Last week, Ta-Nehisi Coates blogged about the following excerpts from Bristol Palin’s memoir:

Bristol proceeds to down wine cooler after wine cooler, as she “slowly surrendered to their woozy charms.” (Pg. 3) Levi keeps replacing her finished wine coolers with new ones, and soon Bristol hits “that awful wall” that takes her from a “happy buzz” into “the dark abyss of drunkenness.” (Pg. 3) The last thing she remembers is sitting by the fire and laughing with friends, and doesn’t remember waking up in her tent the next morning “with something obviously askew.”

Bristol awakens in her tent, with no recollection of the night before. She looks over and sees Levi’s empty sleeping bag right beside hers, and hears Levi and his friends “outside the tent laughing.” (Pg. 3) Bristol quickly texts her friend to get over to the tent, and she immediately pops over and tells her, “You definitely had sex with Levi.” (Pg. 4)

Coates asks the question, “Isn’t that rape?” In a follow-up post, Coates adds that the implication of nonconsent comes from another quote:

“Suddenly, I wondered why it was called ‘losing your virginity,’” Bristol writes. “Because it felt more like it had been stolen.”

Um … from my reading, the “implication” of nonconsent comes from the fact that she describes being intoxicated to the point where she couldn’t even remember the events of the previous night.

Naturally, the very first comment to Coates’ article accuses Palin of lying. So damn predictable.

I don’t know what happened between Palin and Johnston. But I do know the scenario described here is a common one. Using alcohol to lower a woman’s inhibitions is a frequently-used tactic. It was a freaking punchline in Friends. “Hey, let’s get you another cocktail!”

Let me put this as clearly as I can. If consent is not given freely, then it’s not consent. If you need to get her drunk, it’s not consent. If you need to threaten her, it’s not consent. If you need to slip something into her drink, it’s not consent.

If the other person doesn’t consent? That’s rape.

The situation Bristol Palin describes? That is not consent. And unfortunately, it’s very common.

So if you’re planning to get someone drunk in the hopes of “getting lucky,” you’re not planning to get laid. You’re planning to commit rape.

Any questions?

Bill Deresiewicz wrote a piece for The Huffington Post about Pride & Prejudice: Hidden Lusts [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] by Mitzi Szereto, described as a pornographic edition of Jane Austen’s work and another entry in the ever-growing list of mashups that began with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Pop quiz: what’s wrong with the following sentence, from the very first paragraph of Deresiewicz’s article?

“There was no shortage of kinky sex in the novels of Austen’s time — adultery, voyeurism, incest, rape.”

If Bob beats Joe to death with a baseball bat, that’s a crime. We call it murder or homicide. We don’t call it a sport just because Bob happened to use a bat. So why the hell do people have such a hard time understanding that rape =/= sex?

It seems like a little thing, I know. A careless word choice, either because Deresiewicz doesn’t know any better or he just wasn’t paying attention. It’s not like he’s actually committing or advocating rape in any way, right?

But the little things matter. The more often we suggest that rape is just “kinky sex,” the easier it becomes to blur that line. We end up with phrases like “gray rape.” We make it easier to excuse rapists, and to question and challenge whether someone was really raped.

Repeat a lie often enough, and many people will begin to believe it. Could we please stop repeating this one?

There are only a few days left in the fundraiser for rape crisis centers. We’ve raised more than a thousand dollars so far, and many of your donations were matched, which raises the total even more. So far, I’m giving away an ARC of Snow Queen’s Shadow, a copy of Goblin Tales, and a cameo role in Libriomancer. If we pass $1500, I’ll throw in all three of the princess books (autographed, of course).

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Almost every time I post about rape, I hear from people who believe I’m exaggerating. That rape isn’t as widespread as people say. That they don’t know anyone who’s been raped, and can’t won’t believe it’s a real problem.

Unfortunately, that sort of attitude leads to stories like this one in the Denver Post.

“The victim in a Washington state sex assault now linked to a 32-year-old Lakewood man was charged with false reporting and paid a $500 fine in 2008 because police didn’t believe her story. Authorities … reopened their case and reimbursed the woman after Colorado detectives found pictures of the victim on a camera belonging to Marc O’Leary, an Army veteran charged in two similar cases in Golden and Westminster.”

