Oh, boy. If ever there was a contender to break the 1 bazillion comment threshold, this I, Anon is it. Yikes.

Duh. everyone knows that if you kiss someone in their home after drinking, that gives automatic consent to let them do anything they want to your body. Geez, that girl is such a whore for saying no. Who does she think she is? setting boundaries? As if she has any choice in the matter once she's inside his apartment? And then wanting to stay away from him for overstepping her boundaries and warning other women about his house rule of "no personal boundaries allowed."? Oh, the nerve of that dumb bitch!

Do you wear a sign around your neck saying, "Proud douchebag"? You should. I'm sure the many, many females driven mad with desire by your musk wouldn't mind.

@4 I think a female wrote this I, Anon.

@5 douche baguette then?

Great, another 'I was treated so much worse than you, so your mistreatment doesn't coun't, you sissy'-competition. Were you a fly on the wall the entire time, Anon? Or do you simply like him more than her and therefore he is right and she is not? Anyway, fuck this stupid general rule of never dating anyone who was/is a good friend of your ex.

@6 That's acceptable. @4 seemed to be going off on an anti-male tirade even though it seems, to me, a female wrote it. Personally, I'd prefer the gender neutral douche nugget, as we're unsure of the gender of LW (though the last couple sentences seems to hint at female writer).

Apparently, the proper thing to do is when things are getting heavy is to stop and ask permission before rounding for another base.

Stopping when told to stop just isn't enough anymore.

Tricky waters, and only the two involved know what happened and how appropriate each move was.

Uno mas cerveza, por favor.....

Frankly, i don't understand why any male would want to be involved with a female outside of procreation. Generally speaking the younger generation female is manipulative, scheming, selfish and self-absorbed and are always looking for some flaw in the male that they can change and when they don't get their way they are the first to use sex as a weapon, then bitch because they can never find a "nice" guy. If you don't believe me go to any restaurant in the University District where two or more are congregating and just quietly listen to them talk. Women like to come off all "empowered", but really they are no better than men, they just like to use the term "empowerment" as a reason for being domineering "know-it-all"s, that barely know where they crapped last. Men in America have generally become mindless shirt-chasing simpletons and really need to wake-up, find their balls and pull away from whatever sport is on TV and start taking control of their lives and stop letting this kind of manipulative BS happen because Charlie Harper on "Two and a half Men" does it and can get away with it. Maybe then we'll see less of these situations and innocent men facing jail time because some empowered woman didn't could control herself and wants to blame a man for her mistake.

People who are kissing in a private place are entitled to touch each other the way they want to. People who don't want to be touched in certain ways are entitled to set boundaries. People are entitled to check now and then to determine whether those boundaries have been revised. People who object to these checks are entitled to stop kissing, walk out or kick the other person out. The only person who did anything wrong is the person who trashed the other person's reputation afterwards.

Glad the woman in question escaped from the bad guy and fled to safety. Sounds like it was a close one. Thank you Baby Jesus.

Sounds like she set a boundary and he abided by it when she made it clear. No one wants a sex life (especially women) that has to stop and ask permission for each movement of the hand.

The outrage from Anon is not that she demanded he stop, but she still went around telling people he raped her when he did exactly what she wanted: he stopped when she said "stop."

From the story we have, anyway.

I am sorry, but NON-CONSENT is ALWAYS going to be NON-CONSENT, no matter what alcohol was involved or not. NO MEANS NO. ALWAYS.

This blame the victim thing, especially when done by other women, is BULLSHIT.

This all hinges on the phrase "tried to rape". In the third hand account we have here, the attempted rape was a guy trying to put his hands down her pants while they were consensually making out. He stopped when she said to. I guess the accuser could consider that act crossed the rape line. I guess the guy could have asked first.

The question is, since all we have is a biased third person account, do we take the accuser's side or the accused side?

Do we believe that the accuser was the initiator of two make out sessions, and stopped both sessions when the accused got too handsy? But either misremembered it as a clumsy aggressive attempt at rape or is outright lying about the whole scenario?

Or do we believe that the accused could possibly be the aggressor when alcohol was involved and that he stepped over the line in a drunken stupor? And, that the accused is feeding a line of horseshit to IA in order to not seem like an asshole?

Oh dear

First date with my wife we made out. I went for boobs and she was cool. I went for pussy and she pulled my hand back. I didn't try that again because, well, you just don't pull that shit. Not then, not now. By the way, today is the 26th anniversary of that first date and that pussy is still worth the wait. And I will tell my son, if you don't trespass on boundaries, be prepared to pay a stiff fine.

#24 corrected last sentence: And I will tell my son, if you do trespass on boundaries, be prepared to pay a stiff fine.

A girl can stop whenever she feels uncomfortable nothing wrong with that part, but he did stop when she said no so doesn't seem to be rape.

