wantinglove

hot off the presses. these notes were gleaned from two workshops put on by gail stern at the safe zone society national conference on sexual assault in our schools. during the workshops, we basically outlined an example objective of wanting to explain consent. we expanded on the characteristics of consent, then made a huge list of the most common responses to each item. there were fewer responses toward the end because of time constraints, but here's how it went:

consent is sober, verbal, mutual (equal / no power differential) and needs to be to each act of intimacy.

sober

• "how drunk is too drunk to give consent?"
• "what if they're both drunk?"
• "people get drunk and have sex all the time"
• "people get drunk to get laid"

verbal

• "it kills the moment"
• "you just know."
• "she'll say 'no', but mean 'yes'."
• "she doesn't want to look like a slut."
• "she said yes before."
• "I can tell."

mutual

• "if she's there, it's mutual."
• "physiological response means yes."
• "there's a point of no return / she shouldn't have led him on."
• "are you saying freshmen can't date seniors?"

to every act

• "that's tedious."
• "do we need a lawyer present?"

gail then pointed out that though there were a great many "typical" responses, the vast majority of them could be grouped into themes. six that we discussed were:

minimizing - "it isn't rape, it's regret. it's a bad night." this "bad night" explanation includes things like "the victim talked to her friends and claimed it was rape only after that" etc. in minimizing the situation, I minimize my responsibility.

nice guy - "he's a nice guy, nice guys don't rape, therefore he didn't rape." this follows the "it was just a misunderstanding" or "it was just a miscommunication" method of minimizing a situation.

shared responsibility - "I'm strong and independent, therefore whatever happens to me must be partly my fault too."

individual victim blaming - "she should've known." along with this is "what was she doing there?" "what did she expect?"

group victim blaming - "everyone knows that all men are animals." this includes "science-y" or "evolutionary" explanations of rape.

grouping comments in this fashion is of great use to the presenter as it provides them with an easier way of refuting arguments without needing to resort to "you're wrong." hecklers' arguments can be followed down (predictable) chains of reasoning to exaggerated lengths in order to demonstrate their absurdity. more sympathetic audiences can be guided back to more amiable topics. most of the arguments presented above, for instance, can be guided down the "everything that happens to women is women's responsibility" chain. once demonstrating the absurdity-- ex: "in a situation where two people get drunk, is the survivor really expected to be responsible for the actions of the other person?"-- the presenter can then guided back to the more important question, "why aren't we focusing on the behavior of the perpetrators?"

a couple interesting notes:
"people don't wake up after a night of bad sex and think, 'man, that sucked. I think I'll accuse someone of rape.' we aren't talking about bad sex or bad choices. we're talking about rape where there's an absence of choices."

"rape is not bad because it is against the law. rape is against the law because it is bad."