It takes two...
Emily Maguire
November 20, 2010
If sex was seen as a collaboration, a pas de deux rather than a battle, sexual assaults would be reduced.
There's a public debate that reoccurs with every high-profile sexual-assault case. It involves people who were not there arguing about who was to blame. Since those discussing the case cannot know what actually happened, they quickly turn to hypotheticals: ''What if she didn't say stop?'' ''What if she had been flirting?'' ''What if she was drunk?'' ''What if everyone was drunk?'' ''What if she was into it, but then regretted it in the morning?'' ''What if she's a known groupie/sex worker/gold-digger?''
Many will answer that it doesn't matter. Sex without consent is never OK. Well, sure, others will reply, everybody knows that ''no means no'', but what if … And the hypotheticals begin again.
Ask anyone if they believe sex without consent is OK and they will say ''Of course not'', yet women continue to be sexually assaulted by men who claim to have muddled up the apparently very complicated matter of consent. Meanwhile, women who have been sexually assaulted continue to be shamed and blamed for ''getting themselves into'' situations where their ''no'' apparently does not mean that at all.
The national conversation about consent - carried out in newspapers, online forums and TV panel shows, and informed by school sex education and public anti-violence campaigns - is usually well-meaning, but it is also dangerously immature. It is important that people understand that nonconsensual sex is a crime, but too often the discussions end up mired in legal definitions. Is this rape? How about this? The aim seems to be to clarify the circumstances in which you can get away with having sex with a reluctant partner rather than to educate about sexual ethics.
If you pay attention to the arguments used in most discussions of heterosexual consent, it is clear that many people understand the relationship between sexually active men and women as an adversarial one. Men fight for sex; women defend against it. Sometimes the fight will be with other men (sexual competitors or sexual gatekeepers, such as fathers), but in the final battle it always comes down to man against woman. There are rules - no means no, do not use physical force - but as long as you stick to them, well, all is fair in sex and war.
Under this model, a woman may say no, but it is the man's job to convert that no into a yes or a maybe or drunken mumbling. As long as he can extract something that could, at a legal pinch, be described as consent he can do what he likes, regardless of her feelings.
The adversarial model of heterosexual interaction rests on the assumption that women do not enjoy sex and therefore, without payment, coercion, grand promises or vats of vodka, they would never do it. And if female reluctance to have sex is natural, so is physical unresponsiveness during the act and seeming distant or teary afterwards.
If you think of sexual negotiation as a battle between a man (who wants it) and a woman (who does not), the idea that certain female behaviours encourage or excuse sexual assault becomes easier to understand. If she was serious about ''winning'' (that is, not having sex) then she would not get drunk, wear a tight dress, flirt, agree to go back to a man's room etc. Engaging in any of these behaviours is like turning up at a battle weaponless.
Suddenly, Peter ''Spida'' Everitt's defence of Collingwood players accused of sexual assault - a tweet in which he told girls they should learn that ''at 3am when you are blind drunk and you decide to go home with a guy it's not for a cup of Milo'' - makes sense. Walking into your adversary's lair in the middle of the night while debilitated by alcohol is asking for defeat. You cannot expect mercy from your would-be conqueror. This dark, misandrist view is often described as ''commonsense''. It is just ''being realistic'' to assume that men are either so weak they cannot stop themselves from raping a vulnerable woman, or so cruel that they will insist on sexually conquering an unwilling woman who was silly enough to trust them.
Parents and teachers of boys - does this not infuriate you, this speaking of men like they are sociopaths who cannot help but rape or manipulate in pursuit of selfish pleasure? Parents and teachers of girls - do your hearts not break at these warnings to girls to be constantly fearful and vigilant?
There is a better way to talk and teach about sexual negotiation and consent, a more realistic and ethical approach that would, I believe, also be more successful in reducing sexual assault. It begins with thinking of sex as the outcome of a collaboration rather than a battle, as dancing rather than fighting.
