Not pit-level annoyance, just a peeve about pedo and rape hysteria...

In My Humble Opinion
121

Sorry Stoid… I quoted exactly what you said. You said, to give you an example of a lesser kind of rape… then you described what happened to you, which was a fairly accurate description of date rape. You used your experience, admittedly by you a date rape, as an example of a lesser kind of rape.

I actually agree with quite a bit of what you say, Stoid. Stop feeling so put upon and be more clear.

Tripolar - there are a ton of examples of ridiculous crimes that people can get on the registry for. For example, in Virginia, if you french kiss a person, 12 or under, and you are 18 and older, that can, in the discretion of the judge, be a registerable offense. Seriously. I am not fucking kidding. It got pushed through the legislature after some grandpa made out with his granddaughter. (I just thought your example, of a 17 and 18 year old, which is not even a crime, let alone, registerable, was a bit far fetched).

122

All of the above and more. His intention and my response.

As I’ve said a few times, but which isn’t nearly as interesting, is that human sexuality is not black and white, cut and dried, right and wrong. There are lots of cases where the line between pushy guy/wishywashy girl and rape is very fine.

And if I were a man saying that, the uproar might be a little easier to understand, but I’m a woman. And every woman I know well enough to talk to about this agrees with me about it. And I think that people who are well grown and have had an active and relatively varied sex life who deny this reality are not being honest. People who have led active sex lives with multiple partners are extremely likely to have experienced variations of “reluctant girl/pushy guy”. Hell, the really experienced (myself included) might have experienced “reluctant guy/pushy girl”. When that situation ends in sex occurring, it’s not automatically rape. And when it really kinda is, like it was with me, it’s not the end of the world, and there’s no reason we should WANT it to be, but a whole lot of people do, it seems.

And someone earlier in the thread made the excellent point regarding fetishizing purity and how that smacks up against this subject. That’s part of what I’m talking about. It’s not honest, and it’s not even healthy to work on being as outraged as we can possibly be at every unfortunate instance of sex that isn’t plainly 100% agreed to in blood by all parties beforehand.

My rape was lesser because I was a slutty girl who was having random sex with boatloads of people for lots of bad reasons. This was one guy who really didn’t do it for me and after a certain point I knew I just didn’t want it, but that was so far into it already and he was just drunk and pushy and didn’t want to stop and I just found it simpler to get it over with than freak out, scream, get hysterical or struggle to physically throw him off my body, which appeared to be the options at the time.

He wasn’t a criminal rapist, just a pushy shmuck and I was just a wuss and it wasn’t a big deal. And yippee for me. I think it would be pathetic, sad, and scary if here, 36 years later, I was traumatized about it. I think it would have been pretty ridiculous to have been traumatized about it at the time, given my general behavior at the time. It wouldn’t really have made any sense. Why go into trauma over something that was just a tad ickier than the sex I was having with all the other people? For the drama queen jollies? No thanks.

And because I know I’m not a unique person and this was not a unique situation, I use it as an example of what I mean by a lesser kind of rape.

And that in no way whatsoever now or at any point in the thread is the equivalent of my saying “All Date Rape is Lesser And Victims Have No Business Being Traumatized” and the people in this thread who are saying it does are lying. Probably because it’s more fun than actually engaging in the conversation, but maybe because they are really incapable of seeing anything but the red that rises up at the mention of rape. Or the name Stoid. Who knows?

123

I dont’ feel put upon, I feel annoyed. Why, I have explained in all caps earlier.

124

Some rape victims are not as bothered by the rape as are others, but it is the victim and the victim alone who gets to describe it as a “lesser” act. If Stoid was raped and doesn’t consider it to have been the end of her life, tainting and destroying her forever after, then Stoid is the one who gets to describe it as not that big of a deal.

I find it tiresome that people so often take the stance that a rape victim is forever ruined and that rape is the worst thing that could ever happen to a person. It’s demeaning and dehumanizing. It implies that once we have been violated, we are tainted. As though the only thing that made us worthwhile before the rape was the fact that we were in some way pure.

