Student Columnists and the Semantics of Date Rape
Sunday, April 4th, 2010 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerBefore proceeding further, I should say for the record that I like students. I don't like all students, by any means (as will become clear soon) but on the whole, I think students are pretty decent people. This is good, because my job means I have a lot of contact with them. Some of my colleagues talk about how wonderful universities would be if there were no students, but generally they mean that universities would be wonderful places if there were no papers to grade and no morning classes; the minority who really don't want to have students around should really ask themselves why they don't like bright, and for the most part friendly and polite, young people, and what this says about them. If you hate someone because they turn up late to class or dangle participles, then you either need professional help or a new profession.
That said, some students really test my pro-student attitude to breaking point. I'm not talking about the ones whose assignments are late or plagiarised or who play with their cell phones throughout the class; I mean student columnists. Such a person, who is at this moment enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame (plus comments and trackback), is the self-described "angry libertarian", Alex Knepper. What got Knepper into trouble is an article he wrote for a student newspaper, and particularly this paragraph:
Now I'm not saying that Knepper would date-rape someone. I'm not even saying that he would defend an actual date rape. The guy is probably as nice as anyone who likes Ayn Rand and Ann Coulter can be. And I'm definitely not saying that he's a protofascist, a term which was vaguely ridiculous even back in the 1970s when it was still fashionable. (Believe me, I was there. I also remember "cryptofascist" but I could never work out the difference.) I am saying that his analogy is flawed and potentially dangerous, not to mention lacking sympathy and compassion. Let's put the two cases side by side:
Am I alone in seeing almost nothing analogous in these two cases? Both involve an undesirable consequence and an action which precedes it, and that's where the similarity ends. I suppose we could take the view that since they both produce bad consequences, they are both bad acts and differ in degree but not in kind, but this would be a kind of deranged consequentialism that would make Jeremy Bentham look like John Locke (if you'll forgive the Lost allusion).
However, this is not simply a case of Knepper confusing "contributory negligence" with culpability. That has been discussed many times both in and out of court. Getting drunk and accompanying a stranger to his room is not sensible behaviour, but then how much sensible behaviour do you expect from nineteen-year-olds at a party? It does not make rape any less rape, any more than forgetting to cancel newspaper deliveries when you go on holiday makes a burglary any less of a burglary. What Knepper is claiming is that the action "indicates that she wants to have sex," and this is a completely different kettle of fish. It is also crucial to whether what occurs is classed as rape.
Knepper states later on that "‘Date rape’ is an incoherent concept. There's rape and there's not-rape, and we need a line of demarcation." There is nothing inherently incoherent about the concept of date rape; it is simply rape which occurs between the parties on a date, just like domestic violence is violence which occurs at home or vehicular theft is theft from a vehicle. What makes it controversial is not that it is different from rape per se, but that it illustrates the point that actually the boundary between rape and not-rape does not have a clear line of demarcation, a fact that Knepper should know if he's been reading proper philosophers like Wittgenstein as well as faux philosophers like Rand. Many if not most of our everyday concepts are, as Wittgenstein said, "blurred around the edges" and rape is no exception. We can define rape very clearly as sex without the consent of one of the parties involved, but we do not have a clear definition of "sex" or "consent" nor should we. As Wittgenstein again says, "sometimes a blurred picture is exactly what we need." When Clinton said "I did not have sex with that woman," we do not need a precise definition of sex to know that he was lying. Most of us would say that putting your dick in someone's mouth counts as sex, but it's conceivable that there are some cases where it might not. Let's say that Bill had been bitten by a snake, and Monica was just trying to suck out the venom. Less absurdly, there are acts which fall right on the blurred boundary of sex (fondling someone's breasts, for example). However, let's ignore this, because the interesting blurriness is in the notion of consent.
Consent to anything is a tricky issue, but let's stick to sexual consent here, otherwise I'll be blogging way past my bed time. Let us also focus on what can be interpreted as consent to sex, rather than the act of inner consent, which is unknowable. We can start with a clear-cut act of sexual consent: the girl takes off her clothes and says "Give it to me now, you horny stud!" It doesn't require a leap of faith to assume that, under normal circumstances, someone behaving in this way "is indicating that she wants sex." At the opposite extreme, take a scenario where the girl points a .44 Magnum at the boy and says "Go ahead, make my day." Now on paper and out of context, that sentence may look like an invitation, but anyone who wants to ignore speech act theory and take it as such also needs to ask himself one question: "Do I feel lucky?"
