I do this activity in schools where a couple goes to a party, both of them drink, but the female becomes so drunk as to be incapacitated. Her boyfriend takes her upstairs (she wants to lay down to feel better) and has sex with her (while she's unable to protest). Most commonly the response to "what happened??" is "There was a miscommunication." I think Amanda's response to this over at The Sexist is SPOT on (read the whole article for much more debunking fun!) ***
Excerpt from Legal Consent, Morning After Regret, and "Accidental" Rape Orignally posted Nov. 9, 2009Some rapes happen on accident [Source].
As Thomas notes on the Yes Means Yes! blog,
the dominant analogy used to address rape likens it to a terrible and
unpreventable disaster. Under this model, rape is like a hurricane.
Everyone agrees that hurricanes are devastating. Hurricanes cannot be
prevented—they can only be predicted, planned for, and vigilantly
avoided. Because no one can be blamed for causing a hurricane, the onus
is on the victims to make sure they stay out of the disaster’s path.
Similarly, because many people are convinced that nothing can stop a
rapist from raping, women are encouraged to conform to a series of
disaster-avoidance behaviors: stay indoors, wear longer skirts, quit
drinking, travel in packs, and avoid trusting men.
Of course, rapes have a pretty obvious culprit: rapists. Still, some
people continue to cast date rape scenarios in particular as
unavoidable accidents. Since acquaintance rapes are absent of any
obvious malicious intent, they are considered a product of an
unfortunate miscommunication. These rapists did not intend to rape anyone. In a way, they too are victims—victims of the problematic gray area of sexual consent.
This focus on some rapes as “accidents” suffers from a
misapplication of the term “accident.” I often find analogies
misleading in discussion of sexual assault (see: that hurricane
bullshit), but I’m going to use an analogy in this instance because I
think it may be helpful. What if we thought about rape in terms of
another type of accident—a car accident?
In the United States, driving a car is a privilege. In order to be
cleared to drive, you must pass tests, register your information with
the government, have enough money to buy a vehicle, and secure
insurance in case you get into a wreck. For some people, the privilege
of stepping behind the wheel inspires a certain amount of hubris. These
people believe that because they are driving a car, they can take
certain liberties on the road—including cutting others off in order to
save time, running red lights, shirking stop signs, and generally being
a gigantic asshole. Their concern lies only in getting where they want
to go as fast as they can, and not at all with all the other humans on
the road they have an obligation to protect.
A few weeks ago, my boyfriend was hit by a car when he was in a crosswalk
(he’s fine, thanks for asking). In D.C., of course, pedestrians legally
hold the right of way in a crosswalk. But my boyfriend did not share
the privilege of the driver—he was a pedestrian, and so he was forced
to wait patiently at the very wide, very well-marked, very busy
crosswalk until one of the big privileged cars deigned to stop for him.
If a pedestrian decides to step out into the street as oncoming traffic
approaches, he has to hope that his legal right to cross—not to mention
his human life—outweighs the driver’s sense of privilege to keep on
trucking. Asserting your rights, of course, comes with a certain amount
of danger. But pedestrians have no choice but to cross busy streets.
And sometimes, they get hit.
Now, the driver who hit him did not set out with the intention of
running into a human with her car. She didn’t mean to hurt anybody. But
she also knew full well that cars are required to stop for pedestrians
in crosswalks. She was simply so accustomed to her driving privilege
that she never dreamed that this could actually happen—and that she
would ever be held responsible for her habitual disregard for the law.
After all, a lot of motorists act this way, and most pedestrians just
stay out of their way. When a pedestrian is hit in a crosswalk, it’s
not an accident. It’s the result of the motorist who has normalized her
dangerous actions.
When rapists engage in sex acts without bothering to gain their sex
partner’s consent, they are not “accidentally” raping someone. Rapes
don’t come from miscommunication. They are not isolated, unpreventable
incidents. They are a product of institutionalized, reinforced,
life-long privilege. They are the symptoms of a flaw in the rapist’s
entire worldview. They are the product of the way the rapist has
habitually devalued women, laid claim to the bodies of others, pursued
what he wants no matter what—and never thought anything of it because he has never been called on it. That’s not an accident. That’s a system.