Rape Prevention, Keep it civil, folks Options

[James McMurray]

Then she is raping you. Rape is not a unidirectional thing. It can occur between any combinations of sexes.

[Moon-Hawk]

So then if two people are both playing the coy game and they both say 'no' while they're going crazy on each other, then they've just raped each other at the same time!
Weird.

[Wounded Ronin]

Yeah. It sounds like you've just criminalized anyone who ever had sex with someone who liked to say "no" during sex for whatever reason.

[James McMurray]

I have just criminalized them, and it was completely on purpose. Unless the "rapee" was doing things while saying no that weren't being done because of any form of duress. They'll never go to court because the person was actually consenting, but when they say no you're raping them if you continue.

[Dawnshadow]

Ok.. that's just gotten silly.

Rape is non-consentual sex. Rape is not sex that the person has said no to.

For rape to be sex that someone has said no to, then either it's a necessairy condition or a sufficient condition (or both). If it's a necessairy condition, then someone gagged so they can't object can't be raped, and if it's a sufficient condition.. then a totally willing participant can be raped, which is illogical. Especially in a shadowrun setting, where you could have someone with an influence spell conditioning them to whisper "No" at some predetermined point during some sex act. Therefore, rape cannot be directly, solely, related to presence or absence of the word "no".

That being said..

"No" is considered the be the most basic, simple, way to deny consent. "No" is not, however, the only way to deny consent, and "No" is not always used to deny consent. To equate "Someone said no" with "Someone was raped" is accurate, a large percentage of the time. That percentage is not, however, 100. It could very well be 99.9. But there is a non-zero percentage which falls under "exception" -- and people have pointed that out repeatedly.

[James McMurray]

That is an excellent explanation. The problem is that it leaves too much room for interpretation and becomes an apologetic excuse for date rapists. Saying no when you mean yes is a stupid thing to do if they don't know ahead of time, but if you don't know they won't mean it, the safest course is to not do it. Anything further is rape.

I don't ask you to believe, but if you're ever dating a friend or relative of mine and he/she says no, I'd suggest taking it at face value and asking for clarification if you think you're getting mixed signals. :)

[Wounded Ronin]

[James McMurray]

[Kremlin KOA]

broaden ti enough and it will become mainstream enough to be 'cool'

Thw first rule of rape club, is you do not talk about rape club.

[Wounded Ronin]

[James McMurray]

[Wounded Ronin]

You know, this thread has reminded me of a conversation which I witnessed between two American women and one African one. They were talking about this very issue.

The Americans were expressing the view that at any point in time during sex if someone says to stop the sex must stop or else it becomes t3h rape.

The African woman (very well educated; she was a medical doctor) replied something like, "you don't make him get all big and swollen and ready for sex, and then stop."

I thought it was interesting because I thought it revealed a difference between African and US cultural expectations.

[James McMurray]

I agree with the African woman's sentiment. Doing that is just plain mean. But if the woman does it, you stop.

[hyzmarca]

You see, this is why context is important. There is a gigantic difference between "No; don't; stop!" and "No, don't stop."

[James McMurray]

Hmmm. It seems like we keep going around this. The problem with arguing context is that people are fallible. You may think you hear "no, don't stop" when she was saying "no. don't. stop." Unless you know her really well the safe thing to do is to stop right then and there.

[Willy-Gilligan]

Thanks to a guy I used to know, I can offer a Czech perspective on rape, too.

A man is on trial for rape. He doesn't bother with a lawyer, just defends himself. The prosecution goes on for a day or so making their case. When it's the man's turn to present his defense, he calls one witness-the accuser's mother. When he gets her on the stand, he asks her to hold a pencil. Holding his thumb and index finger in a circle, he asks the woman to try to stick that pencil through the O that he has made. She attempts to do so, and he moves his hand. Again she attempts, and again he avoids the pencil. After a few more attempts the man turns to the judge and says "Your honor, I did not rape that woman." The man is acquitted.

