HOW COME?

Does this complex, brilliant man’s one bad choice make him a monster? No, of course not; nor does this one experience make me a “victim.”   -Naomi Wolf regarding Harold Bloom

the-great-debate?videoId=211079923&videoChannel=1

Large surveys of college students in both the United States and New Zealand have documented that over 50% of women in college had experienced unwanted sexual activity in the past, and up to 25% of all college women and 6% of college men reported having been the victims of assaults that met the legal definition of rape. Virtually none of these episodes had been reported to the authorities. Several studies show that there is confusion among youth about what constitutes sexual consent… Of the 25% of college women surveyed who reported having had unwanted sexual intercourse, 84% knew their assailant, 57% of the episodes occurred on dates, and 41% of the women stated they were virgins at the time of the assault. Between 25% and 47% of date rape occurred on the first date, with an increased risk of rape if the male had initiated the date, driven the car, and paid for the date.
SOURCE

Why Yale Students Don’t Understand Date Rape

By ADRIEL SAPORTA

Decem­ber 2009

In a con­ver­sa­tion with a nor­mally non­judg­men­tal and moth­er­ing friend, I alluded to the date rape of some­one we both knew; my friend rolled her eyes and asked, “What does that even mean?” Her reac­tion is not unique for this cam­pus. Many Yale stu­dents approach the topic of date rape with a dis­con­cert­ing blend of hes­i­tancy and cyn­i­cism. Nei­ther Yale, nor its stu­dents, can be blamed in full for this ambivalence—few issues on Amer­i­can col­lege cam­puses are as con­tentious, or as per­ti­nent, as that of date rape.

This sum­mer at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity, I con­ducted a soci­o­log­i­cal study to explore how Yale under­grad­u­ates under­stand date rape, and con­se­quently to dis­cern their feel­ings towards its legit­i­macy as a felony. I wanted to exam­ine stu­dents’ reac­tions to the term “date rape” and to see whether or not their per­cep­tions of date rape con­formed to cur­rent legal def­i­n­i­tions.

Con­necti­cut law states that “[a] per­son is guilty of sex­ual assault in the first degree when such per­son,” among other pos­si­ble offenses, “engages in sex­ual inter­course with another per­son and such other per­son is men­tally inca­pac­i­tated to the extent that such other per­son is unable to con­sent to such sex­ual inter­course” (Gen­eral Statutes of Con­necti­cut, Title 53a, Chap­ter 952)[1]. The law spec­i­fies that “‘men­tally inca­pac­i­tated’ means that a per­son is ren­dered tem­porar­ily inca­pable of apprais­ing or con­trol­ling such person’s con­duct owing to the influ­ence of a drug or intox­i­cat­ing sub­stance admin­is­tered to such per­son with­out such person’s con­sent, or owing to any other act com­mit­ted upon such per­son with­out such person’s con­sent.”[2]

…an intox­i­cated vic­tim of sex­ual assault is con­sid­ered more respon­si­ble for putting him or her­self in such a state and sit­u­a­tion, whereas an intox­i­cated aggres­sor is con­sid­ered less culpable…

Acquain­tance rape is the most com­mon type of rape com­mit­ted in the United States.[3] About a quar­ter of Amer­i­can women will be the vic­tim of rape at some point in their lives; female col­lege stu­dents are in “the high­est risk cat­e­gory for date rape.”[4] Amer­i­can col­lege cam­puses, which wit­ness a high level of binge drink­ing, face the unset­tling sta­tis­tic that alco­hol con­sump­tion is twice as likely as force to lead to lack of con­sent in a sex­ual encounter.[5]

Much of the con­tro­versy about date rape cen­ters on its def­i­n­i­tion. How do we define “con­sent”? As we see above, accord­ing to Con­necti­cut state law a per­son is not in a posi­tion to con­sent to sex­ual inter­course if he or she has been served drugs or alco­hol “with­out such person’s con­sent.” Does this qual­i­fi­ca­tion sug­gest that if a woman drinks to the point of black­ing out—after hav­ing bought drinks for her­self—and some­one has sex with her uncon­scious body, it is not con­sid­ered date rape? On the other end of the spec­trum: if a man or woman can­not legally give con­sent while even slightly intox­i­cated, is all drunken sex deemed date rape?

