I went to a feminist book club last week. For those of you who read this, you will either be totally repulsed by that idea or totally jealous. You should be the latter, it was awesome.
I met about fifteen other women who wanted to talk about stuff I wanted to talk about and who were interested in the same kinds of conversations I wanted to have about said stuff. None of this 'I'm right, you're wrong' bullshit, but more 'I hear you and am interested, tell me more.' I felt that I had the opportunity to consider a lot of ideas I hadn't thought about before and at the same time that I had met a group of like-minded women I am psyched to meet again. We didn't all agree with each other, in fact, we challenged more than we acquiesced and something someone said has lingered with me this whole week.
The subject of rape came up again, as it is likely to do when discussing sexual politics and inequalities between genders. Also I was shamelessly plugging my blog, which unfortunately recently has been about the same subject. Anyway, one of the women in the group said that she found it unfair that if a woman is too drunk to give consent, than surely a man can be too drunk to control himself. Whuuuuh? To be honest, this was a totally new idea to me, so I didn't want to dismiss it, I wanted to think about it. So I have.
Drunk, incapacitated women are so often the victims of sexual assault, that to then excuse this assault by saying that a man simply loses control of his faculties and has to forceably put his penis or other object into someone else's body is pretty fucked up. But here we are again (dum dum duuuuum)Is it rape? Is this a crazy double standard we've been peddling all this time? A way to avoid regret by calling rape? I say 'nay.'
In my experience, if you can get it up, you have an idea about what you are doing. All my male mates have the same response to too much alcohol as I do: they pass the fuck out. They don't grow massive hard-on and seek place to bury it. If you are putting your penis into someone who is too drunk to know what's going on or passed out, then you are a rapist. If you can't get it up and then still try and put things into someone else's body while they are incapacitated...well you, my friend are a whole new level of fucked, but you are also a rapist. And this shit is not exclusive to college like Katy Perry's brand of lesbianism. If you raped someone in college, you are a rapist. It's not a cute phase you went through.
Is it totally fucking crazy that I've been considering this for a week? No, and I'm glad I did. Far too often women are painted as victims and men as predators, but sometimes it's because that's just how it is sometimes. Sometimes, not all the time. I love men. Really, really love them and so therefore I refuse to believe that all me have the capacity to rape; that when a man gets too drunk his default identity is Rapey McRaper. I have intelligent, sexy, impressive men in my life. Men who drink and have drank a shitload of alcohol and none have raped.
Sadly I also have huge numbers of beautiful, smart, hilarious female friends who drink and at one time in their life have drank a shitload of alcohol and have woken up with dicks and other objects inside them and have been raped. It's just the truth. So I'm not saying in any way that women can lose control and men can't. I'm just saying that we both lose control in a similar way and it is a predator, not some poor, hapless drunk who rapes.
Hopefully the next time I'm here it will be with cheerier topics, but I do feel that this is important that we are thinking about it and talking about it. A lot of people have stories to share, but are silent because of the shame and the blame surrounding these incidents. Let's start to have the difficult conversations and start to get on the same side.
And if you need help:
You can call Rapecrisis freephone helpline in the UK 0808 802 9999
And in the USA you can call 08006564673
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