he had gotten me into the mood and I’d decided I wanted it after all and everything was OK and he had no idea– and I believe him–but I just, never was able to get him to understand and of course he got angry at me for accusing him of rape and… well, I got him the hell out of my life. But I still wonder if I haven’t made a mountain out of a molehill. I talked to my therapist about what had happened and she acted like it was no big deal, I think I talked to my mother about it too with the same result, and I don’t really want it to be a big deal, I don’t want anyone to say “oh my god, what a terrible thing happened to you” but it affected me in a pretty big way, and sometimes I still think maybe something much worse should have happened to me, for how much I’ve let it hurt me- and I’m hesitant to call it rape, because I really could have stopped him, but I didn’t and after a certain point, I hid that I wanted it to stop.
I have to be so careful with myself now- any sexual contact I don’t absolutely want leaves me feeling depressed- even if it’s just kissing. Luckily I’ve found a few people I’ve been absolutely over the moon about having sex with and those experiences have been lovely.
And yet while I think that waiting for enthusiastic consent is very important- I think that there are times, in a healthy relationship when both partners need to give a little that maybe they’re not thrilled to give- I am not suggesting rape, or anything that should be close to its grey areas, but sometimes your partner wants something that you may not be enthusiastic about giving. Say there’s a woman who doesn’t enjoy giving blow jobs, but her boyfriend loves them. As long as it doesn’t physically or emotionally hurt her to do so, I believe that it’s part of her responsibility if she’s in an exclusive relationship with this guy to go down on him, at least every once in a while- and that it’s his responsibility to reciprocate and do things he may not be into for her pleasure as well. They may even discover that they actual enjoy giving these things, even though their initial feelings about the matter were less than enthusiastic- less than enthusiastic, but not the feeling of saying yes to something that is bad for them.
This is such an important issue, Rabbit, and thank you so much for writing about it.
I completely agree with you that there is indeed a grey area, though I’d never quite crystallised my thoughts as well as you have (for me) – being that enthusiastic consent is the opposite of rape. Just a few days ago, I had my most decidedly grey-area-experience to date, and though I’m certain the emotions that it has prompted aren’t comparable to that which is experienced by actual rape (or even grey areas that err further on the side of no consent), it has given me a glimpse of the reasoning that I’m sure many go through when it comes to taking further action.
One of the main things I felt that wasn’t covered in this article (and that’s certainly because of how I’m feeling about my own situation, rather than you not being thorough), was that the people involved usually know each other. I’m not close with the person who pressured me into sex I didn’t want, nor do we have many mutual friends, but I have found myself thinking about how I would react if I knew that one of my friends had done this to a girl. And though I’d want to know in theory, I also know that I wouldn’t want to believe it of someone I was close to. As a result, my decision has been to keep it to myself, and even cut off contact with a couple of people who are so close to the person that I don’t want to hear about what a great guy he is, but also don’t want to vilify myself by telling them what has happened, which unfortunately is almost certain to be the result. Maybe they’d surprise me, but I’m not willing to risk my standing with people for what was a hugely alcohol-fuelled situation.
Thank you for addressing this Rabbit.
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