Dating and Assaults
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Anonymous
I agree with most PPs, but need to say that it's not fair to men if a woman can think sex was consensual at the time, but then decide years later that it wasn't. |
Anonymous
Um, she's not saying that her "consent" changed. But what we view as consent -not to mention outright double standard of sexism and how that affects things (i.e., she dressed like a slut so she asked for it)- has become clear over time. We should not have accepted some things 20, 30 or however many years ago. Some things were clearly assault (or worse) and men got away with it. Some are probably less clear, and while that may mean there is no legal culpability, it doesn't mean it was right. I don't care if that's "not fair to men." |
Anonymous
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When I dated, I was abducted by a date and forced to have sex for fear of my life after the date was over. That was the only time I was raped on a date. I was also assaulted by a date once, also in a car. He was driving on a highway and I couldn't safely get out, which I think is why he did it there.
I was also groped in a shared cab by a stranger just a couple of years ago after attending a gala. I don't think it's rare at all, but I do think that many young women confuse "rape" with "I drank too much and now I wish I hadn't gone along with that." It's also become a group bonding thing to share rape and assault stories with friends. I've heard this with my friends and I don't participate. I just listen. I've never shared what happened to me for this reason. It's not a thing to bond over. It's a thing to recover from. I'm doing well now and I don't want to think about it regularly. What's the point? I know that some women feel better when they know they are not alone, but that doesn't work for everyone. |
Anonymous
There is no evidence that false accusations of rape are made in greater numbers than any other crime. And statements like the bolded a) minimize these womens' experience when you know nothing about them, and b) are exactly why more women don't come forward. And it's gross. Do we say this about other crimes? "I drank too much and wish I hadn't [----]" and then dismiss what happened? No, we don't. I also take issue with the use of "bonding." I would call it healing. I held in my molestation by an uncle, my molestation by a family friend's brother, and numerous other instances that don't rise to the level of "rape" for decades. Decades. My trauma, feelings, shame only started to lift when I started talking about with people, including people who had been through the same thing. That may not be healing for you but it is for many. Calling it "bonding" is not accurate or helpful. |
Anonymous
I dated a guy close to 20 years ago who had a terrible habit of over sharing about women he’d dated previously (we didn’t date for very long). Anyway he told me about a “bad” sexual experience with a woman where she just lay there, didn’t move at all. He said he didn’t go out with her again. At the time I just thought it was a weird thing to talk about but in retrospect I wondered if it was not consensual and she froze and waited for it to be over. This guy was sweet but more than a little oblivious; I firmly believe he would not have forcibly raped someone, but also a woman would have had to say no firmly and mean it for him to stop. Mixed signals like saying no meekly and continuing to kiss would have been very confusing for him. He was kind of old school in his thinking and would have chalked it up to saying no but meaning yes/reading body language not listening to words kind of thing. I’m not in any way saying that’s what happened, just something I wondered about later. |
Anonymous
I don’t think that’s true, actually. We are just more able to recognize that this is bad and name it as assault more easily than we were 20 years ago, when the prevailing line of thinking was “women never want sex so it’s normal for men to coerce them into it.” Of course it happens more now then it did 100 years ago when dating and hooking up were less common overall and people got married earlier. But then the problems were happening inside marriages and even harder to recognize. |
Anonymous
Exactly this! And this is why we talk about enthusiastic consent now. I graduated college in 2012 so experienced the peak of hookup culture. Casual sex was common and accepted and slut shaming was bad BUT we didn’t have a good understanding of the dynamics around consent and agency. So many women (and men, I’m sure! but as a woman I am more familiar with that side of the experience) ended up in situations where they were having sex they didn’t want to have because they were drunk, didn’t know how to express their own limits, were afraid of provoking a confrontation, etc. I had those experiences myself and I look back and wish they had gone differently - I wish I’d had more agency and confidence in myself to be comfortable speaking up and setting boundaries. I wish the men I was with had been more proactive about checking in and making sure I was comfortable and wanted to keep going. I don’t look back and view those men as horrible rapists. They were young and inexperienced and didn’t know any better the same way I didn’t know better. But that also doesn’t mean that those encounters were consensual and that I should not have any trauma associated with them. And it definitely doesn’t mean that I think women who have the same experiences today should just shut up and deal with it because I did. We have a much better understanding of these dynamics now and language to talk about boundaries and limits and enthusiastic consent. So the dynamics we experienced 10-20 years ago shouldn’t fly today. We need to make sure our sons and daughters are conscious of how alcohol and social pressure impact one’s ability to consent, and emphasize that it’s always better to to play it safe. If you aren’t sure someone is able to consent, if you aren’t sure they really want to have sex with you and aren’t just going along to get along, don’t have sex! If they truly like you they’ll still like you when they’re sober and you’ll both have more fun then. And I’ve been really happy to see this come through in the Gen Z experience where both men and women seem to be more proactive about checking that their partner is comfortable and excited, and voicing when they aren’t. To be clear, there are more clear cut experiences of assault in my past that I don’t look back on with the same level of compassion for the man. I can recognize the difference between those assaults and the more grey-area nonconsensual encounters, but the fact that some experiences were clearly worse doesn’t mean the grey area experiences were good or fine. |
Anonymous
This! Your dd really captured what I was rambling about in my last post. I really hope everyone on this thread reads that and takes it to heart - and that those with sons pass on that advice as well! |
Anonymous
| PP 11:53, there's a lot of great advice in that, but I'd just like to add that you're also very different now than you were then. A 20 yo young person has hormones that drive them to risky behavior, which looking back, can seem like a lack of knowledge. So for OP, even education and warnings weren't enough for her elder DD. I don't have any solutions, but just wanted to point out a dynamic which stops our young women from avoiding the same experiences. |
Anonymous
| Just before I left for college my dad told me “college guys only want two things. To get drunk and to get laid.” While at college, once they got drunk I made a quick departure and sadly some of my friends did not. I wasn’t much of a drinker and that helped too. |