At this time 10 years ago I was almost finished with my first semester of my freshman year of college. During the first week we were there, all freshman were required to attend a sexual assault orientation. The first portion was a lot of statistics about rape and college students and information about where to turn and what resources were available if you’d been assaulted. During the second half the men and women were split up and sent into their own groups. The focus of this time, at least for us ladies, was discussing how to avoid being raped. We were told to not accept open drinks from strangers, not to run alone at night, and that if we were caught in a desperate situation, one of the best ways to extricate yourself is by grossing out your attacker by peeing or vomiting on yourself.
The thing is, I was a 17-year-old college freshman. By the time the semester had ended I had probably done every single thing I was told not to do in that seminar. I was reckless and foolish and young. And I know I was probably incredibly lucky, but never once when I let someone buy me a drink or walked home alone to my extremely distant dorm room did I feel pressured, and I didn’t wake up feeling manipulated. The pangs of hurt and betrayal I feel from my college days can be traced back to going to a friend’s apartment to talk and hang out and things taking a turn I didn’t expect, or when I ran into a friend at a bar and was offered a lift home only to have to answer the question, “Your place or mine?” when I got into the car.
Looking back I have always felt bad because I let things happen. I have friends who have had much worse experiences and the emotion they feel the most is disappointment…in themselves. As I’ve grown up, I’ve come to know how extremely backwards this thinking is. So many times women who are manipulated or pressured or inebriated and taken advantage of blame themselves. They won’t even admit they’ve been raped.
The word rape has been reserved for back alley assaults by men wielding knives and wearing masks. It’s reserved for women who are beaten and bloody and scream NO. And while those women have most certainly been raped, so have the thousands of others who were walked home by a friend and were then forced to repay the kindness. But those women are told they sent the wrong signals, they got too drunk, or they didn’t actually say no. They weren’t raped; they just made a mistake. It is such an unfortunate attitude because it blurs the lines between right and wrong. It allows men who assault women to walk away with a clean conscience and leaves women holding the emotional baggage.
It’s time to change the conversation. The city of Edmonton, Canada has decided the same thing. Instead of placing the onus of preventing rape on women, they are speaking out and telling men to, quite simply, not rape. The campaign puts aside the notion that rape requires force and resistance and reminds men that anything other than an enthusiastic—and sober—yes, is assault.
I, for one, am really excited to see ideas shifting and who knows, maybe one day at college orientation the men and women won’t have to break apart for separate sexual assault talks. Maybe there will only be one talk and it will say something along the lines of: Always respect one another; always ask before acting; and only have sex with people who want to have sex with you, too.
Brandi is a lawyer in Denver who spends very little time actually lawyering. She can usually be found working for free at a non-profit, hiking up mountains, or bossing her husband around because he made the mistake of asking her for help with his business one time. She’s horribly technologically inept (unless people still use AIM in which case she’s a genius) and takes one bite out of every donut instead of finishing a single donut in its entirety, which is probably a metaphor for something but she hasn’t figured out what it is yet. You can read more from Brandi on her blog, Randi Nickle.
It’s about time the conversation changed. I always get so angry that people (because it’s not just women who are raped) are taught how to prevent themselves from being assaulted – that means that the assaulted is responsible for putting themselves in the position. No. That’s not the way it is. Assaulter – don’t be that person. Don’t put pressure on someone else, don’t take advantage of a drunk or otherwise unknowing person. Your last sentence is right on – that is the sentence that needs to be taught.
Yes, you are never responsible for the actions of others. Period.
An enthusiastic “Go Canada!”
I was molested and raped at ten years old (no sorries needed here, I’m a survivor) and it was one of violence and threat. However, someone very close to me was raped when she was thirteen. Her boyfriend, then sixteen, pressured her into sex. She said no once, and he continued to “convince” her. Because she was afraid (and thought that rape was only under those back street alley conditions) she didn’t know that she could scream, push him away, or run. So she “let it happen”. But it was still rape. She said no, he pressured and continued. And nothing was ever done about it because people think that the conversation is only the older way of thinking. I’m glad people are thinking a new (and better) way.
Unfortunately, I too have a very good friend who was absolutely raped, and yet will never use that word to describe what happened to her. It just absolutely breaks my heart to see people have to not only deal with being raped, but with the shame of thinking they somehow did something wrong and caused everything. It’s wrong in every way.
ABSOLUTELY.
We all hate victim-blaming, but I have a few specific comments to make about women who “sent the wrong signals, they got too drunk, or they didn’t actually say no.”
