This is what I wrote:

Absolutely disgusting. There is nothing a woman can wear, nothing a woman can do, nothing a woman can say, and nothing a woman can drink that will ever, ever, ever excuse rape. If she says no, you stop. Not in a second, not when you're done, right then and there. You want to think she's a tease or a bitch? You're problem. Sex is not the same thing as rape. There is no blurry line. Unless you get enthusiastic consent, and maintain enthusiastic consent, do not proceed. The only people who are responsible for rape are rapists. You don't want to be accused of rape? Then don't rape. If she looks too drunk to stand, don't have sex with her. If she can hardly talk, don't have sex with her. If she looks like she's unconscious or falling asleep, do not have sex with her. If you do, it's rape, regardless of how you feel about it. If she changes her mind, and you continue, it's rape. If she stops and you don't, she stopped but you didn't, if she STOPS, but you DON'T, it is RAPE. It doesn't matter if she had your penis in her mouth two seconds ago. It doesn't matter that she went up to your room with you. It doesn't matter that she took off her own clothes. If she stops, and you don't, it's rape. Not sex. Rape.

I don't know if we've taken over the comments section of the campus word, but they're actually NOT making me want to hide in a corner and cry like many other comment boards do!

Sweet.

I would comment at the site, but I just can’t seem to come up with a post that isn’t a curse-ridden rant aimed directly at the ass author and the asses agreeing with her in the comments. Thankfully, there are those like KMP (your move went well I hope) and the nice person after her that can respond calmly and rationally.

The Gray Rape Myth…why won’t it fucking DIE already?!?!

This is what I posted - lengthy I know but I have a lot to say:

I don't really know how many time's I will have to say this in my life - but here I go again - Gray Rape does NOT exist and it does not matter what a woman is wearing/drinking/doing/sucking - unless you have 100% consent you are raping her. Once a woman says no she has withdrawn her consent - and yes, at that point it become's a man's responsibility to stop. If a woman is confused about what she wants to do then she has not consented. If a woman is drunk then she cannog legally consent to sex. I am a rape crisis counselor- I work with survivors every day. It is articles like this that compound the guilt that women are already feeling after being attacked. If anybody reading this is a survivor (I am sure many of you are - as 1 in 4 women will be assaulted in her lifetime) Please do not listen to what the author has to say. Clearly, the author has not done her research and is speaking off the cuff. It is unfortunate that people feel this way - but unfortunately society will always look for a way to blame a woman because it is just too hard to accept the idea that your dad/brother/boyfriend/friend is a rapist. Instead it is much easier to blame a woman who did not say NO loud enough - because if that be the case you can still feel sorry for her without hating her.

I challenge the author of this text to contact her local rape crisis center and meet with a counselor - they will shed a great deal of light on this topic for you. They will confirm yet again that Gray rape does NOT exist. Regardless of circumstances it is never acceptable to put your penis into a vagina withour enthusiasitc consent. In the scenario you described that is clearly not the case.

I'm so sick of this BS.

I work on a rape crisis hotline. I cannot tell you how many times I've heard women saying they don't know if they were raped. Is it really rape if I invited him over? Or if I dated him? Or if the moon is in Aquarius?

I left a rather long-winded comment there, so I won't repeat it, but it's about the same.

When will all of this stop?

Feministique, I'm glad you suggested the author visit her local rape crisis center and meet with a counselor. I hope she gets an earful. This article is garbage!!

Feministique, I'm glad you suggested the author visit her local rape crisis center and meet with a counselor. I hope she gets an earful. This article is garbage!!

God I can't stand this. MEN ARE NOT ANIMALS. Stop giving them the excuse that they are. Men have self control, we need to move the focus to teaching boys to exhibit self control, instead of teaching girls how to steer clear of the "uncontrollable" male sex drive.

And I was sexually assaulted in college while wearing sweat pants and an oversized t-shirt, but even if I was wearing a sheer thong and nothing else, it wouldn't have made his actions any less wrong.

Sigh. So much nonsense surrounds a concept long settled . . . . Excuse the length of this note but the legalities are something I know very well.

First, women are never, ever responsible for rape, period. Should they be careful? We should all be careful of bad people, but that's not the issue. The rape shield laws are an attempt to keep irrelevancies out of rape trials because clever defense lawyers used to make the woman's sexual history the focus of the case. But what is so difficult for people to understand about consent? There is no such thing as "gray rape." Under the law applied everywhere, consent really means consent -- it need not necessarily be "enthusiastic" or verbal or anything else specifically, but it must be consent. Either there was consent or there was not. Consent is a legal concept that has been settled in the common law from time immemorial. The present "gray rape" craze is an effort to sell magazines to young women. But for all their twisting and pounding, they are not going to change a concept long-settled in the law. Nowhere is this seriously debated except when some magazine starts on the "gray rape" craze.

To determine whether there was consent, the question is whether a reasonable person in the position of the male would have understood, from all the surrounding circumstances, including the woman's speech and conduct, that she was assenting to intercourse. The only evidence that matters is the female's objective manifestations of assent; her secret, subjective wishes are not relevant to this determination.

In the situation painted above, the question is this: after the female made it plain that she was inviting and consenting to sex, would a person in the position of the male reasonably have understood that she had suddenly withdrawn her assent? The article states, in conclusory fashion, that the guy "should have" stopped. The facts may or may not support that conclusion, but we'd need to hear more. From whose perspective? The legal standard says -- properly so -- it's whether a reasonable person in the postion of the male should have known consent was withdrawn (and note, it's not what the guy SUBJECTIVELY believes -- rather, what would a reasonable guy believe it?).

