In case you were wondering, Thor reads Cosmo.
This month, Cosmo featured an article about “Gray Rape,” or:
sex that falls somewhere between consent and denial and is even more confusing than date rape because often both parties are unsure of who wanted what.
The gripe really is with the following classification by Cosmo:
Many experts feel that gray rape is in fact often a consequence of today’s hookup culture: lots of partying and flirting, plenty of alcohol, and ironically, the idea that women can be just as bold and adventurous about sex as men are. How can something so potentially empowering become so damaging?
What do you think? Is hookup culture more empowering for women and thus more dangerous? Obviously this is a sticky issue, but it’s one that anyone in a short term sexual relationship thinks about. Is there anything unique about Charlottesville and UVA?
Of course, we could always have our lawyers present:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.glumbert.com/embed/consent" height="336" width="448" /]
Related posts:
- Yeah Right! Women/Men have it much easier in this town!
- Sugar Daddy in Charlottesville
- A Not So Casual Afternoon Shooting
You may also be interested in reading this article about the author’s new book:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/fashion/01hook.html
the problem isn’t any action (or reaction to those actions), the problem is that two people who are willing to be physically intimate with each other who are willing (or mature enough) to be honest with each other about why they are willing to be physically intimate.
The morning after is not the time to start talking about what the night before “meant” to each of you.
Laura Sessions Stepp is a twit, I wouldn’t use the pages from any of her stupid books as toilet paper. Seriously, it incenses me that this woman has a job writing for one of the most influential newspapers in the country.
I mean, really. A two year study of NINE whole women gives her such authority?
I think she does a real disservice to women who have been raped by promoting this ridiculous concept of “gray rape.” Call me crazy, but none of the examples cited in the Cosmo article seem “gray” to me in the slightest.
How can something so potentially empowering become so damaging?
The key word is “potentially”. If you mix casual sex with personal responsibility, accountability for your actions, etc., that’s empowerment. If you mix it with alcohol and bad judgment, well, it doesn’t take a trendy new label to identify the problem. Nothing unique about it in our community or anywhere else.
Those examples seem awfully like rape to me. But there are other examples about what could constitute “gray rape” without the girl saying “no.” There are a lot of people (males and females) who might hook up while drunk and regret it the next day. I think things like this sometimes get recorded as rape statistics, but are they really rape when both parties wanted it at the time? This is how Kobe Bryant “raped” that girl a few years ago, if I remember correctly. God knows I have done a few things I regretted the next morning, and sometimes I wonder what the girls still think of the event years later–if it was just a casual hookup or something else (if they even remember).
I think the whole term “gray rape” is dangerously enabling. Instead of waking up the next morning and thinking “wow – I would not have slept with that dude sober – ew, I think I need a shower and a cup of herbal tea, and maybe to lay off the everclear next weekend,” chicks can hang onto a concept like gray rape as a crutch to keep them from changing a behavior they are ambivilent about and instead victimize their really bad decisions (I feel like this is especially true for college girls, but that could just be my bias from having been a UVA gal and watching “good little baptists” by day morph into Samantha from Sex in the City by night, only to regress right back to Polly Anna the following morning). I can think of an incident or two where upon reflection the next morning I felt coerced, but that looking back years later, I know I really just didn’t want to own up to having gone along with something so stupid (read: don’t hook up with good friend’s boyfriend – ever). I think that’s just called being a sexually active young person warring between a Puritan undercurrent and a sexual pop culture, and while it sucks, it doesn’t make it rape. Isn’t that why we’re supposed to learn from our mistakes?
great post, Lys.
Well-said, Lys.
Lys, you are smart.
Gosh, you guys are making me feel so special I might just be tempted to recklessly sleep with you and then regret it in the morning.
Cosmo is one of the dumbest magazines out there.
Every issue screams about HOT SEX positions, how to SEDUCE that guy, etc…
but if you had too much to drink then you were raped.
Maybe if media stopped making chicks think that they had to be rampant sexkitten/fembots that should seek out these situations, “gray rape” (i.e. hookup guilt) wouldn’t occur so much.
Interestingly enough, Ms. Sessions Stepp was featured at an event right here in my very own neighborhood recently… alas, I couldn’t make it, but a couple intrepid bloggers were on the scene to ask the important questions like “Why in the bloody effing hell would you ever say something as stupid as ‘ladies don’t belong in bars, that’s a man’s place’ and then claim you’re NOT anti-feminist?”
http://whyihatedc.blogspot.com/2007/10/rambling-laura-sessions-stepp-wrap-up.html
Wow, she really is an idiot
It is lovely to sit here and read all of your comments bashing the idea of “gray rape”. But until you actually experience something along those lines, it is probably best for you to shut the hell up, don’t you think? I was a victim of what I thought was rape, but because it felt so “gray” to me, I never reported it. For months I have been feeling as if maybe I was to blame, but reading this article, and the accounts of other victims, reassured me that I wasn’t. There IS such a thing as “gray rape” and if I had read this article months ago, I probably would have had the confidence to do something about mine.
no one is bashing rape victims here and if they did i know the community would be telling them to F off.
as you can see from most of the comments, people have a problem with labelling a “drunken mistake” as “gray rape” because it can excuse sexually promiscuous behavior that is mainly attributable to drugs and alcohol
With complete knowledge that this officially makes me evil, I’m stilll going to say it – that you responded this harshly makes me think you were raped, not “gray raped”, Victim. That you felt unsure of how to respond is typical of rape. I’m sorry you went through this experience, I hope you seek counceling for this, but please understand that no one here is arguing that rape isn’t bad. In fact, we’re saying that calling things rape that aren’t, or even equating things to rape that aren’t, undermines the awfulness of what you experienced.
That being said, I am glad the article brought you comfort.
Victim, nobody here is trying to downplay the awfulness of rape. I just think terms like “gray rape” makes it sound as if the women in these circumstances somehow are at fault for what happened to them, when it is plain that they never gave consent in any fashion. I think terms like “gray rape” only make women feel as if something they did blurred the line between consent and non-consent. To me it’s a new variant of the “well she was wearing a short skirt so she was ‘asking for it’” argument that gets trotted out in so many rape cases.
I hope you have seen a counselor who can help you through the trauma, and I’m very sorry you had to go through such a thing.