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We’re
sick and tired of hearing about your sick fascination with
Ashton Kutcher. Whatever happened to making cheese from breast
milk, ejaculating into women’s shoes, or screwing your sister?
—Hot
Old Twosome Bored Of Dan
My
thing for Ashton is sweet and wholesome—and it’s annoying
the shit out of my boyfriend, so I will drop it. Nevertheless
my boyfriend came up with a much better name than Fagged
for the next show I think Ashton should star in. Hey, MTV,
how’s this sound: “Ashton Kutcher starring in Spunk’d.”
Still, HOTBOD, I’m afraid I’m not going to get to the cheese-makers,
shoe-spunkers, and sister-screwers this week. I recently attempted
to define rape for all the college sophomores out there—I
went out on a limb and said “rape” meant “forced sex”—and
furious e-mail has been pouring in ever since. Let me wade
through a few rape responses this week and next week, and
with God as my witness, I swear we’ll get to back to the kinky
freaks.
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You should be careful when you tell
people that consenting to sex when you are drunk or high is
not rape, which you told to DIDHE recently. Technically you
are right; if you give consent, it is not rape. The problem
is that it is legally impossible for someone under the influence
to grant consent in many states. It doesn’t matter if she
was screaming “Take me! I want to have consensual sex with
you!” If she was drunk and you fucked her, you can go to jail.
Sounds tough, but it is the law in a lot of places.
—Ramifications
Are Pretty Extreme
If
the law supposes that drunk and/or high people can’t consent
to sex, RAPE, then the law is an ass, an idiot. People have
sex under the influence all the time. Easily 80 percent
of the sex that goes down in North America on any given weekend
involves two or more people under the influence of something.
To say that drunk people can’t consent to sex is as good as
saying that virtually everyone on earth is a serial rapist
and a serial rape victim.
Let me cut to the chase here—any
sex a woman doesn’t want to be having is rape. That includes
both physical force and emotional or mental coercion. As a
victim of both kinds of rape, I know what I’m talking about.
The time a friend pushed me to the ground, yanked my skirt
down and literally forced himself on me (accompanied by my
screams and tears and attempts to fight him off) was rape.
And so were all the times a then-boyfriend convinced me he
was “owed” a blowjob.
—Rape
Is Outside The General Rules Regarding Real Life
I’m
sorry, RIOTGRRRL, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.
We can’t go tossing men into prison or calling them rapists
for the sin of not being able to read minds. If a woman doesn’t
want to have sex, she has to say so. Period. That guy who
pushed you to the ground? Rapist, for sure. The boyfriends
who guilted you into blowing them? Sorry, RIOTGRRRL, they’re
not rapists. They’re just run-of-the-mill boyfriends.
Lest we confuse college sophomores
any more than already are, I feel obligated to respond to
your response to DIDHE. As a licensed clinical social worker
and certified rape-crisis counselor, I must tell you that
in most states, pressuring someone to have sex is legally
considered rape. Furthermore, when someone is incapacitated
due to drugs or alcohol, he or she cannot give legal consent
to sex.
While it is fucked up when the person who was enthusiastically
fucking you the night before wakes up the next day and calls
you a rapist, the gray-and-fuzzy zone we’re arguing is relatively
narrow. I’m talking about your typical random hook-up at a
bar, party, or dorm room. Yes, they may appear willing, but
you are taking a risk if you regard their slurry “yesh I like
yoooo” as consent. I’m not for championing those who regret
their choices and cry wolf, but they just may be the inevitable
crappy side effect of a system that protects people who, while
intoxicated, cannot protest advances with the same zest and
vigor as a sober person.
Instead of advising your readership that there’s a clear line
between what is and isn’t rape, you should use your power
more wisely. Hey, we all like to get a little tee-rashed and
enjoy the resultant relations. But if you’re engaging with
someone a) you just met and b) you and/or they are ass-stinking
drunk, then your respective views on consent may not align.
—Proceed
With Caution
I
get letters every day from men and women who are pressuring
strangers, neighbors, personal trainers, boyfriends, girlfriends,
husbands, wives and yappy little dogs for sex. Shall we lock
them all up? No, of course not. Because what determines whether
or not a person who is pressuring someone for sex is “moral,”
much less a rapist, is how they react when they hear “no.”
Do they take “no” for an answer and drop it? Then they’re
moral. Do they sulk and resort to emotional blackmail? Then
they’re jerks. Do they fuck the person they were pressuring
for sex anyway? Then they’re rapists.
And, yes, if a woman (or a man) is incapacitated and
someone fucks her, then it’s rape. But she’s got to be incapacitated,
not merely drunk or high. If you’re the type of person who
consents to things when you’re drunk or high—sexual or otherwise—that
you wouldn’t consent to sober, well, then it’s your responsibility
not to get drunk or high. But if you do get
drunk or high and say “yesh, yesh, yesh” to someone who may
or may not be drunker than you are, someone who may not have
had sinister motives when he or she ordered that third round,
then you’re not anyone’s victim but your own.
Finally, PWC, I agree that people should proceed with caution.
And I’m not an advocate for the return of “She passed out!
She’s fair game!” But I’m very troubled by the notion of some
poor college kid being hauled off to jail—a place where he’s
likely to be raped—because he, in his diminished state, fucked
someone who, in her diminished state, screamed “YESH, YESH,
DO ME!” when they got back to his dorm room. It seems extremely
unfair that a drunk woman can’t be held accountable for her
actions—giving her consent—but a drunk man can held strictly
accountable for his actions, however impaired he may have
been at the time, and sent to prison. That’s not just a “crappy
side effect,” PWC, that’s an appalling injustice.
You’re probably still smarting from
having your dick ripped off by the “it-is-SO-rape” crowd.
The problem is there’s only one term “rape” to describe a
broad spectrum of sexual boundary-crossing. May I suggest
the following terms:
Grape: when someone inappropriately GRabs a tit or ass or
cock, but backs off when told to do so.
Drape: when a Drunk or high person gets fucked (and later
regrets it) but nevertheless consented.
Cape: when, in the middle of sex, one partner Changes his
or her mind and the other takes a few seconds to switch gears
before stopping.
Gape: using Guilt or pressure or lies to get someone to put
out.
Rape: let’s save the biggie for using violence (or threats
of violence) or fucking someone who isn’t able to consent.
—Really
Angry, Pretty Exasperated
Thanks
for sharing, RAPE.
mail@savagelove.net
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