Was Bristol Palin raped?

Hi sakura - how's things in Japan?

I'm slightly gobsmacked that people are talking in such terms about a girl.

Yes, a girl, a child.

Who found herself in a position that no child should have to face, pregnant by an arse, in the full glare of the worlds spotlight, with condemnation, judgements etc raining down on her.

Regardless of what I think of her mother, or the wisdom of conducting a slanging match with the father of your child in public, I feel that Bristol has generally behaved with more dignity and maturity than I think I would have done at her age.

So what we have so far is:

Bristol Palin is probably lying because of her upbringing

And men cannot be held responsible if they don't know whether a drunk woman has consented or not.

Men should be taught not to have sex i.e rape women who are too drunk to consent.

One of the big, big problems with the abstinence cult is their obsession with PIV and 'virginity'. The more prevalent the abstinence cult, the more young people engage in anal intercourse, in some cases against their will, because it 'doesn't count'. And the abstinence cult sets up women and girls to fail and be harmed and to have difficulty articulating what happened to them. Whatever happened to Bristol Palin, she was brought up in an environment that would have made it horribly difficult for her to discuss how she really felt about sexual behaviour - whether she at the time wanted to find out what PIV was like, whether she was passed out drunk and unconsenting, whether she was raped but felt she had to put up with it because He Was Her Fiance... we don't know. She hasn't said she was raped. It's not helpful to insist on labelling another woman's experience with a different label to the one she chooses to give it.

If she enters this debate in the book (was I raped?) it would be an interesting read. Hopefully someone in the media will ask her this question, so we can hear her thoughts on the matter.

I imagine the rest of book is crap. And was in all likelihood ghost written by one of her mother's 'people'.

Women sometimes do go on to have relationships with guys who have raped them during dates etc, because of denial, of shock, wanting to turn it round in their minds, not wanting to believe this guy they like would really do that, wanting to minimise it and because of rape myths that always bring it back to being the woman's fault somehow. We're immersed in this culture. It doesn't mean they weren't raped. That Bristol went on with her relationship with Levi doesn't mean all the sex they ever had was consensual.

Three guesses.

no, one.

Why is it ok to make derogatory statements about Levi based on guesswork around what little we know, but not ok to do so for Bristol?

Yes, let's talk about Levi, a teenage boy brought up in a fucked up culture that suggests that sex is something women trade and that a Man's job is to get the 'best deal' which is to fuck a woman without marrying her, whereas a woman's job is not to allow fucking until marriage. It certainly sounds as though he behaved stupidly, selfishly and insensitivley towards Bristol but in the case of a teenager rather than a sexually experienced adult, being brought up in a woman-hating culture that pushed such a twisted and disgusting view of sexual behaviour on him, there is some explanation for his behaviour.

Whether she was raped or not I don't think her experience is unusual, sadly.

Agree with Dittany that it might be more constructive to discuss Levi rather than Bristol.

I agree with Floyjoy that it might have been better to have a more general discussion of how the awful 'abstinence' culture contributes to both rape and the dismissal of rape victims' complaints. (This does not mean that boys and men rape because women refuse sex, it means that the abstinence culture is so misogynistic that it encourages rape by peddling the myth that women are either pure or fuckable no matter what they say or what they actually want).

excellent post floyjoy what I was trying to say but not as articulate.

What Hully said.

This is a disturbing thread. A lot of the comments on here are disturbing, but the questionable OP title, 'Was Bristol Palin raped?' clearly invites argument so it is to be expected. To discuss a living, breathing human being (a woman) in this way, picking over her account of an experience is pretty negative. Analysing her account in order to put forward one view or another just marginalises Palin and her experience. She has chosen to speak about it but does everyone really need to pile in to debate it in this way? Surely posters here have enough knowledge and RL experience to draw on without entering into debates about what is going on in Bristol Palin's head? Bristol Palin is disrespected enough in the male media already.

REcently there was a thread on here..somewhere, the OP said she was pissed and alone in her flat with a date, she called him a cab for him to bugger off and went upstairs and passed out, he then went upstairs and had sex with her, well raped her, she did not consent. She did not accuse or accept he raped her, just that she couldn't remember and would have been too pissed to consent. So these rape myths, of what even constitutes rape, are widespread.

No one here knows or can know what did or didn't happen.

Since when did being a feminist mean you had to believe anything that any woman said about anything at any time becasue of her gender? Never in my 40 odd years of feminism. Singularly unhelpful.

I give up. I never implied Bristol lied about the events of the night, never.

I speculated along with other posters about the situation surrounding her.

Seriously, every time I venture on to the feminist board on MN I find myself having to defend my feminist credentials

I gonna stop posting on here Imagine if Bristol doesnt share this view and wakes up one day to ma media storm that apparently thousands of people have been discussing on the web?

not good at all, how would you feel if it was any of you?

I think using her daughters personal issues in a campaign may have been very horrible for her , correct me if im wrong