Reminds me of one of my favorite Onion point-counterpoint articles:

European men are so much more romantic than American men.
vs.
American women studying in Europe are unbelievably easy.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/europea…

The other side of the coin is...

Fifty shades of hot teacher-on-middle-schooler sex is a book you can buy now

Alissa Nutting’s debut novel, Tampa (Ecco/HarperCollins) involves a very randy protagonist, 26-year-old middle-school teacher Celeste Price. She seduces a 14-year-old male student in hedonistic, sociopathic, American Psycho style.

Nutting explains in a Cosmopolitan interview. “It got me thinking, ‘Well, what are some novels that are about female sexual psychopaths? I really didn’t have many references for that, and I felt like that was a void in transgressive literature that I wanted to fill.’”

http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/10/fifty-…

Female Johns (Janes?) and female psychopaths.

I'm hoping for more SLOG posts on the subjects.

Thanks for posting these followups...the tilted playing field is quite disturbing.

has this been linked in the men's rights reddit yet?

AVAST2006 made a brilliant comment.

Suppose instead of raping/having sex with a guy, the woman got in a car and drove drunk.

Could she use her drunkenness as an excuse?

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…

Wait I thought brothers were actually into fat blondes ...

@4 oh god, please no. This thread is a guaranteed trainwreck as it is, let's please not invite in the marching morons.

Where did this idea come from that you cannot consent if you're drunk? I'm pretty sure they taught me in law school that, while you may reach a level of drunkenness at which you are no longer able to consent, merely being drunk makes no difference as long as you still somewhat have your wits about you.

Since when did the law and university policy have anything to do with one another?

@8: It seems like the line there might be a tad gray.

Being impaired (young, old, mentally challenging, handicapped, in a coma) makes you more of a victim in most aspects of the law.

Being drunk makes you more of a perp in most areas of law (assault, date-rape, DUI) or gives you no excuse (take out a loan while drunk, and you still owe the bank).

So this is all consistent with other arenas of life. BUT as the LW points out, the reporting patterns are biased towards women.

Q to the LW: If the guy responds, "I wasn't going to file a complaint, but she actually raped me that night." and then he files a complaint, then what do the University rules dictate? It seems to be a "he said, she said" and nothing can be proven.

Basically, don't fuck drunk people, especially drunk fellow-students, unless you're really sure of how they'll feel about it later. Which you can never know with a stranger.

Or, another legal safety-tip: No PIV (or anal nor oral on him) during the first drunken date. Roll around with each other and do hand jobs on each other, maybe he goes down on her. None of those hit the cultural rape button quite so hard. Second date? You can go a lot further. No second date? You might be REALLY glad you didn't go further on the first date.

@1: I LOVE that one!

Though the first letter's fascinating, I don't think that's what happened with TURISTA. I just think she had higher, more romantic expectations of the vacay lay than was advisable. For the record, that does NOT mean she deserved the river of shit she got for her "entitlement" and "naivete".

yeah, what Tehanu says.
While I'm obviously sorry for any individual guy falsely accused of sexual assault - and while that sucks, and while that person has every right to be incredibly angry and if possible seek damages from the false accuser - I'll start worrying about that as a major societal issue when it anywhere remotely close in scope to actual sexual assault.
We don't have prisons filled with men convicted of drunk-date-rape, we don't have universities kicking out boys en-masse because of _any_ alleged date rapes, even less drunk-date-rape. What we do have are staggeringly high rates of sexual assault, especially among college-aged women. Given that, frankly, the (male) obsession with false rape accusations is rather disturbing.

And just as a reminder - the woman in the letter didn't press rape charges. Going by the letter, she didn't use the word rape at all. She was upset. I think if the LW is a decent guy - and he sounds like he is - he should feel bad about any sex that made the other person feel shitty the next day. He should try to minimize that happening in the future. End of story.

Mr Rhone - Will you concede that she appeared entirely ignorant of the local customs concerning casual encounters (for which, assuming she really was, I do ding her, if not give an actual demerit)? I have not been abroad much, but I at least knew what to expect from the Dutch when I went to Amsterdam (and became a GGGM, which has nothing to do with Mr Savage's dicta whatsoever - it's hard to believe it was fifteen years ago).

And, to tie in two other pertinent themes of the moment, it was on that visit to Amsterdam when I had a rare (for me, anyway) sighting of a presumably bi stranger identifiable not by a label but by behaviour. I just happened to have the good fortune to be placed quite near a very pleasant-looking trio that appeared to be of SBG composition. And to make everything all the more perfect, this all took place at Dam Square during a free concert given by Bjorn Again.

@17,

Way to be dismissive about false rape. As if it would be just 'devastating' (as in 'boo hoo' who cares you go to jail and are labeled a sex offender ruining the rest of your life...its not that big a deal).

You dont have to be an MRA @sshat to grasp that false rape accusations happen all the time. The problem is that its hard to decipher when it is false and not real. Just like DV situations. It really happens a lot, but its also lied about by women somewhat less frequently (but commonly). Ive known two men who have been accused of rape after a night of mutual drunken sex. Neither seem like rapist, but thats not really something you can tell. In each case, the woman was involved with someone else at the time (Bf and husband), and in each case the guy was not aware of that fact until after the accusation came out. Did it really happen? I cant say. But I also cant say that there was not an incentive to lie about being raped by these women.