So far, so clear. What, then, of the blurry boundary, and in particular, what about Knepper's scenario where the girl drinks five cups of jungle juice and accompanies the boy to his room? We'll assume that this is a normal frat party, so the punch is probably highly alchoholic but doesn't contain drugs, and the boy's room is a normal dorm room. If no words of import are said, does this constitute an indication that she wants to have sex? Well, it certainly could. If I were the boy in that scenario, I would be feeling lucky, though not in the same way as the boy in the Dirty Harriet scenario. But this is not the real question, and this is where Knepper is guilty of equivocation. An indication that someone wants sex is not the same as consent to sex. It is not even quite the same as an indication that someone is consenting to sex. I agree with Knepper that not everything needs to be spelled out verbally, and that sometimes an action can indicate consent as strongly as words. If I'm canoodling with someone and she helps me undo her bra, that's about as clear an act of consent as you can wish for. But drinking at a party and walking into someone's room? I can't help feeling that someone who would interpret that as consent is not too concerned about consent. I'm reminded of a line from, if I remember rightly, Monty Python: "The best method of defence is attack, and the best method of attack is surprise, so you hit your opponent before he hits you, or better still, before the thought of hitting you has even occurred to him."
The solution to the problem of blurred boundaries here is not to draw a clean line of demarcation, not least because, as Knepper unintentionally demonstrates, you can draw the line in the wrong place. What is needed is to accept the blurriness and apply a little common sense, sympathy and respect. This doesn't imply, as Knepper puts it, "a bedroom scene in which two amorphous, gender-neutral blobs ask each other ‘Is this OK with you?’ before daring to move their lips any lower on the other’s body." It just means that you don't assume that gender makes the rules so different that what girls say and do can be interpreted in any way that suits you. After all, if Knepper's party experience had been of drinking jungle juice, wandering into some guy's room and getting anally penetrated as a result, I think his column might have turned out differently.
That said, some students really test my pro-student attitude to breaking point. I'm not talking about the ones whose assignments are late or plagiarised or who play with their cell phones throughout the class; I mean student columnists. Such a person, who is at this moment enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame (plus comments and trackback), is the self-described "angry libertarian", Alex Knepper. What got Knepper into trouble is an article he wrote for a student newspaper, and particularly this paragraph:
Let's get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK? To cry ‘date rape’ after you sober up the next morning and regret the incident is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s head and then later claiming that you didn’t ever actually intend to pull the trigger.The funny thing is that it comes immediately after the sentence "For my pro-sex views, I am variously called a misogynist, a rape apologist and—my personal favorite—a ‘pro-date rape protofascist’." I mean, if you come out with things like that, what do you expect to be called?
Now I'm not saying that Knepper would date-rape someone. I'm not even saying that he would defend an actual date rape. The guy is probably as nice as anyone who likes Ayn Rand and Ann Coulter can be. And I'm definitely not saying that he's a protofascist, a term which was vaguely ridiculous even back in the 1970s when it was still fashionable. (Believe me, I was there. I also remember "cryptofascist" but I could never work out the difference.) I am saying that his analogy is flawed and potentially dangerous, not to mention lacking sympathy and compassion. Let's put the two cases side by side:
| College Party | Firearms incident |
| Girl gets drunk, goes to boy's room | Girl puts gun to boy's head |
| Boy rapes girl | Girl shoots boy |
Am I alone in seeing almost nothing analogous in these two cases? Both involve an undesirable consequence and an action which precedes it, and that's where the similarity ends. I suppose we could take the view that since they both produce bad consequences, they are both bad acts and differ in degree but not in kind, but this would be a kind of deranged consequentialism that would make Jeremy Bentham look like John Locke (if you'll forgive the Lost allusion).
