Latoya Peterson's excellent essay, "The Not Rape Epidemic," a version of which was published in the brand new anthology Yes Means Yes, and was blogged about last week by Megan, isn't exactly a gentle holiday season comedown. But I was struck, reading the piece — which is both moving and important — by a strange feeling of recognition. Peterson defines a new term, "not rape" — the kind of sex and sexual attention young women get from men which is, if not outright unconsenting, some measure of coerced. Not rape is every kind of uncomfortable experience you're made to feel complicit in: for choosing to go to the party, for wanting the kisses but not knowing how to say 'No' to what came next, for ending up alone with someone you thought you could trust — or, in Peterson's case, for opening the screen door a few inches to a friend-of-a-friend one summer afternoon while her parents were out.

The essay made me think of all the times I've not been raped. And all the other women in my industry who've not been raped.

Most models start working in their early teens. The youngest girl I've ever lived with in a model's apartment, a girl who went to the same grown-up job castings our agency gave me, was 12 years old. (We were working a fashion week in a secondary market, and her show list was easily twice as long as mine and our 16-year-old roommate's. The clients just loved the 5'11" middle schooler; she gave her age as 14.) My first real modeling job was a photo shoot for a major European magazine — and when I got to the studio that day, I was greeted by the sight of a 17-year-old Russian, posing topless, smoking a Marlboro. She told me in broken English that she'd been working full-time for three years. I think I'd gone a week in Paris before I met an Arkansan, also 17, who'd dumped her boyfriend of several years to sleep with with a man old enough to be her father who happened to be the director of her (major, well-regarded) agency.

I can't count the number of girls I meet in this industry who speak in regretful tones of that short-lived "relationship" they had with that older photographer or client; I can't count the number of men I meet who radiate the unmistakable sense that they have literally been sleeping with 17-year-olds since they were that age themselves. Agency directors in the mold of Gérald Marie. Financial backers. Clients. Or any of the industry hangers-on, the restaurateurs and the importer/exporters and the gossip columnists who end up at the parties we go to (because, you soon learn, going to parties is sort of part of the job).

And the fashion industry, which is an industry I love and whose vital importance as both an economic engine and a field for the projection of women's dreams I affirm, probably has a case to answer for perpetuating the idea that teenaged girls — or the occasional leggy 12-year-old — are the equivalent of grown women in every way. There are some photographers — Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, for example — who will only work with models over the age of 18, because, as Inez told me once, before then, you don't really know who you are or what you're comfortable with, anyway. And the modeling industry, or at least some of its players, probably should be more careful about the level of supervision and the kind of working environments it provides for their youngest charges.

You spend a lot of time in this line of work away from your regular support network of family and friends, in cities where you may not speak the language, working with an agency that, while technically in your employ, pretty much feels like your boss, down to telling you how to dress and comport yourself. I won't even pretend I know the intricacies of the sexual assault statutes in Milan or Paris or Hong Kong — let alone the responsiveness of the local police to such complaints. A 15-year-old from a small town in Ukraine probably wouldn't have a hope. Being not raped is something our work environment tacitly encourages us to shrug off.

A few months ago, a 19-year-old friend of mine told me a particularly sad story about a model we both knew who had just turned 17. Part of the story was that she had been dating a man in his mid-twenties, a sorta-famous musician, and the relationship was over. (The other part of the story involved heroin.) There was a long pause. "The thing is," my friend said, with a rueful laugh, "I was sleeping with him when I was 16, too."

I know these kinds of relationships — which, at the very least, are characterized by regrettable power dynamics — are not unique to the fashion industry. And even within it, they're not exactly normal, just more common than perhaps would be ideal. But I think it is worth considering whether these kinds of inappropriate behaviors are connected to the fact that, in this industry, you're treated as an appropriate professional stand-in for adult women from menarche — or from when you hit 5'9", whichever comes first.

