This is rape, pure and simple, and it sounds like it was premeditated. DTMFA

The biggest difference between a good relationship and a bad one, is how well you are able to communicate during the tough stuff. In a good relationship, you can talk about being hurt, confused, angry, etc... without jeopardizing the relationship. In a bad relationship, you don't talk about the things that hurt you for fear of the relationship ending. You must discuss what happened, in order to keep the relationship on the right track. If you just pretend it didn't hurt you, it will never get resolved, and it will come between you both. If talking about things that bother you ends the relationship then it wasn't very solid to begin with. Talk to him, let him explain, and work it out.

Yes, this is rape. And my gut tells me this is a trick he's used before.

I agree with Kim@2, you just need to talk to him calmly about it. Don't listen to @1 unless your bf is a jerk about trying to talk about it.

I'm not trying to give this guy a pass, but I was thinking while I read the letter about my past experience with a guy who happened to be pretty bad at aiming his dick, even while sober. Sometimes he would aim at the wrong hole, I would giggle and readjust him. I can imagine, while drunk and perhaps a bit more worked up than usual, he may accidentally aim pretty hard at the wrong hole. I don't know... could be that...

I swear to god that this exact same letter was published in the Savage Love book that came out in the late 90s, just updated with terms like GGG that I don't think he had coined yet. I'm not going to go dig it out and try to find it, but I will ask all you Savage regulars to tell me if it sounds familiar to you, too.

Yes, it is completely rational to be upset. What he did was incredibly dangerous - without prep and without adequate lube, you're lucky you didn't land in the hospital with a huge anal tear, and he owes you an apology. Talk to him, tell him how you feel, and ask him what the hell he was thinking, and once you've had that conversation you'll be able to decide whether to DTMFA or forgive.

Ohhhh hell no. That was not OK for him to do. Not at all.

LW, you can define it however you like. But you have a right to feel violated. SeattleKim is right - you need to talk this out with him. But don't feel like you have to be cool about it.

So much of the discussion is going to depend on your instincts. How does he explain himself? Does he try to blame it on the alcohol? Does he sound sincere? Does he try to claim you should be OK with this? Is an apology forthcoming? You've got to listen to your gut. Don't make excuses for him in your own mind, and don't take this too lightly, because it might be a make or break moment for your relationship.

Also, remember that he needs to earn back your trust. It's not your fault if you need some time to recover from this.

Good luck, lady, this is a difficult situation.

Pardon my asking, but is it physically possible for the anus of a straight women unaccustomed to anal sex, even drunk and/or horny ones, to admit the penis (however small) of a rape-behaving "boyfriend" on the first thrust?

Not putting blame on her, what he did was totally wrong, he shouldn't even have slid up and down her crack and then gone back in the vadge "for the rest of the night," etc., etc. I'm inquiring as a gay guy of the lots-of-foreplay-lube-stretching-generally-not-having-sex-when-totally-hammered-or-stoned school.

Dear God, the rapist namers come out at the slightest provocation anymore. STFU.

If this was a 2 week relationship, then maybe. But, they've been together a year and a half. And, there was alcohol involved.

LW, talk with the dude. He may apologize. He may not. He may actually be a dude with a problem. But, throwing a year-and-a-half relationship out the window over a drunken night of bad judgement without even talking to him might be a little extreme. If it was ongoing or whatever, you know...that's a different story.

This guy sounds like an asshole. But it's not rape. Rape would be him continuing after she told him to stop. He stopped after she made it clear this is something she didn't want to do.

That said: he was wrong. This was his fault, not hers. He violated her and he violated her trust. She needs to talk to him about how he hurt her, and he needs to get on his hands and knees and grovel the shit out of her for forgiveness. If I were her, I'd probably still break up with him.

But it wasn't rape, and as the victim of sexual assault, I'd appreciate it if some of you would stop trying to conflate ten seconds of unwelcome buggering that stopped after she made it clear she did not want it to continue, with an event that can literally change your life for the worse. Bad sex and a violation of trust are not the same thing as rape.

