That’s not what the California law says. It absolutely allows for non-verbal consent. It’s literally there in the text. Maybe if you read more you’d be more attractive and then you’d know what I’m talking about when it comes to feeling desired.

It’s weirdly hard to stop yourself from going back, especially when it’s someone you know/someone you were really interested in previously. When this happened to me I had to block his number and email address because it was so tempting to try and go back and win, somehow, or make it okay. People are complicated, and…

I think I’ve answered this pretty thoroughly elsewhere, if you keep reading, but in short, my answer is twofold.

That’s awesome. I certainly wish that at the time I had the wherewithal to have done that!

As a graduate of a women’s college, you’ve come to the wrong place for that argument :) Sounds fine to me!

Amazing to me the number of women who feel it necessary to respond this way to some fairly obvious hyperbole in a fairly sensitive conversation. I’m not thin-skinned and I don’t really care, but some people are and would.

Completely incorrect, but thanks for playing. Always nice to hear from the men’s rights peanut gallery!

^^ trained in Kenpo by a bunch of police officers running a dojo from age 7 to age 18. Still box. 5'10", athletic, and delights in confrontation. Have no problem hitting people; have in fact done it more times than most people.^^ Still possible in the moment for a toxic combination of social pressure, confusion,…

Amazing to me the number of women who feel it necessary to respond this way to some fairly obvious hyperbole in a fairly sensitive conversation. I’m not thin-skinned and I don’t really care, but some people are and would.

Yeah, exactly. I feel like what you’re describing gets exactly at what is so difficult about this—it really has to do with what is in someone’s mind. In my situation, I did make a conscious decision to go along with it, even though I didn’t really want to and didn’t say I did. In your case, you said you did, but in…

No, it’s not just a women’s issue. But since any large-scale cultural change will benefit men as well as women in this matter, and since it’s like 98% a women’s issue, can we have this thing just this once? You can continue running the government and all the Fortune 500 companies and the entire free world, promise.

Presumably there is, and you know what it is, or you wouldn’t be so hot about telling other people how to define their own experiences. I sense the phrase “devil’s advocate” is imminent and boy, is that a useless and facile reason for asking dumb questions, so let’s just head that off right now.

Because this woman says it wasn’t rape, and I trust women to be able to understand what happened to their own damn selves. It wasn’t rape for me either. Sorry you can’t understand that there are things that happen in the infinite manifestations of human sexuality and interaction that don’t fit neatly into one of two…

I appreciate the kind thoughts, but I’ve made my peace with it. The fact is that a lot of what determines whether something is rape or is not rape is invisible—it has to do with what’s in someone’s head. For me, it sucked, and it was wrong, but it does not deserve to be categorized as rape. Similarly, I may be one of…

An excellent point. Relationships, sex, people—these are complicated and fluid things. We cannot simply say “rape” or “not rape” and expect everything to fit neatly into one category or another.

The reason I hesitate to call it rape is because the author herself doesn’t consider it rape, and I also personally went through an experience that some people might call rape, and I don’t. I’m not rape-compliant, I’m resistant to telling women how to think about their own lived experience, and resistant to having…

No one is disputing rape culture exists. Quite the opposite, really. Just more focused on finding a way out to change things.

I’m in my early 30s, still single and dating—so still technically in need of those skills, but it feels basically second nature at this point.

Thank you, Captain Obvious! If only there was someone out there just telling women to “say no!” that would be the end of all but the most violent rapes. I wish someone had told me that!

Like most terrible things in life, it’s mostly not your credentials that prevent them from happening to you. It’s mostly sheer chance. I’m glad this never happened to you, and it’s natural to try and dissect why, but I think it’s important for the sake of prevention and policy creation that we not draw any artificial…