This scenario as painted is not the norm because the woman so clearly was inviting sex at the outset but then, the implication is, decided to change her mind literally at the last second. That could happen (e.g., the woman experiences pain, or sudden regret or guilt, or any number of other things) but it's not the typical case. In any event, would a jury find beyond a reasonable doubt that the guy knew consent had been withdrawn? Would a jury find that a reasonable person in his position would have been able to process whatever she was saying at that particular moment? Would whatever she was trying to tell him have sunk in? How long did it take to sink in?

It's not clear based on those facts if, at that exact instant, he reasonably would have known that the consent had been withdrawn, and on those sketchy facts I suspect it would be difficult for the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he reasonably would have beleive consent had been withdrawn when he penetrated. We would need to hear more facts.

I was thrilled to see guys comment on there who were outraged by the article. Here's my comment:

Are you kidding me? If a girl says no, the guy should stop, END OF STORY. What if he had entered her and it turned out to be painful for her? Should he not stop then because she "looks like pure sex"? Every guy I've ever been with has stopped if I show the LEAST sign of discomfort or unwillingness; any guy who does less than that is not just a selfish jerk, but a RAPIST.

Ditto for me Liz. It is pretty well impossible for me or my partner to stay aroused if one of us is displaying any signs of not enjoying things 100%. I just can't wrap my mind around the kind of people who would just disregard a person's wishes like that. God, it's absolutely sickening.

This article is outrageous, but I have to take issue with this response: "If a woman is drunk then she cannot legally consent to sex."

Um, you can consent to sex when you're drunk. I've done it. Many of my friends have done it. Just because you're drunk doesn't mean you're not still an adult.

I wish people would talk about the difference between regrettable sex and rape. You can have completely consensual sex that you regret later, but you know you consented. And really, if you just kind of regret it, WHY on earth would you want to drag it out with reporting rape? No, you just kind of let it go and move on. When you report rape, it's because there was something wrong, not just because you did something you regretted in the (sober) light of morning.

And I am all right with acknowledging that rape is occasionally falsely reported. At about EXACTLY THE SAME RATE as every other crime. Just because a few people lie about being robbed does cast doubt on the reports of other people who are robbed. Rape should be no different.

nice work, everyone. i think we've officially pwned that comment page. i hope at least some of the comments are from outsiders though--that would make me feel encouraged that we aren't the only ones who "get it."

I was thrilled to see guys comment on there who were outraged by the article. Here's my comment:

Are you kidding me? If a girl says no, the guy should stop, END OF STORY. What if he had entered her and it turned out to be painful for her? Should he not stop then because she "looks like pure sex"? Every guy I've ever been with has stopped if I show the LEAST sign of discomfort or unwillingness; any guy who does less than that is not just a selfish jerk, but a RAPIST.

I actually go to BU, and this is only the latest of many sexual assaults on campus. I find it kind of weird that the author of this article chose this particular incident to focus on, because in her eyes, the victims weren't "doing anything" to "encourage" the perpetrators.
Aside from the fact that there is obviously no such thing as gray rape, I really don't understand how the first part of the article relates to the second part. These girls were sexually assaulted in their beds! It wasn't their fault, but if you dress like a slut and get drunk, you're just asking for it! Don't make men rape you! Don't change your mind!
This is just repulsive.

I don't know if mine posted but here's what I said, curse words included:

I feel incredibly sorry for the author of this piece, that she could possibly hate other women and herself so much that she not only wrote this dreck but that she probably believes it to. I'll echo what everyone else has said: RAPE IS RAPE IS RAPE. It doesn't matter that the hypothetical woman in this sick "scenario" was "looking like sex" (excuse my language but what the fuck does that even mean?). By the authors OWN WORDS she said "No" and then the frat guy continued in anyway because HE thought she was having a "moment of insanity". It couldn't possibly be that the woman actually changed her mind, could it Ms. Reiss? Oh no, the frat guy gets to do all her thinking for her because... well I don't know "because" but I'm guessing it's because she's a woman and women are just like that now aren't they? They don't know what they hell they want so men must know that for them.

This article is disgraceful to women and men everywhere. I hate to break it to you, but men can control themselves, it's just that women like the author don't expect them to and give certain assholes passes. If a woman says no, back the fuck off or else it's rape. End of story. You can do all the apologizing and logic bending you'd like but that's the fact.

Pretty interesting how the critical moment is literally elided from that anecdote:

"she changes her mind and says drunkenly “actually…�

Wow, she said "actually"?

Oh wait no, it's "actually" dot-dot-dot...

Would that be actually... no?

Actually... get the hell off me?

Oh well, what does it matter what she said?

Exelizabeth -
Actually it is true - by the definition of the law you cannot consent to sex when you are drunk. Certainly you can have sex when you are drunk - but it can still legally be termed rape. Just like you can't get married if you are drunk - you can do it, and nobody would really question you - but technically it's not legal. When I talk to men about sexual assault I always tell them that the good rule of thumb is to think about whether or not they would let this girl drive their car. If the answer is no, she's in no condition to drive, she's in no condition to have sex.

Also - you should check your facts. According to FBI statistics rape is falsely reported 2-4% of the time whereas general crimes are falsely reported 8 - 10% of the time. That is a significant discrepancy. This also does not account for the women who are intimidated into retracting their accusation by their rapist.