He penetrated her without her consent. That *is* rape, although yes, no jury would convict given the situation described. The "violation of trust" framing is what the LW is using, and I agree that it sounds like a good frame here, but she would also not be wrong if she named it rape. Because again, he *penetrated her without her consent*, and yes, that IS rape.

Savage Love letters feature a lot of guys doing stupid shit. Sometimes, I can kind of relate to those guys, especially the younger ones. But not the guy in this letter.

Holy fuuuck. Ladies. LADIES! It is never, never, never kosher to change lanes without signalling. Such behaviour should be immediately met with a fucking slap across the face, at the very, very least. What the fuck is wrong with some people!?!

@13. So did he get consent before having sex with her from behind?

"He leaned me over our bed and started having sex with me from behind (which I was totally into)"

No consent there, but she's fine with it. Is that still rape?

Yes, it's physically possible for a thrust to get in your virgin ass without lube. And it hurts like hell. I've had it happen accidentally, in the midst of a particularly bouncy session. And I bled. And was sore for days. Your boyfriend is an idiot, but hopefully only temporarily so. And hopefully out of ignorance, not malice.

Ask him what the deal was. Just because I like a guy and I want to have sex with him doesn't mean he can sneak over in the middle of the night and go to town. Your interest in anal isn't a green light to go at it with no warning, no lube and no consent.

You also don't go straight to anal sex without some practice. You need to start with a ton of lube and fingers, and you probably won't get to actual P in A until you've had some practice, a few times of successful finger/toy penetration. It shouldn't hurt. Google it. The straight-to-it you see in porn isn't at all reality.

As for the ass itself, anal fissures are a BFD. I know someone that had to have surgery and spent a lot of time recovering. Those tissues are delicate, aren't designed for penetration, and can't be temporarily retired like your vagina can in the case of an injury. You NEED your ass to be in good shape - you use it every day.

Profuse apologies are in order.

Also, you might wanna see how it feels for him. The mechanics are the same, and him knowing how sensitive it feels might turn on a light bulb for him. Also, he has a prostate. Chances are it'll feel better for him than you anyway.

Someone pulled this on me before. Was a douchebag in more ways than one.

I'd have a serious discussion with this guy. Consider cutting your losses.

@18. I'd rather be obtuse than minimize real rape and abuse by calling this rape.

Just because it's worth being upset over (for the writer, not for us) doesn't mean it's rape or abuse.

Also funny is @4's comment: "Yes, this is rape. And my gut tells me this is a trick he's used before."

vs. what the letter writer said:

"He’s never done anything like this before."

@10, yes, yes it is. (Agreeing with 17.)
I'd be willing to call this an honest aiming mistake, if he's generally not more aggressive than you like, and if he was convincingly shocked and dismayed to find out what happened.

@21, the point is not that he's done this before with the LW, but a feeling that he may have tried this before with other women. If he were sufficiently dismayed, I wouldn't think that he had tried it before. But if his reaction was: "well, I bet you'll like it next time" or "you seemed to like it at first" or "most women can't admit that they like anal," or anything like that -- then I'd be wary.

I think you need to judge just how serious a violation this feels like to you, H&H. Nobody else can really tell you, except to validate you in confirming that it WAS completely unacceptable.

Was it rape? I don't know. I don't know if trying to label it is helpful until you know how you feel about it. He broke your boundaries, definitely, but he was doing something that it was reasonable to think would have been on the table in ordinary circumstances, and he'd also been drinking. He stopped once you indicated you wanted him to. It was wrong, and it was a violation, but it's up to you to decide if a "broke the rules" violation was rape to you, just like it's up to a wronged partner to decide if breaking the rules with someone else is or isn't cheating.