Many feel that the use of ver­bal as well as phys­i­cal force should be regarded as rape. As one cyn­i­cal soci­ol­o­gist points out, there are prob­lems with this pro­vi­sion: “If ver­bal coer­cion con­sti­tutes rape, then the word ‘rape’ expands to include any kind of sex a woman expe­ri­ences as neg­a­tive.”[6] Must con­sent always be ver­bal? After all, dif­fer­ent par­ties in a sex­ual encounter can inter­pret non-verbal signs dif­fer­ently. For instance, “a smile in response to being asked ‘do you have a con­dom?’ could indi­cate con­sent giv­ing in an estab­lished rela­tion­ship, but might indi­cate ner­vous appre­hen­sion on a first date.”[7] Can con­sent only be estab­lished after tak­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of the context?

I hoped, through this soci­o­log­i­cal study, to find out where Yalies stood on the mat­ter. I admin­is­tered a web-based sur­vey with the aid of Face­book. Yalies who were already in my net­work of “friends” were invited to par­tic­i­pate: 72 responded, all between the ages of 18 and 23.[8]

In the sur­vey, respon­dents were pre­sented with the fol­low­ing hypo­thet­i­cal setting:

“Sce­nario A. Two col­lege stu­dents, a boy and a girl, leave a party at which nei­ther has been drink­ing. The two return to the boy’s apart­ment in order to “hang out.” After spend­ing some time talk­ing, they begin heavy pet­ting. All cloth­ing is removed except under­gar­ments. The boy shows inter­est in sex­ual inter­course. The girl says “no,” and the boy responds by try­ing to per­suade her ver­bally. Although the girl con­tin­ues to show inter­est in the boy sex­u­ally, she explic­itly says that she is unin­ter­ested in hav­ing vagi­nal inter­course. He con­tin­ues to ini­ti­ate vagi­nal inter­course. The girl remains pas­sive and does not react, pos­i­tively or neg­a­tively. Would you con­sider this date rape?”

69.4% of respon­dents con­sid­ered Sce­nario A date rape, even with­out either party’s being intox­i­cated. Only 9.7% responded that it was not date rape, and 20.8% responded “depends” or “unsure.”

Respon­dents were then asked if they would con­sider Sce­nario A date rape if the boy forces the girl phys­i­cally to have sex­ual inter­course, at which point she gives up protest­ing. As soon as phys­i­cal force is put for­ward, 93.1% call the sce­nario date rape. I was sur­prised to see that even 2 respon­dents said it wasn’t date rape, and that 3 responded “depends” or “unsure.” Inter­est­ingly, the two who replied “no” and two of the three who replied “depends” or “unsure” were women. It is pos­si­ble that men are care­ful not to approve of phys­i­cal force in any sex­ual sce­nario, wary of the asso­ci­a­tions with vio­lent, or stranger, rape. Per­haps women would rather not admit to being phys­i­cally defen­sive in such a scenario.

Must con­sent always be ver­bal? After all, dif­fer­ent par­ties in a sex­ual encounter can inter­pret non-verbal signs differently.

When asked if they would con­sider Sce­nario A to be date rape if the girl has had 3–4 drinks at the party, 84.7% of the respon­dents replied “yes”—more than when she is sober (as the case should be, given the legal def­i­n­i­tion of date rape). Reas­sur­ingly, when asked if they would con­sider Sce­nario A to be date rape if the girl drinks to the point of black­ing out, 95.8% responded “yes”. Only one respon­dent (female) replied “no.” Research has shown that while men were more likely to blame women, and specif­i­cally their intox­i­ca­tion, for non­con­sen­sual sex­ual acts, women were more likely to blame mutual mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, men’s mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of sig­nals, and gen­eral soci­etal and male atti­tudes towards date rape.[9] My sur­vey respon­dents’ answers did not reflect this statistic.

Respon­dents were next asked to “con­sider the same cir­cum­stances as those of Sce­nario A, but both stu­dents have had 3–4 drinks at the party (from now on referred to as “Sce­nario B”). Would you con­sider this date rape?”