I am not advocating for no drunken sex - I always advocate for enthusiastic response. But if a girl is blacked out or too drunk to say no then it is rape there is just no way around it.

Just added this now:

It's nice to see the author of this article has fallen hook, line and sinker for the virgin vs. whore paradigms that come into play when one invokes the too much to drink, dressed a little too revealing etc. arguments.

Newsflash Kimberly! That's a set up meant to divide women and to take the issue off of where it squarely needs to be - on the backs of men who rape. Everything else is simply not relevant when a woman says no. Period. Provided you have any journalistic integrity, I will await a retraction.

feministique - can you give a citation for those FBI stats. I've been looking for something similar since my own father said "Women have been lying about rape since the beginning of time." Nice huh?

I wrote in with:

Had to come back for a second helping. I just put my baby daughter to bed, and was thinking the entire time how desperately I want her to be able to grow up in a world where the kind of vicious, ignorant, destructive tropes you traffic in have ceased to exist. Where women don't have to cut themselves walking the razor's edge between being 'desirable' (wearing sexy clothes) and asking to be raped (wearing sexy clothes). Where women who opt out of the game aren't called dyke bitches, or feminazis, or castrating man-haters, or whoresluts. Sound like an interesting world to you? We could get there, if the ignorant would stop blindly perpetuating the perception of women as unworthy of basic respect for the sanctity of their bodies.

Go crawl back under a rock and stop polluting my daughter's world.

Mirm,
Heres an older but interesting paper. http://www.sexcriminals.com/library/doc-1002-1.pdf

Just google fbi rape statistics or fbi false rape allegation statistics and youll get a ton of interesting results as well as discussion of these stats and cases over the years on all kinds of sites to include feminist blogs. have fun.

Tim,
Can you help me out and let me know how consent plays out in a trial? I don't have a legal background but how does one prove there was or wasnt consent? I'm just trying to understand how if a man and woman or any combination of two people are together and one accuses the other of rape saying consent was withdrawn, how could that be proved in court? (without evidence of injury or other extenuating circumstances)

feministique - ACTUALLY, it depends on where you are. Each state has its own rape laws and many of them, including New York, where I live, DO NOT automatically equate drunkeness with an inability to consent to sex.

When I was at college briefly we talked about this very issue after reading Camilla Pagina's(sp) piece on how women should basically be blamed for their own rapes by exercising their freedoms to travel, dress or act a certain way and how feminists are misleading women by telling us we can wear whatever we want, do whatever we want and that men should be punished for rape. What really disturbed me was that all of the women and men in the room agree that women were to blame in situations of date rape. It really alarmed me, so I brought up cases where women were clearly not being sexual and were date raped anyways, situations where women were drugged or raped by a friend. They still didn't seem to understand the concept that women don't ask for rape or that women should be able to exercise their freedoms regardless of the rape threat and that men should just learn to stop raping women and using them as an excuse. Pretty scary actually.

@mirm: the big gaping flaw in your father's logic is that it's incredibly difficult to get a rape conviction, and, unless the victim is a child, it's the accuser whose personal life is publicly examined. It'd be highly unusual for any grown woman to volunteer to go through the gruelling courtroom process, with such a dismal likelihood of payoff, out of petty spite.

"God I can't stand this. MEN ARE NOT ANIMALS. Stop giving them the excuse that they are."

Exactly what I was thinking! This is about giving men excuses. I know plenty of men have shown they do have self-control so...why can't that be expected of all?

It is refreshing and sadly strange to see all the comments left. I think anyone who disagrees was scared away!

Of course I don't really get how in her last paragraph she gives the men advice that seems to contradict her story from above.

He certainly got her ass kicked for that. It will be interesting if she writes a follow up and says, "thank you all for giving me a clue". If she does I hope feministing publishes a link to it.

She certainly got her ass kicked for that. It will be interesting if she writes a follow up and says, "thank you all for giving me a clue". If she does I hope feministing publishes a link to it.

"Where women don't have to cut themselves walking the razor's edge between being 'desirable' (wearing sexy clothes) and asking to be raped (wearing sexy clothes)."

Or the line between "too ugly to be tolerated" and "pretty enough to rape"...

Mina: eeeeeeewwwwwwwwww, that hurt. Good one. (Bad one?)

Hmmmmmm. That last comments seems a bit obscure to me, and I just wrote it.

What I meant to say is that I liked your comment even as it made me cringe. The sting of intolerable truth.

dandanddanica

So as not to derail the thread, I have cut back my intended post to this:

Reportedly, Kanin has said of your linked study of his, "Certainly our intent is not to suggest that the 41 percent incidence found here be extrapolated to other populations, particularly in light of our ignorance regarding the structural variables." Then why bother to publish such a report (much less his 1985 100% false claim), and within the study defend his methodology, if he is "ignorant" of the variables? Anyone with an agenda could find a conveniently nameless population where findings of false accusation of rape are an extreme high or low, and apparently, that is exactly what I see.

