Lol, okay not everyone, but a good chunk of people are discussing what really constitutes rape over at Thought Catalog. The article has been shared over 350K times!
Are those stories true? Actually, they are. And neither of them were rape, at least not to any sane person. The first guy, John (yes, that really is his name) was taking things slow with me because he was in a guy quandary. Although he wasn’t a “hang out in the backyard” friend of my older brother, they had a lot of mutual friends, and he was skirting awfully close to the “don’t fuck my sister unless you are serious” rule.
I grew up in small town and my brothers were known for being “protective” of their sister, although they had little reason to be. I went on my first “date”, to a movie, the summer between Grade 8 and Grade 9 and that first date lasted until about halfway through Grade 12. I bypassed the entire drama of highschool dating by having the same boyfriend pretty much the entire time. And here’s a true confession – I wonder what you will all make of this. The relationship ended amicably and we remained friends, because my boyfriend was finally ready to admit he preferred the company of other men. Not only did I bypass the drama of teenage dating, I bypassed any potential sexual pressure because he really was more interested in being my friend and weaving daisies in my hair.
My brothers like to joke that I was so appealing as a girlfriend, I made my boyfriend gay, but the reality is much more harsh, I’m afraid. Most people were incredibly homophobic. I probably saved his life, although I was not aware I was doing so. I certainly saved him from years of torment, and sad to say, that torment is still visited on individuals who are open about their sexuality during adolescence. He really was a dream highschool boyfriend, though. The point of that story is that by the time I was dating John, my hormones were raging and I was ready.
I also really loved him.
John was, and still is, a terrific man. I have, on occasion, stalked him on Facebook, where I see images of him and his wife and their four children. They seem genuinely, deeply happy, and I am happy for them. He really did propose to me, and I turned him down because I thought we were too young. I bought the “go to college and find yourself – marriage is a trap and children suck” feminist rah rah rah you go girl Koolaid. That day in his backyard was not our first time, but he was twitchy as hell about my brothers knowing the extent of our relationship and it was the middle of the day! He wasn’t thrilled with the idea of his brothers showing up either. But I really did jump him and after that, we became very seriously involved, leading to the proposal. I’m not generally aggressive, but sometimes, especially when it’s unexpected, that can be fun!
The second guy, Ryan, is exactly as I described him and we played a mutual “you are gonna be late game”. I would get out of the shower and he would drag me into the bedroom, despite my protests that I had to go to class/work/the library/whatever. It was all by mutual arrangement. If I really was running late, especially for work, he wouldn’t even think of playing the game, and neither would I. As I wrote in the comments at Thought Catalog, those games allowed me all the thrills of being slutty without actually being a slut. I met Ryan when we both auditioned for a play a few weeks after we started college, and we dated all the way through college and stayed together for several months after graduation. Sounds obnoxious, but it’s true. Same guy all the way through highschool, same guy all the way through college. I think growing up in a house full of men gave me great instincts. I picked terrific men because that is all I’ve ever really known.
Ryan also proposed but I did not like his inherited wealth. I was seriously concerned that he would not be able to handle the sacrifices of parenthood since making sacrifices or doing without was not something he had ever really experienced. I was very, very wrong. His sister passed away about a year after we parted, leaving her two small children behind her, and their father had mental health issues that did not allow him to be a sole care-giver for them. Ryan sold his store and moved into his sister’s house and became the full time caregiver for his niece and nephew, who will have very few, if any memories of their life without Uncle Daddy. I guess I should have trusted my instincts.
No real harm done, though, as I went for a hat trick and met my husband the first day of the MBA program we were both enrolled in and here we are three children and sixteen years later. And yes, he gets “raped” the same way Ryan and John did. Not often. As he might say “not often enough” because well-timed and unexpected aggression can be quite … stimulating.
I honestly feel sorry for men and women on college campuses today, denied the ability to explore their sexuality and personalities in the way I was able to do because rape hysteria didn’t exist. Yes means yes affirmative consent laws are unambiguous. Under the law, I most certainly am a serial rapist.
Serial rapists no doubt love the feminist hysterics that have led to this insanity of making what amounts to ordinary human sex into rape, because when everything is rape, nothing is. When every man is a rapist, it makes it that much easier for a real rapist to hide. And the nasty, poorly thought out truth is that by feminist definitions, it’s not just every man who is a rapist.
Every woman is, too.
Peachy, ladies. Thanks for nothing.
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 
Every time you talk about raping I picture you as Yeoman Rand.