There's definitely a high degree of implied consent in a long-term relationship like that. If he'd flipped her over into an uncomfortable position without asking first, no one would be calling that rape. This is more serious, of course, but it's similar.

Talk it over with him in no uncertain terms, H&H, and make sure he knows you did not want that and that it made you feel violated. If you find the ensuing apology satisfactory - and if there's no apology, DTMFA - and believe that it was a boozy fluke and he's learned his lesson, then maybe you can move on and feel safe that it won't happen again.

What @11 said.

It was rape even before the anal. Drunk folk can't consent, therefore it was rape. End of story.

@27, you're really trivializing rape by including every drunken hookup in the history of mankind. That's kind of a disservice to actual victims. By your logic I have both raped and been raped a number of times in the course of long-term relationships, but funnily enough no one objected, at the time or afterward. It is possible for rational, mature people to give consent that lasts longer than a single act, and that's part of what makes up a "relationship." Maybe you've heard of them?

Are you a troll? Or some kind of maladjusted ideologue? I can't even tell.

If this was a case of bad aim, he would have immediately acknowledged this and apologized, right? It would have been an Oh shit! moment. Instead, he continued and only stopped when she called out. He treated her like a piece of meat. He may not be a rapist, but he's surely a scum bag of epic proportions. As Dan would say, "Run!"

@28. I'm neither, I just understand that if you can't withdraw consent, you can't offer it.

Oh, for fuck's sake. An intoxicated, overzealous boyfriend poking you ONCE in the ass and then backing off the moment you show a sign of discomfort is not rape, you melodramatic morons. It was a stupid and inconsiderate thing to do, but calling a piddling little incident like that rape is making a mountain out of a molehill and insulting people who have suffered real rape.

The real question here is, did the boyfriend just suffer a momentary lapse of judgement from the alcohol, or was he actually hoping he could "sneak" in there while she was drunk? If it's the first, get over it. Sometimes people do stupid, impulsive things when they're under the influence. If it's the second, he's an asshole and he's taking advantage of his girlfriend. DTMFA.

"I'm sad and ass sore, but instead of asking him what the fuck he was thinking I'm going to write a REALLY long letter to Dan Savage" does not speak to a relationship based upon trust and communication.

@25 " it was reasonable to think would have been on the table in ordinary circumstances"

Nope. I cut him slack on the premise that he had bad aim. If he thought he had consent to stick his dick in her ass with no warning or prep, that's an asshole assumption. A man doesn't like to have anything rammed in his ass with no warning, and neither does a woman.

If we consent to you poking us in one hole that means that we trust you won't poke us in the other hole without first getting our OK. A longterm relationship without anal, even one which has been discussing the possibility of anal, is not implied consent for just ramming it in there. The wise move is to start some anal play such as described @22 -- wow that was hot! -- and see where the other person takes it.

@29 it's not clear what the drunken LW was able to communicate to her somewhat less drunk boyfriend before the unhappy noise that got him to stop. Without further info, I'm assuming he stopped as soon as she let him know.

@28, just because nobody objected during or afterward, does not mean rape didn't occur.

This is one of the reasons why a considerate lover waits for an enthusiastic "yes" rather than the mere lack of a "no".

@33, did you read one single other sentence of what I wrote? Of course it was an asshole move. Of course it was bad judgment. That was already stipulated. He had also been drinking, which does not excuse but does help to explain said bad judgment. My point was that when you both come home drunk - and we don't know how drunk he was - it is a mistake that could easily be made in a context of implied consent. It is a bad mistake, but it is one that could happen pretty easily in an even moderately sloshy brain, and I do not think it is reasonable to just assume that it was on the level of rape. That's up to the person who experienced it.

@35, oh, for fuck's sake, dummy, don't try to tell me I was raped, because that's not up to you, and try to understand discussions before you jump into them. I was arguing against the idea that alcohol invalidates your ability to say "yes" regardless of prior context. Take your straw man somewhere else.