I reached that height threshold when I was barely 13; I remember that was the year men started leering at me on the bus, or pestering me with awkward come-ons. It has not gotten any easier since. As women, we are so often compelled to see ourselves as nothing more than our bodies — to look, in essence, through the eyes of the men who objectify us without our consent, and to want to dislike what it is they see. As someone who is complicit in my own objectification for a living, as someone whose work is in my body, I think I maybe even feel this discomfort more keenly. I sometimes buy into the whole notion that life would be easier, somehow, if I were less attractive, if I didn't have a job that required me to hit the tight/revealing/short clothing trifecta every day I have castings, that I wouldn't get this kind of unwelcome attention if I could somehow change myself. (I know that's not true, because it isn't a function of my choices, and because I don't think a single one of my women friends from outside the industry has experiences that are in any way different.) The other night I got briefly out-of-step with my boyfriend, and as soon as I turned a corner, the rolling public commentary on my looks that is the reason I usually keep my headphones on even if they're not plugged in to anything, not to mention why I wear dark glasses whether it's sunny or not, started up, courtesy of a group of middle-aged men who were standing on my street. My boyfriend heard and when he caught up he looked at me, aghast. I thought at that moment, At least now he gets, if only for a moment, what it's like to be us.

Sometimes it's difficult to define yourself as a woman in this culture by any other measure than your persistent fear of men. Men can do things that we will never be able to do without first brokering some kind of peace with the fear. In case the fear doesn't produce itself in your gut whenever you're alone in public, in case you don't know any survivors of sexual violence yourself, rape is made a plot element of television shows and movies every single day, male violence fills the news, and even the media created for us and by us constantly interrogate what it means to be raped and what "counts" as rape, as if we didn't know, or might forget. And as Peterson's essay illustrates so aptly, there are a million male behaviors that are not so much rape as rape spectrum, or rape-ish, or not rape by degree instead of by kind, an entire constellation of potential violations, that almost every sentient woman has more than enough reason by experience to be afraid of. We are taught to put such extraordinary faith in such ridiculous talismans — I can go jogging if it's still light, I can walk these three blocks if I hold my keys out, I can leave my drink unattended while I go to the bathroom if I put a napkin over it, I can trust him if he's so-and-so's friend — that, if we stopped with the bargaining for a minute and actually thought about the chances we have to take to live as men take for granted or to try and have some semblance of trusting romantic relationships, we might never leave the house again. Refusing the fear — walking home alone when the buses have stopped running, doing anything at all alone after dark to make the point that you can — doesn't feel entirely liberating, either. It mostly feels stupid. (I still do these things, sometimes, because if I'm going to feel putting-a-napkin-on-my-drink stupid, I might as well occasionally feel walk-home-drunk-alone stupid.) How to contend with this fear is, I am convinced, the major question of 21st century womanhood. Are there any positive ways to define yourself, as a woman in the Western world? I'm still trying to come up with some.

The last time I was not raped was earlier this year. I had flown to a major market for work, and rather than stay at a hotel or in agency housing, I thought it would be more fun to sleep on the couch of a guy close to my age, who I think I suspected even then would not prove a lasting or dependable friend. One night, he had his girlfriend and a few of his friends over for a late dinner, and afterward, we all had a couple drinks. I think I was nursing my third glass of wine around 1 or 2 a.m. when my friend called it a night; two other guests left shortly thereafter, and soon it was just me and a part-time male model, sitting on my friend's porch. We were talking about David Foster Wallace, who was at that point still alive, and I liked the conversation right up until he put his arm around me, grabbed my breasts, and tried to kiss me. I was in a (different) relationship then; I'm the kind of boringly faithful girlfriend who mentions her absent boyfriend to new acquaintances at least once every few seconds. If my talking points that night had a chyron, it was Not Interested Or Available! And what's more I could hardly see how our nerdy patter could be misread as an attempt at flirtation, let alone an invitation to suddenly slide my sundress down my shoulders and make a grab for my breasts. I stopped, told him curtly that wasn't acceptable, and scooted away. He made some dismissive, faux-innocent comment — Really? That's not OK? — that implied I was the one with the problem, but he promised not to do it again, and I uneasily returned to our conversation, hoping that he'd leave soon. Within five minutes, he tried to kiss me again. I wrenched free and went inside, but my friend and his girlfriend were asleep, and the male model was my friend's close buddy — they went back much further than he and I did. Since it wasn't my place, I didn't feel like I could ask him to leave. When he followed me into the living room, I turned on the loudest, most grandiose, least romantic movie I could find — Scarface — and sat as far away from him on the couch as possible. He kept on creeping closer to me, and he rebuffed any hint I gave that he should think about going home.

