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

"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.

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]

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]