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‘Gray Rape’: A New Form of Date Rape?

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  • ‘Gray Rape’: A New Form of Date Rape?

    At a panel discussion at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, panelists discussed the “gray area” of cases in which people have sex and then disagree afterward as to who wanted what.


    Interesting read...

    ‘Gray Rape’: A New Form of Date Rape?
    By Sewell Chan

    When Robert D. Laurino, chief assistant prosecutor for Essex County in New Jersey, told a friend that he was speaking on a panel about the topic of “gray rape,” the friend was confused. “Are you talking about the rape of the elderly?” the friend asked.

    An article in the September issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, “A New Kind of Date Rape,” defined “gray rape” as “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.”

    A standing-room-only audience packed the lobby of the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice this morning to listen to a vigorous panel discussion on the idea of “gray rape” — and whether the term is even meaningful, helpful or harmful. Not too many events in the intellectual life of New York City bring together Jeremy Travis, the legal expert and former city police official who is the president of John Jay, and Kate White, editor in chief of Cosmopolitan, which sponsored the event.

    The panel had four women and three men and was moderated by Ashleigh Banfield, the Court TV anchor. Ms. White promised a “very scintillating discussion.”

    Laura Sessions Stepp, a Washington Post journalist, wrote the September article on “gray rape.” It has stirred considerable discussion on blogs and discussion boards. (Ms. Stepp’s latest book, “Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both,” about how smart, ambitious young women do emotional damage to themselves by getting physical with men they are not dating or may have met for the first time, also raised some controversy.)

    In this morning’s discussion, Ms. Stepp said she did not embark on the story believing that there was such a thing as “gray rape.” She said, “For me, rape is rape. I really didn’t know what that term meant.”

    But in the course of her reporting, Ms. Stepp said, she came across descriptions of “sexual encounters where usually both parties were very drunk and really didn’t know what they had said to each other the next morning.” In such cases, consent is uncertain. Such cases are more likely to emerge today, Ms. Stepp argued in the article, in an era when sexual boundaries and rules for women have loosened and when it has become socially acceptable for women to pursue casual sex.

    “Girls go after guys just as often as guys go after girls these days,” Ms. Stepp said at the panel. In her article, she wrote, “The odd thing about the current equal-opportunity hookup culture is that a lot of guys may feel as uncomfortable and confused as their dates do when things end up in bed.”

    Ms. Stepp’s article and her comments generated a wide range of reactions from the other panelists. Some panelists, in particular, were concerned that the concept of “gray rape” could be used to exonerate men from their culpability in violent sexual crimes.

    “Rape is still rape,” said Neil Irvin, director of community education at Men Can Stop Rape, saying it almost “seems cliché” at this point to have to remind people that no means no.

    Ms. Banfield pressed the issue. “Is it possible that you could acquiesce at the beginning of the evening and by the time you’re too drunk to be heard or understood, it would be unfair for men to try to decipher when the no ends up actually arriving?” she asked.

    Joseph Samalin, who as a student at State University of New York at New Paltz and at Columbia University was active in groups that oppose women’s violence, did not buy that premise. “There were a lot of things in the article that concerned and frustrated me,” he said. He said that intentionally or not, the article might have the effect of suggesting that “you can be a woman in charge of your own sexuality … but not too much because these are the consequences that will happen to you.”

    Mr. Samalin added: “We still need to hold a lot more men accountable for their actions, their behaviors and the violence they commit. I’d rather be at a panel here on that.”

    Ms. Banfield maintained that gray areas remained one of the most fraught areas in discussions of sexual violence, especially on college campuses. She cited the case of Adam Lack, a Brown University student who in 1996 was accused by a fellow student of sexual misconduct. The accuser said she could not remember the events of the evening but said she was too intoxicated to be able to consciously consent to sex. Mr. Lack maintained that the student had initiated the sexual encounter and that he was not aware she was drunk. No criminal charges were brought, but Mr. Lack was subjected to academic discipline.

