astro, it's NOT my fault! No means NO!

The BBQ Pit
141

I think a lot of the disagreement in this thread is over what “kind” of rape (i.e. statutory vs. plain ol rape) people have in mind with regards to Zabali’s experience. Not one poster here has said she wasn’t statutorily raped. Thing is, statutory rape and plain ol rape aren’t the same thing. An eagerly consenting female can be a victim (I use that word loosly) of statutory rape.

There is no such thing as a willing victim of rape.

That’s why statutory rape is not referred to as rape without the word “statutory” in front of it. A victim of statutory rape is deemed not to have capacity to consent due to their age, and nothing more. A victim of rape does not consent, period. They don’t want to have sex. It’s not a matter of “oh, you don’t know what you want, you’re not old enough to really know” it’s a matter of “I do not want this.”

A victim of statutory rape has a choice, however she (or he) is deemed not to be educated enough to be able to make that choice responsibly. A victim of rape has no choice.

No matter how badly some of you may want to claim the two are one in the same, they’re not. They are very different. And I think it does a disservice to actual rape victims to insist that there is no difference between the two.

Quotes such as this are what led me to go on this little tangent…

Yes. That is why it has been stated numerous times she was a victim of statutory rape. By her age alone, she would have been deemed unable to give meaningful consent. However, more than that is needed for a rape to occur. Rape is criminally defined as sex with a person against their will. To me, that implies something more than just “you’re too young to know if you really want this.” You can be deemed legally incapable of consenting to something, but still willingly engage in it. There is no such thing as a willing participant to rape.

That’s why many juristictions require a substantial age difference between the parties. It seems rather contradictary that two teenagers with a year between them can not be convicted of statutory rape because there’s not enough of an age difference between them although one may be above age and the other below, but yet any young girl not legally able to give consent is automatically a rape victim soley because of her age. It’s not logically consistant. She’s either too young to legally consent and thus a victim of rape if she has sex or she’s not. If you’re going to use the victims age and nothing else to determine whether a rape occured, her partners age should have no bearing on the matter.

I’m not coming down on statutory rape per se, please don’t misinterprete my post that way. I’m just saying that you’ve got to come up with something beyond the age of the victim to cry rape. Hell, the age of the victim alone isn’t even enough to prove statutory rape, so how the hell can it be enough to prove rape, period?

142

Originally Posted by Bricker
Couple of thought experiments:

A adult woman is told…

(A) (By a fiance) Have sex with me now, or I won’t marry you.

Agreed. The woman has no right to be married, and so the man can place conditions on the offer. Under the common law, if that was the request, and the woman said yes, then the man later refused to marry her, he was guilty of the crime of seduction ( a felony I believe).

(B) (By a voodoo practictioner) Have sex with me now, or I will put a voodoo curse on you.

Again I would agree; if the person that demands sex knows the person believes that a voodoo curse will cause them physical harm, then this counts as a threat of force even under present rape statutes.

(C) (By an employer) Have sex with me now, or I will fire you.

If there is a crime there, it is unlikely to be rape in the jurisdictions I have seen. Here there is no physical force, and so under the force requriement in most rape statutes, and enamored by many here, there is no rape.

(D) (By her husband’s employer) Have sex with me now, or I will fire your husband.

Again, almost definitely not rape, under the present legal system. Threatening to kill hubby if she didn’t put out would satisfy the force element. Threatening to fire him would not. I am not sure whether dependency on, for example, health insurance for life extending medication would be sufficient. I think probably not.

(E) (By a potential employer) Have sex with me now, or I won’t hire you.

Unfortunately, again almost certianly not rape at the moment because of the absence of force.

(F) (By a client who has discovered her embezzling money) Have sex with me now, or I’ll call the police and turn you in.

Not rape again, I believe, no force. If you subsituted a request for $0.01 in lieu of sex, then this is extortion, I think. I don’t think demanding sex even gets you to extortion.

I’m in pretty full agreement with you on what should be called rape. Unfortuantely, a law which is dependent on a force component does not recognize these as being rape situations. To me,they make a pretty persuasive argument as to why rape law needs reform.

143

So if you deliberately take someone home with you at three in the morning, get naked, kiss them all over, lay on the bed naked in front of them, and then tell them not to touch you because you never even considered having sex with them, you’re not an asshole?

