Is it rape if the person it happened to doesn’t call it that?
A post published recently at Thought Catalog, written by an anonymous author, recounted a situation where a friend was drinking with another person and was “taken advantage of.” No consent was given. The incident did not escalate violently. And thus, the author’s friend doesn’t call it “rape.” After all, a person simply took advantage of the body belonging to someone who lacked the capacity to exercise their own agency:
Just because someone thinks they weren’t raped doesn’t meant they were not raped by definition, right? Does state law define rape or do your emotions?
I know that I will always be there when he wants to talk about it.
But do I tell him he was raped? According to state law, he was sexually assaulted. According to him, he was just too drunk to realize what was happening and say no. In my mind, that is rape. But in his mind, it’s just an unfortunate incident.
But there’s one problem here: that is rape.
Let’s be clear about this: rape is a violent act of power and control exerted over another person. In the USA alone, one in six women and one in 33 men are the victims of an attempted or completed rape. Furthermore, a Harvard study revealed that 72% of college students who were raped over the course of the study were intoxicated. If the 72% holds true across the entire population of rape victimization, alcohol is a factor in approximately 12.37 million survivors’ rapes. (Ironically, rape survivors are 13 times more likely to abuse alcohol.)
Sexual assault support websites like RAINN have advocated on behalf of inebriated rape victims for years. Intoxicated victims are often blamed for their own rapes, although feminists and survivor advocates have been fighting this stigma and working for years to convince the world-at-large that anyone who is “physically impaired (due to voluntary or involuntary alcohol or drug consumption)” can’t give consent, making clear that sex you’re unaware of, unable to stop, or too incapacitated to have to fend off is rape. Furthermore, RAINN provides a three question checklist to establish if a rape has occurred. The pertinent question is: “Do both people have the capacity to consent?” If there’s no consent, there’s no sex. If there’s no consent, it’s rape.
The Thought Catalog author asks “am I victimizing him or is society?” This is a difficult quandry – respecting your friend’s experience is obviously important, as is supporting them in any way possible after any sort of violation. But as a proponent of blaming who is at fault, the perpetrator victimized the author’s friend, and I feel that needs to be recognized no matter what words we’re using to describe what happened. Danny Brown calls his assault “the incident,” and throughout history we’ve been conditioned to think of unwanted sexual activity as “bad sex,” “awkward situations,” and – worst of all – something that is our own faults. That doesn’t change anything about what happened.
Rape is rape is rape, no matter what it’s called. 
You should like Thought Catalog on Facebook here.
Thought Catalog
1. Support PETA.
I do not eat meat. I am a Hindu. Go vegetables!!
And besides, I don’t care much about other animals but please treat cows with all the kindness. Cows are sacred. But then again I will totally support you eating beef. “How could you?” but yeah, I totally get it. Not really.
2. Love Iyanla Vanzant.
These real-life hairy gurus in India will charge a fortune. With this horrible economy who has the time and money. Iyanla is my Guru. She is my she-ro. She talks the talk. She can heal and she rules. That bitch is fierce.
3. Have a Grindr account.
“Do you use a Grindr?” I asked one of my gay friends. “No, mama uses a hand mill to make curry powder, besides grinders are very high price with our economy you know”, he replied.
No one uses Grindr here anyways. I still have one because it’s popular in America. Snap!
4. Aerobics over yoga.
I would rather jump around and sweat my body to a Lady Gaga song.
Yoga is so overrated. Who wants to listen to a half naked fur ball taking about how to clear you skin with yoga doing breathing exercises? Start with shaving your facial hair. Maybe you can see some skin then.
5. Use hair removers.
Lots and lots of hair removals. Bushy eye brows are so not westernized. So are arm pit hair, hand hair, feet hair, toe hair, and so on. Thank God for hair removals!
6. Pout.
They will pout in every one of their pictures. Their Facebook profile, their library card, their spoken English tuition cards and their Call centers employee card.
7. Follow American politics
“Yes we can!” TEAM Barak Obama. We won. Hurray. Mitt Romney can go suck it. Sorry about it, republi-can’t! Equal rights. Gay marriage forever!
