From: uunet!infmx!hartman@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Robert Hartman)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: My Young Friend Was "Date Raped"...
Date: 19 Nov 92 21:36:36 GMT
Organization: Informix Software, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

In article <1ecjk6INN13m@agate.berkeley.edu> quilty@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Humberto Humbertoldi) writes:
>In article <1ec0nbINNqoj@agate.berkeley.edu> uunet!infmx!hartman@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Robert Hartman) writes:
>.....[stuff deleted].......
>
>......[more stuff about "playing dead" to survive bear mauling deleted].....
>>
>>Depending on a woman's history, she may lapse into a mode of playing
>>dead because she's had a previous bad experience.  Even if I mean her
>>no harm at the time, if she's in the middle of reliving a previous
>>trauma, she's traumatized right then, and therefore in no position to give
>>or withhold consent.  And so, if I then take her lack of vigorous protest
>>as tacit assent, I may well have crossed the line without knowing it.
>                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Not only without knowing it, but without it being "knowable by a
>reasonable person" as the legalistic phrase about legal responsibility
>in a wide variety of situations goes!

Not so.  Insofar as I, a reasonable person, was just able to articulate
the circumstances in which such a thing might occur, a reasonable
person, upon hearing about such circumstances, will take them into
consideration.

Since I (and now you) have been made aware of this possibility, I 
(and now you) as a reasonable person, must take into consideration 
the possibility that any lack of active, unprompted assent initiated 
by one's partner can imply a diminished capacity to give consent, a
reasonable person therefore cannot construe a lack of "vigorous"
or even "explicit" protest as consent.

> ... It just becomes absurd to talk
>about rape (or any other crime or injustice) taking place without it
>being possible for a reasonable person to know their actions
>constitute such.  It reminds me of a move back to a kind of
>"Caininite" theology, in which guilt is a property of what on IS, not
>of what one DOES.

Nice try.  When one person takes advantage of another's vulnerability,
however "unwittingly," call it what you like, it's wrong.  When I
did it, I was wrong.  I hope you never have to feel the way I felt
about myself after I recognzied what I'd done.

> ...	I don't mean to make light of people's past traumas, but
>neither do I think that a current "perpetrator" can be held
>responsible for them -- nor even for assuming they exist.  

No.  But a man can and should hold himself accountable for his own
actions, and even though it might not seem fair that a woman's prior
history can interfere with whatever fun he might like to have,
sometimes that's just the way it is.  Since _everyone_ has a life
history, and the current figures estimate that 1 woman in n where n is
your favorite single-digit number has experienced incest, molest or
rape, a reasonable man must take into account the possibility that
engaging in similar activities may bring up traumatic recollections
in any woman he's with, and be prepared to deal appropriately with that
eventuality.

I realize that the standard I propose is tough.  But what is it that
men want?  Do men want to avoid unwittingly committing what some women
call "rape?"  Or do men just want to avoid the blame when they're
careless about a partner's feelings and the sex goes awry as a result?

> ... I should be held accountable for
>my actions based on their own contents, not based on what people are
>reminded of by them.

But when you ask someone to participate in something with you, and
they decline to answer, in any other context that is taken as a "no."
What's so "unreasonable" about taking a nil response to an invitation
for sex as an implicit "no?" 

-r


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