“No” means “no.” *
*Unless you’re Ohai with a 15 year old and they only say “No, no keep it up here” once and you’re in an industrial room where noone can hear her.
Apparently the new threshold is they must attempt fight you off physically. Must be a broader Asian thing.
ftfy
So when you were in college, when a girl stopped you from going south the first time you didn’t try again?
WOW
So it’s her fault cause she only said No once???
^ Didn’t say it was her fault, said it’s a gray area. Are you telling me you never said no in the beginning of an encounter and let it go further later?
No, I actually didn’t. But then again, the first time I lost my v card it was the girl’s idea and I was initially reluctant for whatever that’s worth. I don’t think you should have to wear a girl down to get action.
Bunch of Rahul’s coming out of the woodwork here. “But how many times did the 15 year old say no? Did she physically fight him? It’s a gray area!”
It is a gray area - that’s why there is a discussion on this and the trial outcome is uncertain.
I think you have to be more clear and that saying no once doesn’t necessarily constitute bounds for rape. I think if a girl is going to accuse someone of something so serious and life altering, you have to resist more than saying no once, albeit physical or verbal. the environment doesn’t exempt her nonactions. the girl clearly went along with it after the first no and didn’t seem to make any attempts to stop what was happening. also, saying no just once could be interpreted as the girl being shy & nervous, not necessarily STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING IMMEDIATELY. you have to be clear with your nonconsent at the time of the action if you are going to call rape, this seems more of an afterthought to me
i agree with blackswans comments on being raised to be overly respectful towards women. i’ve always been on the timid side when it comes to boundaries. but most guys may not be raised this way, and in a boarding school environment when parents aren’t really in the picture, sexual education like this has to come to the forefront of the picture
I feel like if she was closer to adult age I may be more open minded to it other explanations.
You are all missing the point. This is a tradition???
Dude. Are you serious? Do you really think that after she said no, but then didn’t say no again it is because she suddenly changed her mind and decided “oh wait! What am I doing? I really wanna have sex with this guy who is pushing himself on me against my will”
This. For those saying this was how they got by in college, time to rethink some of those encounters. If she wants it, she wants it and will let you know. I don’t see it as a gray area at all, it’s just forcing your desires on someone. Even if we don’t call it rape, it’s still ugly and repulsive and speaks volumes about the individual.
the problem with this argument is that you can’t expect the kid nor the jury to get into this girls mind. she has to act out either physically or verbally otherwise the jury has nothing to work with
i agree with BS^ post above. morals are higher than the law. but there has to be a clear line drawn to prevent calling rape on an afterthought of dissaproval
First of all, we only have her testimony so far, not his. Second of all, read her testimony objectively. I’m not saying the kid should be nominated for an award, but her testimony is not so clear cut as to convict him as a rapist.
I’m generally a fan of “‘No’ means no,” but I have to admit that in my life, there have been an awful lot of no’s that seem to mean “not right now, seduce me some more, first.” They sound very different from the firm no that means “no f-ing way,” but they have to be listened for and it takes learning. Until then, guys need to be as conservative as possible in their interpretations of “no”
I agree with Palantir that “the tradition” sounds like the bigger problem here. I wonder if either of them would have been in that situation if it weren’t considered “traditional” to do something like that. Unfortunately for the guy, the usual way to break the tradition is to use the legal system to make an example of the guy and scare the crap out any potential future participants.
I’ve often thought that there needs to be some category of crime for these grey areas that doesn’t have as heavy a connotation as rape. There clearly need to be consequences, and the guy is in the wrong, but putting it in the same category as a war crime feels wrong. It’s a bit like boys that get into fights at school - it’s wrong, and they need to be punished, disciplined, and possibly deliver some kind of compensation, but it’s not the same category as a mugging or an adult that does the same thing.
That’s the way it always happens according to Brazzers.
She DID act on it verbally by saying No. Some men just don’t give a f…k. She knows that now.
After I wrote my last post, I was trying to figure out how the no that means “seduce me more” is different from the no that means “forget it, buddy.” I think I’ve come to two distinctions
The voice is firmer with the “forget it buddy” version.
What happens immediately after the no, is indicative. In both cases, the guy needs to back off a bit, but when no really means no, usually the make-out session that’s going on stops as well, where when it means “seduce me more,” she will usually ensure that there’s no break in the making out and get right back to it. However, what’s indicative is that she re-initiates the making out, not he.
The problem is that the legal system wants there to be an on/off switch, contract-like version of consent, when what really happens between two people who are getting it on is a kind of bargaining/haggling about where the boundaries are at that very moment, and at any moment, boundaries change (in either direction) as feelings change.
I’ve pretty much always been extremely conservative in making a pass at a woman and many women have later asked me why I took so long, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t many grey-area moments when I wasn’t sure whether an advance would be welcome or not, and a wrong step risks branding as sexual assault.
Today I’m a little better at it, but probably have gone rusty again because I’ve been in a relationship for a while where the boundaries are settled and well established. Part of the problem with high school students is that it takes time and experience to know how to read people’s signals, plus what means something to one person may mean something different to another, so things that we attribute to malice in adults are often simply due to stupidity or inexperience in teenagers.
At the same time, sexual violation generally has pretty substantial psychological effects that can be long-lasting, so brushing it off as “boys being boys and dumb” seems to make light of the fact that the girl has gotten messed up by this too. This is why I think the comparison to schoolyard fighting might be the appropriate analogue here.
OK, reading the article more closely, I have to say this looks like rape to me. She didn’t just say some general “no,” she said “keep it up here,” and that set the boundary pretty specifically and clearly.
If she was in pain, then the boundary wasn’t crossed gently, and that means that she didn’t have a non-duressed opportunity to signal whether the boundary was still there.
Admittedly, we don’t have his testimony yet, but it sounds pretty rapey to me.