I have done my own reading on the issue. I, like this university instructor of journalism, have found figures ranging from a low of 2% to a high of (the studies I could actually look into, as opposed to seeing simple claims of percentages) approximately one-third. The truth must lie somewhere in between, but as it stands, I personally go with the FBI figures of 8%, reasoning similar to that discussed below. Also note that the famous FBI figures only apply to "forcible sexual assault," and a complainant refusing to cooperate for whatever reason is not grounds for dismissing the claim as "false":

http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/97/6/rape.asp

The Elusive Numbers on False Rape
by Dick Haws
Columbia Journalism Review
November/December 1997

[start quote]

Sometimes the 2 percent figure appears without any attribution. It simply floats out there, as in a 1994 article in the Houston Chronicle that cites a women's center official as the source for the false-rape-report figure of "between 2 and 3 percent." Period. And sometimes the attribution is vague but credible-sounding, like "federal statistics" or "the FBI." In 1992, The Boston Globe reported that a rape counselor stated the 2 percent rate for false reporting of rapes is the same as for false reports of other crimes - "according to the FBI."

But the FBI has been saying since 1991 that the annual rate for the false reporting of forcible sexual assault across the country has been a consistent 8 percent (through 1995, the most recent year available). That's four times higher than the average of the false-reporting rates of the other crimes tracked by the FBI in its Uniform Crime Report. The agency's guidelines define a report as false when an investigation determines that no offense occurred. A complainant's failure or refusal to cooperate in the investigation does not, by itself, lead to a finding of false report.

For the reporter, the conclusion is clear. Don't rely on one source. Talk to the local sexual assault counselors, talk to the local police, talk to the FBI, talk to the academics. Try to make some sense out of all the different numbers. And be careful.

[end quote]

dananddanica

And I'm busy at the moment, so will have to comment on this actual article or your concern about determining consent later, but neglected to add, the issue of false allegation should never overshadow the issue of rape and real rapes.

This is a really frustrating topic for me, because as a female college student I have friends who've insisted that rape is always "partly the girl's fault." I think they partly believe this because they want to feel like it could never happen to them, since they seem to want to relegate all potential rapists as creepy strangers, not as aquaintences one has a history with. Also, I think blaming the victim is due to a culture that continues to judge women on how they dress and perpetuates stereotypes about women who show more skin. Women blaming women for rape is a form of internalized oppression.

I've only been reading this site for a little while, but I am particularly grateful for this article, and had to comment.

Without even really thinking about it, and with no other source of information, I had fallen prey to the myth of "grey rape" being spread by media outlets like Cosmo. I never really questioned this idea, or challenged others when they referenced it. I'd even used it to personally refer to something that had happened to me. This article has forced me to realize what I should have done on my own as an intelligent, educated young woman and feminist, not to mention as a human being.

I write at this moment feeling even more enraged than I usually do after reading this blog, and leave utterly determined to never let this awful myth slide with the people around me again.

There are no gradations of rape. It is never okay, and it is never "better than it could have been".

I am a first-year college student. For new student orientation in the fall, everyone was required to attend an event called "Sex signals," which is a professional two-person show that uses improv comedy to dispel the myth of gray rape. They took the time to go through a scenario much like the one described in the article, where the woman who initially consented later withdrew her consent. Then they asked the audience if they thought it was rape. I was one of the few to raise my hand. They went on to define consent and talk about gender stereotypes.

I hope that my fellow classmates got as much out of it as I did, and I'm glad that our administration cares about this very important issue.

Read the article. I'd like to say she was sympathetic to women in at least the first half of the article, but she was holding victimized women responsible for not locking their doors, as well. There are reasonable things that people do to protect their property, but because of its intimate nature, there is nothing victims can do including carrying a gun and knowing how to use it, that will stop them from being raped. Only education of males and fear, if necessary, will stop male on female rape.

"Actually it is true - by the definition of the law you cannot consent to sex when you are drunk. Certainly you can have sex when you are drunk - but it can still legally be termed rape. Just like you can't get married if you are drunk - you can do it, and nobody would really question you - but technically it's not legal."

feministique – With all due respect to your experience and expertise, these statements are flat out wrong. Tim’s comment gave an excellent synopsis of the legal standards for obtaining a conviction for rape. Consent is a critical factor that distinguishes a sexual encounter from rape. Intercourse without affirmative consent is rape. Not saying no is not the same as saying yes. So, I agree with your statement that if a woman is too drunk or otherwise debilitated to affirmatively give consent, then any sexual act that follows has been perpetrated without her consent, i.e., rape. But if she does affirmatively give consent to have sex with a man and does not subsequently say anything or behave in a way that would indicate to a “reasonable� male in the position of the man that she has or is trying to withdraw consent, the law would not recognize any subsequent sexual act as rape. There is no legal principle that I'm aware of that says that consent is invalid if given while a woman’s judgment is impaired through voluntary inebriation.

jfaustus,

I read nearly all the comments on the article's board (and believe me, there were a lot of them), but yours I think was the most striking, and I just wanted to say thank you for driving home the point so well.
"Where women who opt out of the game aren't called dyke bitches, or feminazis, or castrating man-haters, or whoresluts."
I particularly like that part because (and maybe I've just been reading to many YouTube comments here), common perception seems to be that we all REALLY want in Maxim, but couldn't quite make it so we went gay and feminist instead. I guess in this case the theory is that we're just mad because no one would ever want to rape US. Wow, I just re read that sentence and thought how horrific it sounded, then realized that I've actually heard that reasoning when explaining my pro-choice stance, or just my regular rape-is-wrong stance. Anyway, to end a ramble, I hope we make things better for your daughter, as well.

My comment on the Campus Word website: (I'd kinda like to hear critique/responses, if anybody would like to take a moment. I'm curious to see how my perspective either fits or doesn't fit around here.)