Now that both the boy and the girl in the sce­nario are equally intox­i­cated, the num­ber of respon­dents who replied “yes” drops sig­nif­i­cantly (77.8%). This per­cent­age is lower than when only the girl has had 3–4 drinks, sug­gest­ing that respon­dents believe that the boy’s drunk­en­ness excuses his behav­ior. Prior stud­ies have shown that an intox­i­cated vic­tim of sex­ual assault is con­sid­ered more respon­si­ble for putting him or her­self in such a state and sit­u­a­tion, whereas an intox­i­cated aggres­sor is con­sid­ered less cul­pa­ble, his or her behav­ior per­ceived as a result of the alcohol’s effects.[10] It is inter­est­ing to note that this ten­dency to view alco­hol as less­en­ing an assailant’s respon­si­bil­ity is not appar­ent when research respon­dents con­sid­ered other sex­ual crimes (such as stranger rape or unwanted touch­ing).[11]

Respon­dents were asked to con­sider a ver­sion of Sce­nario B wherein the girl never sug­gests that she is unin­ter­ested in sex­ual inter­course, but has had sev­eral drinks. The num­ber of respon­dents who decided that this sce­nario is date rape drops to 18.1%. This is the only time that the per­cent­age of respon­dents who believed the sce­nario to be date rape is less than the per­cent­age of those who believed it not to be (45.8%). How­ever, 36.1% responded “unsure” or “depends”—significantly higher than the per­cent­age of respon­dents who answered thus in any pre­vi­ous sce­nario. As one study has demonstrated—although most of us already know this too well—American col­lege stu­dents have appro­pri­ated “an all too com­mon assump­tion … that if noth­ing is said [before sex­ual inter­course] then con­sent must be implicit.”[12] Con­sid­er­ing this last sce­nario date rape would be the equiv­a­lent, for many respon­dents, of con­clud­ing that all drunken sex is date rape, which goes against their instincts and prac­ti­cal sex­ual expe­ri­ences.

Many of my respon­dents felt that being in a rela­tion­ship jus­ti­fied what they would oth­er­wise con­sider date rape. When told that the girl and boy are in a long-term rela­tion­ship, the num­ber of respon­dents who believed Sce­nario B to be date rape dropped to 48.6% (from 77.8% when the two were not in a rela­tion­ship). While some admit­ted to con­fu­sion (answer­ing “unsure” or “depends”), it is inter­est­ing that any­one would change their answer from the pre­vi­ous scenario.

When asked whether they approved of the term “date rape,” a major­ity answered that they did not (54.2%) and many replied “unsure.” This gen­eral ambiva­lence towards the term forces us to ques­tion its con­tin­ued use. Should a new phrase be coined to reflect a wider dis­tance between stranger rape and acquain­tance rape? The con­no­ta­tions attached to “date rape” could pos­si­bly pre­vent vic­tims from report­ing sex­ual assault for fear of peers’ judg­men­tal and triv­i­al­iz­ing reactions.

25.4% of my respon­dents said that they had endured a non-consensual sex­ual expe­ri­ence, a per­cent­age that includes nearly half (48.5%) of my female respon­dents (a higher per­cent­age of women than lit­er­a­ture on the sub­ject would sug­gest). This sta­tis­tic is unsur­pris­ing; those who have had per­sonal expe­ri­ences with date rape are more likely to be inter­ested in tak­ing a sur­vey on the topic.

…Amer­i­can col­lege stu­dents have appro­pri­ated “an all too com­mon assump­tion … that if noth­ing is said [before sex­ual inter­course] then con­sent must be implicit.”

Uneasi­ness about the term “date rape” appeared in the per­sonal nar­ra­tives shared by my respon­dents. A num­ber men­tioned an unwill­ing­ness to clas­sify an expe­ri­ence as “date rape.” Many dis­cussed their own respon­si­bil­ity in the sit­u­a­tion. One woman wrote, “I would never call it date rape, but I did feel that a boy inten­tion­ally got me very drunk, and we ended up hav­ing sex … it is not the type of choice I would nor­mally make, and I don’t even remem­ber mak­ing a choice. But, I don’t remem­ber say­ing no either and he def­i­nitely did not force him­self [on me].” Another woman wrote, “i was really drunk but i dont think it was rape because i didn’t explic­itly say no [sic]”. One of the few male respon­dents who iden­ti­fied him­self as the vic­tim of sex­ual assault spec­i­fied, “i was black­out and she was aggres­sive. I don’t remem­ber say­ing yes, but it happened.”