I thought if I consented to his rubbing my shoulders, he might limit his other activities. (I was wrong.)

I thought if I stiffened at his every touch, he might get the message. (Wrong.)

I thought if I said clear, standard-issue stuff like "Don't do that," he might abide it. (Wrong.)

I thought if I joked, changed the subject, made light of Tony Mottola's creepy relationship with his younger sister, he might cease the pawing and get a clue. (Wrong.)

I thought if I hunched my shoulders so he couldn't work my sundress off them, he might not decide to reach for my zipper instead. (Wrong on that count, too.)

We watched the movie until 7:30 that morning; he would find a way to put his hands on me, as if to say, "I'm in control here," and eventually I think I got too tired to always be swatting him away. He only got up to leave when my friend walked through his hallway to the bathroom as the credits were rolling. The male model said, "Well. I suppose I'd better get going," in a tone of voice that meant, since you are clearly no fun and I locked my friend's front door behind him. It felt like a very long time before I heard his car start.

When my friend suggested hanging out with the male model a day or so later, I tried to explain what happened, and why I didn't want to see him again, but he avoided my gaze, and said something that implied I'd misunderstood his model friend's intentions. My then boyfriend, never having had the opportunity to witness the diligence of my long-distance fidelity, was suspicious and mistrusting of me as a rule — rightly or wrongly, I thought if I told him, I'd get an argument about why I was "always" in strange cities with strange men, and why I'd been so thoughtless as to end up alone with this creep, and drinking at that. It wasn't really any of my agency's business, plus my booker in that city — one of the only straight men employed there — had long made a habit of standing too close to me, and once rubbed my knee under a table, so telling him was out. And, besides, as violated as I felt, I know it could have been much worse. It was not rape.

A major theme of Latoya Peterson's essay is the importance of words, because articulating an experience can help stop it from being reproduced. "This is how the Not Rape epidemic spreads — through fear and silence," she writes.

Women of all backgrounds are affected by these kinds of acts, regardless of race, ethnicity, or social class. So many of us carry the scars of the past with us into our daily lives. Most of us have pushed these stories to the back of our minds, trying to have some semblance of a normal life that includes romantic and sexual relationships. However, waiting just behind the tongue is story after story of the horrors other women experience and hide deep within the self behind a protective wall of silence.

I polled the other Jezebels, and virtually all of us has been not raped. Megan has written bravely about her sexual assaults before; the rest of us can remember, variously, high school boyfriends who pressured us into doing things we weren't comfortable with, guy "friends" who helped us through breakups, only "he decided to take advantage and I decided to let him," and all the older men who magically started hitting on us when we turned 13. One of us had a college professor angle for some "side boob action" and the same Jezebel had to deter a friend of her parents by punching him in the stomach. Another had her mom's graduate student assistant corner and grope her in an empty office when she was 12. Only one of us says she's been lucky enough to never have to contend with these kinds of situations.

As Peterson writes,

At age fourteen, I lacked the words to speak my experience into reality. Without those words, I was rendered silent and impotent, burdened with the knowledge of what did not happen, but unable to free myself by talking about what did happen.

I cannot change the experiences of the past.

But, I can teach these words, so that they may one day be used by a young girl to save herself

Related: The Not Rape Epidemic [Racialicious]
Yes Means Yes: Visions Of Female Sexual Power And A World Without Rape [Amazon]

Earlier: Not Every Sexual Assault Starts With A Man And A Gun
'Cosmo' Tells Me I Was 'Gray Raped'; Feministing Says It Was Rape. Are We Really Arguing About This?

Yeah, that's right: RAPE! An endlessly thrilling topic, whatever the social context! Especially at the beach, I can totally see this playing out so well:

DUDE: Hey, hotness. The keg may be tapped, but I can show you a clothes dryer where a quarter-bottle of Malibu has our names engraved on them…

'COSMO' READER: Um, cool! So like, did you know, that if you slip something in my drink, I can totally find out if you had sex with my unconscious body the next day without having to drag the police into it?