Sigh, I wish I was twenty years younger.
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This is quite interesting, and I’m not sure what to say — but I am glad that everyone in these relationships, including you, seem quite happy. I think I’ll have to go back and reread your other post now — but seriously, you don’t CARE how the other person feels if you want sex — what you want is all that matters? That doesn’t seem like you at all, but I’ll just have to go back and reread it.
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Susan, being aggressively selfish was part of the fun. It was always by mutual agreement and never abusive. There are a million ways to communicate consent, and I guarantee it was always consensual. Example: not into it? Let yourself be kissed but don’t kiss back. Who doesn’t know that means “no thanks not right now”. In all the scenarios I described kisses were returned. That’s a green light for the majority of sane functioning adults in long term relationships, don’t you think?
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How come when I try to tweet from your webpage it tells me the account does not exist. I know it does not but currently it says 5 people have tweeted it.
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I have no idea. I made an admin change. Does that help at all?
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I’m confused is John gay or not? I know it’s an unimportant niggling detail, but you call him gay and then talk about cyber stalking him and his wife.
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No John was after the gay boyfriend.
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Yes, the way you’re explaining it now sounds perfectly consensual. Also, your example of backing off if the other person isn’t kissing you back clarifies things much better. I haven’t had time to reread the original post yet — but I took your original comment about not caring if the other person wanted sex or not, and about what you wanted being the only thing that mattered — literally. What I’m hearing now was that you and these guys were in a sort of mutual roleplaying game. I certainly think that people can have, and even act out, their rape fantasies, in ways that are non-abusive. That just wasn’t what I’d understood from your original post.
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You and I had a lot in common, JB. I dated a gay guy too! 🙂
But, my husband is the only man I have ever actually jumped on and raped.
So…I’m just a rapist, not a “serial rapist”. 😛
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Raping the same victim still counts as serial rape …..
Just sayin’…….
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“Serial rapists no doubt love the feminist hysterics that have led to this insanity of making what amounts to ordinary human sex into rape, because when everything is rape, nothing is. When every man is a rapist, it makes it that much easier for a real rapist to hide. And the nasty, poorly thought out truth is that by feminist definitions, it’s not just every man who is a rapist.”
It’s also the case that you couldn’t do a better job of keeping rapists out of prison than by–just as feminists are doing–discouraging women from reporting rape to the police, and by convincing women that the ordinary, necessary course of police investigation is needlessly, even viciously intrusive.
Professional rape crisis feminists appear to have no interest in actually combating rape. If they did, they’d be organizing protests at police stations and at the offices of district attorneys. They’d be publicizing how police investigations are conducted so that victims would know what to expect from the process, and what to demand from it.
Feminist students are, unfortunately, useful idiots to those profiting from rape crisis feminism, whipped to hysteria despite ever declining rates of rape, and even though campuses are significantly safer than elsewhere.
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Feminists’ mantra about rape seems to be ‘better ten men (no such thing as an innocent man) are sent to prison than one rape is prevented’.
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Seems as though the only defence would be a legal disclaimer that says “Song of Songs/1 Corinthians 7 is in operation here- I grant this person Standing Consent”.
Kinda like opening up ports in a firewall.
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J.B. I’ve reread your original post, and I still feel like the behavior you described there is completely different from what you’re describing here. What you’re describing here is roleplaying in long-term relationships in which both people care about one another and would never do anything that was truly against the other’s consent. Here, you come across as someone who cares as much about your partner’s happiness as you do about your own.
In that other post, it’s basically like you were writing from the mindset of the rapist in your roleplaying game. You flat-out said you didn’t care about the feelings of your partners — that you might try to persuade them that they really wanted it too, but ultimately, all that really mattered was what you wanted.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the term “cognitive dissonance” — and that’s what I’m feeling by trying to discuss the serial rapist post with you, when you are in reality a whole person with many aspects to your personality. There is a PART of you that fantasizes about being a rapist and enjoys acting out this fantasy with someone else who also enjoys the game — but the fact that you are a WHOLE PERSON who also has a great deal of empathy for others, even though you sometimes enjoy roleplaying a person who has no empathy — this fact keeps you from becoming a real rapist.
A real serial rapist has chosen to BECOME the role. Yes, this person may come across as a nice and decent person to most of the people who know them — but the niceness is merely a façade to enable them to acquire victims and get away with raping them. In other words, the kind, nice, and caring person is a “role” they play, while the rapist is who they are.