Meanwhile I have no idea what is happening in India. Can I go to jail for being gay?
8. Coffee over tea.
Tea is the national drink of India but coffee is better any day, even if I do not like them both. In fact I love milk. Did I hear a new Starbucks is opening around? OMG yay!
9. Marry anyone for a green card.
For a green card? Absolutely anything for the American dream. Anyone?
10. Watch RuPaul’s Drag Race.
The most exciting reality show ever created. Miss Sharon Needles for world president! Can I get an “amen!” up in here?
You should like Thought Catalog on Facebook here.
Thought Catalog » Life
1. A film where the repercussions from a night of excessive drinking can’t be tidily resolved in 90 minutes; hire me as a Technical Consultant.
2. Big Momma’s House IV: Big Momma’s House Into Darkness
3. Cowboys & Aliens & Postpartum Depression
4. A Choose Your Own Adventure film where all of the endings were written by M. Night Shyamalan.
5. Don’t Wake Daddy: The Movie
6. A three hour opus devoted to Ken Jeong’s penis.
7. A documentary about photosynthesis called A Convenient Truth.
8. A Hangover Part III where the guys wake up from a blacked-out night of debauchery to discover that they spent the night making responsible, prudent decisions like filing their tax returns and backing up their hard drives.
9. Is It Herpes? Yes, It’s Herpes
10. The Hangover Part III: Vatican City
11. Rerelease the first two films after using extensive CGI to edit out Justin Bartha, the guy that plays Doug; replace him with something more charismatic, like Carson Daly or a clothes hanger.
12. The Hangover With Mr. Cooper
13. Wilmer Valderrama Presents Yo Momma: The Movie
14. A third Hangover film where all of the dialogue is taken from reviews of The Hangover Part II, leading to snappy exchanges like:
Alan: “Somebody must have roofied me. I left The Hangover Part II feeling dazed and abused, wondering how bad things happened to such a good comedy.” (Rolling Stone)
Stu: “The movie’s an unclean thing and a mostly unfunny one.” (The Boston Globe)
Phil: “If you want to avoid plot spoilers for The Hangover Part II, don’t watch The Hangover.” (Film.com)
15. Regis Philbin Gets a Colonoscopy
16. America’s Saddest Home Videos
17. Two hours of Zach Galifianakis reading Popsicle stick jokes.
18. Ernest Gets Bukkake’d On
19. Any of the films that Troy McClure claims we might remember him from (I’d be particularly excited for Christmas Ape Goes To Summer Camp, The President’s Neck is Missing, Alice’s Adventure Through The Windshield Glass, or Get Confident, Stupid!).
20. Mr. Magorium’s Black Tar Heroin Emporium
21. Test out that thing where you give typewriters to a bunch of monkeys and see if they can eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.
22. Millard Fillmore: Zombie Trapper
23. The Hobbit: Are You F—king Kidding Me? You’ve Been Holding The Map Upside Down This ENTIRE TIME?!?
24. Rumpelstiltskin: Armed & Dangerous
25. We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident, That All Men Are Created Equal, That They Are Endowed By Their Creator With Certain Unalienable Rights, That Among These Are Life, Liberty, The Pursuit Of Happiness, And The Right To Die Hard
26. Footloose II: The Stanky Legg
27. The Intoxicating Moonshine of the Homeless Bum
28. How Clay Aiken Got His Groove Back
29. Just rerelease the first Hangover, call it The Hangover Part III, and see if anyone notices.
30. Create a movie franchise where all of the films aren’t made using a single Mad Libs template. Wait, that’s actually a good idea…
You should like Thought Catalog on Facebook here.
Thought Catalog
“If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
Age Five
You can’t construct this sort of memory without the assistance of your mother’s persuasive confidence. Everything looks hazy and unfocused when viewed through the fog of lost time, those early, early years that your mother has gleefully documented via VHS tapes and piles of crumbling photo albums.