Seriously though, rape should get talked about more, but it's odd to see Cosmo suggesting it's as simple and no-big-thang as, say, sticking a finger in his ass while you're in reverse cowgirl. But hey! Maybe I'm just old and rape is now so just so common it's lost its stigma as a discussion topic. How awesome would that be?

Cosmo

She's been trying to take her boyfriend's brother to court, and there is some ambiguity in the Massachusetts law that keeps this sort of thing from being an actual crime. Smart rape technique, eh? Anyway it happens a lot with drunk girls at frat parties too. So they're trying to, you know, criminalize it.

If Your Neighbor Poses As Your Husband, Is It Rape? [NPR]
Husband Remains In Dark About Wife's Nighttime Visitor [Detroit News]

Earlier: Dear Abby Strongly Doubts Your Wife's Rape Story

If a woman says, I'm "seeing someone else," as a way to get a dude to stop going forward sexually, he could interpret that statement to mean:

• You want to go further but you want him to know that it doesn't mean that you're committed to him
• You want to go further but you want him to be discreet, so that the other guy doesn't find out
• You want to go further but you want him to realize, in case you end up "going together," that you may do this with someone else while you're seeing him
• You don't want to go further.

Those were all choices in the form that Motley gave his students. Some of the men were asked to choose what it would mean when they said "I'm seeing someone else," and the other half were asked what a woman would mean if she uttered the phrase. According to the press release, "The questionnaire study showed that men were accurate at interpreting direct resistance messages like 'Let's stop this.' But they were as apt to interpret 'Let's be friends' to mean 'keep going' as to mean 'stop.' And few of them would mean 'stop' if they were to deliver any of the indirect messages themselves." Motley thinks that women are more likely to use indirect messages because they don't want to anger or offend the men that they are dating. One of Motley's main conclusions is that women need to be as direct as possible when communicating sexual wants. We suggest using the time-honored "Get your fucking hands off me." It seems to relay the message pretty clearly!

Men, Women, Sex And Confusion [Los Angeles Times]
Why College Men May Hear 'Yes' When Women Mean 'No' [UC Davis]

Earlier: College Senior Tells Rape Apologist* To Stop Blaming The Victim
'Cosmo' Tells Me I Was 'Gray Raped'; Feministing Says It Was Rape. Are We Really Arguing About This?

I have, for whatever reason, been pawed and groped and molested and yeah, date raped more often than the average alcohol-abusing girl. I am also somebody who, because I despise "dating", tends to endure epic famines of no sex or physical intimacy at all. And so there have been times when I have found myself, in a semi-conscious drunkorexic fog, being somehow violated by a stranger and probably enjoying it. (If only I hadn't been too drunk to remember, right?) Anyway, maybe whatever dude got it in his head to violate me somehow knew I was starving for sexual contact and figured he would help me out. After all, there's a level of drunkenness at which even the most die-hard anorexic can't turn down fries; perhaps men assume the same goes for them. Maybe that's how some dudes think about these things. I'm glad dudes aren't the only ones making laws anymore.

Maryland's Highest Court Rules Women Can Withdraw Consent [The News Journal]

So, how has date rape become such everyday dudehavior? You can probably blame a religious fetishization of virginity for the fact that a lot of girls say "no" to sex they actually want. Perhaps this is a source of some disappointment to dudes who try to fuck Christian girls. (Dudes, come on, stop trying to fuck Christian girls.) So...they date rape them? So they can leave them filled with a nagging sense of lifelong shame? That will fuck up their sex lives, much worse than the religion ever did, for years and years to come? Jesus Christ. Okay, and then there is the chance that she just doesn't want to have sex with you. Maybe she's flirting with you for affirmation, maybe she's heard you're shitty in the sack, maybe she's hung up on someone else, maybe she heard about your folliculitis of the balls. Whatever. So you stick it in anyway and achieve the worst sex of your life and leave her wondering for years and years and years, "Why the fuck did he do that to me?"

One time when this happened to me, I actually asked, and he said, "You just didn't seem to be the kind of girl who thought sex was that big a deal." How perceptive! So why the fuck would you commit a felony to stick it in a girl so deeply uninterested in having sex with you she bothered to say "no" for once in her entire sex-positive life?

