The Grand Unified Theory of Rape

This one’s for all the gentlemen in the audience…or at least those who aspire to be gentlemen. There are just some guys out there who will never get this, no matter what I say, and they’re not my audience today.

I remember the first time I encountered the word “rape.” I was on a Boy Scout field trip to visit the Police Department in my hometown of East Orange, NJ. As we walked around, I noticed some of the wanted posters hanging up, posters for people wanted for things like robbery, murder, and this one thing I’d never heard of before…rape.

I turned to one of the other Scouts, and asked what rape was; and in the tittering voice that can only come from hormonal adolescent boys who don’t quite get it, he replied, “Oh that’s when you force a girl to do it with you.”

Well…that definitely didn’t sound cool. And it was something I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. Oh yes, I could wrap my head around the what. Why I couldn’t grasp was the why?

Ask anyone who’s known me since first grade, and they’ll tell you that I’m an incurable romantic. The idea that you would force someone to do “it” with you just didn’t make sense. “It” was supposed to be with someone you liked; why would you force someone you liked to do it? “It” was supposed to be something you both enjoyed…even Hugh Hefner said that; why would you want to force someone to do something that if they didn’t want to do…especially if they’d hate you forever for it?

For the next 40 or 50 years, that was my working definition of rape. In fact, that was the standard definition of rape for most guys my age.

A few years later, another term was added to my rape vocabulary, and that was statutory rape. As a teenager who thought he was quite mature and thought he knew it all…and especially in the middle of the sexual revolution, I didn’t see why a pop star should be charged with this statutory rape thing for having sex with a 16 year-old fan who probably thought she’d hit the jackpot. Five years later, when I was older, and more mature, I understood.

Anyway, most of us understood both regular and statutory rape. Those were the definitions we knew and grew up with. We knew that they were crimes…heinous crimes. Well…statutory rape might not be quite so heinous because of circumstances, but still, we knew that they were crimes. There was, however, a whole other category of sexual behavior which, while not criminal, was also not something that a gentleman would want to be accused to engaging in.

We called that “taking advantage of someone.” This could be someone who was drunk, someone who was asleep or unconscious, or anyone who wasn’t really in a position to give valid permission. It wasn’t cricket, but it was neither rape nor a crime because you didn’t force her.

And remember, our whole definition of rape was based on the idea of forcing someone.

Then, over the last decade or so, the definition of rape seemed to change. Now all those things we would consider “behavior unbecoming of a gentleman”, those things that we merely considered “taking advantage of someone”, were now considered rape. How could this be? Especially when there was no force involved, and it wasn’t rape in the classic sense that we had been taught about?

The answer, when you think about it, is quite simple. We had been looking narrowly at the definition of what the law called forcible rape, and using it as the definition of all rape (with the exception of that weird statutory thing). But the fact that there was forcible rape and statutory rape tells us that there’s more than one kind of rape. And having said that, it also implies that forcible rape may just be one subset of a number of things that can be considered rape…whether there’s force involved or not.

And to borrow a phrase from the world of physics, the “grand unified theory” of rape boils down to one thing, and one thing only: consent and the ability to give it of one’s own free will.

Where there is force, there is no free will. Where there is lack of consciousness, there is no consent. Where there is free will, but the person is underage, there is no legal consent.

So to you gentlemen out there who think that you would no more rape someone than blow up a school, you need to be aware that it’s not just about force, it’s about consent. And with that in mind, “taking advantage of someone” is rape.

Besides…the incurable romantic in me still asks…why would you want to take advantage of anyone in the first place?

Shouldn’t it be good for both of you?