Lea writes:
You could physically remove yourself at this point, an option most women don’t have when faced with a similar situation.
Actually, they would. “Mike” said that he was extremely drunk and that the rapist threatened to claim rape if he tried to do anything. Granted, the latter part would not work in the reverse. The former, however, occurs quite often. Women who claim date rape often report being too drunk and too confused to do anything, not that they were physically being restrained or were specifically threatened. So women faced with a similar situation do have the option of physically removing themselves, they simply do not, perhaps out of confusion, intoxication, being drugged, some form of coercion or fear.
I personally would draw the rape line at the point when you are either physically incapable of getting away or you are reasonably threatened with violence if you try to get away.
If you did that then the overwhelming majority of women’s unwanted sexual contact would never count as rape or sexual assault (definition of which depends on the state). Ironically, the overwhelming majority of children’s unwanted sexual contact would never count as rape or sexual assault either.
You were in a different situation (at this point, not before) and I don’t think you should take people’s disagreement with you about this part personally, because it’s really more about where the line is.
No, it is not. Mary Jackson’s disagreement with “Mike” has nothing to do with a line, just to do with her political views and her attitude that no woman is capable of raping or sexually abusing a man or boy. The same sentiment is carried by many other people commenting here. The blackmail “issue” is just a means of justifying what is clearly a double standard and what is clearly people excusing and mocking someone’s rape.
I do think there should probably be some legal name for “drunken manipulation” or whatever we want to call it. Blackmail is already illegal, would that count?
Some states have adopted laws counting any sexual act committed on a female while she is intoxicated as rape regardless of whether she gives consent. While the law is specifically gender neutral, the only instances that it has been applied in (to my knowledge) involves cases of date rape against women, not date rape against men or boys. Technically though, “Mike’s” rape would fall into the date rape category.
However, it seemingly has not occurred to the people attacking and mocking James that he could be raped and blackmailed at the same time. Ironically, this act is not uncommon. Child rapists do the exact same thing to children all the time. They rape them (usually by coercing them into sex) and then blackmail them into keeping silent. I would imagine that in instances involving female child rapists people like Mary Jackson would argue that no rape occurred and that no harm was done to the child, particularly if the child were a boy. However, in instances involving male child rapists most people would agree that any form of coercion would be part of the rape, that it would not be a separate, unrelated and probably consensual and harmless act. The same would be true of male-on-female assaults. So it makes little sense that it should not apply in female-on-male assaults.