I'm only one man, but for what it's worth, the article disgusts me too. You can't blame it all on the frat boys or the football jocks, the male portion of society needs to take a damn good look at itself. We are *not* animals. We are capable of making our own decisions, and as such, we are responsible for them. The unconscious woman you decided to stick your penis inside is not responsible for the rape you just committed. The woman who you pinned down after she said "no" is not responsible for your reprehensible behavior either.

(I apologize to the female readers for this next bit.) If you insist on using sex to measure your manhood, how's this: A real man can have sex with a hot chick because she wants to have sex with him. If you have to use alcohol, drugs, force, coercion, or excuses, not only are you committing rape, you're a weakling and a failure.

Sounds reasonable to me, Terry. And men who need to exploit the young or pay to get it are sad, too.

I was about to comment on the original article, but it doesn't seem necessary since hundreds of people got there before I did. I'm glad that only about .0001% of the respondents agreed with her. If I had commented, I would've gone on to add that "no means no" is bullshit, because that makes it sound like the onus is on us to say no, and if you don't hear a know, we've consented by default. It should really be "lack of unmistakable consent means no."

Tuba Terry, that sounds fine except that I would invert "If you have to use alcohol, drugs, force, coercion, or excuses, not only are you committing rape, you're a weakling and a failure" to read "If you have to use alcohol...you're a not only a weakling and a failure, you're a rapist." Because I think that being a rapist is much worse than just being a weakling and a failure.

*Hear a "no", that is, not a "know". I'm tired.

There is definately a meme going around that men "can't control themselves" but I don't really hear opposition in the mainstream about this.

For example, there has been some data claiming that watching violent movies and porn, causes crime rates to paradoxically go down.

http://www.businessshrink.biz/psychologyofbusiness/2008/01/08/watching-violence-and-porn-could-reduce-violent-crime-and-rape/

Of course porn proponents are jumping all over this; but I have yet to see anyone point out the fact that this data (if you believe it) seems to almost prove that would be offenders, to some degree cannot control themselves since they apparently need an outlet to express violent and sexual impulses. Without the outlet, they commit crime. With the outlet crime goes down--if you believe the data, which apparently a lot of people do.

Anyone feel free to comment? For the record, I think there needs to be more research, especially regarding the porn/rape correlation.

A man (or, I suppose, a woman) has two only rights when his (or her) partner springs a surprise "Not going to happen,dear":

1) the right to experience and, I would argue, express disappointment; and

2) the right to vacate the premises.

That's it. She doesn't want to, you go home. Or you go home and whack off. Or you stay there and have a conversation with this person as if she were a person, whether it's about sex or about shoeshines. Maybe you renegotiate in an hour and a half. If not, you go home.

Grown-ass adults experience disappointments on a routine basis. Their train is late; they got turned down for the job; the Orioles have another losing season. What a grown-ass adult does when he experiences disappointment is to say, "oh, well, shit" and move on. This is not a complex concept.

JustAGrrrlGeek:

Thanks! I'm blushing.

"That's it. She doesn't want to, you go home. Or you go home and whack off. Or you stay there and have a conversation with this person as if she were a person, whether it's about sex or about shoeshines. Maybe you renegotiate in an hour and a half. If not, you go home.

"Grown-ass adults experience disappointments on a routine basis. Their train is late; they got turned down for the job; the Orioles have another losing season. What a grown-ass adult does when he experiences disappointment is to say, 'oh, well, shit' and move on. This is not a complex concept."

Right on!

There is definitely a meme going around that men "can't control themselves" but I don't really hear opposition in the mainstream about this.

The "common sense" notion that men, particularly young men, are completely subject to hormones, always want sex (and always with women), and are incapable of real and meaningful human relationships has been floating around in American culture at least since the late 19th c. It's not the only narrative of masculinity, but it's a very, very powerful one.

First, women are never, ever responsible for rape, period.

I'm not picking on Tim's wording specifically, but it just struck me reading all these comments that we're all assuming a men-raping-women paradigm here. That's the focus of the article, certainly, and the majority of rape victims are women . . . but wouldn't it be better to think/argue in terms of the sexual aggressor or attacker--whether they were male or female--being the one responsible for his or her actions? The person who was raped, regardless of their sex or gender, is never responsible for the rape, period.

"The person who was raped, regardless of their sex or gender, is never responsible for the rape, period."

I totally agree. I'd add "regardless of age" too. "Women" doesn't apply to men, but it doesn't apply to girls and boys either.

Mina--agreed!

I commented on the article and sent a sufficiently pissed off e-mail without swearing.

a male,
I linked that paper as it makes an interesting addition to a lot of other articles/papers out there and leads through links and backtracking to a lot of good, informative articles on rape statistics, just as you posted.

to me using stats of almost any kind doesnt do much good as the unsupported 2% so often cited and the 8-9% used, as well as the extremes of .25% and 50+% serve little purpose. also estimates on the number of unreported rapes are notoriously unreliable due to the very nature of the crime as well as the near exlcusion of anything other than male on female rape.

stats will do little good as they are easily rebuked or incomplete.

can anyone answer my question on the consent issue? from a legal standpoint how is it possible to legally prove lack of consent with no extenuating circumstances? should it be possible? im really curious about this. thank you.

crshark:

It depends on your state. For example in California the rape includes:

"Where a person is prevented from resisting by any intoxicating
or anesthetic substance, or any controlled substance, and this
condition was known, or reasonably should have been known by the
accused."