1a) Drunkenness is a circumstance that can get tricky because there are different ways it can impair consent. If a person’s inhibitions are lowered by alcohol and they enthusiastically consent, or even initiate, because of that, and regret it in the morning… whether that counts or should count as rape is really hard to determine depending on whether the partner was also intoxicated, if the partner knew how much the person had been drinking, how well they knew each other and should have been able to spot aberrant behavior, etc. But more often it’s a case of…
1b) … alcohol making one confused, compliant, less able to say no if quite aware of what sex one does or doesn’t want. All this means is that getting drunk increases your vulnerability, and quite frankly, people who take advantage of vulnerable people are lousy pieces of crap. We don’t reprimand young men for getting drunk and making themselves less able to fend off a mugger.
2) “Sending the wrong signals” is another load of crap promulgated by men who think the only kind of relationship worth having with a woman is a sexual one. Therefore, if a woman shows interest in conversation, in the drink you offered to buy her, in a ride home, in spending more time with you in a quieter location … she MUST want teh cock! When actually, all of those are merely signs of finding you an interesting and/or friendly person. Even if she is enthusiastically kissing you, that’s a signal that you may attempt to take it ONE logical step further – say, a hand up the back of the shirt – and back off if she reacts negatively. Better yet, ask before you make that attempt. The only “signal” that indicates consent to sex is “yes, yes, put it in me!”
3) In a perfect world, we wouldn’t even have to point out that “not saying no” is not the same thing as saying, or even making a plausible gesture toward “yes.” But since we live a screwed-up world, here is a link to SCIENCE explaining why that is yet another load of crap: http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/mythcommunication-its-not-that-they-dont-understand-they-just-dont-like-the-answer/
Thank you for that link. And it is for sure can be a very convoluted situation when both parties are drinking, I don’t have any answers. I just know that talking openly and honestly about these things is the first step.
You totally nailed the singnal thing on the head too. Either party is allowed to change their mind at any time. End of story. Dinner does not mean sexual favors. If you are so upset that you spent time and money on someone who decided not to hop in the sack with you then ask them to pay for half. Trust me, you’ll look like an ass either way.
I could not agree more with this piece. Here in the UK, there is currently a powerful TV ad campaign where a teenage boy is depicting forcing himself on a girl, in a bedroom at a house party. The tagline is: “If you could see yourself, would you see rape?”
Here is the link to the UK government website, including a video clip of the TV ad itself: http://thisisabuse.direct.gov.uk/
In the ad, the blame is placed firmly on the perpetrator. Just because the girl isn’t screaming bloody murder and they aren’t in an alleyway, doesn’t stop it from being rape. I really hope this campaign makes a few people sit up and listen.
Wow, that is indeed quite powerful. I saw a statistic once (and of course I can’t for the life of me find it now) that says something like over 50% of men would engage in rape behavior if it wasn’t called rape. I think a lot of changing the conversation is just reminding people that rape encompasses so much more than common rhetoric would have us believe.
When I was a freshman in college, after getting into a fight with my boyfriend during “Spring Fling” weekend, I allowed myself to get super drunk and hang out with a complete stranger. I was with my best girlfriend (who still is a best friend), her boyfriend, and this guy that she knew from somewhere.
This stranger guy took me back to my room at the end of the night and apparently I invited him in to have sex. With my sleeping roommate not 10 feet away we had sex. I don’t remember it. I do remember waking up at 6am the next day with a stranger next to me and a condom wrapper on the floor. I felt dirty, but not manipulated, since it was my condom.
I kicked the boy out. My roommate woke up and I started crying. She called another friend of ours, who after hearing the story confirmed that I had been date raped. Whether or not the boy had put anything in my drink, he had plied me with alcohol and had sex with me (in the state of Connecticut, having sex with a drunk person is considered non-consensual). She made me report it to the campus police, who said that even though I might have said yes at the time, my blood alcohol level (even the morning after) proved that I was not aware of what was going on.
I had to go through the rape kit at the hospital, call my parents, go home. I had to tell my boyfriend, who instead of comforting me accused me of cheating on him and broke up with me (days later he came crawling back, apologizing.) The stranger boy pressed charges against ME, claiming that I was not drunk and that I had come on to him. I dropped the rape charges.
That friend who was with me thought it was funny. She didn’t consider it rape. Over the next year she would invite both the stranger boy and me to get-togethers to see if we could “make up”. She and I didn’t talk for a while.
While some people don’t think what happened to me was rape, it was. I was too drunk to make any decisions. Plus, I don’t remember if I did say yes or no or anything at all. The boy has never said, he only said that I had the condom.
If you feel violated, it was rape. People need to accept and realize this.
I am so sorry, Emily. That is truly horrific. But thank you for your willingness to speak out and tell other women the importance of coming forward and standing up for yourself.
Your last point nailed it on the head.
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