Here’s another example from the Pittsburg Post-Gazette. Sara Reedy was raped at gunpoint in July of 2004. When she reported it to the police, she was arrested and spent five days in jail.

“Then, in August 2005, a month before she was to stand trial on the charges, Wilber Cyrus Brown II of Dauphin County was caught by police in the act of raping a woman at a convenience store in Jefferson County. During a police interrogation, he admitted to a series of sexual assaults, including the assault on Ms. Reedy.”

Both of the above links are from ginmar.

I’ve written about false rape reports before. Are we really so determined to deny and minimize rape that we’d rather arrest the victims? I do believe there are police officers and detectives who do everything they can to catch rapists and protect the people. Unfortunately, there are others who seem more interested in protecting rapists and punishing victims for daring to speak out.

Check out these excerpts from a New York Times article last month.

• “[H]ow could [these] young men have been drawn into such an act?”
• “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.”
• Residents in the neighborhood … said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s.
• “Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?”

The victim in question? An 11-year-old girl, allegedly gang-raped by eighteen suspects who range in age from middle school students to a 27-year-old. Yet it was the men who were “drawn into” committing this crime. The victim dressed old for her age … or maybe it’s the mother’s fault. There’s plenty of blame for everyone except the people who actually chose to rape. Much like a case in Australia where “a man who had a baby with his 11-year-old stepdaughter has walked free after the judge ruled that the young girl was the sexual aggressor.”

It’s everywhere.

• More than 1,000 young American women have been raped or sexually assaulted in the last decade while serving as Peace Corps volunteers in foreign countries.
• University of the Pacific in Stockton “acknowledged it engaged in ‘victim bashing’ to defend itself…” in a 2008 rape case involving three basketball players.
• Today a female member of the military is more likely to be raped than to be killed by enemy fire. She is twice as likely to become a victim of sexual assault as a service-member than as a civilian.
• Over 100 US male soldiers have claimed they were sexually assaulted in 2010 while serving in the military. The Pentagon has warned the number of victims is likely to be much higher due to fear of reporting.

These are just some of the links and stories I’ve come across in the past few weeks. This is why I hope you’ll consider donating to RAINN, your local rape crisis center, or another organization working to support survivors and end rape.

Donations as of 4/30/11: $1553

April is sexual assault awareness month.

Last year, I ran a fundraiser that raised more than $1500 in donations to various rape crisis centers. I would love to see if we can break $2000 this year.

Michigan law appears to prohibit raffles, so I’ll once again be using the unraffle model, giving away an advance review copy of The Snow Queen’s Shadow [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy].

I am asking you to make a donation, either to RAINN or to your local rape crisis center. RAINN has announced that donations made at http://www.rainn.org/mickfoley during the month of April will be doubled, meaning your donation goes twice as far. Many places will also allow you to donate online. But donations are not required to enter the drawing.

To enter, all you have to do is e-mail endrape@jimchines.com. If you do make a donation, please mention that in the e-mail and let me know how much you gave. I don’t care if it’s $1 or $1000, and it makes no difference to the drawing, but I’ll be tracking and posting how much we’ve raised.

The winner will be drawn at random from all entries on April 30. One e-mail per person, please.

For every $500 raised (up to $5000), I’ll throw in an additional drawing for other prizes.

• First Bonus Prize ($500): An autographed copy of Goblin Tales
• Second Bonus Prize ($1000): A cameo role in Libriomancer
• Third Bonus Prize ($1500): The first three books in my princess series (autographed, of course!)

If you’d like to spread the word, you can copy and paste the following into your blog, which will add a smaller version of the image above and a link back to the original post. Please feel free to modify as needed, and thank you.

<a href="http://www.jimchines.com/2011/04/endrape-2/"><p align="center"><img src="http://www.jimchines.com/Pics/SQ%20Rape%20-%20Sm.jpg"></p> <p align="center">Support rape crisis centers and enter to win an advance copy of The Snow Queen’s Shadow, by Jim C. Hines.</p></a>

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A few statistics:

The Sexual Victimization of College Women, Page 10: “Over the course of a college career — which now lasts an average of 5 years — the percentage of completed or attempted rape victimization among women in higher educational institutions might climb to between one-fifth and one-quarter.”

World Health Organization report on Violence Against Women: “In a random sample of 420 women in Toronto, Canada, 40% reported at least one episode of forced sexual intercourse since the age of 16.”

Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey, page 3: “1 of 6 U.S. women … experienced an attempted or completed rape.” (14.8% reported completed, 2.8% reported attempted only.)

I want to preface this post by saying everyone messes up.  We all say things without thinking.  We say things that are hurtful, offensive, or just plain stupid.  To me, what’s important is what happens next.  Do we try to listen and understand and decide whether or not to be more mindful in the future?  Do we get defensive?  Do we go on the attack?

Last week, Tarol Hunt (creator of the Goblins webcomic) posted on Twitter:

I’ve gotten laid before, but I’ve never gotten laid using only the power of hypnosis. But one day I will. Oh yes, I will.

As most anyone could have predicted, there was backlash to the idea — even in jest – that gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to have sex without having to worry about that silly old consent business?  Because a disgusting number of people genuinely believe consent is nothing but an obstacle to be overcome by any means necessary.

Hunt followed up by explaining how it was just a joke, and you can’t really hypnotize someone to force them to have sex against their will.  Also, “…hypnosis + sex = rape. This is true in the same way that killing NPCs in WoW = murder.”

My clueless.  Let me show you it.

The thing is, pretty much everyone got that this was meant as a joke.  I don’t think anyone believed Hunt was seriously planning to become a hypnorapist.  The fact that it’s a joke isn’t the point.

From what I can tell, he did start listening and trying to understand.  He apologized to anyone he offended in a blog post a few days later, and acknowledged that he was being insensitive.  But he also kept up the defensive “no person on the planet has ever been forced into sex via hypnosis” bit, and brought up questions like why his hypnosis joke was triggering but not the rapist character from his comic?  (Answer: the rapist character doesn’t make rape into a joke, or feed into the attitude that consent is an irksome obstacle to be overcome.)

His second blog post suggests, to me, that he’s working on it.  He’s still stumbling, but I think he’s trying to listen and understand.

Penny Arcade posted a comic last August in which they referenced slaves “being raped to sleep by Dickwolves.”  Once again, there was backlash.  Once again, the immediate response was, “It’s just a joke,” with an added helping of “You’re stupid to be offended” as seen in their follow-up comic: It’s possible you read our cartoon and became a rapist as a direct result…

They didn’t get it.  Unlike Hunt, Penny Arcade had zero interest in understanding why people were upset.  Instead, they promptly turned around and began selling Dickwolves T-shirts and pennants.  Essentially, they declared open season on those who felt offended by humor about rape, and their supporters gleefully jumped into the fray.

Folks like TeamRape on Twitter were upset that the mean people were trying to censor Penny Arcade’s Freedom of Speech.  (A PA blog post notes that this is bullshit.  “[S]he is not censoring us, she has not stripped away our freedom of speech.”)  DickWolvington (account now deleted) attacked rape survivors, demanding proof they were really raped.  PA continued to make a joke of it all, on Twitter and elsewhere.  There’s more.  Timeline here if you’re interested.

I don’t believe PA intended to offend or hurt anyone with the original comic.  But once people began saying, “Hey, this isn’t cool,” PA’s response was a big old “Fuck you.”  Having been told that people were upset by the comic, PA deliberately set out to do it again.

Everyone messes up.  Everyone, sooner or later, says something that offends another person.  When that happens, you have choices.  You can assume that person is an idiot who just likes being offended, and mock them for it.  Or you can try to listen and understand why this person took offense.  Maybe you’ll agree with them, maybe you won’t.

Personally, I find Hunt’s “joke” more distasteful than PA’s original comic.  But PA’s response has been despicable, ignorant, and deliberately hurtful.

If you’re talking about rape, even as a joke, and someone confronts you about it, you might consider:

• Rape is one of the most common and most underreported crimes.
• Most people don’t choose to take offense just for the fun of it.
• Our society treats rape survivors like shit.

To Penny Arcade, I say no, your comic did not magically transform readers into rapists.  But your actions did encourage people to mock and disbelieve rape survivors.  You encouraged people to joke about rape, about the concerns of people who have been raped and people fighting to end it.  You belittled people who are damn tired of rape being treated as nothing but a joke.

Thanks for making things that much harder for rape survivors, and for those of us doing our damnedest to try to put an end to rape.

I’m talking about sexual assault and the coverage of rape in the media.  Both the description of rape and the victim-blaming in the reporting are likely to be anger-inducing and/or triggering for some readers.