22: That's the thing. If it did go down as the LW says (where he stopped when she asked him to stop), I wouldn't consider that rape.

What sets up the red flags for me is that this letter uses all the old victim-blaming cliches about how "you were flirting with him!" and "you went HOME with him" and all the other horseshit (she sounds like one of the villains from that movie where Jodie Foster is raped on the pinball machine).

None of that shit is relevant to whether or not she was raped later on, so either way the LW is a moron in my book.

Oh, and 16: Unless this is a satirical post (you never know on the internet), you're giving off a real creepy Buffalo Bill vibe. You might want to have that looked at before you post any more little manifestos.

(Maybe the shrink will even write you out a prescription for some COCAINE and MALT LIQUOR!)

@20
Fuck you, 20!
You write:
"I am sorry, but NON-CONSENT is ALWAYS going to be NON-CONSENT, no matter what alcohol was involved or not. NO MEANS NO. ALWAYS."

Your reliance on the obvious is exceeded only by your feeble parroting of cliché.
Yes, obviously "no" means "no". And thank you, for enlightening the world on that vital, heretofore elusive point.

But a caveat:
"NO" DOES NOT, and CANNOT mean "NO" after the fact.
You cannot legally convert a gift into a loan, nor a contract, after the gift has been made.
And you cannot declare that "no" can be rightly invoked in a moment of regret after the fact.

Silly twit.

@27 hit the nail on the head. The story, as told by LW, is clearly not rape or attempted rape. But it is hard to take LW at face value when she thinks that it is relevant that the girl in the story flirted with the guy and initiated the make-out session.

@30 Who initiated what is kind of relevant. If she actually was being a flirt, went home with him and started making out with him, that is relevant to the story. As is whether or not he stopped the heavy petting when she said no.

I'm not saying girls who go home with guys are obligated to put out, but if he thought she was implicitly asking for something more, and crossed a boundary by trying to make it to the next base...but then he took no for an answer, that all is relevant to the story of whether or not he sexually assaulted her. But he could be lying about the whole thing too.

To each their own, but if this isn't an affirmation of my choice to be monogamous since my early-20s, I don't know what is. For every, "I wish I had spread my wings and tried to fuck more people like that hottie over there..." there is a fucked up person/situation like this waiting around the corner.

And while I'm on my high horse, I'll add that while there are plenty of potential assholes in this story (the drunk guy may be an asshole if he did persist in the absence of consent, the drunk girl may be a lying attention-grabber slandering the drunk comer-onner, Anonymous might be an asshole for judging/criticizing the alleged victim), The Stranger is unquestionably The Asshole here for posting this stupid shit.

*and by "stupid shit" I mean offensive, unproductive, he-said/she-said, slut-shaming, rape victim-criticizing bullshit. C'mon, Stranger. I know the tone of the blog/publication is light-hearted and not everything has to be a morality tale, but this is just ridiculous.

To me the biggest question is this: if the letter writer truly believes this was an attempted rape, why aren't they in contact with law enforcement?

Bar gossip is just that.....bar gossip.

Was there a point to posting this other than clickbait, or does The Stranger honestly believe that somehow this will serve as a productive way to have a conversation about rape?

The new definition of rape from the Department of Justice is:

“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…

Bureau of Justice Defintions

Rape - Forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion as well as physical force.

Forced sexual intercourse means penetration by the offender(s). Includes attempted rapes, male as well as female victims, and both heterosexual and homosexual rape. Attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape.

Sexual assault - A wide range of victimizations, separate from rape or attempted rape. These crimes include attacks or attempted attacks generally involving unwanted sexual contact between victim and offender.

Sexual assaults may or may not involve force and include such things as grabbing or fondling. It also includes verbal threats.

http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=3…

So based on #37 and #39 he could be charged with attempted rape, since he was trying to penetrate her using his hand the second time, and she made it clear the first time that she had no interest in going beyond kissing.

I think rape is bad and should be against the law.

No comment; just want to make sure we can hit the number of comments that #1 laid out.

This is why "use your words" is something to be taught early in life.

If things went as the LW perceives it, I think the woman in this situation thought she was putting up clear boundaries and the guy had no idea what they were. They started making out, she stopped when he went too far, but restarted, because she wanted to keep making out (but didn't want it to lead to anything else). Stopping, then starting isn't the same thing as saying "make out only" or "let's stay above the belt tonight."

If you think you've made your boundaries clear and someone keeps crossing them, it seems like assault. But, if you haven't actually spoken, you can't know whether you've made your boundaries clear.

I know we women have often been socialized not to directly speak about sex, but we can't blame our partners for not being mind readers. It's important for us to learn the skill of saying what we want, what we don't want, and where our boundaries are.