Apparently, you had found a “boyfriend” in your kindergarten class. How this came about, it’s a mystery. His name escapes you and fortunately, your father and mother don’t remember. But the pictures show a small, pale twig of a boy in a dark, thick sweater, his brown hair snipped into a shaggy bowl cut. You are holding hands with the unknown classmate and he is obliviously smiling with little Chiclets of teeth and you’re wearing a navy blue dress, white tights, and your mother’s gleaming white pearls. Even at a young age, long before you had discovered your father’s Playboys in the garage or ventured down the rabbit hole of 90’s AOL chat rooms, you were mixed up and gullible about love, chasing the illusive, searching for someone to not only compliment you, but complete you.
Maybe this assessment is an overreaction, a consequence of hindsight and cynicism. But you have the sneaking suspicion that this was not an accident or some monolithic rite of passage. You read too many books and watch too many movies and feel too connected to art and so you like to think that the photographs are permanent evidence, the first page in a book that defies one genre.
Age Eleven
Your mother lets you watch a movie called Pretty Woman. This is one of her favorite movies. You watch it in your parent’s bedroom, curled up beneath the blankets. Your mother doesn’t mention anything about the true nature of what Vivienne (played by Julia Roberts) does for a living. She is simply “a woman who worked in a bar” and somehow by the complicated magic of serendipity, Vivienne, a diamond in the rough, meets Edward, a dashing yet emotionally unavailable millionaire, and they eventually fall hopelessly in love and he gives her a classy makeover and some snooty blond saleswoman is mean to her in a gaudy boutique on Rodeo Drive.
Your mother likes to craft a teenage past that omits the poverty of the Philippines and the crime and the instances of dictatorship. Instead she likes to talk about all her suitors, the ex-boyfriends and the ex-admirers and the ex-soul mates. She was the kind of girl who snuck out of her bedroom window to meet some boy after the sun went down. Your mother was only twenty-one when she met and married your father. She spoke English and heavily identified with American culture (school dances and lazy summers featured a soundtrack provided by Madonna and Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson), but she had never been out of the country. She had told you that she may not have married your father, that she had been entertaining a proposal from a handsome British medical student who was perpetually broke but movie-star handsome with clear blue eyes.
What made you pick Dad? you wondered. You couldn’t help but think that there was a note of wistful regret in your mother’s voice; each time she told this story, she could still picture the British student with impeccable detail.
Because he didn’t have it together. And your father did. And I loved him.
You instantly notice that love is listed as the second reason, having taken a backseat to stability. Was that the true nature to love, the key to success?
After all, would Vivienne have fallen so in love with Edward if he were absolutely broke?
Age Fifteen
You’re not sure what love feels like, but this may be it.
A new student is transferred into your homeroom and your English class. He instantly becomes the class clown, a role that he laps up with equal parts glee and deep-rooted thirst. You wonder how you can be attracted to someone so outgoing, someone so able to thrive on the quick flash of fifteen minute high school fame, someone not afraid to play the fool if it means winning attention. But as much as your personalities are opposite, you cannot help but be drawn to his aura, this carefully cultivated image. You like his smile and his laugh and the way he doesn’t judge your occasional bursts of social awkwardness. He liked your writing and he liked being around you and that was all that mattered.
A few months later, after weeks and weeks of casual hand holding and one afternoon of sneaking him into your bedroom like some paranoid Cold War spy, he decides to date a different girl because you, in his very own words, “act too much like a white person.”
Age Eighteen
You’re in the club and you made sure to wear red lipstick because somehow you’ve been conditioned to believe that a woman instantly looks more appealing with a slab of red lipstick. The unspoken uniform of the club’s patrons seems to be body-conscious and monochromatic. You try to dance without thinking of how lame you probably look; your confidence and self-worth instantly rocket up when an older man makes a beeline for you. It’s all a game (to you) and thus when you and your gaggle of friends are invited to go back with this frosted-tip, frat boy looking stranger’s hotel room, you don’t hesitate to accept. Wasn’t this the validation you were desperately craving? The stranger is sharing a room with his friend, who works with him. They offer you all a joint. Eventually, you make out with the stranger in his hotel bathroom, the door shut, his hands slowly slinking down your shoulders, down your hips, down the small of your back. He’s not a very good kisser but it’s nice to be kissed by someone, anyone really, even a telephone pole technician with pleather pants, because you’ve never been on a date and all of the boys at your high school thought you were downright ugly.