@36, it seemed to me that you were saying that if they hadn't been drunk, "it was reasonable to think [surprise anal] would have been on the table."

But you say I'm misreading you. So I'll ask straight out: do you think that if they hadn't been drunk, he would be justified in thinking he had implicit consent to "change lanes without signalling" (as 15 put it so well)?

Conversation starter: "So tell me what your intention was last night." Then listen.

Important to add to conversation: "Surprise anal is very, very dangerous. If you don't believe me, we can hunt down some pictures of anal fissures online. You could have seriously injured me, and I'm not happy about what happened. I need to trust that you will never try to surprise me in that way again."

Yep. definitely rape. Since the law won't protect you, you should probably just chop his dick off.

If he drunkenly jammed it in with no lube and you can still poop the next day, you are a lucky, lucky woman. And I say this as someone who can do anal with no prep (but LOTS of lube). Sit him down, look him in the eye, tell him he's a complete jackass, and ask him what he was thinking. If he says the equivalent of "yeah, it was there, I was drunk, wanted to try, sorry" then evaluate how sincere the "sorry" part is before you punch him in the balls. If he's not cognizant of the damage he could have done and not very sorry, it's ball-punching-dtmfa time. If not, tell him he's in for a pegging so that he can understand.

@40 - tell him he's in for a surprise pegging. Let him wonder if tonight's the night as he goes to sleep each night.

Even the most enthusiastic consent (implied or explicit) does not mean "jam it in without warning." This is true of pretty much any sex act, but especially true of anal. Any time there is any danger of injury, you go slow, dammit. And you really shouldn't try anything tricky for the first time when you are drunk.

Read him the riot act, and depending on how contrite he is, make him go get a book on how to do anal the right way. That is, if you want to try again. But let him know that at this point he has lost the privilege of initiating it. Any further exploration in that area is now the prerogative of you and you alone, until such point as he has demonstrated sufficient a) skill, and b) trustworthiness.

The same should apply for pretty much anything you haven't tried before. Bottom line, you don't spring things on your partner without warning. (And being drunk is no excuse.)

He needs to be clear that he is already on probation. He's already blown his first chance, and this is his second. He doesn't get a third.

Folks,
Any penetration without consent is rape.
If that penetration happened on the first date, in a 5 year relationship or 30 year marriage.

And yes, Hungover and Hurt is right to feel violated.
She did not give consent.

But is her partner a sexual predator, an abusive monster, or otherwise a threat to this women and women everywhere?

I dunno.
H&H really needs to talk to her partner about this.

I have had instances in which I was not in the mood for anal but did not express this, offering vaginal intercourse and assuming that during the heat of the moment my sex partner would follow along.

At least two times, during hot-steamy-totally-consensual-rough-sex, I ended up, very accidentally, poked in the butt when I didn't want to be. (Someone asked if this is possible: if there is enough of a lady's natural lubrication down there, a misdirected boner can slip in to the asshole - but without prepping it is not pleasant.)

The yelp that followed was enough for my partner to stop. In these instances, my partner always checked with me before continuing. I never considered these incidences a violation because my partner put everything on hold when he realized the slip up and made his respect for me and my feelings a priority over sex.

I cannot honestly say how I would feel if a sex partner simply stopped without checking in on me. But I don't think I would wait very long to discuss what-the-hell-just-happened.

@42, oh my goodness, I wish I could claim that that was intentional.

@27: "Drunk folk can't consent, therefore it was rape. End of story. "

Translation: No amount of established relationship behavior, nor apparent active, enthusiastic participation, can be construed as consent. Alcohol turns off all higher cognitive brain function.

But only in women.

#1 and the rest of the rape crowd: If a woman shoves a thumb in her boyfriend's ass without prior consent during consensual sex, he asks her to take it out, and she does, is that rape?

If not, what is the distinction?