Yes, I have. I damn near made it out the door onto N. Craig St., Oakland, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania sometime between the hours of three and four in the morning on my knees, bare ass naked, because I had been thrown kicking and screaming onto a couch and stripped of my clothes.

I did not crawl fast enough.

Later that same night, I tried again to crawl away, that time to a bathroom with a door that locked. Didn’t make it there either.

Cruel how? People have regrets, and they often suck a hell of a lot and are very painful, but that does not make the thing regretted a criminal act.

I was at my own, for the entire two hours and thirty minutes. I’ve sinced talked to a lot of people who have been raped. Don’t know a single one who didn’t make some effort to actually get away.

I think that a reasonable female would try anything to escape being raped.

And some of them are just suggestible women who took an experience they have no fond memory of, but wasn’t criminal, and were eventually convinced by their helpful counselor that it was a crime. That’s how the famous ‘one in four statistic’ came into being.

I know a lot more about this topic than I ever wanted to. I also know how common it is for someone to assume I know nothing about it because I disagree that persausion and later regret make an act rape.

144

I’d just like to add that my above post is not meant to say that she wasn’t raped, the facts stated in her latest recounting show that IMHO, she was in fact raped. Although her credibility is somewhat diminished due to her constantly changing story.

I realize that it was a long time ago (depending on her age now) and that rape victims will often leave out details initially due to their trauma. However, the fact that she was asking whether or not what happened to her was rape when she told the story the first time and still managed to leave out facts that made it rape is a bit sketchy. It’s not that she left out facts, it’s the facts that she left out that are leading some posters, including myself, to wonder whether or not her later recounts are made with making the event constitute rape in mind.

145

jarbabyj said:
Here’s a tip: even if you get drunk, have dinner, go home with a guy, strip naked, kiss him, lay down and THEN decide you don’t want to have sex, you say no. If he persists…he’s raping you.

Sure, the person raped is the asshole. What if she wants to be naked with him, kiss him, lay down with him, maybe even have oral sex with him but doesn’t want to have vaginal sex with him? She’s the asshole if he ignores that and penetrates her anyway? What if her intention the whole way was just to engage in petting, even naked petting? She’s an asshole who deserves to be forced into sex? Both parties have an absolute right to terminate the situation at any time they feel uncomfortable or just simply don’t want to go any further for whatever reason. Is it full sex or nothing as far as you are concerned, otherwise the woman is an asshole?

villa said:
It’s situations like yours that made me come round to the belief that rape needs an affirmative consent standard.

Sure. The rationalization of the legal system to treat rape in the same way other crimes are treated, as opposed to tainting the victim with the assumption that she has to prove she did not want to be raped isn’t a benefit. After all, it’s the men who need to be protected in this situation.

People who get robbed aren’t assumed to have consented to their property beign removed unless they can prove otherwise. Yet our system places that standard on women who have been violated in this way. Throughout the development of rape law you see exactly the motivation you are putting forward - lets make rape harder than any other crime to report and convict, because, after all, women lie and falsely accuse men after bad sex. The trouble is, there is no evidence that women do report rape falsely at any greater rates than other serious crimes.

And you know this how, exactly? Many people who have studied this far more than you have have suggested that women should not fight back in a situation where they are being raped. Such a view is not popular now, but that does not alter the fact that countless women were told their best chance of survival was to lie back and take it. But according to you, they weren’t raped, because they didn’t behave in the pattern you have decided they should. They might have lied there crying; they might have choked back their screams because their children were sleeping in the next door room and they had no idea what their would happen if their kids wandered in to see mommy’s date raping her, or what he might do to them; they might have been so scared they were medically incapable of flight; they might have been in an area they did not know, with their assailant having stolen their car keys and be terrified of leaving into a crime ridden area at 3 in the morning (see State v Rusk, a Maryland case, where a sensitive judge came up with exactly your point of view); yet because they did not crawl out naked into the street in what YOU have determined should be the reaction of a woman being acquaintance raped should be, they were not raped.

Here’s a clue - not realizing you have been raped is an extremely common reaction to being acquaintance raped. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It just means that in a society populated with people such as yourself, girls and women who are already faced with the traumatic experience of havign been raped are presented with beign told that it never happened, and that it was their own fault if it did happen. And then it is those damn man-hating counselors that convince these women that they were raped.

