Only Yes Means Yes; Taking a Stand Against "Gray Rape."

This post is cross-posted at BlogHer.

“The opposite of rape is not consent. The opposite of rape is enthusiasm” Hugo Schwyzer

I've been thinking a lot about rape lately. Specifically because there seems to be some confusion over it, and that surprises me. See, it's pretty black and white to me.

But then, I would never have sex with someone who's so drunk that there's vomit all over them.  I would never have sex with someone who seemed uncomfortable and/or miserable.  I would never have sex with anyone who didn't look me right in the eye, or whisper to me straight in my ear, and fully communicate that they want to be with me.  Clearly, no one should be doing that, right?

Only Yes means Yes.

Anyone having sex without enthusiastic consent is messed up in my book.  And if you have sex with someone who doesn't want to have sex with you, that's rape.

Cupcate over at DollyMix, in her post Gray matters: feminist bloggers battle over the "gray rape" debate, tells us:

The (unfortunate) hot topic amongst feminist bloggers this week has been "gray rape". Cosmopolitan fueled this debate by asking their readers to write in and share their stories of "gray rape", which they define as being, "a situation in which they never intended to have sex, but wound up forced into it because until that point, they'd been a willing participant". Yeah, so in other words, RAPE.

From Jezebel: 'Cosmo' Wonders: Is It Rape If You Had Too Many Jaeger Shots To Remember It Anyway? YES. If you said no, it's rape. And the person who raped you, RAPED YOU. If someone drinks and then drives and then kills someone, that's a crime. If someone drinks and then has sex with someone who doesn't want to have sex with them, it's rape. This isn't rocket science. Moe Tkacik at Jezebel disagrees. Kinda.

...this one time about nine years ago I got locked out of my house and went home with some vaguely smarmy hair-product using type from my ex-boyfriend's frat. I had slept with maybe two or three guys prior to that -- it was the summer between sophomore and junior year of college -- so when he, after about a half hour of fooling around, put on a condom I was like, "Whooooah, what are you doing?" But I'd had two forties and I kept drifting in and out of consciousness -- my tolerance, obviously, wasn't what it is today -- and I woke up to find him sticking it in. I'd said 'no' a bunch of times and when I came to I just froze, stopped, turned over and slept...

...I remember that sexual experience a little more vividly than most of the consensual sexual experiences I've undergone in a similar state of intoxication, but neither sentiment makes it RAPE, does it? It's something, "date rape" I guess, but it's not rape unless I say it was, right?

All of which is a poignant, personal way of alerting you to the fact that Cosmo has come up with a new name for this kind of nonviolent collegiate date-rape sort of happening: gray rape.

Ann Friedman at Feministing says, Call it what it is.  Moe replies, 'Cosmo' Tells Me I Was 'Gray Raped'; Feministing Says It Was Rape. Are We Really Arguing About This?

Yes, we are.  And I can't believe it either.  Ann spells out the common sense for those who aren't getting it in "Gray Rape," cont...

Ok, I'll repeat myself and say that the definition of rape does not change depending on its empowering/disempowering effect on the people involved, or whether they choose to use the word "rape." And rape isn't something that's committed only by guys who are OMG PURE EVIL. Even if 99% of the time he's an upstanding citizen and all-around awesome dude, but he still wouldn't listen that one time when you said "no," he's still a rapist -- and it's still rape.

Over at Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte puts it this way in a post called Cooties:

When I was 20 years old, I had a car accident that could have gone very, very badly. I was on a long drive back to West Texas from Austin for Christmas. When a squirrel* jumped in front of my car, I pulled the wheel before I really had a chance to think about it, and since I was on the narrowest part of the journey, on a two-lane highway with no shoulders on the side of the road, I immediately hit dirt at 75 mph and began to spin out of control across the highway. I hit a road sign on the other side, which levered my car straight up into the air, god only knows how far, but it was enough that it started spinning. And I thought as I was hanging upside down in the air,** “This is how people die.”

But the car kept spinning. Enough that it didn’t a 180 but a 360 and I landed on all four tires. Not dead. Not even hurt. The car was fucked up but the only inside-the-cab damage was a few bows flying off presents. I was so relieved to be alive that “traumatized” wasn’t even in the ballpark of feelings. I was fine. In fact, I felt guilty about how fine I felt, how relieved it wasn’ as bad as it could have been.

It was still a car accident.

Pissed off about "Gray Rape"?  The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault has launched The NYC Media Response Project Letter Writing Campaign, "No Such Thing as Gray Rape."