False rape/regret rape is a thing and it does happen. Its impossible to say how often, but at the same time, it shouldnt be dismissed because of the scale of horror for actual rape. Being wrongfully accused of anything is horror itself. Not as bad as being raped, but a horror all the same that will ruin your life and your future.

Weve all heard the story of the Football player in CA that lost his scholarship and went to jail after a false rape conviction only to have it overturned when she admitted the truth under the pretext of keeping her civil suit reward. Lets not pretend like its such a rare or unharmful thing.

That should have been to @13^

@15,

So, if both parties are drunk and have sex and black out, the party with a penis is a rapist, but not the party with a vagina?

BTW Im not playing the MRA card here, I hate what those idiots really stand for, but how can anyone take this position without it being sexist against men?

@17: The problem with your example is both women could very well have been raped, and the "incentive" for lying seems extremely paltry in the face of the nightmare of rape kits, pressing formal charges, having one's entire sexual history put under a microscope, and no guarantee of justice.

Just because you have insurance hardly means it's in your best interest to burn your own house down.

My own school had a sexual assault policy that was initially far too easy on rapists and then swung the other way to prevent them from being able to confront their accusers. There is such a thing as too much, but I'd like to remind the prof that women almost never commit sex crimes against men. Yes, that policy should be modified to allow the accused to argue that he/she could not have consented either, but come on, most of those cases almost certainly did involve men taking advantage of women who were not capable of consenting at the time. This isn't anywhere near a 50/50 situation.

@17, false rape accusations might "happen all the time" but not nearly as often as real rapes that go unreported, not even as often as real rapes that are reported but do not result in punishment for the rapist. If we're creating a system that must be both sensitive (catches actual rapists) and specific (does not catch non-rapists), then the system is far more lacking in sensitivity than in specificity. There are more false negatives than false positives.

That being said, women who lie about being raped or convince themselves that they were raped are part of the problem.

@13: "A lot of feminists these days are working to encourage the model of "enthusiastic consent" which is indeed positive and affirming."

A lot of the feminist sites promoting Enthusiastic Consent try to include two rather majorly boneheaded overstatements of the concept:

1) Enthusiastic VERBAL Consent: If you didn't literally ask "May I (fill in the blank)?" and get a reply of "Yes" then consent for that specific thing hasn't happened, and if it occurs it's sexual assault. No amount of enthusiastic, self-directed, non-verbal participation counts as consent. It's words or it didn't happen, and it's also totally reasonable to expect a fresh request and affirmation of verbal consent at each and every stage of escalation. At the same time, however, men are supposed to be sufficiently attuned to the behavior and evident mood of their partner to detect that the partner is now thinking "No," even if a "Yes" was previously said out loud, even if she continues to participate, because she just might be afraid to say No and thus you must be able to detect the one she is holding back in her mind.

2) Intoxication invalidates consent, period. ANY level of intoxication, at least any that one would be able to plausibly claim (at any time after the fact, like the following morning, or months later) that inhibition was lowered, and thus the consent was less than genuine. This one has been discussed to death already in the previous column, follow the links.

"And yet the men's-rightists twist that as well. "

It wasn't the MRAs that said either of the above.

Yes, I have really heard feminists say that a woman may be participating actively and passionately at every stage of an encounter, kissing you back, fondling you back, taking off all of her own clothing and climbing on top of you naked, but if you take that as consent and penetrate her, girl-on-top style, without verbally asking first, you just raped her.

Don't get me wrong, I think the idea of Enthusiastic Consent is a great idea. I just think that certain factions are managing to fuck it up pretty badly.

"Anonymous Prof"

Dear Reddit MRAs, I never thought it would happen to me but...

*sound of a thousand assholes masturbating at once follows*

@21: I have to agree, videos of predatory college guys taking sexual advantage of some poor passed out woman appear with depressing regularity. Those are the cases that are unquestionably rape, and I'm sure it happens that way far more often than with the sexes reversed. That said, I don't see the logic behind "we don't need that, because it almost never happens that way." What we need is a system that treats EVERYONE fairly and rationally, regardless of comparative frequency of incidents. So what if it happens a hundred times one way for every once the other way? If you were the "once" case, would you want the system to ignore your plight?

Anyway, I think the discussion here is on the cases where the person is drunk enough to not remember what happened the following morning, but was far from being the inert rag-doll in the videos.

The problem from the perspective of that person the morning after is that in the absence of memories there is no way to tell the difference between passed out cold, and lampshade-on-the-head, dancing-on-the-tables, fucking-someone-you-wouldn't-otherwise-do, drunk. It doubtless _feels_ like they must have been passed out cold, and that any sex that occurs must have been done to the rag doll. That is what compels them to feel raped. If they could remember any of it, they might remember that they participated willingly and actively, and it was actually pretty fun at the time. But all they remember is a void, coupled with evidence that someone had sex with them. As far as their experience, it might as well have been that the doctor anesthetized them and had sex with them on the operating table.

In my opinion, the policy should not be modified so that he too could claim he could not have consented either. (The whole point of that angle is to point out how "I was too drunk to consent to what I myself did" is logically absurd.) It should be modified such that responsibility for one's own actions remains firmly in place for as long as one is capable of being an active participant, same as it is for drunk driving.

The one exception I would carve out of that is if one participant got the other one drunk by stealth or coercion. Nobody would hesitate to call it rape (not to mention poisoning) if he roofied her. The same thing should apply to any intoxicant.