Some people are shattered by being sexually assaulted. Some people aren’t. Some people can forgive their attackers. Some will want to kill the fuckers. Recognizing that not every victim responds the same way, that not every assault is the same, and that it isn’t always the end of the world is not a bad thing. If this was what Stoid was going for, then I agree.

Be that as it may, there was a generalization in the OP that I find fairly problematic:

I’m not a woman, so I can’t say that my response is what a woman’s would be, but for me there was a huge difference between the assault by a stranger when I was a teenager and the guy I’d been hooking up with who forced himself on me last spring. But it isn’t the difference described in the OP. The stranger attack was frightening and left me jumpy and scared, but it never really got to me on an emotional level. The guy I knew left me suicidal and really, really fucked up emotionally speaking. It definitely left a much deeper scar.

Whatever the circumstances or your own experiences, you can’t generalize how other people will react.

125

Yes, society does. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t even bother to have a term called ‘date rape’. We would call it, simply, rape. Some women would, if given the grim choice, choose date-rape over shakey knife to the throat out of the bushes rape. **That doesn’t mean that women who are date raped don’t deserve as much sympathy as out-the-bushes raped. ** It’s not a contest.

It is starting to look desperate to keep pounding this point. Even if she was less than 100% clear, she has clarified plenty. Let this angle go and debate her on the merits of her OP.

126

Yes, and you then treated what I had said as though I was somehow incapable of making the plain statement: “Date rape is a lesser kind of rape.” and therefore had resorted to describing what happened to me so you could painstakingly piece it together: “Oh, she said her experience was an example of a lesser kind of rape. Then she described what was clearly a date rape… I guess what she really meant to say is date rape is lesser rape!”

If I meant “ALL date rape is lesser rape.” I would have said “All date rape is lesser rape”, I wouldn’t have gone into describing my own date rape like some speech challenged alien being that needs to be translated! YOU are the one who is “interpreting” me, layering meaning into otherwise plain speech, and therefore concluding that I am not being clear.

Let me say it a slightly different way: you made the connection that my description of A date rape really meant “ALL DATE RAPE” and I simply lacked the vocabulary to do so, forcing you to struggle to find clarity in my fuzzy communication.

If you and others would stop digging around to find obscurities you think I must have meant, you’ll find me just as clear as Nzinga and others have found me.

Again, the problem lies with you.

127

I think if you had said this from the start, you would not have gotten all the heat you did. This is much more clear, and also makes it clear that you think YOU would be pathetic if traumatized, and YOU would feel ridiculous if you carried this around like a cross to bear. But not that other people are pathetic for feeling victimized in a date rape scenario.

I have had some similar experiences. I do not believe I am a victim. I take responsibility for putting myself in those situations. But I was also an adult in my 20’s. I think if those situations had happened when I was 13 or 14, VERY different.

128

Yes!

I wholeheartedly concur.

129

Thanks for the clarification, Stoid. I figured that’s what you were going for, but it seems like people are more concerned with wording that could be misconstrued than what the actual point was.

130

Yeah, it kindas does, doesn’t it?

And thank YOU! :wink:

131

I haven’t been following/responding since I TRY not to browse here at work. Also, as I posted, I am well aware that I am likely less than objective on this type of issue, but not really for the reason it sounds like–I volunteer my legal services to women who are beaten/abused/raped and need things I can help with like restraining order etc.

So, I was nodding my head in agreement with the OP until the part about “date rape.” It read how it read, and I still read it the way I think it was originally intended.

I find that the OP’s statements were offensive as set forth in the OP. The clarifications thereafter ring hollow to me. Further, the OP’s general clarity in other threads has been less than ideal. Had 126 been the OP, I don’t think I’d have been offended.

That said, understandably, if someone wants to reply to this, that’s fine, but since I do realize that my objectivity might be clouded for the reasons above, I am bowing out of this one. I will read responses and do my damndest NOT to reply as I don’t want to get my licks in and then run.

132

You kinda rock. :slight_smile:

And I take issue with using the word “deserving”, especially that “slutty” = “deserving”. NEVER in a million years. Especially since my own stepmother is a prostitute and I know lots of prostitutes and I’m the first one to tell you, no, get up in your shit and let you know in no uncertain fucking terms: YES, PROSTITUTES CAN BE RAPED, ASSHOLE. (And that was not actually directed at you, obviously, since I just told you you rock. It’s just for dramatic effect.) Consent is fucking consent, the basis for the consent has nothing to do with it, and a prostitute still has every right that every woman has to say no and if a man forces her anyway, she’s been raped. It’s exactly the same crime, goddammit.

