Sprawling musings on “grey rape” cuz it’s bugging me.

Everybody’s talking about “Grey Rape”!

Yaaaay!!! Blogosphere funtime! Nothing like a good hearty debate on whether or not a set of hypothetical abusive scenarios =”rape” (and if so, which shade?) to get my week a’rockin’ with provocative food for thought fueling our collective grappling with these tough questions while I gaaargle...braainzz...

If you have somehow been lucky enough to miss the hoopla,
Cosmo printed a “report” concerning something they’re calling “grey rape”. Feminist blogs have been doing an excellent job of pointing out that this term is not a useful addition to anyone’s lexicon of sexual abuse, unless your goal is to undermine the utility of the concept of ‘rape”, blame victims, encourage victims to shut up and suck it up, etc.

Then there is a fairly upsetting mini-series of posts developing on Jezebel, which Feministing has been addressing quite nicely

It goes like:

Feministing calls bullshit on Cosmo

Moe on Jezebel says inventing new words and terms is fun and useful, and “grey rape” as a term is useful to her as it allows for empathy and forgiveness for rapists who aren’t “OMG PURE EVIL.”*

Ann responds on Feministing.

Moe replies with a disturbing recounting of an incident that I would just call rape, explaining that this is “grey rape” not “rape” as she was not “scarred” and calling it rape gives the rapist too much power.

Whoa there. Hold up.

There’s a good response on Feministing in which Ann notes that:

Calling it what it is -- RAPE -- doesn't mean you have to have a specific reaction to it. No one is requiring you to be traumatized. In fact, I'm really happy to hear that this experience didn't seem to cause her much pain. But the definition of rape doesn't change depending on how you feel afterward.

TRUE FACTS.

This whole controversey/discussion/”grey debate”/whathaveyou raises a lot of prickly emotions for me, as I’d imagine it does for many of you. Almost all of us have been affected by rape and other upsetting, yes even scarring sexual experiences. Maybe we’ve had a fairly trauma-free time of it personally, but have supported friends who’ve experienced rape and abuse.

As such, one of the things that this whole “grey rape” thing raises (besides great big old red flags warning of massive underlying misogyny/beware the hounds released in the name of the Patriarchy,) is that US culture does not encourage communication about sex. It encourages lying, coercision, and manipulation on all levels. Mainstream cultures says that honesty (particularly between men and women) is impossible and probably undesireable in general, and the hijinx that result from attempts at communication about anything are a goldmine for sitcom writers.

Many of us have had sexual experiences that we might not call rape that were traumatic, experiences, where the other person/people involved were inconsiderate, assholic, etc, but had reason (besides denial or insanity) to recognize our words and actions (or lack thereof) as consent. Or maybe we gave consent even though we didn’t actually want to. This can be confusing and horrible, but there is also different from someone fucking you when you are passed out and/or after you have said that you do not want them to do that. There are areas of unpleasant and traumatic sexual experience that can feel grey. That’s real. That is a topic for discussion. Improving people’s ability to be in touch with themselves and their partners/potential partners, even if it’s a one night stand--great. Classifying a certain chunk of rapes as “grey” because they involve alcohol or frat parties? What the fuck does that sound like to you?

I also fear for how this whole “grey rape” thing depoliticizes sexual assault, reduces it to a level of personal choices and bad nights, rather than a systemic problem. I worry that Moe and perhaps others embrace the concept out of a desire to humanize rapists--yes, rapists are people too, many of whom have many wonderful qualities and may be capable of treating people with love and care. I mean, if [pick you statistic] women (not to mention everyone else) are raped in their lifetime, where do all these rapists go? Jail? Back to their hermetically sealed rapist fort? No, they go back to their lives. Many, if not most of them will not see themselves as being rapists, and this whole “grey rape” thing only exacerbates a culture that encourages denial. That allows men to rape without having to realize that’s what they’ve done. “Grey rape” encourages women to assist in rapists’ denial.

I do not in any way want to take one iota of responsibility away from rapists, but at the same time, as a feminist, I want to be real about why people rape and how we can prevent them from doing so. Part of this is recognizing that men are in many respects socialized to rape, and to not see it as “rape”. They need to be educated, and this includes those who may have already raped someone--andthat’s a heavy thing, and god bless people who make it part of their life’s work to work with rapists and abusers. These fuckers (the rapists and abusers) are people, and they are not homogenous, and their violations do not need to be sugar coated for us to grant them humanity. The aftermath of rape for the rapist who is not a sociopath by definition** is almost taboo to explore. I don’t see how redefining a rapist’s transgression using a bullshit term like “grey rape” helps anything other than perpetuating the kind of silence and denial that helps foster rape and abuse.

Laura Sessions Stepp, the genius responsible for the Cosmo article, has previously reported on how girls who like sex and/or have opinions are causing an increase in Erectile Dysfunction.

*This post also opens with seeingly basic, yet confusing illustrated points about language = powerful, as explained through zionist propaganda. For the purposes of my discussion I really want to empathize with this woman, but I would be remiss to link and not point out the unhelpful offensiveness.

**Whatever one may think of such definitions