48 ... and, of course it's impossible for the guy to use his words and ask "Can I touch you here? Is this okay or do you just want to make out?" And of course, if you're in any way uncertain of what someone wants, that means it's totally okay just to go ahead and do whatever YOU want to them!

Also, LW, your post is horrible (I initally wrote 'you are horrible', but I'm going to retract that on the basis that you've surely been reminded of your own trauma and having to face that a friend might be an attempted rapist cannot be easy). But the crime committed against you does not make this less vile. Every man who's ever raped anyone has friends, you know. And practically every man who's ever raped anyone is going to tell the people in his life that "she wanted it" or "all I did wrong was this tiny minor thing but she freaked out anyway."

And really, I think you are not nearly as sure of this guy's innocence as you pretend. If you'd just stuck to the idea that he got too handsy twice and stopped when she told him to, *maybe* I'd give you, and him, the benefit of the doubt. But what is all that bullshit about how she went home with him voluntarily and willingly made out with him? How is that relevant if your story is simply "what he did was in no way rape, and yet she's saying it is?" It's only relevant if you think "okay, maybe he WAS trying to penetrate her without her consent, except really she'd already consented by going home with him and at that point deserved whatever happened."

It's also very odd and striking that you chose the word "maliciously" instead of "really" or "genuinely" to differentiate between what happened to you and what this girl claims happened to her. It sounds as if instead of distinguishing between rape and no-rape, you're now distinguishing between "malicious rape" and "no-big-deal rape." Which again is odd if you're that convinced by your friend's version of what happened.

I love how TheMisanthrope goes off on a whiny tirade about a post they perceived as anti-male (which is quite a stretch), but says nothing when douche canoe @16 spews actual misogynist bigotry.

kersey, you took the words right out of my mouth.

The last thing we need in this world is one more excuse to say people are lying when they have been violated. Definitely not going to bother to read the comments but I'm pretty disappointed in the stranger for even posting this. What is constructive about this? Was it supposed to start good conversation? Because it won't.

@54 What's "constructive?" Page views, man.

The Outrage Economy. It's what drives internet "journalism". The beauty of it is even complaining about it makes them money.

If the facts are as the author said, I agree with this I/Anon. Note: I'm a proud feminist and would be happy to personally take the balls of a genuine rapist.

@49 Not sexy. Not to me at least. I don't want a guy asking me if I'm ok with something if we're making out. But, either I'll leave or tell him to stop because it's not working out. And, if the dude I'm making out with is cool, it ends up ok.

Like one dude was going to try to fuck me without lube. I put a halt to that right quick. No lube, no entrance. Likewise, I was being the dominant one with a boy, and I put my hand down his pants and he said I was going too fast, and asked if we could just make out for the night. Which I obliged.

But if I asked during every stage? Mood killer. Because then everybody is being way too passive and pansy for fun.

58, I was responding to this:

" Stopping, then starting isn't the same thing as saying "make out only" or "let's stay above the belt tonight."

If someone's already stopped things because they felt they were going too far (which even in LW's obviously biased account, the woman did), I would hope asking would be sexier than just assuming it's okay to make out for a little while and then go for it again. Like, even if your boy hadn't said explicitly what he DID want: "can we just make out," if he'd said "Too fast!" or just pushed your hand away, thus making it clear what he didn't want, you would need to check in SOMEHOW before you went to do the same thing again.

You don't need to ask at every stage if someone is happily responding to everything you're doing.

@59 Doing that one time isn't clear. Too Fast could mean that you only want to stay above the belt tonight...or it means that you want a much longer kissing session, with maybe some hair rubbing, or nipple massage.

If you're pushing a hand away, it's even more vague. You could be just trying to prolong non-explicit making out. Or, maybe you're just trying to be the one in control of the situation (I've done that). Or, maybe you're being coquettish and cutesy.

Stopping then starting a make out session is stronger language but it still isn't a clear symbol, especially to a drunk person. If somebody puts their hand down there, and you stop, generally there's a "what's wrong" conversation. If the offended party says "nothing" or, worse, nothing at all, then how is a partner supposed to react, especially if the offended party re-initiates the make out session without providing further info?

Words people.

Apparently no one understands nuance anymore and that sexual encounters can involve a lot of assumptions. Because stopping to fill out a checklist and ask 20 questions can be a massive turn off to any non feminist. So I guess we as a society should just condone charging anyone with rape who makes a mistake during foreplay or sex. Because sex is so cut and dry and not at all based on the interpretations of two different people taking physical and verbal cues from moment to moment.

Worst phony iAnon agenda-planting story ever.

It's hard to know the truth in these cases.

There are assholes of all genders and assholes use whatever power they have to hurt people whether it's using physical force or false-accusations.

I think it's up to the LW to confront the woman and actually ask what she means exactly by "attempted rape" and at least hear her out.

Assholes can also come off really charming so its always possible the supposed "nice guy" here pushed things too far.