Age Twenty-One
You thought you had found someone who liked you for you, fumbling social anxiety, allegiance to nerdom and all. He had big, grey eyes, a chiseled chin and a boyish smirk. On your first date, he hadn’t kissed you goodnight and you had wondered if you had sent the wrong signals. On your second date, you went back to his apartment, expecting some sort of haven for a bookworm turned high school English teacher, but his room looked more like a boys’ locker room, the carpet littered with crumpled clothes, the bed spread stained, the desk cluttered with trash. He had told you that he preferred to date black girls over white girls because they were exotic and better in bed. He waited until after you finished hooking up to let you know that he wasn’t interested in anything serious, and in fact, he thought he may be addicted to sex and he was “like a heroin addict.”
You were too scared to leave his apartment in the middle of the night because you’d forgotten how to get back to the subway stop and you didn’t want him to walk you there. You were disgusted with him and disgusted with yourself. You wait until the pale light of a yellow sun hits the New York skyline and then quietly slip on your clothes, gather your purse and your shoes, and then hightail it out of the apartment.
A week later, you feel so lonely and helpless and ugly that you almost give in to meeting him again. But you have enough self-control to eventually decline his invitation to dinner. You realize that something has died in your heart, something you had been holding on to since you were fifteen, something that prevented a head-first dive into the quicksand of the martyrdom of a hopeless romantic.
You should like Thought Catalog on Facebook here.
Thought Catalog
1. When you voiced your bewilderment on how banning gay marriage could be unconstitutional if the majority vote to ban it, realized I could argue this point, and then backtracked with “I don’t want to get into a fight about this.”
You don’t get to close the discussion before my opinion gets heard. You can’t be both someone who values me and someone who refuses to hear my thoughts on an issue I am passionate about because I might outsmart you. Women see this all the time: a guy makes a casually offensive remark and acts wounded when we call him out. “Whoa, calm down! Can’t you take a joke?” It’s dismissive. It’s a cheap shot. You can’t call in backup, so you have to question my ability to have a rational discussion. And if you are so worried about constitutionality, maybe go back and read the part about inalienable rights. I don’t think it contained a “unless a huge group of people gang up to take them away” caveat.
2. When you brought up your ex girlfriend on our second date.
You ex-girlfriend sounds like a fucking bore, by the way. She listens to Dr. Laura and doesn’t understand why anyone likes Harry Potter. I can’t fathom the active self-loathing it would take to boast either of these qualities. This should have raised one of two red flags for me: either you are hung up on this woman so you will probably bore me just as much as she would, or you must be so insecure that she jumped to the forefront of your mind the minute she moved on from you. By dating you, I was placing myself in the crossfire of an unfinished shit-slinging contest. Plus, between this ex and every woman in your family – an onslaught of one kitchen fixture after another – I felt like I was deconstructing the Feminine Mystique every time I considered what a future with you would be like.
3. When you told me “I hope I never have a daughter.”
One of my girlfriends is convinced that when a guy say this, what he really means is that he sees women as sexual objects; given how he views a woman’s role in society, he cannot conceive of a world where he is responsible for loving, guiding, and protecting one. You are so comfortable being complicit in female oppression that you don’t think a female life is worth the trouble it takes to challenge gender norms. I felt so dehumanized when you said this, I wondered if having extended contact with me was also too burdensome for your privileged brain. I finally came back with “I guess you and I can never have kids, because I’m only having girls.” I love being female. I love women. You cannot shame me for my identity.
4. When I mentioned my idea of applying for a competitive writing fellowship in addition to graduate programs, and you told me I shouldn’t.
It was a shot, even if I was fumbling in the dark — a shot at something I’ve wanted since toddlerhood when I stared at the symbols in those heavy books my parents read and knew I had at least this much to say. I don’t know why you hated this idea. Perhaps because the fellowship was out of state, or possibly because you thought it was a ridiculous goal. Really, I should’ve known I was ill-advised to sleep with you after you blew off my offer to let you read an essay I’d gotten published. How little you must have regarded my voice to choose to preserve the effort it takes to glance over a few pages.
