There Has to Be a Better Way to End Rape Culture: It Isn’t At All Like Stealing $5
Some of this consent-explaining is starting to rub me the wrong way.
(Is consent really like tea?)
***UPDATE: a new-and-improved version of this piece is now on HuffPost. Some of the revisions were inspired by insightful responses from Medium users, so thank you! :)***
[cw: rape]
Over the last day or two, a series of tweets has gone viral that explains rape in terms of stealing money:
“If you ask me for $5, and I’m too drunk to say yes or no, it’s not okay to then go take $5 out of my purse… Just because I didn’t say no. / If you put a gun to my head to get me to give you $5, you still stole $5. Even if I physically handed you $5.”
People are sharing it all over my Facebook newsfeed. Popsugar called it “The Best Analogy to Describe Rape You’ll Ever Read.” And while I give props to Twitter user @thatxxv for standing up to the people who are still perpetuating rape culture, something about this explanation is very troubling to me and at first, I wasn’t sure why.
I’m starting to have mixed feelings about all these clever analogies that present rape as a kind of unwanted exchange of money or goods — like $5, or the borrowed car in the cartoon above, or even tea.
(Don’t get me wrong — back when that “Tea Consent” video went viral on YouTube, I was all for it, sharing it with all of my friends, and spreading the Gospel of Tea Consent. It’s a great message, but now I’m struggling with it for many of the same reasons why I’m struggling with the $5 thing.)
After some thought, I've organized these “mixed feelings” into three main reasons why this type of analogy is troubling to me:
- The message it sends is that the act of rape is the same as the act of sex, minus the consent bit — when rape is actually an act of sexual violence. I don’t think it’s really the same act at all; the lack of consent changes the act entirely. Here’s another way to think about it: in these analogies, the result after the act — e.g. you now have my $5, and I’m $5 short — is the same whether consent was given or not. That can hardly be said for the psychological results after rape vs. sex.
- In the implied flip side of the analogy, consensual sex is somehow also an “exchange”: if I consent to have sex with you, then I’m giving you $5 or lending you my car or letting you give me tea. I don’t want my sex to be an exchange. It’s not a giving or a taking, it’s an experience that I share with someone. Rape, on the other hand, is none of the above. You could call it a “taking” — that is, it robs someone of their dignity.* But in order for the full exchanged-based analogy to hold up, consensual sex would mean that someone gives up her (or his) dignity willingly. And that just doesn’t sit right with me.
- Even with these two flaws, the analogies would be totally worth it if they were really changing people’s minds about consent. But I sometimes wonder if the only people viewing and retweeting are the people who already get it. Are these pithy quotes and cartoons changing people’s minds? I honestly don’t know. But I do know this:
One of the many roots of rape culture (besides good ol’ misogyny) is the mentality that sex is an exchange. It’s the I-bought-her-dinner-and-was-really-nice-to-her-so-she-owes-me-something narrative. I don’t think that the “exchange” mentality has any place in our cause.**
As an aside, I do also want to say that I’m really in support of the “consent is simple!” message, but in my lived experience, consent hasn’t been as simple as I want it to be. In those tweets that sparked my writing of this post, it was simple: if someone is too drunk to consent, case closed.
But what if I’m emotionally beholden to someone? What if I’m feeling too vulnerable to say no? There’s consent, and then there’s enthusiastic consent. And in order to fight rape culture, I think we need to acknowledge the difference there too.
As always, thank you so much for reading! -Anna
[*And sometimes also “robs” them of their virginity. But I think most of us agree that the “taking/losing” language surrounding virginity is misguided and often harmful.]
[**Unless we’re discussing sex work, which is a different issue for another time. Though of course consent is an important topic in those discussions too.]
[And a note on #2 in general: I wonder if my enthusiasm for sex positivity perhaps doesn’t have a place in discussions of rape? Yet so much of this is really about consent education, which I think should be sex-positive. I don’t have the answers here. Even the “consent is sexy” slogan seems to have some problems; consent can be sexy sometimes, but it is mandatory either way.]
Endnote: this post is NOT The Definitive Argument to End All Analogies. There surely is a place for them. I just want us to think a little harder about what these analogies mean, and how we’re using them. I brashly titled this post “There Has to Be a Better Way…” without directly suggesting “a better way,” but I do believe that it must exist.
To be honest, I’m looking for help with working through these ideas, so PLEASE respond to this post respectfully.
As you can tell from my many endnotes, I wrote this feeling deeply troubled and confused, not high-and-mighty on a feminist pedestal. I’m open to conversations; I’m willing to have holes poked in my logic and to admit that I’m wrong. But I’m going to say from the start that I will not respond to hostility.
I’m hoping that if this piece does get any responses, we will be able to engage in a productive dialogue about consent education, sex positivity, and fighting rape culture, and maybe even talk about the logic of analogies if you want to! :)
Anna Hundert is a student at Brown University.