You want to avoid someone realizing down the line they were raped? Don’t rape them in the first place. And that means don’t ignore it when they say no. And ask if they want to do it in the first place. You might get a little less sex. But you’ll traumatize fewer women and I think that is a pretty fair trade.

146

I’d like to ask people to quit using the generic “female.” That’s a sad tactic used to distance yourself from the fact of a girl being forced into an untenable situation. A 13-year old girl. Not an adult. Not an older teenager with some experience and better read. A confused and frightened girl.

147

To put in a spectacularly crude fashion, assholes get raped, too.

In the scenario you outlined, the forced sex is rape: forced sex is always rape. But a woman who behaves as you described – knowing all along that she does not wish to have sex but giving no indication of it – is, to use the term in use, an asshole. He has behaved immorally and illegally; but she is also being a bitch.

If I went to the car lot and took three hours of the salesman’s time, test driving 4 BMWs, picking the one I liked best, and discussing terms and financing, only to reveal at the last moment that I only have $45 to my name, he has no legal right to brain me. Nonetheless, I am being an asshole.

148

Are you fucking serious? Nobody said she would be an asshole if she were raped, that would clearly be the guy. She would however be a cock-tease, and an absolute idiot if she made a regular practice of getting guys naked and then leaving.

He has no right to force her to do anything, and she does have the right to terminate the encounter at any point. We’re not stupid, believe it or not, and you’re doing alot of “creative paraphrasing”.

I particularly like the part in your scenario where she blows him, then he rapes her, I’m sure that happens all the time. Guys are never satisfied with blowjobs.

If rape is of any concern to you, you might want to rethink your sexual practices. Try being around a guy with your clothes on. When you strip naked and jump into their bed…they might not know that your just checking the thread count of their sheets, they might assume something sexual is in store for them.

Just so we’re clear, I’ll say it again: He has no right to force her to do anything, and she does have the right to terminate the encounter at any point. But, if you jump into bed naked with enough guys, eventually you’ll meet someone who doesn’t play by the rules. Then you’ll have a pretty hard time convincing people you were forced, since you’re the girl who likes to jump into bed naked with everybody.

Habitual cock-teases are assholes. They’re also putting themselves at risk. If a girl is in that situation, and needs to get out, fine. She’s protecting herself. To endorse that type of behaviour as a normal practice is ridiculous.

149

You know what, you’re right. I’m not sure I totally agree with you, but I definitely don’t like what I just posted or the way I expressed it. Rereading Catsix’s post I can see she does not make the jump that I kind of assumed, form behaving stupidly to consenting to sex. And as you point out, while the rapist’s guilt is not altered, the victim can still be seen to have behaved badly or foolishly in that situation.

Posting late at night while doing five other things. Not that that excuses the mistake, but there you go.

150

See, you should do like I am and use the SDMB as your excuse for not doing those other things. :wink:

151

Inspired by one of villa’s earlier posts, I thought I’d post the relevant georgia laws and use them to charcterize Bricker’s and Zaballi’s hypotheticals:

So, here are my answers:

A) (By a fiance) Have sex with me now, or I won’t marry you.
no crime committed

(B) (By a voodoo practictioner) Have sex with me now, or I will put a voodoo curse on you.
not rape, but sexual assault

© (By an employer) Have sex with me now, or I will fire you.
Not rape, and not strictly sexual assault, but I bet the prosecution could make a sexual assault charge stick.

(D) (By her husband’s employer) Have sex with me now, or I will fire your husband.
see C above

(E) (By a potential employer) Have sex with me now, or I won’t hire you.
Not rape, and not sexual assault, but I bet the victim could bring one Hell of a civil case about sexual harassment (sorry, couldn’t find the wording of the laws concerning sexual harrasment

**(F) (By a client who has discovered her embezzling money) Have sex with me now, or I’ll call the police and turn you in. **
Sticky, but see C above

An adult female who’s just recieved an expensive gift, and meal, is told that now she has to “repay” the fellow that bought them for her.
No crime commited

A young adult female, who is sexually active without her overbearing violent parent’s consent is told "Have sex with me, or I’ll tell."
No crime commited. It sucks, but I don’t see what statute would apply.