    Chitra Raghavan, a John Jay psychologist who conducts research on intimate-partner violence and rape, said she did not accept the article’s argument that it has become socially acceptable for women to pursue casual sex.

    “I would respectfully disagree that women have been sexually empowered to hook up,” Dr. Raghavan said. “What’s happened is that women are not legislated anymore. There’s a huge difference for it to be legal for women to pursue sex and for it to be socially acceptable for women to pursue sex.”

    Many studies have shown that rapes often do not involve physical violence or coercion, because the mere threat or potential for physical harm is enough to make victims submit, she said. Dr. Raghavan also said that studies have shown that women’s sexual interactions do not change appreciably if they have been drinking and that serial rapists maintain (inaccurately, of course) that their victims did not resist and in fact wanted to be raped. She said that the discussion of alcohol “is endemic of how we blame women,” saying that such blame could lead to a viewpoint like: “Women hook up, get drunk and then say they don’t want sex. Tell them to cross their legs and put on a chastity belt!”

    Katie Gentile, who directs the Women’s Center at John Jay, cited research by David Lisak, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, who has done extensive research on convicted sex offenders as well as ordinary men on college campuses.

    “Men use alcohol all the time to ply their dates, whether they are drunk or not,” Dr. Gentile said. “It is the way in which they get their dates to be submissive enough to get raped.”

    Dr. Gentile said that rape is one of the crimes least likely to be falsely reported and one of the crimes for which prosecutors find it most difficult to secure a conviction. “I see on average two women a week for what is obviously a rape,” she said, and yet in five years, none of the students has ever decided to press charges and bring a case in the law-enforcement system — even at a college that is dedicated to studying criminal justice.

    Dr. Gentile also cited research by Michelle Fine, a psychologist at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York who has studied sex-education curricula. The message in most of these educational materials, Dr. Gentile said, is: “Girls, you better be careful, because you’re in charge of the sexuality of men and you’ve got to control them. Across the board in these curricula, they are not taught sexual responsibility in these relationships.”

    Linda Fairstein, who was chief of the sex crimes unit at the Manhattan district attorney’s office for 25 years, until 2002, said she did not believe the article introduced anything new from a legal standpoint.

    “Certainly, in the criminal justice system there’s no such thing as gray rape,” said Ms. Fairstein, now a media consultant and crime novelist. She added: “Gray rape is not a new term and not a new experience. For journalists, it may be, but for those of us who had worked in advocacy or law enforcement, this description of something being in a gray area has been around all the time. It’s always been my job in law enforcement to separate out the facts.”

    Ms. Fairstein said the present discussion evoked the debates that followed “The Morning After: Fear, Sex and Feminism,” the 1994 book by Katie Roiphe, who famously asserted, “There is a gray area in which one person’s rape may be another’s bad night.”

    The prosecution rate for rapes by strangers is “astoundingly high,” Ms. Fairstein said, while date rape remains a fairly new concept. “It wasn’t even a term when I started prosecution in 1972,” she said.

    Alcohol and drugs inevitably complicate acquaintance rape cases, Mr. Fairstein said, describing the concept of an alcohol blackout — “a period of amnesia during which the person is actively engaging in behaviors — walking, talking — but the brain is unable to form new memories of the event, leaving the person unable to recall the events once they are no longer intoxicated.” In such cases, investigators must try to talk to witnesses and reconstruct what happened.

    Mr. Laurino, the county prosecutor, said that the recreational use of drugs and alcohol had started to amount to a “public health crisis,” citing statistics that 30 percent of women who are examined for sexual assault report having used alcohol and that another 6 to 7 percent report having used some drugs. Mr. Laurino said that Dr. Lisak’s research showed that even the “nice guy next door” will use alcohol strategically. “The predator uses alcohol because they know it’s going it impair the credibility of the victim, which is extremely important,” he said.

