A Message to Good Men about Consent and Rape

Rape: a horrifying event, a violation of the most extreme kind, a trauma that can affect a survivor for years and years. Most people understand what it is, in that upon hearing the word they know generally what happened - a man penetrated a woman against her will, probably with force, such as holding her down.

At least, this is what we've been conditioned to think when we hear the word "rape." We think of a male perpetrator, a female victim, and forced, probably violent, penis-in-vagina sex. But this is wrong, and picturing rape with these specific details is incredibly damaging to everyone. Like most things that are completely horrible, rape is hard to talk about. But we have to. We are doing a disservice to everyone - both potential penetrators and victims and current survivors - when we talk about rape with one narrow definition. One week into my training to become a rape crisis counselor, and I've already had my definition of rape, which I thought was quite advanced, challenged and corrected.

One of the most interesting things to come up has been how men are conditioned by society and the media to rape women through tools other than violence - tools like coercion and alcohol, and how to many men, their use of these tools has been so condoned and normalized by the world around them that they use them to rape women who they respect and want to be good to. This post is about men who rape unintentionally, who want to be good and get consent but have been so affected by our society's rape culture that they don't even recognize their actions as rape.

Please note, this is not all people who rape - there are many perpetrators who rape with full knowledge that what they are doing is rape and do it anyway. Those sorts of people need something different to stop them from raping. This post is about the population of men who want to have consensual sex and rape mainly due to lack of education on how to properly ask for consent. I'm hoping that this post will help more of these sorts of men learn how to do better.

The issue is that when people don't have conversation about rape and consent, there isn't a groundwork to talk about it in the heat of a sexual encounter. Without learning the language to use beforehand, how can you learn to say anything other than, at best, "want to have sex?" We need people - men and women both - to learn the language for talking about consent.

A few male friends who I've talked to about this have all said that they've gone through an experience that they later worried didn't involve proper consent. These stories range from having sex with a woman who was intoxicated to pressuring a woman into sex merely by asking for it to engaging in consensual sex but then performing some other act during sex without permission or a conversation about it first. These male friends of mine are good people who do not want to rape. But when there is a lack of dialogue around what constitutes rape and consent, they don't fully understand how to recognize their acts as rape. They simply have an uneasy feeling later and, in most cases, discuss what happened with their partners after the fact.

The conversation with a sexual partner after the fact to "make sure she's ok" with what happened is nice and all - it shows that the men understand that there wasn't consent involved, that they have empathy towards their sexual partners and are really trying to do the right thing. But these conversations need to happen before the sexual act and not after.

So here we go - here's a quick and incomplete way, based on what I've learned so far, for good men to do better when having sex with others. It is incomplete because I'm not an expert and one could write volumes about the subject. It's merely a jumping off point. And please please please comment on things you think I missed or didn't explain well so that I can learn to talk about this in a better way.

Consent is a an enthusiastic "yes!" given by an adult without force or threat of force or other punishment and without cognitive impairment, given in full knowledge of what they are consenting to.

There are many ways to give consent other than an actual "yes!" Because there are so many ways that enthusiastic assent can be given, I'm going to focus on many ways that people do not give consent but that our society and the media teach us are acceptable ways to "consent" to sex.

These are not consent:

• A lack of "no." Simply because someone doesn't say "no" when a partner unzips their pants does not count as consent. There needs to be a "yes!" You need to have a conversation, no matter how weird it feels.
• A hesitant "um, sure." It lacks enthusiasm. If someone is hesitant or not enthusiastic, it's time to dial it back and talk about what sex would mean to that person.
• This is where a lot of people go wrong. If you're pressuring your partner into sex, consent becomes extremely iffy. If your partner is hesitant in even the tiniest way, back off. Even saying something like "but you're just so hot, I just want really want to do it" can be pressuring your partner.
• A person saying "yes!" who is intoxicated, on drugs, or otherwise impaired. (How drunk is too drunk, I hear you ask. I'm not sure yet. More on that in a later post. But for now I'm of the belief that if you even have to ask yourself if a potential partner is too drunk to consent to sex, s/he probably is).
• Someone saying "yes!" who has a mental disability or is under the age of consent. 

There are many ways a person can consent. If you don't know for sure if consent has been given, ask. Say something like "I feel like I'd like to have sex with you, but I want to make sure we're totally on the same page. Is sex something you'd like to do?" You should ask the question, giving your partner the opportunity to give a real answer. It may not be the answer you want. But taking these steps helps you not rape and avoid that lingering unease later that you did something wrong. Most importantly, it treats your partner like the complex human he or she is, and gives them the respect that everyone deserves.

(Again, I truly welcome comments below. What did I miss? How can I do better?)