For a fascinating and comprehensive (if slightly dated) review of the law of acquaintance rape see Kramer "Rule by Myth..." 47 Stanford Law Review 115 (1994).

@ dananddanica:"can anyone answer my question on the consent issue? from a legal standpoint how is it possible to legally prove lack of consent with no extenuating circumstances? should it be possible? im really curious about this. thank you."

I can think of a few high profile cases with extenuating circumstances (grave bodily injury and the crime being caught on tape) where consent on the part of the victim was still challenged.

What scares me is the apparent cultural shift going on where more and more people now accept that women merrily consent to extreme sexual violence as part of "fantasy". Yeah, porn I'm talking about you.

So is it just a matter of time before this acceptance weaves its way permanently into our collective psyche?

And will juries see sexual violence as just another blip on the spectrum of "accepted" sexual practice between consenting adults?"

Seriously. Where is all of this going?

crshark

What Kristen said. Incapacitated does not always equal passed out.

And the "voluntary" comment was completely unnecessary. The issue - like driving or signing contracts - is one of capacity, not how they got that way.

The practice of spiking drinks and slipping people drugs is illegal simply because it's another violation of autonomy. Having sex with someone who has been drugged is illegal no matter how they got that way. (provided a reasonable person could tell that the victim was drugged)

A male

As I understand it, those "false reports" stats include false identification, which is extremely misleading - as this usually has nothing to do with whether or not women are lying about the rape itself - and therefore makes calling them false "reports" a misnomer. Most often, false IDs are the result of bad police work/bad DA's.

I also don't really see how they are sure that they have weeded out the false retractions that are a result of the stress of reporting rape or threats made as a result of reporting the rape.

Whenever something more minor, like sexual harassment, happens, most women I know either agonize over what to do for a long time before they report it or decide it's easier to ignore it. I have a hard time believing that not only are women more likely to be liars than men, but that the thing we are most likely to lie about is something that we often feel ashamed to have happened to us, and are very unlikely to lie about (much less bother to report) when it comes to related, lesser crimes. It just doesn't make sense. There's just nothing logical about believing that women are more likely to lie about rape than people in general are likely to lie about fender benders or being mugged.

"There are three kinds of lies in this world: lies, damn lies, and statistics"

Stats are only as good as the people collecting them. Considering what a shitty job law enforcement and the justice system does when dealing with rape, any stats coming from them on the subject are highly suspect, imo.

spike,
very interesting point. its hard for me to get by the consent issue in the types of cases i mentioned if there is a "beyond a reasonable doubt" condition. the point you make is a very important one but i dont think it can all be ascribed to porn. unless you want to see porn as the root of all behaviors that could leave evidence of a crime.

your point still resonates though and what youre getting at will/has already become an issue. i have many friends in the bdsm community and many facets of that community are now "mainstream", there could definitely be some bleed over and it could become like youre talking about if it hasnt already.

to further the question, with your point in mind, if we go with the male/female scenario and the female does have some marks, does that necessarily mean it wasnt consensual? again for me its hard to view it when seen against the beyond a reasonable doubt threshold. have i left marks on someone or has someone left marks on me that could be viewed as markers of nonconsenual sex if a rape charge was brought? yes. was it rape? no. as more and more people experience or are exposed to all the facets of their sexuality, not necessarily by porn, this will get murkier and murkier as far as i can see in a legal context.

Just for the record, rapes and other crime will happen, whether we have porn or not. In fact, I have read about women being raped by sex toys. Anyways, I'm not going any further on the subject.

As for the so-called gray rape -- it doesn't exist. It never has existed. It doesn't matter what the woman is wearing or if she had 1,000,000 sexual partners -- if a man have sex with her after she says no, then it is rape.

It doesn't matter if the man works for the Chippendales, is 120 lbs. heavier, or have had zero sex partners -- if a woman has sex with him after he says no, then it is rape.

And yes, people who are drunk cannot consent to sex, so therefore, having sex with a drunk person is rape, not matter how much anyone slices it.

"very interesting point. its hard for me to get by the consent issue in the types of cases i mentioned if there is a 'beyond a reasonable doubt' condition. the point you make is a very important one but i dont think it can all be ascribed to porn. unless you want to see porn as the root of all behaviors that could leave evidence of a crime."

...or unless you want to see positive erotica that isn't degrading as non-porn.

To clarify the second sentence in my previous post:

I have read about women being raped by men using sex toys on them.

"As I understand it, those "false reports" stats include false identification, which is extremely misleading - as this usually has nothing to do with whether or not women are lying about the rape itself - and therefore makes calling them false "reports" a misnomer. Most often, false IDs are the result of bad police work/bad DA's."

DNA is used to exonerate men who were already convicted beyond a reasonable doubt and serving time in prison, in at least 20% of cases out of 10,000 in which DNA was tested. Considering 70-80% of rapes are those by intimates and acquaintances, there should be little room for error on the complainant or victim's part. How do you reconcile these two figures? Are all IDs of rape by strangers in error?

"I also don't really see how they are sure that they have weeded out the false retractions that are a result of the stress of reporting rape or threats made as a result of reporting the rape."

As pointed out, simple lack of cooperation of a victim is not grounds for dropping an investigation or labeling the complaint false.

"Stats are only as good as the people collecting them. Considering what a shitty job law enforcement and the justice system does when dealing with rape, any stats coming from them on the subject are highly suspect, imo."