However, this is not simply a case of Knepper confusing "contributory negligence" with culpability. That has been discussed many times both in and out of court. Getting drunk and accompanying a stranger to his room is not sensible behaviour, but then how much sensible behaviour do you expect from nineteen-year-olds at a party? It does not make rape any less rape, any more than forgetting to cancel newspaper deliveries when you go on holiday makes a burglary any less of a burglary. What Knepper is claiming is that the action "indicates that she wants to have sex," and this is a completely different kettle of fish. It is also crucial to whether what occurs is classed as rape.
Knepper states later on that "‘Date rape’ is an incoherent concept. There's rape and there's not-rape, and we need a line of demarcation." There is nothing inherently incoherent about the concept of date rape; it is simply rape which occurs between the parties on a date, just like domestic violence is violence which occurs at home or vehicular theft is theft from a vehicle. What makes it controversial is not that it is different from rape per se, but that it illustrates the point that actually the boundary between rape and not-rape does not have a clear line of demarcation, a fact that Knepper should know if he's been reading proper philosophers like Wittgenstein as well as faux philosophers like Rand. Many if not most of our everyday concepts are, as Wittgenstein said, "blurred around the edges" and rape is no exception. We can define rape very clearly as sex without the consent of one of the parties involved, but we do not have a clear definition of "sex" or "consent" nor should we. As Wittgenstein again says, "sometimes a blurred picture is exactly what we need." When Clinton said "I did not have sex with that woman," we do not need a precise definition of sex to know that he was lying. Most of us would say that putting your dick in someone's mouth counts as sex, but it's conceivable that there are some cases where it might not. Let's say that Bill had been bitten by a snake, and Monica was just trying to suck out the venom. Less absurdly, there are acts which fall right on the blurred boundary of sex (fondling someone's breasts, for example). However, let's ignore this, because the interesting blurriness is in the notion of consent.
Consent to anything is a tricky issue, but let's stick to sexual consent here, otherwise I'll be blogging way past my bed time. Let us also focus on what can be interpreted as consent to sex, rather than the act of inner consent, which is unknowable. We can start with a clear-cut act of sexual consent: the girl takes off her clothes and says "Give it to me now, you horny stud!" It doesn't require a leap of faith to assume that, under normal circumstances, someone behaving in this way "is indicating that she wants sex." At the opposite extreme, take a scenario where the girl points a .44 Magnum at the boy and says "Go ahead, make my day." Now on paper and out of context, that sentence may look like an invitation, but anyone who wants to ignore speech act theory and take it as such also needs to ask himself one question: "Do I feel lucky?"
So far, so clear. What, then, of the blurry boundary, and in particular, what about Knepper's scenario where the girl drinks five cups of jungle juice and accompanies the boy to his room? We'll assume that this is a normal frat party, so the punch is probably highly alchoholic but doesn't contain drugs, and the boy's room is a normal dorm room. If no words of import are said, does this constitute an indication that she wants to have sex? Well, it certainly could. If I were the boy in that scenario, I would be feeling lucky, though not in the same way as the boy in the Dirty Harriet scenario. But this is not the real question, and this is where Knepper is guilty of equivocation. An indication that someone wants sex is not the same as consent to sex. It is not even quite the same as an indication that someone is consenting to sex. I agree with Knepper that not everything needs to be spelled out verbally, and that sometimes an action can indicate consent as strongly as words. If I'm canoodling with someone and she helps me undo her bra, that's about as clear an act of consent as you can wish for. But drinking at a party and walking into someone's room? I can't help feeling that someone who would interpret that as consent is not too concerned about consent. I'm reminded of a line from, if I remember rightly, Monty Python: "The best method of defence is attack, and the best method of attack is surprise, so you hit your opponent before he hits you, or better still, before the thought of hitting you has even occurred to him."
The solution to the problem of blurred boundaries here is not to draw a clean line of demarcation, not least because, as Knepper unintentionally demonstrates, you can draw the line in the wrong place. What is needed is to accept the blurriness and apply a little common sense, sympathy and respect. This doesn't imply, as Knepper puts it, "a bedroom scene in which two amorphous, gender-neutral blobs ask each other ‘Is this OK with you?’ before daring to move their lips any lower on the other’s body." It just means that you don't assume that gender makes the rules so different that what girls say and do can be interpreted in any way that suits you. After all, if Knepper's party experience had been of drinking jungle juice, wandering into some guy's room and getting anally penetrated as a result, I think his column might have turned out differently.
