Rape, Yes, Yes, Yes, um. No. Rape?

Great Debates
1

Hi.

I like you.

Thanks for coming to visit my site. It sure is nice to be a teenager.

You sure are fine looking. How about you stay around. I am sure I could be real nice to you. Later we’ll have cake! You like cake don’t you?

Here, you don’t mind if I enjoy the frosting off your piece of cake. It’s my favorite. You will get some later.

Honest. I would not promise you cake, eat all the good parts and then leave you without any.

Let’s have a couple of beers, too. I know we are only teens, but we both like beer and cake and we’ll both have some.

There. See your cake is right here. Having trouble with the fork? I don’t mind. After all we both had too much beer. I want us both to have and enjoy the cake. Got that cake almost to your mouth?

Well, you should be going now. You need to go home.

.

.

.
The next day-- “Hello, California states attorney? I want to report a guest of mine stole a piece of cake from me.”

So, what am I talking about? This case:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/817961/posts

Personally, I think the guy did do something wrong and should be punished. But the girl did wrong too.

Here is what the guy did wrong.

He went out with a girl without proper morals.

He drank adult beverages without adult responsibility.

He didn’t have the sort of extreme maturity to stop that a real man wouad have. This is why sex is an adult activity

What did she do wrong?

She went out with a guy hithout proper morals.

She drank.

She did not know how to handle sex as an adult should. She did not say no at the right time or with proper conviction and firm action.
I suppose if either of them wants to press for justice they should both get it. She promised cake and did not deliver. That is breach of contract. He took cake that was not completely in his possession.
I say make him go 6 months without cake so that he appreciates it enough to act responsibly if he expects to get it again.

Let her serve cake to anyone who wants it for the same 6 months. If they are fat, old and ugly so much the better. (not thinking of myself personally, though I might qualify:) Oh, and she is not to have any of the cake herself. She can only serve it.

2

when he comes back tell him to bring pie

3

What constitutes “proper morals?”

Should the law state that any teenage girl who Boxer does not believe has “proper morals” is fair game for rape?

What constitutes saying no at the “right time?”

What constitutes saying no with the “right conviction?”

Should the law stipulate that if a girl does not say no at the right time or with the right conviction, then the male in this situation is entitled to force her to continue having sex.

4

They were juveniles and cannot be held to a contract. (If they had been older, I would have come up with something else.)

5

Bah. I wish you have just skipped the cake metaphor entirely. It serves no purpose, and serves to confuse the issue - rape and sexuality are fairly unique, and care should be made not to compare them to simple property theft.

In addition, I thought your monologue coloured in a lot of facts that weren’t given. There is no indication that she promised sex (er, cake?), nor that any dialogue took place prior to the act itself. The article you cited is pretty bare bones - most of your imaginary conversation must be a guess on your part. Seems disingenuous.

By all accounts, she did deliver sex - regardless of whether she promised to or not. And by all accounts, she was punished for her irresponsibility - by being raped.

6

I’m appalled at the blatant gender bias of this statement.

7

Proper morals are acting like you would expect your daughter/son to act.

Of course the lack of proper morals does not automatically make rape fair game. In fact the definition of rape is what this case is all about.

Saying no at the right time is before you have consented to sex, taken all your clothes off, and performed the sex act for several minutes…90 seconds before finishing.

The right conviction includes not just saying “I should go. I need to go home.” but saying “Stop. I do NOT want to do this. Stop right now.” It would also include actually moving away from the person instead of continuing to lay still under him.
There is more to the case that I saw in the TV report where the reporter questioned both of the lawyers in the case.

Again, I am not saying he is right, just that she is also wrong, perhaps as culpable as he is.

8

Older or younger has nothing to do with it. I already said that they were not old/mature enough to be engaging in the behaviour at all. That was a basic part of the problem.

I am not talking about a legal contract, I am just using the terminology of law to express their social relationship.

9

I remember a few years ago, I was watching television and that liberal bitch from “Beverly Hills, 90210” comes on. I believe her name is Gabrielle Carteris. I’m probable wrong on the spelling.

Anyway, it was a show about rape. This dimbulb comes on camera, wearing a short skirt and strutting around like “look at me”, and wearing those fake phony eyeglasses like she was trying to add 10 points to her IQ. So she goes on to say that a naked chick should be able to rub her naked body all over a guy, getting him hot and bothered, and if the guy starts to initiate sex, the chick has the right to say “no”. If the guy continues, it’s “rape”.

10

Let me ask this: If a couple are in the middle of sex, and the place starts to burn down (the fire alarm goes off and the smell of smoke starts to fill the room) can the guy stop right away? Or would he keep on going as the house burned down around them?