An adult female, who’s emotionally/mentally vunerable, is told she needs to learn how to “trust” and that she can learn how to do this by having sex with the person she’s entrusted to help her get well
Not rape, but very likely sexual asault, depending on the relationship.

And lastly, Zabali’s third account of the incident when she was thirteen
Not rape, but statutory rape and sexual battery.

152

Monkey, what’s up with you not being charter-memberized yet?

153

“Unable to charge your credit card”

Still thinking of a work around. Ed’s decided to give us all till Monday.

154

Well, yes, I suppose that makes them an asshole. I misunderstood your statement. Now that I look back and read it again, I see what you meant.
Asshole notwithstanding, I don’t beleive that a woman is COMMITED to a sexual act simply because she has gotten naked, or gone home with them. She still has the right to say no.

Ouch, I’m sorry if I dragged up some bad memories. I’m also very very sorry that happened to you. I understand your decision to fight back. I would have done the same in your situation.

Ithink that a reasonable female would try anything to escape being raped.

I think most women would. But if a woman does not do what you think is everything reasonable, then is it rape? Is it then the woman’s fault that she was raped? Does it absolve the other party in question?

And some of them are just suggestible women who took an experience they have no fond memory of, but wasn’t criminal, and were eventually convinced by their helpful counselor that it was a crime. That’s how the famous ‘one in four statistic’ came into being.

I don’t disagree that it happens, but I don’t beleive it happened here.
I know a lot more about this topic than I ever wanted to. I also know how common it is for someone to assume I know nothing about it because I disagree that persausion and later regret make an act rape.

I don’t think this is a case of persuation and then regret. She clearly states that this man repeatedly used force to put her where he wanted to. She said no, alot. The last thing she said was “I don’t want to” and he did anyway. That’s rape. Just because she was to scared to fight back does not change that.

155

One means of analysing rape is to look at power/authority relationships. Where an unequal power/authority relationship exists, if the dominant power/authority member of the dyad uses that dominant status to assert the dominance to extort sex from the more submissive, but unwilling member of the dyad, as an exercise in asserting dominance, it is rape. And yes, females can rape males if the female is dominant in terms of power/authority and the male is less dominant, unwilling and has the dominance asserted over him as an act of extortion. This is why doctor/patient, teacher/pupil, uncle/niece, priest/altarboy relationships and the like are taboo in our societies.

In this case, there are three power/authority factors in play - age, gender and ‘King for a Day’ status. The sixteen-year-old boy is three years older, he is male and he is the ‘birthday boy’. Age status/power and authority in the teens is well researched. I won’t go into that. Male status/power and authority is also well researched. No in-depth exploration is required. It’s the cultural accordance of ‘King for the Day’ that really interests me in this case. I tend to analyse the subtext of messages posted herein - what is implied or not explicitly said. All suggest that the boy was a jerk for using the emotional blackmail of the birthday present. No one has suggested that the sixteen-year-old was doing anything that other sixteen-year-olds would not do on their birthday. Culturally, in the US, it is not only acceptable in middle-class society, but expected, that people ask for special treatment on their birthday. That special ‘birthday boy’ status is unremarked upon herein yet it gives the boy a power/authority status that, while tacit, is profound.

BTW, Zabali_Clawbane, you were definitely raped. Astro is both wrong and insensitive. This pitting is deserved.

156

The trouble with this statement is that I see no evidence that she capitulated out of fear. She gave in because she wanted the boy to stop badgering her.

She stated that the boy repeatedly carried her from the porch to a darkened area of the yard. That means she repeatedly returned to the porch to sit with him. If she had the opportunity to walk back to the porch, she had the opportunity to run away.