5. When I landed a teaching assistant gig and you said it was a waste of time if I wasn’t getting paid.
You praised this accomplishment until you realized that it actually required some commitment of me — time when I should have been at your beck and call. It never registered with you that I was working toward a career — all you knew is that I didn’t make enough money to lay down a grand for some dream vacation or to order sushi twice a week. Last I heard, you’re still burrowed under the same desk your mom helped you land when you were two years younger than I am now.
6. When I asked you what kind of tattoo you would get if you ever got one and you replied “I don’t know — some kind of really bad ass design.”
I get that ink is not for everyone. But you know what is? Having an identity. Knowing what you’re passionate about, what drives you. You should know in the most general sense what you’d want people to see if they could read your skin. If what you want people to read is what a fucking man you are, then you don’t have the balls to stay with me.
7. When I told you about the time I was sexually assaulted in a Whole Foods parking lot and you said it must’ve happened because I looked so sexy.
You interjected this gem as I tried to convey how terrified and powerless I felt. How I approached the counter in tears and told a cashier what happened. How I dialed 911 but my fingers were shaking too disruptively to press “Send.” How I circled the plaza in my car, trying to track down this man because I’d forgotten to pay attention to the color of his hair. How I replayed the incident over in my mind, furious that I didn’t knee him in the groin. You somehow managed to turn my story of this assault into some kind of foreplay. At the time, I did not have the language to express what a misogynistic fuck you were, so I laughed.
Laughed.
It wasn’t until after we broke up — after you started ignoring me unless you were inside me and I confronted you about it, and you spewed a slew of cliches about not wanting a traditional relationship — that I sought to understand what I’d been through with you during the last year. Our time together was less about me trying to be good enough for you and more about you undermining my worth so I’d never stand up to you. It was more about your need for someone to validate your interests, make you feel desirable, and help do the work necessary to create the life you wanted without something as pesky as individuality getting in the way.
Someone recently told me you’d become engaged. I don’t have to meet your fiancee to know that she fills your spaces with no shifting or expanding required of you. I haven’t reached the final stage of metamorphosis but when I look to the woman I was then I see that I’ve outgrown both of you – and that forever proving myself forced me to crystallize who it was I wanted to become. Now I teach other people how to do things that I was too scared shitless to try back then. There is no part of my body I’m afraid to tattoo, no job I think I’ll never qualify for, no amount of failure that I believe strips away my worth as a human — not even my failure to become your obedient wife. That’s why when you asked me to get back together a week later, I rejected you after a brief deliberation. Yes, I should’ve realized a lot sooner that we were wrong together, but at least I worked it out faster than you.
You should like Thought Catalog on Facebook here.
Thought Catalog » Love & Sex
1. When you voiced your bewilderment on how banning gay marriage could be unconstitutional if the majority vote to ban it, realized I could argue this point, and then backtracked with “I don’t want to get into a fight about this.”
You don’t get to close the discussion before my opinion gets heard. You can’t be both someone who values me and someone who refuses to hear my thoughts on an issue I am passionate about because I might outsmart you. Women see this all the time: a guy makes a casually offensive remark and acts wounded when we call him out. “Whoa, calm down! Can’t you take a joke?” It’s dismissive. It’s a cheap shot. You can’t call in backup, so you have to question my ability to have a rational discussion. And if you are so worried about constitutionality, maybe go back and read the part about inalienable rights. I don’t think it contained a “unless a huge group of people gang up to take them away” caveat.
2. When you brought up your ex girlfriend on our second date.
You ex-girlfriend sounds like a fucking bore, by the way. She listens to Dr. Laura and doesn’t understand why anyone likes Harry Potter. I can’t fathom the active self-loathing it would take to boast either of these qualities. This should have raised one of two red flags for me: either you are hung up on this woman so you will probably bore me just as much as she would, or you must be so insecure that she jumped to the forefront of your mind the minute she moved on from you. By dating you, I was placing myself in the crossfire of an unfinished shit-slinging contest. Plus, between this ex and every woman in your family – an onslaught of one kitchen fixture after another – I felt like I was deconstructing the Feminine Mystique every time I considered what a future with you would be like.
