The theoretical possibility that no means yes

[Creeping]

I am going to be interviewed by a student tomorrow for her Masters thesis, and the subject is rape. She wants to explore opinions about when rape is rape, including the grey areas when yes means no and no means yes (her words).

I am of course going to say that an absence of no does not mean yes, and that active/enthousiastic consent is needed. And that both girls and boys need to be taught this and that anybody has the right to change their mind at any time during the interaction. When consent is withdrawn, it becomes rape.

She also wants to discuss when no means yes, and my instant reaction is that just by entertaining the possibility of no means yes we're venturing into rape apologist territory. Furthermore, nobody ever got hurt by not having sex due to saying no, when they in fact wanted to but didn't say so. I think they are weird concepts she wants to explore. Can you help me to put this into words, so I'm not stuck for words tomorrow?

Kissinger and frith's 'just say no?' from 1999 is useful.

Well, had the interview. It was not as bad as her introduction was making it out to. She only got ethical approval to ask some very broad questions, like "what is sex for you" "what contributes to you wanting sex" and towards the end "when is a sexual experience rape". She emphasised that she wouldn't ask questions about personal experiences and that it was fine not to answer etc.

However, she was not up to speed with concepts like rape culture, victim blaming, rape apologies, etc. So after my lecture (rather than interview) she's got a lot to think about.

What she wanted out of the interview was what factors would be considered before something was rape. Her hypothesis was that there might factors other than consent that might affect whether a sexual experience should be considered rape, like the amount of distress experienced afterwards, and that theoretically a woman could be distressed afterwards but consented at the time. She had the example of a girl whose parents disapproved so much of her having sex that it caused her great distress

In my view consent is the foremost factor to be considered, and that in her example, the issue is not the sexual experience but the parents. I also warned her not to use this example, because it feeds into rape culture and the myth of false accusations being rife.

I came down hard on her idea that the amount of distress should be considered at all. Who is going to be the judge of when distress is great enough? Plus distinguishing between serious rape and not so serious rape is simply rape apologist.

I pointed her towards the sexual experience survey, in which it becomes clear how rape is framed in questions greatly influences the answers you are going to get. She hadn't heard of it. Tsk tsk.

I can only hope she has learned something.

I also think almondcake's point is excellent :)

Creeping, that's interesting. It seems she really hasn't thought it through at all. The parents example is so totally off the mark (and shows her age - if I wanted to use an example like that I'd go for a married person who has a one night stand and then when they realise that they are going to lose their spouse, home, family over it they feel great distress - although here I think it's VERY clear that this is nothing to do with rape, and much less easy to have sympathy for the person in the example.)

I think I'm going to email her over her idea of considering the amount of distress as an index of how serious the crime is. What a load of nonsense. When burglary is reported as a crime, nobody asks the victim how much affected they are by it, if they are rich enough to afford losing a few items for example. And if someone doesn't want to go through the hassle of reporting and insurance and what have you, it doesn't mean that they are suddenly not burgled.

If you are concerned, you could bcc her supervisor into your email too (or email him/her separately). You should find the supervisor's name and contact details on the consent documentation you signed.

You get a really small amount of supervision time for an MSc student, particularly where they're out interviewing people about when rape is rape and other minefield issues. It does really help if participants raise their concerns with you. If I had an email from a participant in a student's project I would be very careful to make sure that the student wouldn't know who had raised a concern, but in would arrange a meeting to talk more generally about the feedback I'd received for participants and to think through how to move forward from that.

I suspect the spate of dubious student projects on sexuality (etc) has a lot to do with the unfortunate direction public debate seems to be going in relation to these issues, and the increasing demonisation of feminism. It's like the spate of student projects I see taking unbelievably deficit approaches to marginalised groups that seem to be feeding off the 'broken Britain'/'troubled families' agenda.

It's depressing.

Also, if the student only got approval for very broad, exploratory questions then the introduction about 'when rape is rape' and 'grey areas' was almost certainly not how she was supposed to be introducing the project. I'd imagine she was supposed to say that the project was about people's attitudes to sex and rape and nothing more specific.

I know you don't need this any more but I found the link! It came up on Twitter. It's late Nd im on mg phone but I might start a new thread about it tomorrow. But for now, its here

www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/11/12/rapists-who-dont-think-theyre-rapists/

This thread reminds me of a very uncomfortable conversation I had with my Dad when I was about 14 - he wanted to make me aware that some people, during a 'sexual encounter', will only hear what they want to hear.

So a woman could shout out, while being raped, words like "No!" and "Please" and "Stop!" and "Don't!" but a man, who doesn't realise he's a rapist, could think she was screaming in passion "Oh, no please don't stop!"

I think my Dad wanted me to rehearse an unambiguous phrase to let a man know that if he continued, it would be rape.

I don't think most rapists are unaware that their partner is not consenting - oh no please don't stop sounds totally different in tone from a panicked what the fuck are you doing, get off, stop that, which is what you're probably more likely to say, if your body doesn't go into shutdown as a safety precaution against inciting more violence.

I can see what he was trying to say but I think it speaks more about a Dad's fear for and hope to protect his daughter, rather than any resemblance to real rape.

The distress thing is absolute cobblers.

The idea that something becomes a crime based on the later response of someone is ludicrous. Impact is taken into account at sentencing but that is a different kettle of fish. And conversely, if someone has been quite obviously subjected to a crime but does not seem / isn't as distressed as it as others might imagine, does that mean that no crime was committed?

What a load of absolute balls, she hasn't engaged her brain at all has she.

As for "what is rape" my understanding is that there is a perfectly good definition written into law.

calamatouslywrong I think that your reasons why this is coming up so much are probably correct. I am very concerned about all of the politicians calling for changes to procedure and law around rape cases in the wake of the Evans aquittal.