I still don't know. But hey! Apparently the shirt's been pulled. Go Feministing Bonerkiller Squad!

Hilarious Rape Shirt Pulled [Feministing]

Interestingly, MacDonald doesn't fully parse the 20-25% statistic (Side note: It's been twenty years: Doesn't a new study seem to be in order? And does 20-25% sound like an over or under-estimation?) but instead descends into a Laura Sessions Stepp-like rant against drunk sluts. "In all these drunken couplings, there may be some deplorable instances of forced and truly non-consensual sex. But most campus 'rape' cases exist in the gray area of seeming cooperation and tacit consent, which is why they are almost never prosecuted criminally." Ah yes, the old "gray rape" defense! MacDonald ends on an even more damning note: "Young iconoclasts can take up another discredited idea: College is for learning. Fighting male dominance or catering to the libidinal impulses released in the 1960s are sorry substitutes for the pursuit of knowledge." If only young women were at the library studying on Saturday nights, MacDonald seems to be saying, then this rape nonsense wouldn't be such a problem!

[Image via The Daily Dose Book Nook.]

What Campus Rape Crisis? Promiscuity And Hype Have Created A Phony Epidemic At Colleges. [Los Angeles Times]

Earlier: Cosmopolitan's Date Rape Panel: There Are No Shades Of "Gray" When Vomit Is Involved
'Cosmo' Wonders: Is It Rape If You Had Too Many Jaeger Shots To Remember It Anyway?

"It started happening, and then he, like, twisted his fingers around my hair and started pulling it and being just kind of violent. I started choking because he was just, like, pushing my head.... I started gagging and choking, and I couldn't really breathe. "She says she started pushing on Shaw-Fox's abdomen to tell him to stop. "And he was like, 'Yeah, that's right, choke on it.'"

She was a virgin, and she calls it — picks zit in shame — "gray rape." I'm not sure what's really "gray" here except the color I would like to render this guy's weiner, but what's in a phrase? Helen Hunter is a badass. Long story short: she sent a letter to her school newspaper not identifying him, and as weeks passed and more victims became aware that they weren't alone, they constructed a Facebook group called "Morgan Shaw-Fox is a Piece of Shit Rapist." He was pictured, appropriately, shirtless. A few hundred people joined. It did not stop him from being a douchebag.

On Dec. 12, Shaw-Fox was on stage at an end-of-year concert on campus that included his a cappella group Momo and the Coop. Shaw-Fox and three other young men sang a song that drew a hearty applause. A portion of the lyrics runs:

I gotta sing and I dance when I glance in my pants,

And the feeling's like a sunshiny day.

I take a look at my enormous penis,

And everything is going my way.

Trial By Facebook [Williamette Week]

P.S. Enjoy the comments on the WW website.
P.P.S. Sorry about that earlier photo. Those were pix of Morgan's a cappella group members. I put them up mistakenly because I am a careless piece of shit.

He goes on to accuse the Labour party of "criminalis[ing] the hard working and the law abiding." These comments come just a month after Cameron spoke out against rape, calling for tougher sentences on sexual predators.

On November 12th, Cameron told the Conservative Women's Organization that he would increase funding to rape crisis centers and said that too many men commit rape because they "think they can get away with it." The Home Office Minister in charge of sexual crimes policy, Vernon Coaker, told the Guardian that if Cameron was really serious about his comments from last month, he should immediately apologize for his friend Redwood's remarks and call on him to issue a retraction."

In the same blog post in which he discusses the "doctrine of equivalence" perpetuated by the Labour Party, Redwood also decries the increasing criminalization of speeding and increased regulations on business. By minimizing the crimes of speeding and date rape in the same breath, Redwood seems to be even further dismissing the seriousness of acquaintance rape. Coaker says it best in the Telegraph: "[A]lmost 90 per cent of rapes are committed by men who know their victims, so this type of rape is the biggest problem we have to deal with - not something to be dismissed as a lesser crime."

A Better Class of Criminal? [John Redwood's Diary]
Redwood's Date Rape Comments Infuriate Campaigners [Guardian]
John Redwood: Treat Date Rape Differently [Telegraph]

Earlier: In British Date Rape "Adverts", Rapist & Victim Look The Same

TV Advert To Warn Men Over Rape [BBC]
Police Launch Rape Awareness TV Campaign [Greater Manchester Police]
Earlier: 'Cosmo' Wonders: Is It Rape If You Had Too Many Jaeger Shots To Remember It Anyway?

