Read An Excerpt

“Another guy I have slept with a woman from a bar. Turns out she was seventeen; she got in with a fake ID. She looked old enough to be there. The guy had no reason to question it. But a teacher overheard her talking in school about their encounter. Teachers are required by law to report suspected child abuse, so they called it in.  Before he knows it, he’s cuffed, charged and convicted of Sexual Battery of a Child.

“Some teens can look pretty mature, but with younger kids, it’s obvious they are too young.  They can’t consent for all the other reasons on the list. So, let’s go through them.”

“The second criteria is that both people understand the proposed activity and agree to it.” Liz described one of her guys who’d chat up girls at parties, then propose they “go for a drive.” In his mind, “go for a drive” meant “have sex in my car.” But the women thought they were just consenting to go on a drive. When he started getting sexual with them, and they resisted, he assumed they didn’t mean it because they’d already consented. So, he kept going.  “That’s the legal definition of rape, and that’s exactly what his accusers called it. But he didn’t see himself as a rapist because he didn’t understand that consent meant the women needed to have said, ‘Yes, I want to have sex with you.’” 

“Didn’t they say ‘no’?” Kevin asked.

“Yes. But male culture and the media tell men that women put up resistance because they ‘want to protect their reputations,’ or ‘play hard to get,’ or ‘really want to be taken.’ Some men hear these things and believe it gives them the right to overpower a woman because ‘she doesn’t really mean it.’”

“Yeah, but come on,” Daniel said. “If you get into a car with a guy you don’t know, you have to figure something’s gonna happen!” 

Liz looked at him. “Why? Why is it on the woman to have to put up a defense against sexual violation? Why can’t men simply not violate?” She let that sink in for a moment. “How many of you, in prison, feared getting raped?”

After a moment, a few men nodded. Warren was one of them.

“If you were raped, would any of you have wondered if you were playing hard to get?” 

The men looked astonished.

“Of course not. You might blame yourself for not being able to fight him off, but it would have been absolutely clear that the other guy was responsible for your rape. Correct?” 

The men nodded again.

“So why is it different for women? Why is the woman’s responsibility to determine if an offer to, say, go hiking with a guy is a legitimate suggestion to hike or a ploy to get her alone in the woods so he can rape her? Why isn’t it the man’s responsibility to say exactly what he wants and let her decide?”

“’Cuz no guy would ever get laid again,” Jason mumbled.

Liz heard that. “Really? Most women I know, when they feel safe and cared for and respected, happily consent to sex. But that means men have to do the hard work of caring for the woman, truly respecting her, and making sure she feels safe around them. Many, many men do this without effort, but there are also many men who don’t want to work that hard. They think women are put on the Earth for their sexual pleasure, and they resent women who don’t ‘put out.’ Ignoring entirely that a woman might have a career, goals, a social circle, and family relationships.”

Warren had to admit what she said made sense. He had thought about women in similar ways until meeting his wife. She was different…stood out. Somehow, she was three-dimensional.

Suddenly, he felt ashamed thinking back to his high school days and how the boys talked about girls. They compared their breasts, talked about who was “easy” and who was a “tight ass.” Warren never had a female friend in high school—never really got to know girls as people. And later, as a young man, he was at a complete loss about how to find women to date. Like a lot of guys, he went to bars. But he felt awkward and stupid trying to start up a conversation with a strange woman.

Then he got a job at a printing shop, and had a few women co-workers. Mostly, they worked the counter, but two ran the presses with him. They’d chat while waiting for the runs. He got to know them: their lives, their thoughts, their roommates and boyfriends. He could talk to them “like guys” without romantic feelings. Then, one day, while covering the front counter, Susan came in. Susan. Who hit him between the eyes.

She had just gotten a job at a law firm and was bringing in legal papers to copy. Warren took her order, asking if this was part of her job. She chuckled. “Yes. I’m a glorified go-fer. One of my duties is to go to the printers every day for copying.”

Warren made a mental note to be at the counter when she came in. And he was. Almost every day, he’d detain her in conversation. He was taken with her, how she smiled and joked with him. Eventually, he worked up the courage to ask her out, and, to his great joy, she said yes.

“Golda Meir, the first prime minister of Israel,” Liz was saying, “was faced with an epidemic of rape in the 1970’s.” 

Warren had been daydreaming. He pulled himself out of his reverie and refocused on Liz.