If a couple is in the middle of sex, and their 5 year old kid walks in the room and says, “What are you doing, mommy and daddy?”, will the guy stop right then, or will he let the kid watch as he finishes up?

In most cases, I think that the guy would be able to stop.

But if a woman says “no”, all of a sudden he can’t stop? Won’t stop?

Granted, it’s a pretty low trick for a woman to play (if indeed she is “playing a trick”) to wait until the middle of the act and then say she’s changed her mind. But still—the guy can stop. And unless he wants to be a convicted rapist, perhaps he’d better stop. It isn’t going to kill him.

11

Are you saying it’s not rape?

12

To me, this is the key. The obligation to say ‘No’ in a way that leaves no room for doubt is just as important as the obligation to stop once your partner asks you to.

13

Boxer (and, I see upon preview, cckerbero) touched upon what I find most disturbing about the court’s ruling in this case:

The girl never told him to stop.

“I should go. I really need to go,” and “If you really cared about me you wouldn’t be doing this” do not equal “stop.”

You’ll get no argument from me that this was bad sex. Why would a guy want to be with a girl who was that unenthusiastic, even if the sex could be construed as consentual?

From the reading I did on this case from another news report on it, the boy’s response to the girl’s statements was to the effect of, “Give me a minute to get my rocks off.”

Cringe-worthy? Yeah. Obviously bad sex? Yeah. Rape? Questionable at best.

Read the girl’s statements again. Could they not be construed by a horny teenage boy as, “I’m losing my enthusiasm for this,” to which he might not respond in his mind, “I better hurry up and get off, then?” As opposed to him thinking, “If I don’t stop this very second, I will be raping her?”

According to the article I read, more than one boy said that she appeared to be enthusiatic to the attention of multiple boys, before the intercourse occurred. What’s the point in bringing that up? Because it provides evidence to the boy that what he is doing is not rape, because she never told him to stop what he was doing.

My concerns about this are very similar to those we debated in an interesting thread about sexual harrassment in the workplace a couple of years ago.

If we are going to live in a society where boys can get into as much trouble as this teen-ager did over this muddled scenario, I think it should at the very least be incumbent upon the “rape-ee” to give a clear, unambiguous, “Stop, I don’t want to do this.”

14

Here is a much more detailed story on the circumstances surrounding the “rape,” and the court’s ruling.

15

Well, I agree that there is some ambiguity in whether the girl’s statements clearly communicated her withdrawal of consent, but that would be a finding of fact for the jury, woudl it not? (Personally, I think it is pretty reasonable to assume her intentions were clear, but lacking full context it is difficult to be certain.)

The priniple behind the ruling, though, is clear, if consent is withdrawn then you should withdraw, too. That works for me.

16

I have to agree with Milossarian here. How is “I need to go home” clear withdrawal of consent?

To me, Laura’s plea says, “I think we should finish up really soon” – not “Stop.” I don’t think this is a case of rape at all.

And what about the reverse situation? What if a guy withdraws consent during sex, and the girl refuses to get off of him? Is that not rape?

17

I hate articles like this. They don’t give enough information. The girl says she told him to stop, and the boy says she didn’t. We have two conflicting stories, and the whole thing hinges on whether she clearly told him to stop. Maybe I’ll try to look up this case to see what really happened. You can’t tell anything from that lame AP wire story.

18

Hermann Cheruscan
Why is this so hard to understand? Sex should be between two *consenting * adults, if one of the participants, at any time, says stop and the other continues then the other person is commiting rape.

(to the general populace)
For god sake, its just sex. You’re not going to die if you dont cum. As yosemitebabe pointed out, you can stop if you really want to (ie. fire), its just that you choose not to. You might be pissed off, you might never speak to the other person again, you may go into the bathroom and have a wank but if you **make the choice **to continue after your parter has said no then you are a rapist.

Now, addressing the OP. I dont think that in this case the woman has not made it clear the she wanted him to stop. The words “No” and “Stop” are pretty clear but “I need to go home” is IMHO not strong enough to convict a person for rape.

19

Not according to the dissenting Justice:

**I believe in this girl’s mind, she truly believes she withdrew consent. I don’t believe women typically go through the trauma of a rape trial if they do not believe they’ve been wronged. I also believe from the facts offered that it’s plausible that the guy did NOT share that perception.

A distressing, sad little case indeed.

20

“Woman” was probably not the best word here in hindsight as they were only 17.

Perhaps this illustrates the need for more/better education programs for young adults that make the obligations and legal consequences regarding sex (as cckerberos pointed out) absolutely clear.