Prevailingperspective. Date rape is a crime, not a misunderstanding.
Another репресійe Anyone who works with both sexes knows it is possible for a man to feel he’s |ust made love and for a woman to feel she’s been raped It’s also possible for a woman to feel she’s made love in the evening when she’s high, and feel raped in the morning when she’s sober — without the man being a rapist. Or for a woman to feel she’s been made love to one evening if the man said, “I love you." but feel raped the next evening if he hasn’t called back But again, that doesn’t mean the man raped her.
It is also possible for a woman to go back to a man’s room, tell him she doesn’t want to have intercourse, mean it. start kissing, have Intercourse, and then wish she hadn’t in the morning. How? Kissing is like eating potato chips. Before we know it. we’ve gone further than we said we would.
The woman who says "I just want to talk" when she goes to the room but is then responsive to a shoulder rub. a caressed hand, and a first kiss has not verbally said. "I’ve changed my mind," but she has said it nonverbally. Therefore her last words were “no" to anything physical. If he is asked to take responsibility because her last words were "no," we are then making him more responsible for her than she is for herself. To make him into a criminal for not taking responsibility for her is to make him into a criminal for not being her parent. Which is not equality, but woman-as-child.
All of this together leaves some men uncertain whether “read my lips" means reading what her lips are saying or reading what her lips are doing.
The problem with every judgment of sexual behavior is that it is made by people who aren’t being stimulated as they are making the judgment. A jury that sees a woman in a sterile counroom, asks her what she wanted, and then assumes that anything else she did was the responsibility of the man is insulting not only the woman but the power of sex. A man being sued after a woman has more sex than intended is like Lay’s being sued after someone has more potato chips than intended. In brief, date rape can be a crime, a misunderstanding, or buyer’s remorse.