“And the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, considered putting a curfew on women. You know what Golda Meir said? ‘If there is to be a curfew, put it on the men.’ Do you see how that turns things on their heads? She understood completely that the solution wasn’t to restrict the movements of potential victims but of potential perpetrators. Naturally, the curfew never passed. No man would consent to having his movements restricted to protect women.

“But women regularly restrict their movements to avoid rape. Even without a legal curfew, women have a whole set of rules they live by. ‘Don’t walk alone at night. Check the back seat of your car before getting in. Never walk in deserted areas by yourself. Always question the motives of a male stranger who approaches you.’ How many of you live by those rules?”

A few men half raised their hands.

“Because you’re worried about being mugged?” Liz asked.

They nodded.

“Well, women worry about being raped. They restrict their movements in a way most men don’t even consider. Let me be absolutely clear. The responsibility for sexual violation is never on the person whose boundaries are being blown past. It’s always on the person who’s blowing past those boundaries.” Liz paused for a moment. “Are there any other questions on this point?” 

“Well, what about if you’ve had sex with the person before? You don’t have to, like, ask every single time, do you?” Lester inquired.

“In fact, you do,” Liz responded. “Because yes on Monday does not mean an automatic yes on Tuesday.” Liz added that even long-term couples still needed to make sure there was consent. “You can make it playful, flirtatious even, but yes, you still need consent. Clear?”

Everyone nodded.

“All right, let’s go on to the next criterion. ‘Both parties know the consequences and the alternatives to the activity.’ Sex has consequences, gentlemen, as you well know. Whether that’s potential pregnancy, contracting a sexually transmitted disease, cheating on a marriage, violating one’s religious beliefs, or legal issues, each person has to understand that consequences exist and the people have to have discussed how to minimize or avoid those consequences. That’s where alternatives come in. Like using some form of birth control to prevent pregnancy.”

“And here’s why children can’t consent. They can’t have those discussions because they don’t understand sex. Or its consequences. When an adult makes sexual demands on a child, it’s to meet the adult’s needs, not the child’s. The child instinctively knows this. But it confuses them, because they assume adults make decisions in the child’s best interest. Also, they’ve been taught to obey adults, so they don’t put up resistance.  Even if they wanted to, they are too small in comparison. They have no alternatives. So no matter how they behave during the abuse, the sexual activity is not by consent. And make no mistake, sexual activity before a person is developmentally ready has devastating consequences in the short- and long-term.

Warren struggled inside himself. He couldn’t wrap his head around the possibility that his daughter simply went along with him. That he initiated the sexual activity.

“The next criterion,” Liz continued, “‘neither party is impaired by limited intelligence, alcohol, or drugs,’ seems pretty obvious. You’ve all heard of the date-rape drug, Rohypnol, or roofies? It knocks people unconscious. That’s an obvious example of non-consent. ‘Limited intelligence’ refers to children, and also developmentally-impaired adults—someone with an adult’s body and chronological age but with the mind of a child. But alcohol is a big gray area.”

“Yeah,” Lester said. “I mean, you go to a bar, have a few drinks. Maybe you’re a little drunk, and she is too. You can’t have sex?”

“Well, Greg here is living testament to someone not consenting to sex because of being drunk. He thought he got consent. She thought she gave consent, though to a guy named Larry. But, in the morning, she woke up and understood that she absolutely had not given Greg consent.  Even if Greg hadn’t lied by saying he was Larry, maybe she was so drunk she assumed he was Larry. Greg didn’t have sober, clear-headed consent from someone who knew he was Greg, knew she’d be cheating on Larry, knew she was protected from pregnancy or STDs, and knew she could say no to Greg if she wished to. So, at what point is someone too drunk to be able to make those decisions rationally? If it’s someone you just met, you don’t know. You may think she’s handling her liquor okay, but do you really want to wake up to a rape allegation” 

The men all looked horrified.

“You can’t afford to play in the gray area, gentlemen. In reality, you can’t afford impersonal sex. The only safe sex for you, and frankly for anyone, is with someone whose age you have verified, who’s given verbal consent, whom you know well enough to discuss precautions against pregnancy and STDs, and who’s stone-cold sober. And, I’d add, whom you’ve told you’re a sex offender. That’s not the law, but it’s the right thing to do. Are there any questions about this?”

“How do you even do that? It sounds like you have to get a signed consent each time!” Sam complained.

“Yeah,” Jason chimed in. “This all sounds like a total buzz-kill.”

Liz turned to him and fixed him with a stare.  “For women and children,” she replied flatly, “Rape is a buzz-kill.”