My mind’s eye pictures what happened this way. ** Zabali is sitting with BF on the porch, he asks her for a special birthday present, she says “I’m not ready”. He begins to kiss and fondle her, “come on baby, please, I love you, if you loved me you would”, all the standard teen boy bullcrap. She squirms a bit, saying “no, I’m not ready” in that petulant teen girl tone of voice that your average teen boy will interpret to mean that with continued flattery, caressing, begging, protestations of love, she will eventually become ready. She says “no, I’m not ready, come on, knock it off” and tries to squirm away, but does not firmly try to shove him away with a firm, loud, “dammit, I said no,get your damn mitts off of me” or attempt to leave. This reinforces he boy’s belief that she can be persuaded. At some point, he picks her up and carries her to a secluded area of the yard. She gets up and walks back to the porch, obviously still willing to remain with him, even if she’s not ready to have sex yet. He persists at his horny teenage boy version of “seduction”. This last bit repeats itself a ouple more times untl Zabali finally says, “If I do, will you leave me alone”? then, as he is undressing her, she whines “I don’t want to…” with an implied “but I will just to get you to stop pestering me.” In other words, consent. Reluctant, grudging consent, but still consent.

If Zabali had taken the opportunity to try to leave would he have physically prevented her and forcibly raped her? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll never know. But I think that any person who is truly afraid that they will be physically harmed who has an opportunity to try to make a run for it would do so, especially if that person had been pawing them in the manner Zabali described. Instead of trying to escape, she returned to the sit on the porch, repeatedly. Maybe she was shocked at his disregard for her feelings, but she apparently did not feel she was in real physical danger. Thinking in hindsight that someone probably would have raped you if you hadn’t consent to sex is not the same as being raped.

So, yes, ** Zabali** does have some culpability for what happened to her. Certainly not the level of responsibility an adult woman would have had in the same situation - as has been said before, that is why we have statutory rape laws.

Zabali, I understand that losing your virginity by grudginly giving it up so someone who doesn’t respect you feelings can be emotionally very painful. But you were not raped, except by legal definition due to your age. Until you can accept this and take your share of the responsibility for what happened to you- which admittedly is the lesser share, due to your age and emotional vulnerability- you will always see yourself as a victim, and your wounds will never heal.

157

This is bullshit.

Zabali was continually telling him, “no I don’t want to.” But he did anyway. That’s enough right there, in my mind.

Also, I don’t think y’all know how it was for some of us at age 11, 12, 13. Zabali talks about being in a small town where everyone “minded their own business.” I think there is a certain mindset that gets into you when you are young, impressionable, and you know no one is going to do anything to help you anyway, which I believe was the case here.

Nothing remotely as horrible happened to me as what happened to Zabali, (not even a 1% as horrible), but due to certain circumstances during my youth, I had no reason to believe that fighting back against a bully (or someone who was doing me wrong) would help. It had never helped before. In my young mind, I couldn’t see why fighting back against a bigger, more respected person of some authority would do anything other than get me in trouble.

Yes, I’m reflecting my own experiences here, but sometimes when I talk about some of the frustrating and hurtful things that happened to me during my childhood, I am admonished and told, "You just should have spoken up! You should have said NO!" Yeah, as if it’s that easy. It’s not that easy you’ve never gotten any results from standing up for yourself. Instead, you get jack shit. What’s the point of trying that anymore?

We learn from what we’ve already experienced. If we learn that fighting back or saying no to a percieved more trusted and older authority will not be believed or gets us into trouble (no matter how justified or righteous our complaint), then we simply don’t even consider it an option anymore.

158

There is another thing I want to say to those who are quick to cry rape in the situations discussed in this thread. First let me quote part (b) of Georgia’s rape law, which I omitted in my last post:

Rape is a capital offense. Does anyone believe that the actions of Zaballi’s boyfriend constitute a capital crime?

It was a crime; of that there is no doubt. But the coercion in her account does not warrant consideration of lethal injection.

Though it is true that very few rapists, if any nowadays, are confronted with the specter of execution, rape is not a term to be used lightly. It should be reserved for the heinous crime of forceful sex without consent. Rape is a violent crime, and must be distinguished accordingly. One thing must be clear – not all crimes involving sex constitute rape.

I stand by my earlier analysis. The boy committed sexual battery and statutory rape. He did not commit standard rape. Trying to expand the definition of rape into the territory of sexual assault and sexual battery will only cause those who actually commit rape to have lighter sentences.

159

Actually, something similar (well, more the reverse - have sex with me to lift a voodoo curse) happened a couple of years ago and we had a little discussion here.

160

Is there any evidence on this being the norm?

I know women who have abusive relationships are frequently drawn to the same type of men. But why would being raped once make you more ‘vunerable’ to be raped again?
From my personal experience it’s the reverse.