Mr. Ven @16: If you have sex with a stranger, you shouldn't expect much. However, that's not carte blanche for the other party to act like an asshole either. Those are good guidelines for casual sex universally speaking, let local customs be. TURISTA's problem was expecting too much- the encounter was not romantic even if the locale was, but he was gracious enough to drive her back to her hotel. But since she had very little experience with one-night stands, she considered him harsh or cold or abrupt- and, in demeanor, he might have been, who knows? But expecting date-night decorum was a little silly. That's all, though-I didn't understand the hostility coming off the peanut gallery..

@araucania - I'll take false rape accusations serious on an individual basis, just as any other relatively rare crime. I don't believe they happens all the time, I haven't seen any remotely convincing evidence they happens all the time (and I've seen some pretty convincing evidence that it doesn't) and "I know two guys who I think are cool and have been accused of rape" isn't even convincing for anecdotal evidence. So yes, I think people who make a big deal about them as a broader issue (rather than in an individual case) are part of the problem.
And "Incentives" to accuse someone of rape? Maybe you live in some alternate universe, where filing a rape charge doesn't mean your private life will be turned upside down and you'll be subject to victim-blaming from all sides, but in the universe I live in, there's practically never an "incentive" to file a wrongful rape complaint against someone (experts say that most false rape reports that are filed are actually distinctive in that they _don't_ identify a perpetrator).

And no, as I said I don't think a case where both parties are drunk is or should typically be considered rape, but considering the incredibly high rates of sexual assault on college campuses I can see how it makes sense for campuses to institute policies that put a higher burden on men. You tell women to not walk alone at night, why not tell men to err on the side of not sleeping with drunk women?

I am really disappointed in Dan that he posted that first letter without any sort of commentary. You would think that a gay man would have seen that bullshit right away and said something. Women who expect men to pay for activities, meals and hotels are called girlfriends, not prostitutes! If having your date pay for your meal makes you a whore, then every woman is a whore. Then that cunt actually said that the men who marry! are even worse whores. That sort of Victorian sexist double standard should be kicked to the curb.

Prostitution is when cash is given directly for sex. I will give her the gray area where the man has an "emergency" and is given cash. But calling a woman a "john" for engaging in other activities that are considered standard for men to do as normal dating behavior is sexism of the worst kind.

@20:

So again, your reasoning is that if two drunk straight people have sex, its actually the man raping the woman because he did not get consent, regardless of whether she got consent from him.

Hate men much?

@26: hoe exactly do you know false rape is a rare crime? Im not saying rape is a rare crime, but just to say that because false rape involves the offender having a vagina = its rare is totally sexist.

Also @26, are you really serious that incentives to lie about rape do not exist? If you are married or in a relationship that you wish to continue but you engage in cheating behavior and do not wish to get caught, you are darned right its incentivized.

Married woman/in relationship woman A cheats on her husband while drunk. Regrets it. Are you telling me there isnt incentive to lie and claim the guy she cheated with raped her? Because if you are, you are living in a fantasy world where people dont lie about things they regret or wish didnt happen or need to justify.

Mr Rhone - Of course people ought not to act like As. Some people were harsh on her; I just had a negative reaction to those who thought her testimony credible despite her apparent ignorance.

My personal thought was that she was lucky she wasn't on holiday somewhere where they stone women taken in adultery. (Not that they should, or that it would be a deserved fate, but I do take it as the sign of a good visitor not to give severe offence when such might reasonably be avoided.) Given her apparent habit of conducting herself as a distinct American who expected everything to happen just the way it would in the US, I was far more ready to believe that she was the rude one, though I can't pronounce on the question before the evidence is presented as to specific Costa Rican customs for the situation.

@27: ?
I don't expect my date to pay for me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_sex_…

I'm just going to say I was intrigued by the first letter making a point of saying people "with high BMIs." That was a nice way of putting it. Well done.

Attention white vacationers: the locals you meet see you as walking dollar signs. This is what you are to them, and all you ever will be. Do not expect anything less, do not expect anything more.

@32, neither do I, but it is the cultural norm in the U.S., you must admit.

@32 re wikipedia's summary of the research: I must say I was amused as hell at reading the efforts to recharacterize female sex tourism as "romance tourism" as if it made it better.

To those who take the "when you think of the trauma and BS why would somebody make a fake complaint", I ask that you remember the points that my criminal colleague noted when I raised that very point with him.
-- The false complainant has no trauma to be triggered, and therefore will find the process less stressful; she is no more likely to suffer stress from the process than an actress playing a rape victim.
-- The system itself is viewed wholly differently by the false complainant. For a real rape victim the system presents a series of hurdles which can deeply insult and assault her integrity and her psyche, and which can damage other valuable parts of her life. For the false complainant, however, the system is the means to the end of her motive. In other words, she doesn't see it as "these horrible police who don't believe me are making things worse" but as "if I answer these questions the right when then X goes to jail!"

The movie, Paradise:LOVE, is actually a pretty good film. Check it out if you get a chance. The protagonist in the film is portrayed as fairly naive, thinking the dude really was in love with her. I kept hoping she'd get over it and just enjoy a good shag.

I think that in general, though, female sex tourism is a fine thing. I hope this to be achieved safely and fairly for both parties. (Maybe this can be a case in which the free market actually works!)

On quantifying false rape allegations: I put these into a dead thread, but some problems with the math can be found here ...
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…
... @ 117 to 124, and 126.