My friend told me this story as an example of how thought and language interact, but that's besides my point here. The current thought in the civilized world regarding rape is very young. As recently as the revolutionary war, some of the British commander's actually found rape accusations against their troops to be very amusing, and a sign of the strength and virility of their troops. We're in the middle of changing that, so you can't take anything for granted. The system is highly weighted against men, even to the point of being open to abuse, and hopefully that will get better, but if you're a man you'd better recognize the situation as it is, and not as 'it should be'. I don't think anyone wants to go to some form of contract negotiation, but it's damn close as it is. If she's drunk, leave it alone. If you're drinking, keep at least one sober friend around and tell him not to let you do something stupid. CYA, at it's finest.

The other thing to remember is this; whether she says 'no' or not, whether she's incapacitated or not, those things don't matter until one point in time--when you're accused of rape. It should matter right then and there, to you. You should be paying attention to those things to avoid possibly hurting someone (this is, of course and as always, my opinion), and not worrying about whether an outside observer is going to call it sex or rape, but we've jumped past that question to how far you can go without getting in trouble, so there you have it. Do you want to fill out a police report and try to describe how this woman said 'no' but really meant yes? Do you want to be that guy on CourtTV sitting in the witness stand saying "She said no, but I could tell by the tone in her voice that she didn't really mean it." Do you want your lawyer to publicly accuse this woman that you're thinking of having sex with tonight of being a slut and/or crazy and obviously lying? And if the answer to those questions that immediately popped into your mind right then isn't "I know this girl won't accuse me of rape.", then why exactly are you considering having sex with her in the first place?

Unless you know a person very well, you don't know why she just said 'no'. She could be married and said it in a moment of guilt. Maybe she says it every time she cheats on her husband so that if it looks like she's going to get caught, she can cry rape and honestly say "I told him no and he just kept on going." (While I've never heard it being this well thought out in advance, there are plenty of horror stories circulating about a woman getting caught cheating and then crying rape. Some of 'em may even be true.) All the kinky sex games and "what if"'s don't change this simple question. Are you willing to bet your freedom on your ability to read innuendo? Are you willing to go on a sex offender registry for the rest of your life if you're wrong?

Oh, and just to be clear: everyone is responsible for their own safety. If you don't look after you, who will? If you want someone punished for hurting you, go to the cops (and hope they can actually do something). If you don't want to be raped in the first place, the person you need to talk to is waiting for you right in the mirror. Go look now.

[Wounded Ronin]

I seem to have heard that pencil story somewhere before, except it involved a spinning coke bottle...

[Deamon_Knight]

James, your mistake is also an evidentiary one. Your definition of rape is so broad that it could easily criminalize sex someone (almost certainly a woman) regrets later. How do you prove someone said "no", meant no, and wasn't forced?

I'll agree that a guy forcing himself on a girl is despicable, and that morally,"no" should be the final word, but context IS crucial. Without resisting more that saying no, and without demanding proof that the victim was "restrained" somehow, you are essentially reducing rape to a he said/she said situation. This will certainly cheapen all accusations of rape.

[James McMurray]

That already happens. The law itself says in a roundabout way that "no means no." If you have sex with someone after saying no you've had nonconsentual sex and therefor you've been raped. The opportunity for false accusations already exists and is already used. Hell, false accusations occur when no sex has occured at all.

Telling people to respect that no means no isn't changing the law, it's applying it. If they say no and don't mean it and you continue then you won't get charged, but you're a fool for risking going to prison for rape (unless you know them well and know you're just role-playing).

[Willowhugger]

At the risk of completely diverting this topic to something ACTUALLY related to Shadowrun, I was curious how people may or may not actually use rape as a storytelling device within the context of the game.

In my campaigns I've been known to use it as an expression of the worst sort of scum amongst villainy. Frankly, its a lot less common in my world than it is in real life due to the fact that I save it for essentially the most vicious and vile crimminals out there.

Players have seen the white slave trade and viewed it as an enemy. Individuals that have been essentially mentally reprogramed to be unable to resist and the occasional moment where its done through brute force but we only see the after effects of it.

I try to do a lot to make the incidents as removed from reality as possible unless I'm absolutely sure that it is something that won't make the game in bad taste.

[James McMurray]

I've only initiated a rape against a character once, and that was in a D&D campaign where he had died and gone to hell. It was only a momentary thing though, as a Duke used a tentacle-like thing from under his robe to force the charter's mouth open and put a watchworm into his stomach so he could follow his every move after sending the character back.

Rape has been perpetrated by my players only rarely, and only as a means of a sociopathic PC's revenge.