Executives at the station airing the episode maintain the incident was not rape because Ofunneka wasn't unconscious, while viewers apparently claimed she was; she's filmed hurling, etc.

The whole thing is a lot to take.

Oh yeah, and they are both still competing for the prize money.

Jesus Christ.

Big Brother Horror Show [First Post]

Laura Sessions Stepp was the first to speak at any length, and she basically rehashed the article she had written in Cosmo peppered with some of her usual anti-hook-up propaganda. Blah, blah, women should be dating and not just having casual sex, blah, blah, there wouldn't be so much assault if they had real relationships.

Two of the three men on the panel, Neal Irvin, the National Director of Men Can Stop Rape and anti-violence activist Joe Samalin, focused their commentary on the need to educate men. "The way we socialize men to think about sexuality is the reason they're confused about gray rape," said Irwin. "We're taught that men are the seekers, women are the gatekeepers." An interesting point, but neither Irvin nor Samalin gave concrete examples on how to help educate or socialize the men in question.

Linda Fairstein, the former chief prosecutor in the Manhattan D.A.'s Sex Crimes Unit, was the only commentator who said anything remotely useful in terms of defining gray rape. "There is no such thing as gray rape in the criminal justice system," Fairstein explained. If a woman is blackout drunk — ie she is actively engaging in behavior but not creating new memories — rape will be nearly impossible to prosecute. "I would never have said yes when I was sober," Fairstein said, "will not stand up in court."

"Men are responsible," Fairstein continued. "They shouldn't be having sex with wasted women. Vomit should probably be a red flag... But teaching responsibility to young women is just as important. You don't have to drink eight drinks. You don't have to get blotto."

After the panel, Samalin suggested to me that men should refuse to have sex with any woman who has been drinking. "Even if you've been dating for three years," he said solemnly. Because that's a realistic expectation! Samalin's attitude was my issue with the whole experience. Every panel member vigorously agreed that when a woman says no, a man should listen, regardless of how quietly she says it or how intoxicated she might be. But the messier issues — what if she says no, but then consents later, or what if she says no while she's taking off her panties — were either not addressed or glossed over completely. Incidentally, I learned that in Maryland and North Carolina, once penetration has begun, a woman cannot rescind her consent. Duke sorority sisters, please take note.

I tried to ask Cosmo EIC Kate White what she thought about the gray rape discussion but when I told her I was from Jezebel, she muttered something about needing to deal with logistics and scurried off. Maybe she was aware of the irony that Cosmo — the magazine that, just this month, is suggesting its readers learn to "Tease Him into a Frenzy!" and "Be a Jealous Bitch!" — was hosting a discussion about the deeply conflicted nature of young women's sexual identity. Or maybe she was just afraid we'd tell everyone how airbrushed her letter from the editor photo is.

Earlier: 'Cosmo' Wonders: Is It Rape If You Had Too Many Jaeger Shots To Remember It Anyway?
Related: New Yorkers: Come Protest "Gray Rape" Panel This Morning! [Feministing]

Q: How surprised were you that women would want to start relationships with the guy who raped them? Did you understand it on an intuitive/emotional level or did you only come to understand it on an intellectual level?