One should also bear in mind the "where". One of the first cases I handled in private practice was a completely malicious false rape accusation. It dealt with one incident, but multiple allegations with disparate negative impacts, in that the deceitful complaint was made to (a) to the local police force, (b) to the local children's aid society, (c) to an out-of-province CAS where the family had moved, and (d) within the civil action, which is where I came into the case.

So, is that one false allegation, or four? And were they even quantified as such in the statistics? I know that Ontario courts, for example, do not track completely discredited false sexual assault allegations made within civil cases.

Okay, I have had my statistical say. Back to work.

"I think that in general, though, female sex tourism is a fine thing"

I'm genuinely curious @38 nashville: do you feel the way about male sex tourism? Assume for argument's sake that we are solely discussing sex with adults.

@40. A discussion should probably also distinguish between gay or straight sex tourism.

@27: "Women who expect men to pay for activities, meals and hotels are called girlfriends, not prostitutes!"

So I can go down to Barbados, find myself a "girlfriend" for the week I'm there, and then "break up with her" when it's time to get on the plane headed home. Yeah, right.

Tehanu @13 (great name BTW)

I think many victim's rights activists dismiss false rape accusations far too quickly.

Men are understandably afraid of being falsely accused of rape. The same culture that denies women control of their sexuality encourages men to be assertive, and the result is that dating culture is f'ing *confusing*. Even men who respect women and are horrified at the idea of rape can worry about miscommunication. We should encourage their concern and the discussion it raises. This isn't just about women.

We need to work together to prevent rape and false accusations alike through communication. Dismissing men's fears as MRA propaganda is denying part of the problem.

@37: Well, yes and no. Your analysis applies only to the woman who knows perfectly well she is framing an innocent person.

For the woman who wakes up the following morning with a hangover and can't remember having had sex at all, let alone having consented to it, she does indeed feel like she was raped -- more specifically, that her body was violated while she was unconscious (she assumes she must have been unconscious at the time; blackout must mean unconscious, right? ...no?) -- so the process of reporting will feel as traumatizing and triggering to her as it would to the woman who was raped and can remember every moment of it. Also, she will be put through the same set of traumatizing and socially damaging maneuvers to discredit her experience.

@42--if you were hanging out with a girl all week long on a summer vacation and buying her drinks, meals, and paying for clubs, and you both had sex, would you call her a prostitute? You might not call her a girlfriend, maybe a booty call or a summer fling, but I certainly hope you wouldn't call her a whore! Not that there's anything wrong with sex work, but it is insulting to have a double standard for women.

@45: That kind of depends on whether she was working the beach and doing the same thing with some new tourist every Tuesday and Friday when the cruise ships come in. Also if she was angling for money for other sorts of things as the week progressed. If it was a guy doing that, I might or might not call him a prostitute, but I wouldn't hesitate to call him a gigolo. I don't know what the female equivalent term for gigolo is. But bottom line, it is about commercializing the sexual/romantic relationship (more accurately, providing a convincing fake) for personal gain. That definitely doesn't earn the title of "girlfriend" or "boyfriend." At very least, "user."

And frankly, what's wrong with the word "prostitute" as long as both parties go in with their eyes wide open? It's more honest.

@44: Point taken, and valid. I wonder, though, whether in my mind at least I categorize that as a "false accusation". I guess that -- in my own mind at least -- I characterize a false accusation as one that is deliberately malicious, or indifferent as to truth. As to the latter half I retain some genuine concern as to how to characterize a situation where the complainant in question doesn't even know if she was sexually assaulted but proceeds anyways. There is a difference between feeling violated and traumatized on the one hand and the actual existence of nonconsensual sex on the other, and if you are going to seek criminal, administrative or educational sanction against the sex partner that difference becomes tremendously important. A situation where no objective facts are known yet somebody could still go to jail or be fired or kicked out of school worries the civil libertarian in me tremendously.

@46: Can we accept a middle ground term of "uncomfortably mercenary"? ;)

And what if it goes on? Will worse crimes be committed?
http://www.theonion.com/articles/housewi…

@46 you are confused as hell. You are saying that any woman who expects the man to buy all the drinks, all the dinners, all the movie tickets, all the hotel rooms and all the club fees should be called a "user" rather than a girlfriend if she happens to be slutty? And if the situation is reversed, the man is a gigolo? I'm not too sure about the definition of gigolo, but I thought it meant giving the man additional financial support besides picking up the tab for all mutual activities, like buying him clothes, paying his rent, and giving him cash outright.

@48, LOL

@28: I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. One, I am a man. Two, I didn't engage with the drunk consent aspect of this debate at all, just your example @17 which I thought unconvincing as a 'false rape accusations happen all the time' anecdote. And finally, if you do want to convince me or anyone else of those two men's innocence you need to present better exonerating evidence than "They don't seem rapey to me".

@50 re @17. Well, they do happen all the time. Even if we take the erroneously low but popularly accepted number of 4% for false (formal, criminal) reports that gives us (using 2008 statistics) about 8,000 false claims a year, or just a bit under 22 a day (or even 11 a day if we accept the ludicrous figure of "2%" that some folks bandy about). Even at 11 a day I'd say that a false accusation every 131 minutes counts as "all the time", as the phrase is used colloquially. If we accept the higher-end better figure of 10% then we are talking about a false accusation then we're getting one every half an hour.

