TW: Rape, sexual assault, sexual violence.
Society’s archetypal concept of rape is that of a stranger snatching an unknowing, sober woman and assaulting her in the shadows. There is no doubt that this sadly continues to be the experience for some women and men. However, this paradigm has caused many people to feel that, as their experience of assault is not society’s paradigm, their experience is invalid or cannot be truly labelled as ‘rape’.
It is often thought that those who commit rape do not understand what consent is or how to acquire it. However, upon reflection of my own experience, I came to realise that it is rapists who understand consent the very best as they play on the ‘grey area’ of consent.
Picture this: a night out or a bar crawl at university, someone is continually complimenting you and making you feel good about yourself. During the course of the night you become quite friendly with this person: you may share a lot in common, you may be on the same career path or have the same values. You will probably be told by this person that you’re really interesting, you’re different, or that you’re driven, or that you’re something that they’ve never seen before.
At the end of the night when they ask you to go home with you, you’re not really sure about it. But, because they have been so complimentary of you, you don’t want to appear unkind or unfriendly. You might feel a sense that you owe this person something. You might say that you’re unsure, but they take you anyway and say ‘let’s talk about this later’. Likelihood is that you’re probably drunk, but you get on with this person and you trust them. When you’re back at their house, they might feed you some more alcohol and tell you that it’s just ‘fun and games’ because after all, you’re ‘friends’. The next thing you, know it’s happened. You haven’t kissed them or told them it was ok but you ‘didn’t say no’. They weren’t a ‘stranger that snatched you from the shadows’. They’re kind of your friend, right?
In the morning they might say to you, ‘was last night ok?’. You’re probably not even sure yourself, so you say ‘yeah of course, it’s fine’. They might even say something to you like ‘can I add you on snapchat?’. You say yes. This is then followed by, ‘thanks, because I want you to send me a video of you taking the morning after pill. I want to make sure that you’re not pregnant’. You might be a little taken aback, but it’s ok because you’re friends, right? After all, you’ve just added each other on snapchat. So you do as you’re told, you send him the video and don’t really think about the experience again.
There is nothing in the above scenario that suggests that there was consent. Equally, there is nothing about the above situation that corresponds to a ‘typical’ rape scenario: they knew the person, they were friendly with them, they added them on snapchat. There was no consent given, yet because of this befriending stratagem, the victim believes that they can’t have been raped by this person. Fundamentally, this view has to change. Those who commit rape and sexual assault understand consent the very best because they play on this grey area. They use tactics such as compliments, befriending and (so called) tacit consent to undermine the victim and to lead them to believe that it wasn’t truly rape.
Approximately 90% of victims knew who their rapist was, approximately 9% of rape victims are male, and approximately 54% of rape and sexual assault cases involve alcohol or drugs, yet this doesn’t correspond to society’s rape paradigm (NSVRC.org). This provides the prime breeding ground for rapists to play on: they understand that society has a very fixed view of what a typical ‘rape’ situation is and that victims won’t believe that it’s happened to them if they haven’t experienced just that. Thus, when they compliment, befriend and flatter the victim, they don’t believe that they have been raped, even when there was no consent. Befriending victim’s is an assaulter’s prime stratagem.
---- Anonymous, Guest Blogger
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