A: Well, I think a lot of this has to be considered within a larger context. Firstly, remember that this whole thing begins with — begins on — Match.com. So, off the bat this is a situation where one's suspending disbelief, in terms of accepting that the things the other person, whom you've never even seen in person, is saying about himself are true. To these women he wasn't just "the guy who raped them"; he was also a smart, seemingly successful, good-looking trauma surgeon. Now, for some, that will bring up the question of whether these women had reason enough to accept the things he was saying about himself, namely that he was a doctor (or, to some, a CIA agent, and an astronaut); about that, I suspect it's reasonable to be dubious. But the point is, you're not just waking up in the morning to some random loser or some frat boy in college — you're waking up to a guy whom you met in person for the first time the night before and found likable and drank at least moderately with and believe to be a trauma surgeon, and whom you're now looking at smiling at you across the pillow, contemplating that he might also have just raped you. I mean, for most of us this does not fit the profile: good-looking trauma surgeons who live in fancy high-rises are not rapists. So I think it's possible to understand pretty easily how in the cloud of the next morning her intellectual self might overtake her instinct. And since he for the most part did not really betray any overt violence after the initial night, for those who allowed him into their lives subsequently one can see how these women might convince themselves they were initially wrong, that the memory was flawed. One other thing I want to add is that he fooled some very intelligent women. His former longtime girlfriend/fiancee, a respected lawyer and intelligence analyst for the military, believed for the few years that they were together that he was all these things: that when he'd gone away for some time after September 11 he was in the caves of Afghanistan he said he was in; that when she met him for a meal in the cafeteria of the Center City hospital, he in his white coat and scrubs, that they were in fact sitting in his place of employment; that he was not dating and fucking hundreds of other women. These scenarios he presented were fairly elaborate.

Q: I don't know if you've read all about it on my blog, but I was date-raped in Philly in an incident I never could have in a million years gotten prosecuted. I was resentful in large part because I'd only had sex with two other people at the time, and sex, in my mind, was this muddled concept that was supposed to involve affection, warmth, some element of commitment, etc., which I think is why I so desired, after I chewed the guy out, to semi-befriend him and make the experience somehow "meaningful." At the same time, it probably hastened my adoption of the "oh who cares, whatever, it's just sex" philosophy of fucking that now, given the same situation, would have made things much clearer in my mind, like: "Did I want to have sex with this person? Is this person going to get me off? Is this person going to even try?" Thoughts that didn't occur to me at the time. Anyway! So I couldn't help but notice that a lot of the victims you spoke to were Catholic. Not that I blame that! But, um, did you talk to any of the victims about whether Jeffrey got them off?

A: Hmmm. Shit. That's a question.

I guess I'd say first that your story seems to demonstrate what I was trying to say before: that women apparently often attempt to befriend their abusers after the fact, to convince themselves that their belief is wrong and they could not possibly have been raped, or, continuing to blame themselves here, to elevate the sex to something more meaningful/morally acceptable than "casual sex" (not to mention than "rape"), because you're right, at least some of these women had not really had many partners. (I guess I'd say here, too, that, at the risk of sounding like a dick, not every woman who says she's been date-raped is necessarily ight about that, in an objective sense, particularly when there's alcohol involved, because actions at the time and recollections after the fact are not always what they'd be were it not for alcohol. So we agree that not every claim is necessarily fact, and I mention this because it plays a role in this conversation, in terms of a woman's reaction to an incident.) At the same time, some of these women were sexually empowered, they had had many partners, they were sexually experienced, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that they would have had sex with a guy they'd only just met. So I think that that added sometimes to their confusion about what had happened — remember that many had not conjured that they could have been drugged until much later — and I know that that affected the jury; the jury was not of the mindset that women are chaste, that single women couldn't possibly desire sexual satisfaction, too — the fruits of Sex & The City, I'm told.

As to getting off, it stands to reason that at least some of the women who maintained relations with him after the fact — some for some time — might not have always hated the sex (one told me it was only good, though, "once or twice").

And I should probably mention, too, and this is often really tragic, that sexual assault victims can climax spontaneously during their attacks, even under the most difficult circumstances. It's anatomical, and a fact that tortured many young boys assaulted in the Church abuse scandal. So it's really irrelevant.

[GOOGLE: This turns out to be true. I'd never heard that before! It's like, guilt/fear makes it really easy to get off. Confusing!]

Q: Your last page was about a woman Marsalis met while skiing in Idaho just over a week before his first criminal trial started. She went with him to a bar and saw something granular in her drink and before she knew it she was getting raped. She reported it immediately; she also happened to be gay. The last paragraph is particularly powerful:

Which is to say that should K. be telling the truth, and should a jury believe her, one woman will finally succeed in doing what some 30 others did not. She will have convinced herself, immediately and independent of the influence of anyone else, that the position she awoke to that morning was not of her choosing or consent. She will have convinced herself that she bore no guilt in the matter and had been horribly violated. And she will have convinced herself that the person sleeping beside her, the good-looking, safe-looking man she'd only just met, the kindly paramedic from a few hours earlier, was for her at that moment as he lay there one thing and one thing only: the rapist she could not avoid confronting.