Cite: "How Often Do Women Falsely Cry Rape? The question the Hofstra disaster left dangling." By Emily Bazelon and Rachael Larimore, Slate magazine: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_p…

That said, lolorhone, I'd wholly agree with you that "They don't seem rapey to me" means exactly dick as a valid evaluative tool.

so now we at least have some numbers. Much better than two "non-rapey" guys as a basis for discussion.
Note, first, that this is a estimate about the share of women making wrongful complaints, not about men being falsely accused. That is very much not the same as Armanda Marcotte explains here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/201…
People making false reports are significantly _less_ likely to name an alleged rapist.
The next question is - how far do those charges go? As your link makes helpfully clear (nicely making my point about "incentives" above) "Police treat sexual assault accusers badly". So the woman reports a rape, but being actively discourage by the police, does she press charges? Does she keep her accusations up long enough for the accuser to be significantly affected by the allegations (i.e. does the police start an actual investigation?).
So the combination of those will get the number of falsely accused men _far_ down.
Taking all this, I doubt the number of men facing the consequences of being falsely accused of rape in the US is larger than 1000/year and I think there's a good chance it's much smaller. Now you made an effort - conscious or not - to present your numbers in a way they appear as large as possible, so to counteract that I'll do the reverse - this means that in any give year, a man in the US has about a chance of 1/100,000 to be falsely accused of rape. The chance to be hit by lightning is about 1/500,000 and emphasizing lightning safety has no downside. So yeah, I call bullshit on people who spend any more than five times as much time worrying about false rape accusations than about being struck by lightning.

@49: No, I'm not saying that.

(Though, come to think of it, a girl who expects the guy to pay for all the this, all the that, all the everything, I might very well call a "User," regardless of whether she was slutty or not. If it was a guy who expected the girl to pay for everything, he would be nearly universally derided as a deadbeat, a cheapskate, a mooch, a sponge, not pulling his own weight in the relationship. In these modern times what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The most tactful word I could have for a woman who behaved like that is "pathetically out of date.")

What I AM saying is that someone who makes a practice of hooking up with one tourist after the next, for the purpose of getting as much entertainment out of them -- and if possible spending money -- isn't a girlfriend. (or a boyfriend.) I don't know why you insist on equating this with the usual girlfriend/boyfriend relationship. It is so very much not that -- not even a "slutty" version of that.

@Marrena:
I am with Miss Manners on this topic: traditionally, women had to reciprocate men's generosity. Not by offering sex, but by offering hospitality, e.g. invite the guy to a home-cooked meal.

Nowadays, even if it is quite common in American culture that women expect men to pick up the tabs (and thanks to SITC, women in Europe expect the same), I see it in the same way as I see all the other advocates of gift-grabbing schemes: free-loaders.

And if a woman only has sex with a guy if he pays for her dinner, yes, then in general I'd consider her a... harlot - in want of a better word. Because a prostitute or sex worker at least states her prices clearly.

With male prostitutes in Carribbean countries, I can imagine a problem with being an obvious prostitute: those "romance tourists" that seeker takes exception with (? not sure about the correct preposition) would be appalled and scared off by clearly stated rates. That destroys the phantasy.

@51: I was never in the "false accusations never happen" school, but I tend to side with @52's statistical assessment. Look, shitty people are universal across the gender divide, but that doesn't mean you don't take power imbalances (social and systemic) in to consideration when evaluating rape and rape claims.

@47: One of the ways we can address the issue of the woman not knowing whether she was assaulted or not, but proceeding anyway, is to better define what level of impairment constitutes rape and what does not.

Part of that problem is that there are people promoting an absolutist standard with respect to alcohol that makes two thirds of all the sex happening on the planet rape on any given Friday or Saturday evening.

Google "site:slate.com rapist" and you will see three letters to Dear Prudence near the top of the search results, all describing a situation where a woman has had impaired but still self-directed sex with someone, then is freaking out because she subscribes to a definition of rape that can only be described is ideology gone amok. Often times these situations involve a third party talking the victim into agreeing with the absolutist standard.

@52: The lightning comparison is interesting. Indeed, it appealed to me enormously, leading to the essay version below, because it is so illustrative of many of the numbers problems.

First, just my anecdotal experience, but I've never personally or professionally known anyone hit by lightning, ever. But I have handled the cases of two men falsely accused of rape, (limiting it to situations where the accusation was proved false, rather than just "not proven") and can point to a half-dozen more within my circle of personal or professional acquaintances where the accusation has been conclusively disproven (including one with, literally and astoundingly, the turkey baster so beloved of people who like to sneer at even the notion that an allegation might be false … I shit thee not, an honest-to-badness turkey baster).

Second, in all of those cases the attacker was named: that was the whole point of making the false allegation. I don’t think that one can even compare an alleged crime without a known perpetrator with a definitively false claim with a targeted defendant. (Following somewhat from that is a point that Marcotte assiduously avoids: a false allegation without an identification by the victim doesn’t necessarily mean that somebody won’t be arrested for it; police forces do investigate alleged crimes and they will try and find somebody who `matches the description’.)

Third, the study Marcotte cites is one by prosecutors, who, naturally, heavens, have no stake whatsoever at all in fostering the notion that whomever they prosecute is guilty and that the chances that they have the wrong man are anything but laughably insignificant. (cough Mary Kellet cough!) I'd go to the wider and more reliable homework done by Bazelon and Larimore. (The latter two are journalists who actually do their jobs; Marcotte is an ideologue who cherry-picks her sources.) Note, too, that the numbers that you reference (via Marcotte) from the NDAA study go back to just one 1987 study (look, a cherry!) and things have become exponentially better for rape complainants since then, both in terms of police commitment and victim support and popular consensus about the importance of the work. (There were no TV shows about heroic rape-catchers in 1987 but L&O SVU has been running for fifteen years now, to take one example.) Bazelon and Larimore do a good job of bringing together very many studies, many of which are very recent.