No, stats depend on the agenda of the person collecting them.

mickle,
if stats are to be used at all, if you dont believe the ones from law enforcement then what stats do you use?

"a male,
"I linked that paper as it makes an interesting addition to a lot of other articles/papers out there and leads through links and backtracking to a lot of good, informative articles on rape statistics, just as you posted."

Dr. Kanin, "interesting"?

And a cursory reading can tell you that just 41 false accusations out of 109 reported rapes over the course of nine years in a single conveniently unnamed community of just 70,000 (coincidentally, just a little less than my community, tourists included) are hardly applicable to the rest of the US despite his defense of his methodology. Neither is his study of two also conveniently unnamed universities which *claimed* a full 50% of rape claims were false applicable to the thousands of other institutions nationwide, much less the US as a whole. I don't need my degree in marketing or experience with statistics to tell you so. MRAs don't see it.

Most importantly, Kanin tells us within the first few paragraphs of his report that in 1985, he came up with a study that found 100% of reported rapes were false allegations. More than asinine, that is simply insane. And it apparently got published in a peer reviewed academic journal. I read that decades ago, with his research on male sexual aggression, feminists hailed Kanin's research, but his later "work" shows he should be regarded with suspicion. Less than five false allegations of rape a year is nothing more than anecdote. An MRA with Google can do that today.

spike,
i think the reason people were so surprised at the results of that study and others is because it ran counter to what a lot of anti-porn people were saying. is it possible that the anti-porn people who said porn caused more sexual violence were basing on their personal opinions and not evidence?

you only mention people who might be violent but porn and internet sex sites are a big problem for people of all kinds. many marriages and couples are experiencing problems with internet porn addiction.

as far as someone mentioned earlier in this thread about there being no gradations of rape...again thats in a social sense right? in a legal sense that is definitely not true and even in a social sense how do we reconcile the widely held view that a 28 year old man having sex with a 13 year old girl is somehow worse than a 28 year old woman having sex with a 13 year old boy with all rape being rape?

still the term gray rape is idiotic but again id have to use the legal standard mentioned earlier in the thread. what a reasonable person would do.

This is what I meant when I said I did not want to derail the thread. This is not a debate on false allegation of rape. It's about the reality of rape. I was just pointing out to D&D why Kanin's "work" on rape should be questioned.

dananddanica

We can just take the instructor of journalism's advice for what it is:

"For the reporter, the conclusion is clear. Don't rely on one source. Talk to the local sexual assault counselors, talk to the local police, talk to the FBI, talk to the academics. Try to make some sense out of all the different numbers. And be careful."

He suggests we stick to the professionals and use critical thinking instead of just buying extreme, unsupported claims. It is the job of supporters of women's rights to provide support to women, not to weed out or point the finger at the less than truthful. For better or for worse, that is what the law and law enforcement are for.

a male,
yes indeed kanin has been severely criticized and his methods questioned. I've read the back and forth on it but most people haven't, again thats why I linked it, it leads to interesting pages from people of many differnt views.
should i simply have mocked mir for asking fem for a stat that doesnt exist? michelle anderson of 'nova law has said no such % was ever reported.
reading the paper i linked or searching for it would have led you to most of the points youve made later in this thread, the work by the innocence project or the '96 study by DOJ and so on.
i still stand by calling it interesting as it very well is.

a male,
yes indeed kanin has been severely criticized and his methods questioned. I've read the back and forth on it but most people haven't, again thats why I linked it, it leads to interesting pages from people of many differnt views.
should i simply have mocked mir for asking fem for a stat that doesnt exist? michelle anderson of 'nova law has said no such % was ever reported.
reading the paper i linked or searching for it would have led you to most of the points youve made later in this thread, the work by the innocence project or the '96 study by DOJ and so on.
i still stand by calling it interesting as it very well is.

I guess I am speaking to "Dan":

"as far as someone mentioned earlier in this thread about there being no gradations of rape...again thats in a social sense right? in a legal sense that is definitely not true and even in a social sense how do we reconcile the widely held view that a 28 year old man having sex with a 13 year old girl is somehow worse than a 28 year old woman having sex with a 13 year old boy with all rape being rape?"

Why are you bringing this stuff up, in this thread? We are not at Glenn Sacks' board. This article does happen to be about male on female rape, on college campuses. It may not get the legal recognition it deserves in our country, as opposed to in the UK or Australia, but withdrawal of consent for physical discomfort or any other reason, is valid (perhaps you understand a man may also fail to perform after his requesting or giving consent to a sexual act), and lack of consent means the sex is rape. Marital rape and domestic violence weren't illegal either, before lawmakers (we aren't really there with society yet) opened their eyes and ears.

"I have read about women being raped by men using sex toys on them."

Yes, this is why more enlightened rape laws (Japan is an obvious exception) do not limit the crime of rape to forcible insertion of a penis into a vagina. It recognizes that a *person* may violate another with near anything, in a variety of ways.

"It may not get the legal recognition it deserves in our country, as opposed to in the UK or Australia"

Oops. That refers to lack of capacity to give consent while drunk.

A male, is the "70-80% of rapists are acquaintances" referring solely to the convicted rapists? Or does it refer to the number of *charged* rapists?

Because I would find it very, very easy to believe that acquaintance rapists are acquitted about a zillion times more often than stranger rapists. If 80% of rapists are acquaintainces, but only 20% of acquaintance rapists are convicted, whereas 20% of rapists are strangers to their victim but 80% of them are convicted, then 50% of the convicted rapists are stranger rapists. if the false ID rate is 20%, yes, it could be coming entirely from the pool of stranger rapists.