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It’s not role-playing in the way you are describing, but rather an aggressive, selfish need that is nevertheless attuned to what the other person wants. I think for most people, this is second nature. We can experience a need very strongly, seek to satisfy it, or shut it down if it seems to be having a negative effect on the person we love. It’s not really that different than say, biting your tongue when you really want to complain loudly to your partner because you can see he’s already had a shitty day and this isn’t the time. I honestly believe it’s the way most mature, functioning adults interact with one another. Whatever your interior motivations, they are always mutable for the person you love.
At no point is empathy ever completely removed. I perhaps wrote the scenes a little more aggressively than was strictly true for dramatic effect to make the point that aggressive sexual desire is A) not limited to men and B) not rape.
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Well, when you wrote about picking up on stuff like the other person not kissing you back and clearly not being into it, this was a strong point of differentiation between someone who’s forcefully expressing a need but will still back off if it’s not good for the other person, and someone who completely disregards the other person, like the way you portrayed the serial rapist in your original post.
I agree that when people love and care about each other, they should be able to let their hair down and make it clear that they’re feeling a strong need for something, and it seems like the current rape definitions require people to distort their real feelings and present a strong need as something they’d “kinda-sorta enjoy but it’s not that big of a deal” — in other words, they require dishonesty.
Actually, in the college drinking scene which seems to be the main context for the current rape discussions, we’re not talking about long-term relationships where people really know each other and can read one another’s signals, but often about total strangers whose ability to even pick up on the most basic signals from a stranger is impaired by alcohol. This probably isn’t the best setting for anyone to act out their rape fantasies.
My own dating experience was solely with non-drunk men who were always quick to recognize my signals that things were going too far. All I ever had to do was things like pulling back from a too-intense embrace, or turning my cheek toward some guy who I didn’t feel ready to kiss on the mouth yet. I never had to forcefully defend myself from anyone.
In college, I did hear something about the definition of rape being different in middle and working-class neighborhoods — that girls from the latter group learned, early on, to defend themselves violently because they were taught that “boys are just animals who will get away with whatever they can,” while girls from the former group who “crossed the line” and went out with guys from the latter group sometimes felt like they’d been violated when it was really just a “cultural misunderstanding.”
In my own experience of dating — not a ton of guys but guys from different backgrounds — I didn’t see the guys from poorer backgrounds as any less respectful than the guys from richer ones. But it may have just been my aura. I had some friends tell me stuff along the lines of me coming across as so innocent, vulnerable, and fragile that no one wanted to be the criminal who “desecrated” me. 🙂
I also had someone suggest that I could have a really lucrative career in drug smuggling because I could be completely assured that no one would ever check my bag. I did find this to be true in Europe — not that I ever tried the drug smuggling, but I was always waved right through customs, even when leaving Amsterdam. I did still have to hang around and wait for my brother, who’d quit shaving and got stopped at practically every checkpoint. 🙂
But seriously, I was joking about it being “just me.” I really think the majority of men from all backgrounds have empathy and are not rapists. I think most of the “gray rape” situations occur when people allow themselves to go under the influence of substances in settings where they really shouldn’t feel safe doing so. And our cultural makeup is currently such that a man who wakes up realizing he did stuff he didn’t want to do with someone he didn’t want to do with it, will either stop getting drunk in unsafe situations or say “what the hell” and keep getting drunk and doing stupid stuff, and just accept that there may be some nasty surprises in store for him, but decide that the fun of the moment is worth having to “pay the piper” later. And, whatever he decides, he will probably move on without being scarred for life.
Whereas it seems like women who get into similar situations are encouraged to believe that 1) Their choices had nothing to do with where they ended up, 2) They ARE scarred for life even if they may feel like just laughing it off, learning from their mistake, and moving on, and 3) If they continue to act stupidly, this is just evidence of how scarred they were from their first drunken sex experience.
Frankly, the way things currently are, I think that while young women who get drunk in unsafe situations are incredibly stupid, young men who do this are INFINITELY incredibly stupider. I understand that it used to be girls and women who paid the higher price for stupid sex decisions — but boys and men are now being bled to death for stupid sex decisions. BOTH women and men will be better off finding someone they can trust to meet their needs with.
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Can’t disagree with that and I have to say I have zero experience with the whole “have sex with a perfect stranger you’ve met in a bar while you’re hammered” hook-up culture. My self-preservation instincts are too strong. That’s just not a smart thing to do. Getting accused of rape seems to be a much bigger risk these days, but it still seems to be only men who are held responsible. If the scenarios I wrote had been between people who didn’t know each other very well, or at all, I could see how some people would see them as rape. I guess the moral of the story is “it’s not smart to have sex with people you don’t really know.”