Fourth, lightning is an operation of random chance whereas both rape and false accusations are actions of human agency filtered through human characterization. The physical damage done to your body from lightning, for example, would be consistent with a lightning strike and nothing else. But a DNA sample from a complainant is proof of intercourse, but not necessarily lack of consent. And lightning operates without motive, and I can tell you from professional experience that motive is a very big factor indeed when somebody lies about being sexually assaulted.

Fifth, we aren’t finding more and more proof that people who say that they were hit by lightning weren’t. We are finding more proof of false rape accusations, proof that simply was not technically possible or at least technically available decades ago. The Hofstra boys were able to pull out phonecam of the consent from their accuser; the falsely accused cab drivers in Edmonton and England were able to show the videos disproving the allegations from their female passengers; men behind bars can (if they can get past the ferocious opposition of those same DAs noted above) get DNA tests clearing themselves; Facebook babbling started the process of getting Brian Banks out of jail. Absent those technologies? False convictions.

Sixth, when we talk about lightning we don’t count one kind of lightning strike rather than another. Studies like the once cited by Marcotte address only rapes of women by men. Sexual assaults by women on men or by men on men or women on women don’t enter into the equation. This is exceptionally notable in correctional facilities where some of the evidentiary greys of a civilian encounter are not present. If, for example, a youth in jail reports sexual conduct with a guard that is prima facie nonconsensual in the same legal fashion as statutory rape, and so, for example, you can prove that the youth and the guard had sex at all then you have proved the crime … and 95% of those crimes (in youth facilities) are committed by women. [US DOJ http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/svjfr…]

Look, I'd agree that false allegations are rare, but I don't think that rape victims or justice are well served by the false framing of pretending that the numbers are so small that we don't have to take them into account. Lolohorne correctly and accurately points out that he isn’t in the “never happens” brigade, and that goes fine for him. But anybody who spends even in a minute in these debates knows that the jump from “small percentages” to ““It just doesn't happen!” is not only a short one, (helllllo Karen Smith) but a near-inevitable one, (especially, especially amongst progressives, who feel infinitely more comfortable with feminist issues than men’s rights ones) and is usually-to-always followed by an implicit or explicit demand that the subject not be addressed at all. So, lolohorne, if folks take “small numbers” comment to be denialism it may have nothing to do with you, but with the fact that, well, they’ve heard that song before. Me, I’d like a perfect world where we can discuss the numbers without people thinking we’re on one SIDE or the other, where we can reduce rape, support rape victims, clear men falsely accused, and laugh our asses off at rapists rotting in jail. I’d also like a fucking pony.

@47, continued: The flip side of that is that there are men who are taking sexual advantage of women who are so drunk that they are incapable of participating -- i.e, passed out cold, or nearly so -- but who for some insane reason don't regard that as rape. Feminists are saying that we need to educate these men that this behavior constitutes rape. I am 100% in agreement with that.

Just as we need to educate men on what rape _is_, we need to educate women on what rape _isn't_. Or to put it more neutrally, we need to educate both men and women to come to the same understanding of the boundaries of the problem.

The disconnect in the discussion is that both sides tend to gravitate to whichever extreme example supports their side. then defend their viewpoint doggedly to the point of excluding common sense. If a man suggests the possibility that active participation while drunk is still voluntary, the woman will claim he is saying that includes sex with a passed out person. (I can't quite come up with the opposite version where MRAs jump to their extreme example, because I haven't spent any time on MRA sites.)

There really is a perfectly good middle ground to be reached.

The bottom line is that with a well-educated population, on the one hand stupid drunken potential violators will more often stop short of raping semi-conscious people, and on the other hand, someone who has merely done something embarrassing that they now regret will not feel violated the following morning.

@45, 46 and 48, I think the term you might be looking for is "transactional sex" although the term "mercenary" certainly conveys a meaning. Transactional sex occupies that fuzzy middle ground between professional sex work (sex for cash) and a situation in which one partner disproportionately pays for dates. The relationships detailed in the movie Paradise Love (which I have not yet seen) seem to fall into the transactional sex category, since it appears that the women, or at least the protaganist, was unclear about the transactional nature of the relationship, at least at the beginning. Transactional sex can take the form of sex for food, or housing or good grades.

People who engage in transactional sex rarely identify as sex workers. If you ask people in high HIV prevalence community (say in Africa or the Caribbean) whether they sell sex almost all will say no, but if you phrase the question "have you ever traded sex for something you wanted or needed?" many more will answer affirmatively. Condom use is generally high in professional sex work since it is clear to all parties what is going on and both parties perceive that commercial sex carries a high risk of STI/HIV transmission. Condom use is often low in transactional sex situations since one or both parties may believe (or be trying to convince themself) that the relationship is romantic rather than transactional.

Of course, at the end of the day, all sex is transactional on some level...people exchange sex for orgasms, for feelings of intimacy, etc. In the HIV prevention field we typically consider sex transactional when it occurs outside of a primary partnership and the thing being exchanged has a monetary value.