    Mr. Laurino cited examples of “undetected rapists — the small minority of men who have committed hundreds of rapes on campuses.” Such predators often have “sophisticated strategies” for sexual exploitation that involve deceiving women into imbibing strong alcoholic beverages. “The majority of men who do not commit sexual assault who do not batter or abuse women really need to hold a small minority of men accountable,” he said.

    Dr. Gentile noted that many clubs and bars have rules that allow girls and women to drink free of charge. Every week at John Jay, she said, promoters from clubs hand out cards that state, “Ladies get in free.” She added, to a loud round of applause, “That is a date-rape drug.”

    Dr. Raghavan said that some women do feel ambivalent about negotiating sexual relationships with men. She said: “They want to be able to say no but still maintain a particular kind of image: ‘I don’t want to have sex with you, but there’s nothing wrong with my sexuality.’ They don’t have the vocabulary to articulate no. Or they’re saying no, but it’s not in a vocabulary that’s being heard.”

    Interestingly, it was the two male antiviolence activists, Mr. Irvin and Mr. Samalin, who seemed to take the hardest line on male violence.

    Mr. Irvin spoke of a “culture of masculinity that says we take advantage of women’s bodies because we’re men,” while Mr. Samalin said, “The majority of men who aren’t committing violence are still benefiting from a society that’s based on male privilege, power and entitlement.”

    Ms. Fairstein said that although acquaintance rape is underreported, there is a higher rate of false reporting (about 9 to 10 percent) for acquaintance rape than for most other crimes. Complicating the difficulty of proving acquaintance rape is the lack of physical evidence in some cases. Ms. Fairstein cited the recent example of the decision by prosecutors in Santa Clara County in California, not to prosecute several athletes at De Anza College who were implicated in an assault on a 17-year-old female.

    “Do I think she was raped?” Mr. Fairstein asked. “Yes. Do I think anyone can prove it? Who can you charge?”
    bleh

  • #2
    Rape is rape.

    The 2008 platform of the Texas Republican Party endorses the death penalty for people convicted of rape.
    Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
    "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
    He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

    Comment


    • #3
      Gay rape?

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Docfeelgood
        Gay rape?
        Grape rape?

        Comment


        • #5
          Oh please

          I consider myself to be a feminist, but this is a bit too much. How is one supposed to decipher consent when both individuals are too drunk and the other person may be the one initiating the activity, but in the morning they say "oh ****, I don't know if I wanted to do that".

          Makes it almost impossible to form consent or decide consent if alcohol has been consumed and that's a ridiculous standard.
          “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
          - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
            Oh please

            I consider myself to be a feminist, but this is a bit too much. How is one supposed to decipher consent when both individuals are too drunk and the other person may be the one initiating the activity, but in the morning they say "oh ****, I don't know if I wanted to do that".

            Makes it almost impossible to form consent or decide consent if alcohol has been consumed and that's a ridiculous standard.

            I thought you were male?

            Comment


            • #7
              If neither party can remember what happened, then who the **** cares?
              Tutto nel mondo è burla

              Comment


              • #8
                Cause one party feels like they were raped after they woke up and saw who they ended up sleeping with, it seems.
                “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
                - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
                  Cause one party feels like they were raped after they woke up and saw who they ended up sleeping with, it seems.


                  YES!

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    They were both raped... by alcohol

                    send alcohol to prison

                    (Prisoners will agree with me I bet. And they know all about rape.)

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Aeson
                      They were both raped... by alcohol

                      send alcohol to prison

                      (Prisoners will agree with me I bet. And they know all about rape.)


                      YES!

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Aeson
                        They were both raped... by alcohol

                        send alcohol to prison

                        (Prisoners will agree with me I bet. And they know all about rape.)
                        We tried that. It was called Prohibition.
                        “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
                        - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          I don't think you understand...

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            o.... your but hole before prison.

                            O.... your but hole while in prison.



                            Comment


                            • #15
                              I know women who are proud of their gray rapes.

                              I do think it is rape, I don't think anyone should be imprisoned over it.

                              Both do community service!

                              JM
                              Jon Miller-
                              I AM.CANADIAN
                              GENERATION 35: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

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