In other words, it totally does not surprise me to find that 20% of convicted rapists didn't actually have sex with the woman they were convicted of raping. Rape is an incredibly difficult crime to prosecute, in part because of ridiculous ideas about "gray rape" and women being unable to withdraw consent, so I would guess that almost all convictions are in fact of stranger rapists and that they would be riddled with ID errors... how likely is a person to be able to pick a stranger accurately out of a lineup after a traumatic experience where he was possibly trying to hide his face from her? I'll bet a *lot* of innocent men get railroaded on rape charges because the cops decide that it's better to nail a guy who probably didn't do it than to leave it unsolved. Which leaves the real rapist at large.

If the rate is instead that 80% of *convicted* rapists are acquaintances... that is a really, really frightening thought, because it says stranger rape almost doesn't exist and rape, as a crime, is a crime of violence by men against women they know. Because the barriers to convicting in acquaintance rape are so fucking high that if 80% of *convicted* rapists are acquaintances, and only 5% of accused rapists are convicted... I would imagine that the rate of accused rapists who are acquaintances would be something like 95% or higher.

AJR,

I'm fairly sure that the 80% statistic is what women report in studies and the like, that is, the percentage of /actual rapes/ where the perp was an acquaintance

This is not what this thread was about, but . . .

"A male, is the "70-80% of rapists are acquaintances" referring solely to the convicted rapists? Or does it refer to the number of *charged* rapists?"

All accused rapists, all reported and unreported claims of rape, or wherever those figures come up. The 70% figure, at least, is almost universal.

"I'll bet a *lot* of innocent men get railroaded on rape charges because the cops decide that it's better to nail a guy who probably didn't do it than to leave it unsolved. Which leaves the real rapist at large."

*IF* a sample of 10,000 is truly random, then we may be talking about 20%-40% of all men in jail for rape. That is fucked up. No rape victim, and certainly no feminists or anyone else seeking justice should be happy about this. All it means is, the real rapists are free, along with every other rapist who was never arrested or convicted at trial.

http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/dnaevid.txt

Convicted by Juries, Exonerated by Science:
Case Studies in the Use of DNA Evidence to
Establish Innocence After Trial

by

Edward Connors
Thomas Lundregan
Neal Miller
Tom McEwen

June 1996

U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice
Jeremy Travis, J.D.
Director

Richard Rau, Ph.D.
Project Monitor

The authors of this report are staff members of the
Institute for Law and Justice, Alexandria,
Virginia. This project was supported under award
number OJP-95-215 by the National Institute of
Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S.
Department of Justice.

[quote]

Every year since 1989, in about 25 percent of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI where results could be obtained (primarily by State and local law enforcement), the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing. Specifically, FBI officials report that out of roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases since 1989, about 2,000 tests have been inconclusive (usually insufficient high molecular weight DNA to do testing), about 2,000 tests have excluded the primary suspect, and about 6,000 have “matched� or included the primary suspect.1 The fact that these percentages have remained constant for 7 years, and that the National Institute of Justice’s informal survey of private laboratories reveals a strikingly similar 26-percent exclusion rate, strongly suggests that postarrest and postconviction DNA exonerations are tied to some strong, underlying systemic problems that generate erroneous accusations and convictions.

[end quote]

I'm glad you can recognize this, because our legal system has a serious problem on both sides of the rape issue. Note that being exonerated on DNA evidence only applies to those who conclusively did NOT leave their genetic material on the victim or complainant. For true cases of he said/she said which is what the issue of withdrawal of consent could easily become (as opposed to drunkenness or drug impairment, which can be proven through blood tests if performed promptly enough), there is no way to assist accuser or accused, without penalizing the other. Average people (as opposed to gonzo pornographers) do not make a practice of recording their sexual activity to prove or disprove assault occurred, and it would be a sad society which did. (How gonzo pornographers such as Max Hardcore stay out of jail or avoid death threats while explicitly boasting of hurting women on camera, and I have seen his site's free samples of his "work," is beyond me.)

Which is what I assume dananddanica is concerned about, when asking about how to "prove" consent when accuser and accused are in disagreement. I am too. Even recent university policies of asking and receiving consent at each stage of the sex act such as "May I touch your breast?" (and I am still unaware of how such could ever be conclusively proven) is not enough, in withdrawal of consent. I do recognize withdrawal of consent as valid, as well as sex being rape after withdrawal of consent.

I just thank God that I and no one I know of are in such a position, and I would hate to sit on a jury in such a case.

I need to make a correction: it may not have been Kanin himself who made the claim of 100% of rape accusations being false. He may have simply been recognizing the extreme range of claims in 1985, from 0.25% to 100%. His own claims are odd enough:

"Widely divergent viewpoints are held regarding the
incidence of false rape reporting (Katz and Mazur, 1979).
For example, reports set the figure from lows of 0.25%
(O’Reilly, 1984) and 1% (Krasner et al., 1976) to highs of
80-90% (Bronson, 1918; Comment, 1968) and even 100%
(see Kanin, 1985). All of these figures represent releases
from some criminal justice agency or are estimates from
clinical practitioners. The extraordinary range of these
estimates makes a researcher suspect that inordinate
biases are at work."

Yes, it all depends on the sample and the agenda of the researcher. Science is supposed to be unbiased. It is a damned shame.