@59, no, actually, I'm NOT LOOKING FOR A TERM AT ALL. The standard has been in American culture for many decades that the man pays for the entertainment. Now all of a sudden when women are taking the paying role, it is called prostitution (or "transactional sex" which is pretty much the same thing). There is a difference between fucking for a pair of shoes and fucking after dinner and a movie. This is slut-shaming, pure and simple.

@50:

I didnt defend any rape allegations. In fact, if you look at what I said, I specifically stated that there is no way to tell if a drunk rape actually happened or not from a friends perspective. My point was that because both parties are drunk, its sexist to say that the one with the vagina was raped by the one with the penis and not vice versa, because neither could give consent while drunk. I dont see why or how anyone could argue against that, but whatever fella.

@52: Your little infograph doesnt take into account false rape claims because its impossible to ciphon them out of that data. A conviction or lack thereof does not necessarily mean the claim was false or true. In fact, the only methods of verifying a false rape claim is when the claimant admits it, which is rare. But not admitting to something is not evidence of it not happening, which is a concept that that article references when it states that rape happens more often than its reported.

@61: When did I endorse the both-parties-drunk= woman-was-taken-advantage of theory? I just thought your anecdote @17 was a really shitty one. You thought they didn't seem like rapists, and then said "that's not really something you can tell" and I say no shit. Your other "evidence" of false accusations of rape within that anecdote- that the two women had a boyfriend and a husband respectively and that the two men didn't find that out until after the accusations were made- also seemed offensively weaksauce, which you yourself acknowledged with "Did it really happen? I can't say."
I never said you defended any rape allegations. I never argued the woman "must" have been taken advantage of if both parties were drunk. And I never said false allegations never happen. Not sure where the misinformation or your hostility is coming from, but it's got nothing to do with anything I actually posted.

^ You argued the point and went out of your way to say my evidence (which even I admitted was not strong) was bunk. You just did it again. You keep running the the argumentative line right up to saying "false rape doesnt happen" but not actually saying it. To paraphrase your argument in one run on sentence:

"Your evidence is stupid, even though you admitted it wasnt strong, and your argument about the existence of false rape is equally weak...but I never said you were wrong and how dare you take it as if I made that claim!"

Come on. Really?

@63:

Alright, then, I'll be entirely blunt. If you are going to make the point that false rape accusations happen- a point I never argued no matter what you "sense" I'm not saying- try not to sound like a dumb sexist dick while you're making it. A good way to go about this would be to avoid bullshit anecdotes like the one I flamed you for. To paraphrase your argument in two quotes: "Hey, I'm pretty sure those guys aren't rapists, they're my buds" and "Maybe those chicks just didn't want to get called out for being skanks." It's hard to even start to hear your point when you sound like a slut-shaming frat bro.

@63:

Your original post (@17) was not even about arguing the EXISTENCE of false rape accusations (neither was mine @20, BTW); it was that you felt @13 was being DISMISSIVE of the traumatic effect of false rape accusations on men. I disagreed with that, I thought @13 was on the whole pretty balanced, and when coupled with your anecdote I strongly suspected you had a problem with women. After I took down the anecdote @20 (without getting personal, BTW), you accused me of hating men and ascribed a drunk consent=guy's a rapist argument to me that I never made (@28) which I then denied explicitly while taking down the anecdote again from a different angle (@50). After which you tried to ascribe the woman-as-perpetual-victim-no-matter-what-happened argument to me again (@61), even though I clearly stated my position @55 (not to you, but still). So @62 I come as close to saying that your anecdote made you sound like an asshole and a throwback as I have the whole discussion, @63 you again claim I'm making an argument that I'm not, and in this post and the one before I tell you I was being polite by refraining from saying you sound like a fucking Neanderthal, but since you wouldn't stop bitching about a point I never argued, I say you sound like a fucking Neanderthal. And now, hopefully, you're all cleared up and caught up.

@61 "In fact, the only method of verifying a false rape claim is when the claimant admits it, which is rare. "

While generally true, not the "only" way. Just for the record, two examples: the cases I referenced above. The case that I handled was disproven when the alleged rapist was conclusively shown to have been an hour's drive from the nonexistent attack and actually arguing with a police officer at the time. The "turkey baster" case was disproven when one of her friends in the house ratted the complainant out and the cops found the baster (badly) hidden away under the kitchen sink.

@63:

A "bullshit anecdote" purely because it defies the argument you are trying reaaaaaally really hard to press through without actually saying.

I specifically stated that I could not know whether or not the two men (in different cases) were being honest and a rape had not actually occured. Yet you seem hellbent towards pressing this argument as if I said "Well they told me they didnt, and I 100% take their word for it!".

And AGAIN, you are swiftly dismissing the point behind the statement. False rape allegations do happen. Its hard to say how often, but given the general nature of people to do bad shit and lie about it, where do you get off asserting or implying or even just arguing against the counter assertion of the prevalence of false rape claims? Youve painted me as some kind of pro rape 'sexist' 'neanderthal' when all Ive pointed out as that sometimes people lie about things they regret.

Dont dumb your insecurities and social rage on me, I never defended rape, I never said it doesnt happen, I never even said that I totally trust the word of those Ive known that claim to have been victims of false rape claims (to the contrary actually). Im sorry if you need a springboard to plant the 'look at that pro-rape patriarchal asshole' there, but you are pointing in the wrong direction. Im neither an MRA wang or a 'dude bro' asshat.

BTW, arguing that false rape claims do happen =/= saying that most rape claims are false or in any way supporting rape or defending it. Stop trying to bend my argument as if thats what Im saying when, for the 3rd time, Im telling you its not.