A: I think the Idaho case is really just extraordinary. First of all, I'm not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that the case was not admissible here because it was at that point — and remains still; the case is still probably a few months from beginning out West — still only an allegation, not fact. A person needs to be convicted of something for it to be potentially admissible. This is the same reason his first rape case in Philly was inadmissible in the second, final trial; he had been acquitted of all the charges the first time, so the fact that he'd been accused was immaterial. Having said that, his two sexual assault convictions from that second trial here could be admissible in Idaho.

But about the Idaho case ... That he would be accused of drugging and raping a woman out there just a week or so before his initial trial was scheduled to begin in Philadelphia is really unbelievable. The court records indicate, as well, that that case seems strong, with more evidence, an accuser — who happens to be a lesbian — who went to police within hours of the alleged assault, eyewitness testimony that the woman was severely intoxicated and Marsalis was all but carrying her, and what would appear to be a starker jury pool to decide the case. It seems to put whatever questions linger about the actions of some of the accusers here in Philaladelphia into a different kind of perspective.

Gray rape, if you think about it, is an ideal term to describe a topic about which I am so conflicted. it evokes the notion of "shades of gray," which is to say, the nuance without which empathy would not be possible. I forgave my gray rapist or date rapist or whatever a long time ago, much longer ago than I would have if I had felt myself that night to be in the presence of the OMG PURE EVIL that would be required to commit the sorts of things I'd been used to calling rape in the past. It is a loaded and powerful term, after all, and I derive no empowerment from using it to characterize his offense. On the other hand, I did derive empowerment — and sadness, and pain — from hearing you peoples' stories about how common this crap is. And it is only in recognizing, and accepting, those nuances — even as we hold ever tighter and faster to our beliefs and moral codes and whatever we hold dear — that we will ever come to peace with any of the horrible shit that happens in the world, although, to be quite honest, maybe alcohol will achieve the same effect. (And also: get me laid.)

All of which is a long-winded way of saying: please, if it doesn't bring you to tears, talk more amongst yourselves, about your rapes: to dudes, especially. If the partial amnesty afforded by your comfort with yourself and your sexuality in spite of it all — or afforded by terms like "gray rape" — makes it easier for all those losers to come to grips with what they've done, well, even better. (Thankfully, they'll probably be horrified and treat you like a delicate flower for a few days until they realize you aren't.)

Call It What It Is [Feministing]
Earlier: 'Cosmo' Wonders: Is It Rape If You Had Too Many Jaeger Shots To Remember It Anyway?

But then in Israel I saw this other girl who used to hook up with him and she assured me he remains a douchebag, only now one that practices medicine in New York. Anyway, I sure hope he saves some lives, and I remember that sexual experience a little more vividly than most of the consensual sexual experiences I've undergone in a similar state of intoxication, but neither sentiment makes it RAPE, does it? It's something, "date rape" I guess, but it's not rape unless I say it was, right?

All of which is a poignant, personal way of alerting you to the fact that Cosmo has come up with a new name for this kind of nonviolent collegiate date-rape sort of happening: gray rape.

And some feminists are angry, and they've launched a letter-writing campaign about it, though if you're reading Cosmo for purposes other than to revel in its unique special brand of inanity you have bigger issues with your sexual identity than what to call that time you fucked that guy you didn't really want to fuck. I'm not sure what to think about any of this, because while Laura Session Stepp (the writer of the Cosmo story) is a tool, reading the individual stories of "gray rape" victims that so closely mirrored my own — they got too drunk! they said no, but then they passed out! when they realized they were having sex, they stopped! — I felt absolutely nothing. It was one drunken regrettable night. One of so, so many more to come. And I have found that when a guy demeans you in a drunken state, it is more likely to stick with you and haunt you if you give anything resembling a shit about his opinion.

And come to think about it, how gross do you have to be to fuck someone when it's, like, three Goldschlager body shots away from being necrophilia?

Battling The Myth Of "Gray Rape" [Talking Points Memo]
No Such Thing As Gray Rape [NYC Against Rape]