Amazing that this needs to be said, but apparently, it does.
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haha nice article. Seriously any person who believes the feminist definition of rape are seriously damaged in the head, which sadly most people are today. Not only women, as some men would think, but most guys too! With the present day rape hysteria, anything could translate into rape, and I consider myself lucky, that being a young guy(in late teens), i have realized this. I haven’t had sex for the past year, and due to the sole fear of being falsely accused of rape, and I don’t have any problem with not having sex, until I actually get married. But even that is risky. Anyone heard of Marital rape? While I understand that consent is necessary, I also know that sex would become a boring chore in relationships if sometimes we didn’t take our partner by surprise or asked before changing sexual positions. If the other partner is responding and going with the flow, I don’t see the how its not consent. If they do not want it they would verbally say so or push me aside, and I would respect their decision. However, I as rape laws are expanded to include almost all normal HUMAN behaviour as rape, and its only MEN who are being treated as rapists, I as a man prefer free internet porn to real sex. No thank u ppl, that’s just too risky. Moreover, i wholeheartedly appreciate female writers like judgy bitch, who speak for men’s rights. She could have easily taken the back seat, as being a woman she would not be directly affected by the modern misandarist society, but she choose to speak for equal rights for men and women. A lot of thanks to you, madam. As a man, I really appreciate that.
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I have speculated that “yes means yes” is a kind of population control. Women are generally turned off by a man verbally asking for sexual activity.
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LOL you could have something there.
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JB I recall your writing once about your brothers and another time about Mr. JB. And just like this priece I found your writing actually quite affecting. Not infrequently women writing about men even being very positive depict roles ( you know good dad , husband , worker etc. ) in these short pieced one gets a glimpse of the person and told in a voice that respects the person. In reading them I realise it’s rare in writing about men . I hope you have the inclination to do so again.
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Women can’t rape. Rape requires agency and accountability. Feminists and partiarchs agree that everything women do is mens fault. That’s pretty much everyone. Some women are more ethical than men…but some children are more ethical than adults too. Still isn’t right to hold children accountable to their actions. Their father is to blame and that’s just the way life is.
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Even if women can’t be held accountable for their actions according to both feminist and patriarchal ideologies, they most certainly can be held accountable by those of us who are egalitarians and subscribe to neither ideology.
Still, based on J.B’s recent clarification of her original post, her actions weren’t/aren’t rape, and those same actions wouldn’t be rape if she were a man, either. Still, the original post came off as very rapey to me. She originally presented it like she really didn’t care about the other person’s feelings — but later made it quite clear that she DID care, and would not have acted the way that she had if it hadn’t been consensual.
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I used to think I was an egalitarian but the fact is I can’t hit a woman who has tried to stab me any more than a child…but a man I would try to kill for that.
I highly doubt you are an egalitarian either. Most feminists say Ray Rice would be wrong to knock out a man of Janay’s weight who did what she did, but I know for a fact they would repost the video laughing at such a man’s foolishness to strike an NFL player.
Maybe you are but Ray Rice the pariah is my litmus test for equality.
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I think both Rice and his fiancée acted stupidly. If someone’s behaving violently towards me, I don’t engage with them. If my husband spat on me like Rice did to his fiancée prior to their altercation — well, for the sake of our children, I probably would try to reconcile from a distance — but if we didn’t have children yet, spitting on me would be an absolute deal-breaker. So I see her as every bit as much of an idiot for engaging with him, as I see him as a jerk for releasing his salivary contents on someone. I mean, if you despise someone enough to spit on them, why even hang out with them? And if someone spits on you, why engage with them?
They were equally idiots — but if they’re drama whores, they’d probably see my life as totally boring. Because I do realize that anger and violence can get one’s adrenaline thoroughly pumped…I just outgrew roller coasters a long time ago, and find that my growing children provide me with enough emotion and intense drama, to the point where my husband and I don’t need to smack each other around like The Three Stooges to add extra spice to our lives.
Is that egalitarian enough for you? And snooty enough, too? 🙂
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Everything about feminism is population control. That’s why they defend birth control, abortion, and lately even porn. All these things prevent pregnancy from ever happening.
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How utterly fucking mechanical do they want sex to be?Our feminist overlords seem to want to take all the fun out of it.
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