What if yes meant yes?

I am tired about hearing about Todd Akin.  He made some ridiculous, revealing comments that shouldn't really surprise anyone.  I, like many other, found it incredulous at first blush but then was worn down to accept that this is the level of rhetoric.  I found myself more shocked by his hillbilly science than his qualification of rape as "legitimate."  Not that the former is any more abhorrent than the latter, but discussions about what rape "really" means are not new.  For the last week, pundits and politicians have been bandying about the term rape like we all know what we are talking about.  Even Obama has stated, "Rape is rape."  Like it's self-evident.  I applaud the sentiment and am proud that we have a president who will unequivocally side with the powerless, yet we have this one concept that is definitely across the line, that we can all point to and say, "This we will not accept."  It's easiest to agree on the circumstances if it is a female victim, assaulted by a stranger, and she struggled and there was violence.  Definitely wrong.  When things deviate from this norm, the responses to rape get more complicated.  As I understand some extremist views, it is as if rape were some magic trump card that women keep in their back pockets to be played for their own amusement.  When I hear reporters discussing rape, like it is some digital on/off switch, I am frustrated for a couple of reasons.

First, I was in a sexually exploitative relationship at 15 with a 41-year-old friend of the family.  It messed me up for years.  Worse than what actually happened (I'll spare you the gory details, although doubters usually want salacious specifics to judge for themselves), was the fact that I never said no.  I threw up after I'd leave his house.  I'd cry myself to sleep.  I started sleeping with anyone with a pulse.  But I knew, deep down, that it was my fault.  I hadn't said "stop."  Since then, I've been through enough therapists to hold a poker tournament.  I went to Take Back the Night rallies. I tried on the term rape.  Was he a rapist?  Was I raped?  I still don't know.  It was wrong.  It shouldn't happen to anyone.  But the "rape is rape" slogans do not capture my experiences.  If I had gotten pregnant, could I have been an exception to pro-lifers' hard line?  Probably.  I was young and white and pretty.  When my parents found out, my father threatened to kill his friend.  In the end, though, my parents decided it was better not to press charges.  They didn't want to make a spectacle out of me, especially given my otherwise unchecked sexuality with people more my age at that point.  Looking back, I am not sure my parents really believed that it was that serious.  I don't have children so I will never be confronted with that choice.  I struggled for years to make sense of what happened.  I don't know that a statutory rape charge would have made that process any easier.  Sometimes, I thought it would be less complicated if I had been forced rather than coerced.  And despite all of the repercussions, I didn't play the rape card.  I didn't drag him through the courts.  I know there were other girls after me.  I did my best to warn them for the couple of years I was in the same circles.  But then, in order to save myself, I let it drop.  What does that make me?  His accomplice?  It still haunts me.

Second, in our mad rush to stamp out rape (please do not mistake me, I agree with the stance that rape is wrong and shouldn't be permitted), we forget that the "no means no" chant relies on negation.  How can we expect people in powerless positions to say no and have it respected?  Wouldn't it be better if we relied on "yes means yes?"  If a person has enough power to say "yes," "no" becomes an option.  Affirmative consent is not a silver bullet.  They are still people willing to exploit and manipulate and force, but how different would things be if we believed that silence isn't consent?

Working in the kinky community has taught me about consent.  People I worked with thought about consent deeply, discussing it, picking it apart, questioning their own and others' assumptions.  In another post, I'll probably hold forth on what that looked like from an ethnographic point of view.  In addition to requiring a "yes," people were of critical of their partner's ability to consent, judging how much alcohol or how many endorphins disqualified someone from consenting.  The default position is until someone says "yes," the answer is "no."  Perhaps it assuages some of my guilt over my own situation, but I find it a more empowering position.  In one of my interviews, a person said, "I think consent matters.  I think rape is bad and consensual sex is good but there is a lot of gray areas and there are times when consent is not enough."  Sex is complicated and messy.  At the poles we can point to acceptable and unacceptable but the vast gray area in the middle is not served by the simple rhetoric "rape is rape."  We should all take a stand against victimization, but I worry by eliding different experiences, we do little but pat ourselves on the back for being righteous without addressing the underlying problems of power.