Shadesong pointed out two very different news stories about CBS reporter Lara Logan, who was separated from her crew and repeatedly raped during the protests in Egypt. The difference between the CBS News report and the LA Weekly report is obvious from the images chosen for each story.

For CBS, Logan was one of their own.  Not a sexual object but a human being, a colleague.  They present the facts in a concise article.  Logan was reporting on the celebration in Tahrir Square.  She was separated from her crew.  She was raped and beaten before being rescued by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.  The story concludes with, “There will be no further comment from CBS News and correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time.”

Contrast this with Simone Wilson’s “report” in LA Weekly. “South African TV journalist Lara Logan, known for her shocking good looks and ballsy knack for pushing her way to the heart of the action, was brutally and repeatedly raped…”

Wilson emphasises Logan’s appearance, calling her “the gutsy stunner” or referring to “her Hollywood good looks,” while at the same time sensationalizing/sexualizing the rape with phrasing like, “…Egyptian protesters apparently consummated their newfound independence by sexually assaulting the blonde reporter.”  (Emphasis added.)

Of course, it was really Logan’s fault, because she should have known better, right?  Wilson brings up an Esquire interview in which Logan was called “insane” for wanting to return to Egypt.  (Um … she’s a reporter.  This is her job.  Would a male reporter be similarly criticized for choosing to report in Egypt?)

No report of rape would be complete without an attack on the victim’s sex life.  The longest quote in Wilson’s article is reserved, not for anything to do with rape, but for an excerpt from a New York Post article from 2008 about Logan’s sexual history in which she’s called a “sultry” “home-wrecker,” a lurid piece which sounds more like the setup for an erotic romance than actual reporting.

The pathetic thing is how normal this is.  This is how rapes are reported in this country.  Sensationalized and sexualized, deliberately playing into readers’ rape fantasies.  (Why else would Wilson include the following quote from Mofo Politics: “OMG if I were her captors and there were no sanctions for doing so? I would totally rape her.”)

This is the story we tell, again and again — that rape is about sexually attractive women getting what they deserve, for being sluts or for being unavailable or for just being where women don’t belong.  This is how we treat survivors of rape, blaming them and sexualizing/fetishizing what they’ve been through.  This is how we encourage rapists, fantasizing and justifying the act of rape.

The next time someone asks what “rape culture” means, tell them to go read LA Weekly.

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ETA: For those wondering if there’s anything they can do, Laura Anne Gilman writes:

I just wrote a rather scathing letter directly to the reporter, via the newspaper’s website.

“…Well played. I’m sure you’ll get a Pulitizer for that. Or maybe a Penthouse award. It’s clear which one you were going for…”

I encourage others to do the same. And cc the publisher of the newspaper while you’re at it.

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, was arrested in Britain on charges of rape and sexual coercion for a warrant issued in Sweden.  Given the timing of the arrest, coming so soon after WikiLeaks posted a large number of U.S. diplomatic cables, combined with the fact that rape charges are so often disbelieved anyway … well, it’s no surprise that the discussion has gotten ugly, and fast.

A Slate article quotes a Washington Post blog, claiming that the actual charge is “for violating an obscure Swedish law against having sex without a condom.”

Right.  In Sweden, it’s illegal to have sex without a condom.  This is why the Swedes died out after a single generation, and their land was immediately colonized by sentient ninja velociraptors.

The Swedes are making it up as they go along, proclaims another news story, describing the charges as “absurd” and talking about how the victims went to the police for advice, “a technique in Sweden enabling citizens to avoid just punishment for making false complaints.”

I’m having a hard time finding many official documents or sources about the case.  It’s getting buried under the conspiracy theories and the attacks against Sweden and/or the alleged victims.  But according to a report by The Press Association:

[T]he first complainant, Miss A, said she was victim of “unlawful coercion” on the night of August 14 in Stockholm … Assange is accused of using his body weight to hold her down in a sexual manner.

The second charge alleged Assange “sexually molested” Miss A by having sex with her without a condom when it was her “express wish” one should be used.  The third charge claimed Assange “deliberately molested” Miss A on August 18 “in a way designed to violate her sexual integrity”. The fourth charge accused Assange of having sex with a second woman, Miss W, on August 17 without a condom while she was asleep at her Stockholm home.