3. When you told me “I hope I never have a daughter.”
One of my girlfriends is convinced that when a guy say this, what he really means is that he sees women as sexual objects; given how he views a woman’s role in society, he cannot conceive of a world where he is responsible for loving, guiding, and protecting one. You are so comfortable being complicit in female oppression that you don’t think a female life is worth the trouble it takes to challenge gender norms. I felt so dehumanized when you said this, I wondered if having extended contact with me was also too burdensome for your privileged brain. I finally came back with “I guess you and I can never have kids, because I’m only having girls.” I love being female. I love women. You cannot shame me for my identity.
4. When I mentioned my idea of applying for a competitive writing fellowship in addition to graduate programs, and you told me I shouldn’t.
It was a shot, even if I was fumbling in the dark — a shot at something I’ve wanted since toddlerhood when I stared at the symbols in those heavy books my parents read and knew I had at least this much to say. I don’t know why you hated this idea. Perhaps because the fellowship was out of state, or possibly because you thought it was a ridiculous goal. Really, I should’ve known I was ill-advised to sleep with you after you blew off my offer to let you read an essay I’d gotten published. How little you must have regarded my voice to choose to preserve the effort it takes to glance over a few pages.
5. When I landed a teaching assistant gig and you said it was a waste of time if I wasn’t getting paid.
You praised this accomplishment until you realized that it actually required some commitment of me — time when I should have been at your beck and call. It never registered with you that I was working toward a career — all you knew is that I didn’t make enough money to lay down a grand for some dream vacation or to order sushi twice a week. Last I heard, you’re still burrowed under the same desk your mom helped you land when you were two years younger than I am now.
6. When I asked you what kind of tattoo you would get if you ever got one and you replied “I don’t know — some kind of really bad ass design.”
I get that ink is not for everyone. But you know what is? Having an identity. Knowing what you’re passionate about, what drives you. You should know in the most general sense what you’d want people to see if they could read your skin. If what you want people to read is what a fucking man you are, then you don’t have the balls to stay with me.
7. When I told you about the time I was sexually assaulted in a Whole Foods parking lot and you said it must’ve happened because I looked so sexy.
You interjected this gem as I tried to convey how terrified and powerless I felt. How I approached the counter in tears and told a cashier what happened. How I dialed 911 but my fingers were shaking too disruptively to press “Send.” How I circled the plaza in my car, trying to track down this man because I’d forgotten to pay attention to the color of his hair. How I replayed the incident over in my mind, furious that I didn’t knee him in the groin. You somehow managed to turn my story of this assault into some kind of foreplay. At the time, I did not have the language to express what a misogynistic fuck you were, so I laughed.
Laughed.
It wasn’t until after we broke up — after you started ignoring me unless you were inside me and I confronted you about it, and you spewed a slew of cliches about not wanting a traditional relationship — that I sought to understand what I’d been through with you during the last year. Our time together was less about me trying to be good enough for you and more about you undermining my worth so I’d never stand up to you. It was more about your need for someone to validate your interests, make you feel desirable, and help do the work necessary to create the life you wanted without something as pesky as individuality getting in the way.
Someone recently told me you’d become engaged. I don’t have to meet your fiancee to know that she fills your spaces with no shifting or expanding required of you. I haven’t reached the final stage of metamorphosis but when I look to the woman I was then I see that I’ve outgrown both of you – and that forever proving myself forced me to crystallize who it was I wanted to become. Now I teach other people how to do things that I was too scared shitless to try back then. There is no part of my body I’m afraid to tattoo, no job I think I’ll never qualify for, no amount of failure that I believe strips away my worth as a human — not even my failure to become your obedient wife. That’s why when you asked me to get back together a week later, I rejected you after a brief deliberation. Yes, I should’ve realized a lot sooner that we were wrong together, but at least I worked it out faster than you.
You should like Thought Catalog on Facebook here.
Thought Catalog
