{"id":1059,"date":"2012-12-21T18:07:08","date_gmt":"2012-12-22T02:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/?p=1059"},"modified":"2012-12-22T09:52:41","modified_gmt":"2012-12-22T17:52:41","slug":"what-is-rape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/2012\/12\/21\/what-is-rape\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Rape?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, Rebecca Watson tweeted the following:<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;If you have sex w\/ someone who is drunk, they are unable to consent &amp; that is rape.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Screencaps of this are everywhere, so I won&#8217;t bother posting another one here. But I do have a few comments to make:<\/p>\n<p>1. If this weren&#8217;t the case, I&#8217;d still be a virgin (if we don&#8217;t count the one incident of actual rape, along with another one I managed to escape).<\/p>\n<p>2. Someone needs to learn a bit of grammar and, no, Twitter character limits aren&#8217;t a challenge: Here&#8217;s a far less offensive statement with even less characters, to boot: &#8220;If you have sex w\/someone who&#8217;s drunk &amp; unable to consent, that&#8217;s rape.&#8221;\u00a0 So there goes Watson&#8217;s excuse for being unclear and offensive. Took me about a second to fix.<\/p>\n<p>3. If this applies to men, there&#8217;s no reason why it shouldn&#8217;t apply to women.<\/p>\n<p>4. Every man I know is a rapist by Watson&#8217;s definition, and I don&#8217;t mind that a bit.<\/p>\n<p>5. No means no. Learn it, accept it, and abide by it; unless in your particular sexual relationships role play and safe words are involved.<\/p>\n<p>6. No one should take advantage of someone who is *too drunk to consent.* But this is not nearly as black and white as it seems.<\/p>\n<p>7. Yes, women do have morning regrets when they realize that someone just isn&#8217;t that into them.<\/p>\n<p>8. Yes, sometimes women who like random sex are viewed as slutty, while men are not; and I wish that would change. Screaming &#8220;rape&#8221; when it doesn&#8217;t exist won&#8217;t help.<\/p>\n<p>9. Women should hold some responsibility for how drunk they get. No, this is by no means an excuse for sex without consent. But it leaves a huge grey area where a guy (who may also be drunk) might think that things are going just as they should, especially if the woman he&#8217;s being sexual with is an eager, willing participant. And that&#8217;s fine. It isn&#8217;t rape.<\/p>\n<p>10. I don&#8217;t need to drink to enjoy sex; in fact sex, for me, is much better if I&#8217;m completely sober, and if someone knows me and is willing to listen to what I like and need. All of my serious relationships have been like that, and these days, that is the only way I&#8217;ll engage in a sexual encounter. But it took me a while to learn this, and I don&#8217;t regret the mistakes I made along the way.<\/p>\n<p>____________________________________________<\/p>\n<p>Finally, and most importantly, if we start conflating trivialities with rape, people will stop taking rape complaints seriously, and I won&#8217;t blame them. Rape and sex you regret because of your own actions are two different things. As for an invitation to coffee in an elevator? Oh. My. Gawd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, Rebecca Watson tweeted the following: &#8220;If you have sex w\/ someone who is drunk, they are unable to consent &amp; that is rape.&#8221; Screencaps of this are everywhere, so I won&#8217;t bother posting another one here. But I do have a few comments to make: 1. If this weren&#8217;t the case, I&#8217;d still be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","category-freethought-blogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}