Consider it: if you ask someone to dance and they say no, there is not an awful lot you can do about it. Sure, you could nag or threaten them or ply them with double-strength drinks, but even if that works you will know they are not really into it. And what if they stop part-way through the song? Are you going to take hold of their limbs and force them to move? Shake their hips for them? You could dance at them while they stand there, I suppose. Is that fun? Would you not rather try to find someone who wants to dance? And failing that, well, the cool thing about dancing is that you can do it alone. It may not be as fun as doing it with a willing partner, but it is better than doing it with someone who does not want to be there.
You will notice the dancing model is non-gendered. This is important. Contrary to popular belief, women do initiate sex and do sometimes pressure or coerce men into having sex with them. The dancing - or collaboration - model of sexual negotiation makes the sex of the initiator irrelevant. Everybody is enthusiastically moving his or her own limbs and making happy noises or the dance party stops. Simple.
Alcohol has to be part of the discussion. Those of us who have been caught on tape re-enacting the Single Ladies film clip know that boozing can lead to enthusiastic participation in activities that cause shudders in the sober morning light. When it comes to sex, the potential consequences of drunken decision-making are more serious. Nevertheless, the ethics of the situation are not especially complicated.
Drunk people have consensual sex all the time, but drunk so that you know who and where you are and what you are doing is not the same as drunk so that you are barely conscious and unaware of your surroundings. If you have been drinking but can still speak coherently and work out how to get home, then you are probably also able to determine whether the person you are hoping to have sex with is in a similar state. That is, they have been drinking but still know where they are, who they are with and what they are consenting to.
And if you are not sure if the other person is able to consent, play it safe and decline to have sex. They might promptly, clearly communicate the wrongness of your assumption, in which case - hooray, get it on. If not, well, you will have done the right thing and there will be other chances to have sex - maybe even with this person - in circumstances where you know you are both into it.
As for regret, well, it happens, but the idea that women often ''cry rape'' because they regret a drunken hook-up is silly. Here is what happens when you report a sexual assault: you must give a detailed statement of everything that happened before, during and after the assault. You may need to go to a hospital to have evidence collected from your body. If charges are laid, you will need to make another formal statement and, if the case goes to trial, you will have to go to court and answer all the questions you have already answered, this time in public and with the questions being asked by someone who wants people to think you are lying. If the person you are accusing is a public figure such as a footballer, people you have never met will debate whether you are a lying whore, a pathetic drunk or just a victim of your own stupidity.
It is hard to imagine someone choosing to go through all that because of sexual regret. That is not to say it has never happened, but the idea that it is a common response to the morning-after cringe is ridiculous. Most people who have regrettable sex while drunk just want to forget about it. Some people who have been raped just want to forget about it, too, of course, which is part of the reason why almost 80 per cent of sexual assaults go unreported.
Some people want to insist consent is complicated, but it does not need to be. Most of the ''what ifs …'' evaporate when you think about sex as a collaboration rather than a battle. If the desired outcome is mutually enjoyable sex (however the participants define that), then only enthusiastic participation throughout will do. I am not suggesting anything other than that is rape, but not-rape should not be the ethical standard we set ourselves or teach to young people.
For those still confused about the difference between collaborative, enthusiastically engaged-in sex and possibly-legally-defensible-not-rape, consider the words of ''Clare'', the young woman who unleashed a storm of debate when she spoke about her experience in a New Zealand hotel room with 12 rugby league footballers: ''They never spoke to me, they spoke just to themselves, amongst themselves, laughing and thinking it was really funny. When you have sex with someone … it's nice and you talk and you touch and this was awful. This was nothing like that.'' A human being was ignored, talked over, laughed at and about during ''consensual'' sex. A human being was left traumatised and suicidal after ''consensual'' sex. Does the fact that the police decided not to press charges against the men make this OK? What if she said yes? What if she did not struggle? What if she was drunk? What ''what if'' would make you feel OK about having this kind of sex?
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/it-takes-two-20101119-180u4.html
Do people "petition" to rape?