Regarding the letter writer, of course, she is perfectly justified in saying, "Hey, dude, that whole buttsects thing? Yeah, you don't have a key to that washroom yet. Not liking that. Don't do it again." And being seriously miffed at the execution without discussion is also perfectly justified...so long as she discusses it, gets the "sorry" she is owed, and (this is the important part) moves the fuck on from it.

But as she finds herself writing letters to third parties rather than simply grousing at him and letting it go, my guess is she is into grudge-keeping. She is seeking some support for the grudge in writing in here. And given comment # 1 and those like #1, the letterwriter came to the right place.

@49 ": If a woman shoves a thumb in her boyfriend's ass without prior consent during consensual sex, he asks her to take it out, and she does, is that rape?"

If she did it to a stranger, would it be some kind of sexual assault? Fuck yeah. Don't do that. But if you don't like words, you can get non-verbal consent by putting your thumb at the hole, and observing if that makes him moan and push against your thumb -- that's an invitation. Also, lube.

50, you answered your own created questions ("If she did it to a stranger..."/"...if you don't like words, you can...", not the one I asked.

Anybody care to explain how my scenario and the one presented by the letterwriter should be viewed in different ways?

@52, I changed it to a stranger to emphasize that the body part doesn't matter -- thumb or penis, it's still forcible genital penetration. The question of whether it's rape revolves around whether she consented or was forced against her will.

Implied or non-verbal consent is fine for certain activities. But "surprise anal" isn't one of them.

One of the problems I've had in trying to talk to people about rape is that many don't seem able to fathom that a man who rapes does not cease to be a human being. Nor is it automatically a relationship-ender. Yes, it probably *should* be, but the same could be said of cheating, or hitting, or any other of many scenarios the general public takes as clear-cut reasons to DTMFA, but which real couples often stay together after.

My husband raped me. I stayed married to him for nearly ten years after that. This does not mean he didn't rape me. The previous six years of marriage can be construed as a LOT of implied consent, but my "No" at the time was very clear and repeated. Our sex life had already been on the rocks. After that, it fell off the cliff.

Is it rape to have sex with someone too drunk to consent? Yes. Who the rapist and raped is in this circumstance is very simple to determine - who penetrated? That's your rapist. Who was penetrated? That's the raped. More muddled circumstances where both or neither were penetrated have more mixed definitions. I think it's perfectly possible to have a sexual situation where both parties are raped. I can imagine the letter writer's scenario, for example, but in the imagined situation, she angrily shoves him off, grabs up a dildo, and manages to poke him in the ass repeatedly with it as retaliation.

Is it rape to shove your thumb into a partner's orifice when you have reason to believe you have no consent for this? It's a sexual assault. "Rape" tends to be defined as penile penetration, so I'd hesitate to call digital penetration 'rape'. Sexual assault can be equally serious and violating as rape.

Not all rape or sexual assault has the same life-changing response in the victim. It doesn't automatically turn off your positive emotions towards the person, which is precisely why rape is often such a mind-fuck.

@54: If you want your Who-Penetrated-Whom standard to be taken seriously, it needs to be paired with a sensible definition of Too-Drunk-To-Consent. Otherwise, you allow for ridiculous misapplications, such as: a man and a woman are both equally (and substantially) drunk. The woman takes off her own clothing under her own volition, climbs on top of the man, and rides him cowgirl-style six ways from Sunday, evidently and vociferously enjoying herself the entire time. But since the man did not accurately judge her state of inebriation and therefore do the gallant and manly thing by preventing her from enthusiastically embarrassing herself all over him, that makes him the rapist in the situation? This is unreasonable.

If any amount of inebriation completely invalidates a woman's capacity to consent, while no amount of inebriation will relieve a man of responsibility for not only his own actions but his female partner's as well, then clearly women are weak children who cannot be trusted with liquor, and we need to raise the drinking age for females to, say, 75.