From the data, it appeared that most Yale stu­dents were rel­a­tively informed as to the legal def­i­n­i­tions of date rape. It is pos­si­ble that most respon­dents under­stood which answers were “expected” of them (Yalies are usu­ally pretty good at com­ing up with the “right” answer). I did find, how­ever, that stu­dents’ under­stand­ing of that def­i­n­i­tion did not trans­late to their inter­pre­ta­tion of the sce­nar­ios. When given con­crete exam­ples, their per­sonal instincts pre­vailed over their intel­lec­tual grasp of the concept.

Only through a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of young adults’ men­tal­ity towards date rape and sex­ual con­sent can we con­struct ade­quate pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures. Stu­dents’ inabil­ity to define sex­ual coer­cion or con­sent will only encour­age sex­ual assault on col­lege cam­puses.[13] Under­stand­ing why date rape car­ries inap­pro­pri­ately high social accep­tance reveals deeper forms of struc­tural sexism.

Whether or not one believes acquain­tance rape to be more or less “seri­ous” an affair than stranger rape, date rape has nev­er­the­less become a per­va­sive prob­lem. Rape, as defined by our judi­cial sys­tem, is most often com­mit­ted by an acquain­tance of the vic­tim. The offense is indeed, as one of my respon­dents defined it, “the least pros­e­cuted crime in America.”

Adriel Saporta is a junior in Yale Col­lege. She is the man­ag­ing edi­tor of Broad Recog­ni­tion.

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[1]http://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/pub/chap952.htm

[2] http://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/pub/chap952.htm

[3] John­son et al.

[4] Loiselle et al., 261

[5] Loiselle et al., 261

[6] Sawyer et al. 1998

[7] Humphreys et al., 307

[8] A full descrip­tion of the study par­tic­i­pants illu­mi­nates some of the study’s short­com­ings. Approx­i­mately equal num­bers of men and women com­pleted the sur­vey: 39 and 33, respec­tively. An over­whelm­ing major­ity of my respon­dents were het­ero­sex­ual; there were only six male homo­sex­ual and five bisex­ual (but no les­bian) respon­dents. A major­ity lost their vir­gin­ity between the ages of 18 and 21 (43.1%) and had been with 7 to 10 sex­ual part­ners (18.1%). Prior stud­ies have shown that the more sex­ual expe­ri­ence an indi­vid­ual has had, the less impor­tant he or she believes receiv­ing ver­bal con­sent to be[8]. Con­trary to pop­u­lar expec­ta­tions, the major­ity of female respon­dents had had 7+ part­ners (30.3%), while the major­ity of male respon­dents could boast only 3 part­ners. Only 18.1% of respon­dents were fra­ter­nity or soror­ity mem­bers, and 51.4% con­sumed alco­holic bev­er­ages 1–2 days per week. None of the sur­vey ques­tions were required: par­tic­i­pants were allowed to skip any and all ques­tions. Need­less to say, these fig­ures reveal more than a few lim­i­ta­tions in this study. My sam­ple size was rel­a­tively small: 72 stu­dents can­not pos­si­bly speak on behalf of all Yale stu­dents. This was a non-randomized sam­ple of con­ve­nience: those who took the sur­vey rep­re­sented those who are on Face­book, rel­a­tively com­fort­able talk­ing about their sex­u­al­ity, and inter­ested enough (and likely already well-versed) in the sub­ject of date rape. Not only was my sam­ple overly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of het­ero­sex­ual respon­dents, but my sur­vey also did not inquire as to respon­dents’ under­stand­ing of homo­sex­ual sce­nar­ios of date rape. In addi­tion, it is pos­si­ble that respon­dents were con­cerned that their iden­tity would be dis­cov­ered, which would have affected their responses.

“UNFOUNDED”