I’m a tad touchy about it because I know better than most people exactly how prostitutes are considered less important, worthy, deserving or having fewer rights. The police department has an acronym for prostitute murders that I can’t remember exactly at the moment, but it’s something like NHI for “No Humans Involved”.

Having had that little ranty moment, my reference to sluttiness is not about “deserving”, it’s about general behavior itself. I was fucking almost anyone who asked, I was putting myself in ridiculously dangerous situations, I was being very indifferent to myself and that behavior was irresponsible and contributed directly to finding me in that situation. I have to take responsibility for that, and I do. At the risk of being run over again, I don’t agree that a woman walking stark naked through a group of drunk hig school football players has zero responsibility if she ends up raped. She doesn’t DESERVE it, but she was fucking stupid to put herself in that situation and she needs to recognize that, hello! Again, it’s bizarre to me to treat women and rape like some rareified category of specialness where she just has no responsibility to do anything at all to protect herself and everything she does is ok and any results that aren’t lovely are just shocking!

Women need to be reasonable about taking care of themselves and their safety and not pushing situations to the outer limits and then end up shocked when bad things happen as a result.

By way of example, I theoretically agree with the idea that a woman should be able to say no at any point and have her “no” respected. But I also live in the real world. So if I think “no” is a possibility, I dont’ wait until we’re naked and his dick is half an inch from my vagina to decide, and if I do and he doesn’t back off, I don’t really think he’s entirely to blame there. In other words: don’t be stupid. Don’t participate in creating rape-friendly situations.

133

You have zero basis for deciding that I mean something other than what I say I mean, and the fact that you choose to do so anyway is yours to own.

134

What utter BS, aside from the prostitution part to fit - is this thread just a brain dump for you or are you going to start making sense soon?

Now you are arguing (again apparently) that a girl who gets raped bears some culpability to the degree that she placed herself in a situation where a rapist would take the opportunity?

How is that not “blaming the victim”?

And to the degree she is culpable in her rape, a criminal offense, is she going to jail too?

This is precisely the nonsensical sort of projecting on others to make you feel safe and secure about being raped that started me off in the first place.

There are no situations where if a girl or woman is raped, it is her fault, because being raped is something she should have recognized as a possibility.

Or to put it another way, there are not times or places where a guy is free to rape whoever blows by in the wind.

If you can provide specific examples and reasons otherwise, I am open to learning your idea of how society and/or the law work or ought to work. It should be fascinating!

135

There is no gray area when it comes to 30 year olds fucking 15 year olds, no sliding scale, no “details” that matter.

This game can be played both ways. What if the girl is 14? 13? Where do you draw the line? Anywhere you draw the line you can always use the “one minute before midnight” hypothetical, so it’s not a very useful or significant objection. Of course the line has to be somewhat arbitrary, but the alternative is open season on children, and I’d rather tilt that line in favor of the children rather than the predators.

136

I’m not going to bother citing something that everybody knows is true.

137

We already went down this path in this thread, and you conceded in a response to me that there are “details” that matter, why the backsliding?

138

So you got nothing except that you are alleging your opinion is conventional wisdom, and therefor true? Got it, especially the “you got nothing” part.

139

I don’t agree that this was clear at all. I think it was very clear that she was trying to demean the idea that date rape is the same as stranger rape.

She said it wasn’t as bad and she put “date rape” in scare quotes, which, again, implies that she is demeaning its classification as rape.

She had no responsibility in her own rape. None.

It does not make a difference in the nature of the crime and the traum,a to the victim.

Being able to prove it happened has nothing at all tp do with the conversation. We’re talking about the impact of the crime on the victim, not whether it can be prosecuted. We know that most rape is never prosecuted. That doesn’t have anything to do with the damage it does to victims or how people should feel about it.

140

Missed the edit window on #137.

For the example I am referring to, see post #73 on this thread.