Letter Writing Party Wednesday, August 22 at 6:30pm to 8:00pm at the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault, 27 Christopher Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, Subway: A,B,C,F,V,2,3. The evening will start with a workshop giving practical tips on media activism and end with your final draft. Munchies will be provided. For those who can't attend, please read the article and write Cosmo on your own at cosmo@hearst.com

OK, my post is a little late notice for the Letter Writing Party if you didn't know about it before, but perhaps they will hold another one if the response is building. Meanwhile, I encourage you to email Cosmo directly.  Over at When She Speaks I Hear the Revolution, Stephanie Novak offers her letter in her post, There is no gray in rape.

My favorite post on this topic comes from Hugo Schwyzer (whose quote I opened this post with): Not just consent but enthusiasm: some notes on college sex workshops and stoplights.

The message that needs to be repeated over and over again is this one: true consent is never tacit, it is never silent. Too many young men become date rapists by confusing silence with a clear, verbal affirmation. “No means no”, but with folks you don’t know well, you need to presume that silence (especially when accompanied by physical passivity) is also a loud, clear, shout-it-from-the-flippin’-rooftops, “NO!” How many women have had sex they didn’t desire with men they didn’t want simply because they were too tired of fighting, too tired of resisting, too eager to just have it over with?

Finally, I am planning to shoot a PSA in 2008 with the tagline "Only Yes Means Yes."  If you are interested in helping out with this project in any way, please email me at onlyyesmeansyes *at* earthlink *dot* net. 

Related Reading:

Gray Rape is Bullshit, and Saying You Were Raped is Brave  Shakesville

Gray Mugging  Echidne of the Snakes

Gray Rape??!!??:  Stop Reading Cosmo! Mad Melancholic Feminista

Gray rape, yellow rape: On calling rape rape and not fearing so-called “victimhood,” which I’m pretty sure some man made up to scare us. Serious.  Reverse Paranoia

Laura Sessions Stepp's "Gray Rape" Idiocy  The DCeiver invokes "Only yes means yes"! It's finding its way into the Zeitgist!

If you've written a post on this topic, I've asked for additional links in the comments over at BlogHer.  Comments always welcome here as well, of course.

Comments

[Rhea]

Thanks so much for writing on this topic. I spent a lot of my young adulthood working on issues of sexual violence, particularly involving pornography (the use and making of it). It's time for men to stop raping. It's just got to stop.

[Jules]

Reading this made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Tears formed in my eyes but I forced them back, as I have done for over 12 years,

When I was 19 I attended a 21st of mate, or so I thought. The event was at a cricket clubrooms and we arrived and immediately proceeded to get plonked.

Somewhere around 10.30pm I was dancing on the dance floor at the same point as somebody swigging out of a wine bottle. As so happens, I managed to dance into said wine bottle receiving quite a blow to the head.

Events are blurry after this point and I do recall refusing to head into town with my girlfriends and also recall trying to get into my car to sleep at another point, to no avail as I was trying the wrong car.

That was my last memory until the next morning when I awoke naked out the backroom of the clubrooms to the father of the guy whose 21st it was walking in on me lying on a mattress. I was highly embarrassed, found my clothes and got dressed. I came into main hall to find Chris (21st guy) and a friend sleeping there. I asked about the previous night and no one would tell me how trolleyed I was but one of the guys said "you never know you could have had the time of your life". I had no idea what that meant.

I found out a week later that both guys had violated me while I was pretty much out to it. I was a stumbling drunk due to too much alcohol and the knock to the head and apparently they fed me up on a good few hits of pot. I only found out because some guys that were mates of mine were in the vicinity when these two were talking about it to other mates and then they told my two best girlfriends and they let me know.

I was sickened. Everyone told me it was rape but I didn't feel justified in thinking that it was until reading this post. I bet myself up for many years about that night. Now I feel that I had a reason for feeling so mortified by it all.

[foxchild]

This the post I made about this same subject just today on my blog...
http://foxchild.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/gray-rape-and-language-bans/

[cynthia]

great post. shocking indeed how NO could mean anything but NO, and that it could be further confused with what a YES is.

[Liz]

Thank you, everyone, for your comments and links. Jules, I am so sorry that you had that horrible experience, and I do honestly believe that two guys having sex with someone who is clearly deliriously drunk and/or not conscious is rape. And then to say "You could have had the time of your life" clearly shows what kind of people they were. Instead of taking care of you, their "friend," they chose to use and abuse you. Clearly the bad people in that scenario was them, not you.

[Denise A Romano]

Please see an ongoing discussion about the importance of CONSENT and the irresponsible PUA industry that essentially trains men to sexually assault and rape women by teaching them abusive and misogynistic comments such as "ASD" (anti-slut defense) and "LMR" (last minute resistance) -- these are the terms the PUA industry gives to women's expressed resistance to continued sexual contact with men - and men are taught that these expressions of resistance really do not mean "NO".

Please visit Lady Raine's blog on wordpress and my blog at www.eqwithdenise.wordpress.com

Thanks
Denise