Note, however, that if a sensible version of Too-Drunk-To-Consent is applied, there is no reason for Who-Penetrated-Whom to even come into play. If a woman were to fellate a man who was too drunk to slur out the word "No," it would clearly be that she was sexually assaulting him -- not the other way around, as would be implied by Who-Penetrated-Whom, in as much as his penis was "penetrating" her mouth. If, on the other hand, he was seen to be smiling, verbally encouraging her, and physically helping with the act, no court in the world would claim that he wasn't actually consenting in the moment, and regretting it the next day would not absolve him of his responsibility for his half of the interaction. This is a reasonable standard to apply to both sexes.

Note that in the Letter Writer's situation, the relative levels of drunkenness are not at issue, because what the man did was forcibly spring surprise anal on her. There is no way to consent in advance -- regardless of whether she was roaring drunk or perfectly sober -- to something that is done to her without warning.

@54, I just wanted to address this one point:
>> "Rape" tends to be defined as penile penetration, so I'd hesitate to call digital penetration 'rape'.>>

This past January, the US Dept. of Justice changed the definition of rape to "The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim."
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/Janua…

Note that if you stick something in, and then pull it out when you hear STOP!, you have already committed rape. You're supposed to find out if it's okay before you put it in.

@57: Well, yes, but....

This is where the concept of Implied Consent comes into play. If the thing you are about to do is something that the two of you have done many times before, that she has enjoyed each time before, and the two of you are engaged in activity that in prior occurrences has led to an enthusiastic yes to this particular thing, you are not unreasonable to assume that she is going to like it again this time, and just go ahead. Having to stop mid-make-out session and verbally ask your wife of twenty years, "Are you sure you want this?" before commencing missionary, on pain of being labeled a rapist if you fail to ask first, is a moronic standard.

The times where Implied Consent does not apply include:
-- two people who do not know each other well
-- a new, untried activity, especially if it is one that is potentially painful.
-- people who are genuinely Too Drunk To Consent. But that should mean too drunk to form words, too drunk to move in a coordinated way. (and of course the more extreme forms, like passed out, or being taken advantage of while throwing up into the toilet.) Not merely drunk enough to lower inhibitions and then regret it the following morning. Not even drunk enough to not remember the following morning. If you were up on your feet, making coherent sentences, and taking off your own clothing at the time, you were an active participant.

I know you get this already, Erica. But it is regularly held up as the Gold Standard of Non-Rapist Male Behavior, even here on SLOG: that there is no such thing as Implied Consent, ever; that mentioning it is nothing less than rape apologism, every single time; that yes, you really do need to ask verbally every single time, or else you are a rapist; that liquor invalidates consent, period. Thankfully, not by you. But enough that discussion is warranted.

@54: I'm sorry that happened to you. And sorry to have glossed over it in my first reply. What a horrible thing to have happen.

What you describe brings up a difference in understanding of what Implied Consent means. If you were saying "No" at the time, no amount of prior activities meant anything, because consent was being specifically and explicitly withdrawn. Implied Consent should not mean that you don't get to say no. (The way it does for roadside sobriety tests.) I understand that in some states it means exactly that for spouses, which is horrible beyond words.

What it should mean is that a history of enjoying a particular sort of intimate contact should be sufficient in establishing an assumption that it will be enjoyed next time you initiate, rather than having to start from square one every time and assume that the answer will be No, the same way you would with a stranger.

It should also mean that your intimate partner enjoys a certain level of intimate privilege -- and has a reasonable expectation of enjoying it as a regular part of the relationship -- that is not granted to the average stranger. This privilege can always be revoked on a one-off basis, whenever desired, of course. But let's face it, if your default stance is "Hands off, rapist," you aren't spouses, you're business partners.

avast@58, what does "implied consent" get you, that "non-verbal consent" doesn't do better? If they're not talking out loud, then both partners should be paying attention to each other's body language to make sure everything is cool.

If "implied consent" is in place, then do I have to use words to remove my consent? Stiffening my body or crying wouldn't count?