I’m neither judge nor jury, and I can’t say what actually happened.  But it strikes me as rather telling that all this outrage about condoms completely ignores the parts of the charges where he allegedly used force to hold one victim down, and assaulted another in her sleep.

As for the condom issue, let me put this as clearly as I can: consent for one action does not imply consent for another.  If I consent to kissing, it doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to grope me.  If I consent to mutual masturbation, it doesn’t mean I consent to intercourse.  If I consent to intercourse with a condom, it does not mean I consent to intercourse without one.

Meaning, if Miss A did consent to sex with a condom, but Assange didn’t use one, then he was committing a sexual act against her which she had not consented to.  Remind me, what do we call it when one person commits a sexual act against another without the other person’s consent?

There may be other issues here, political and otherwise.  And if I’m understanding the chronology correctly, Sweden didn’t do itself any favors by flipflopping on whether or not to charge Assange with rape.

However, I’m getting awfully damn tired of yet another round of Smear The Rape Victims.  Of the assumption that women lie.  Of the myth that if you tweet about hanging out with cool people at a party, then nothing that follows could possibly be “real” rape. (After all, you went to the party, right?  Doesn’t that equal consent to be assaulted?)¹

I don’t know if Assange is guilty or not.  But I’m disgusted with how we so often and so quickly leap to attack and condemn the alleged victims in cases of rape.

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Two things led to this particular post. The first was a guest essay on Jeff Vandermeer’s blog by Jaymee Goh, about Enthusiastic Consent.  The second was an article published in Cosmopolitan a while back about “Gray Rape.”

I don’t like the phrase gray rape, and the Cosmo article pisses me off from page one with “gray areas” like:

“No. Stop,” she said softly — too softly, she later told herself. When he ignored her and entered her anyway, she tensed up and tried to go numb until it was over … “It fell into a gray area,” she said recently. “Maybe I wasn’t forceful enough in saying I didn’t want it.”

and:

When [Laura] was a sophomore, she met a fellow student at a frat party. They drank, they flirted, and then he invited her to his apartment. There, they kissed for a while, and things got more heated until Laura realized that he was taking off her underwear and entering her. She was drunk, but she says she was aware enough to say no. When he ignored her, she froze — a common response, much like Alicia’s — and he continued to have sex with her.

There’s no gray here.  This is rape.  It does illustrate a common reaction to being raped, however, which is to blame yourself, and to question what you could have done differently.  It’s a reaction our culture is all too happy to encourage, emphasising the victim’s supposed responsibility for someone else’s choice to rape her (or him).

What about those situations where the victim didn’t clearly say no?  This used to come up a lot, along with false accusations, when I spoke to men about rape.  Is there a difference between rape and a misunderstanding?

Take the Kobe Bryant case back in 2003.  After the alleged victim dropped the criminal case, Bryant was quoted as saying:

Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did…

If one person believes an encounter is consensual and the other doesn’t, you have a problem.  Consent has to come from both parties.  If it’s one-sided, it’s not consent; it’s rape.

But if you didn’t intend to rape someone, and you believed they were okay with it, then it’s not your fault, right?  Just like if you didn’t intend to run someone over with your car, then they won’t really end up in the hospital with internal bleeding.

Wait, the voices say.  Isn’t it her responsibility to say no and make it clear she’s not interested?  Is it fair to blame the guy if someone’s sending mixed signals?

This seems like a duh moment to me, but the phrase “mixed signals” means the signals are mixed.  There’s no clear message as to what the person wants … meaning you have to find out.  With as much miscommunication as you get in most relationships, don’t you think it’s a good idea to make sure you’re both on the same page?

When working with rape survivors, I talked to a number of people who had frozen when they realized what was happening.  Sometimes these were people who had been raped before.  Freezing is a survival response to a threat.  It does not equal consent.

So to everyone worrying about “misunderstandings,” you’ve got a choice.  You can choose to make sure your partner enthusiastically consents to what you’re doing, or you can choose not to.  Why wouldn’t you make sure?  I can think of only two reasons.

1. You’re uncomfortable talking about it.  If that’s the case — if you’re not comfortable talking about what you’re doing — then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it?
2. You’re worried they’ll say no.  Meaning you’re not sure they want this, and you’d rather risk committing rape than risk asking and being told no.

Discussion welcome, as always.