I for one am ending my participation in the sexual assault part of the thread at this point. I'd prefer to see the whole dating-for-goods-and-services (and the defining thereof) to be the focal point from here forward.

Man, @68 came across as pompous. I just meant that I think that I'd said my shit and now I was interested in the other half of the post. No dickishness intended.

araucania: A "bullshit anecdote" purely because it defies the argument you are trying reaaaaaally really hard to press through without actually saying.

lolorhone: If you are going to make the point that false rape accusations happen- a point I never argued no matter what you "sense" I'm not saying- try not to sound like a dumb sexist dick while you're making it. (@64)

araucania: And AGAIN, you are swiftly dismissing the point behind the statement. False rape allegations do happen.

lolorhone: @51: I was never in the "false accusations never happen" school, but I tend to side with @52's statistical assessment. Look, shitty people are universal across the gender divide, but that doesn't mean you don't take power imbalances (social and systemic) in to consideration when evaluating rape and rape claims. (@55)

araucania: Im sorry if you need a springboard to plant the 'look at that pro-rape patriarchal asshole' there, but you are pointing in the wrong direction. Im neither an MRA wang or a 'dude bro' asshat.

lolorhone: I said you sounded like one. Get a better anecdote- one that doesn't need qualification ("I know this is weak, but...") or sound like the rationale of a dude bro asshat- if you don't want to come across like a dude bro asshat. This is, again, different than saying you don't have a point at all.

araucania: Stop trying to bend my argument as if thats what Im saying when, for the 3rd time, Im telling you its not.

lolorhone: For the 3rd time, I never said you were defending rape, I said you had a weak, shitty anecdote that made you seem like a dick and you do. That is NOT bending your argument, just pointing out how it comes off. Stop trying to bend MY argument by implying I said you're a rape apologist; I said change your argumentative approach because you sounded like one. And I already said all of this shit in my post @65. Get yourself to an optometrist and leave me alone already. Jesus.

@72:

So the sum of your entire argument is "get a better anecdote, I dont like that one". Fine. Ill keep it in mind. Im done.

@70:

You sort of hit something on the head that I would LOVE to see discussed either in the slog or just anywhere when you stated :

"and I'm glad this asshole resigned. Sometimes it can be hard to call a rape a rape when you've grown up hearing that rape is committed by minority strangers with weapons"

A lot of white women Ive known have told me this is a common thing their parents tell them. "Beware of black and latino men, they want to rape pretty white girls like yourself". Its an ugly stereotype that was created after the civil war to justify member ship in the klan and other white supremacist terrorist organizations. Statistically, like most crime, more than 99% of rape victims are victimized by someone of their own race (often someone they know). Yet the standing culture is "those oversexed wild negros and perverted brown mexicans cant wait to get to your pretty white self".

I think a lot of white women grow up with this, hence why you notice they do things like refuse to smile or even make eye contact with black or latino men they see in the street, or reach for their phone/keys and close their purse when they see a latino or black man. Ive literally seen women RUN up the stairs of my parking complex when I so much as walk in. This is a part of 'white' female culture that I think is really embarrassing and would damage the unity efforts made by gender equality groups with minority groups. Its something that needs to be discussed though.

@73: FWIW, I completely agree with and can relate to what you said there.

I was falsely accused of raping someone I'd slept with. It came months after the fact but it still created a level of mental anguish I don't think I can describe in enough detail to do it justice. I painstakingly picked apart the encounter and looked for signs I was rapist, and you know what -- I found them everywhere. They weren't really there, they were just things that happen during sex -- you change positions, you don't ask before doing something you know that partner likes, etc. It's nothing genuinely rapey. Seriously, if you ever want to have the worst experience of your adult life, take yourself out of the moment and try to decide who is taking advantage of whom in each moment of an encounter. You will feel like &^%$ if you do this. It will RUIN sex for a while.

I bring this up because people so often pass off false accusations as no big deal, especially if it comes to naught. But it's not the same as being falsely accused of knocking over a jewelry store or even murdering someone -- you know absolutely in your mind if you did or didn't do those thing. But if you've slept with that person, you can come up with all kinds of reasons you are guilty. Maybe that partner was the kind that enjoys playing hard to get (which my partner was.) Maybe your partner loves being tied up, or held down, or something like that. Power play throws you straight into the grey area and the grey area is a place where your brain can torture you much more effectively than any lawsuit could.

@70 -- the idea that we can convince drunk folks at bars to not go home and screw like bunnies is hilarious. That's the point for a lot of people engaging in that behavior.

Perhaps part of the problem with identifying female sex tourism as sex tourism is not categorization per se, but with whether we are willing to put women into the same category as we have put male sex tourists. We also have to question how we even define sex tourism (leaving aside predatory actions like sex tourism to get underage partners, which is its own unique and loathsome category).

Are we, for example, to use a feminist power analysis to absolve women of the label "sex tourist"? Or are we going to use an economic one to more strongly affix that label to them? Do we limit our analyses to westerners travelling in non-Western countries, which is often the case? Or only analyze sex tourism where there is an economic power analysis, like the cliche example of Japanese businessmen in Thailand? And how do we address sex tourism within a culture? For example, is a Turkish man travelling to a Med resort where there are lots of drunk English girls looking for sex a sex tourist? Or are the women? Or both? Or neither?

And naturally, are we to decide in advance whether the term is to be pejorative or descriptive?