To elaborate: I want to get us beyond merely questioning whether a particular sex act was legal or not. Many things are legal and shitty.

If someone relies on implied consent and their partner is happy - that's great.

If someone relies on implied consent and their partner ends up unhappy and complains afterward... I want us to say more than "well, that didn't break the law, so no harm no foul."

To the person who felt violated, let's say: "Next time, make sure that you decide what you want in your head and communicate it as clearly as you can to your partner."

To the person who is accused of being too aggressive... let's say, "Did you think your partner was having fun? What gave you that idea? Thinking back, were there any clues that maybe this was going in a bad direction?"

@60/61: I'm in complete agreement with the points you make. I was just exploring the idea that "get permission first or else you have committed rape" is in certain situations an oversimplification.

Body language and non-verbal vocalizations should be perfectly acceptable forms of withdrawing consent. (Or the converse, granting it. An enthusiastic yes can be expressed non-verbally.) Someone who isn't sensitive to those isn't going to make much of a lover in the first place, and in extreme cases should be held accountable for ignoring them, even as far as the result constituting rape.

That's kind of orthogonal to the idea that a well-established history of enthusiastic consent for a particular act may be relied on in order to initiate it without formally requesting permission first. (Paired, of course, with my previous comment that you need to go slow enough to not do something surprising and painful, in any case.) If I come up behind my wife and fondle her as she is brushing her teeth, I can expect a laugh and a kiss from her, because there is a well-established pattern between the two of us. If I were to do that to a stranger on the street, I can expect some combination of a slap, an arrest and/or a lawsuit. In the first case Implied Consent is clearly in play; in the second case it clearly isn't.

Imagine, further, that my wife is annoyed with me one day (say I forgot to get the trash bins out to the curb for the second week in a row) and when I come up behind her I get a grumble and get pushed away. Was what I just did sexual assault? It was done without getting formal permission first, and it was apparently against the wishes of the recipient. Or was it a case of non-verbal withdrawal of the implied consent under which I thought it was okay initiate in the first place? As long as I back off after the negative reaction, was the first touch assault, or was it implied consent being withdrawn and respected?

I wouldn't ever say "no harm, no foul." People need to communicate their needs and air their grievances, or they build up over time. And they need to learn from the present incident in order to better handle future ones.

I'm not sure, but I think we are in agreement here.

@62, Thanks for checking back! We're in agreement except that I don't think it's important to decide whether or not you committed sexual assault when you didn't pay attention to your wife's body language and groped her.

I don't know if that would, theoretically, be against the letter of the law. If I take money from my husband's wallet but we have a joint bank account and he doesn't even notice the money is gone -- is that stealing? Who knows...

The point is: the goal should be to grope your wife on days when she wants to be groped, and to not grope her when she's not in the mood. (Also to get her to grope you when she's in a good mood, so the guy doesn't have to do all the initiating.) Let's not make it all about deciding if something is criminal or not; people will make mistakes... As you say, let's focus on encouraging people to "learn from the present incident in order to better handle future ones."

Remember the letter from Dear Prudie a week or so ago, where the Letter Writer got drunk, and her husband (gasp!) had sex with her while she was drunk, and she (gasp!) enjoyed it, but now she thinks she needs to divorce his ass because sex while drunk fits her technical definition of rape, meaning she technically was incapable of consent, regardless of the fact that she liked what he was doing at the time (but the alcohol took its toll because she couldn't remember parts of the evening)?

Yeah, her. My legalistic analysis of the situation is for the benefit of silly-assed hard-liners like her. (And like #27, above.) Just trying to keep the nuance in the discussion when it starts being expressed in terms that some people latch onto as absolutes.

@64, feel free to make it your mission in life to prevent all marital fondling without prior verbal consent. I suspect that will be a lonely fight.

@65, I just don't see the point; it's not like you're going to convince 27 or 64... But then you don't need my approval to tilt at windmills :-)