ChickSpeak

What do you think of when you think of rape? Walking down a dark city street alone late at night, a strange man assaulting a young girl? A drug slipped in a cocktail and a girl waking up a few hours later unsure of why her clothes have been pulled off?

What about when you get drunk with a friend, one thing leads to another, and before you can make up your mind, he’s penetrating you?

The first two instances might seem more cut and dry than the last, but actually, they’re all rape. Lately, however, the latter situation has come be to called “gray rape” — not quite rape, but not exactly consensual sex either.

The concept of gray rape is a hot issue among experts in sexual assault issues. For many campus coordinators and anti-violence groups, rape is rape: If someone did not make it clear that he or she wanted to have sex, it’s rape, no matter what the other circumstances are.

But a feature in September’s Cosmopolitan magazine brought up the idea that unwanted sex may not always count as rape. (Ironically, the very magazine that tells us to be sexual animals is the one chastising us.) It defined gray rape as “sex that falls somewhere between consent and denial and is even more confusing than date rape because often both parties are unsure of who wanted what.”

This statement disturbs me. First of all, it calls date rape “confusing.” What’s so confusing about non-consensual sex, whether it’s after a date or not? Sorry, but going out on a date with someone does not guarantee sex at the end of the night. In fact, a lot of girls like going on dates because they can get to know someone before engaging in sexual activity.

More importantly, this statement suggests the idea that there is an intermediate space between consent and denial. We’ve become so used to the idea of “no means no” that we overlook the fact that the absence of a yes still means no.

The mere name “gray rape” makes it seem less serious than it actually is. Officially, this type of situation is called “acquaintance rape.” According to a Department of Justice study, as many as nine in 10 completed and attempted rapes were committed by someone that the victim knew, most often a classmate, friend, boyfriend or ex-boyfriend.

Acquaintance rape could be the biggest silent issue on university campuses. A college with 10,000 female students could have more than 350 cases of rape a year, according to the same Justice Department study, and half of the victims of acquaintance rape will not call it “rape.”

The national trend manifests itself at Georgetown as well. Jen Schweer, who works in Health Education Services as the sexual assault and health issues coordinator, said that acquaintance rape is “the most common thing that I hear.”

Here’s an excerpt of an example of acquaintance rape from the Cosmo article: “While it felt like rape to her — she had not wanted to have sex with Kevin — she was not sure if that’s what anyone else would call it.”

This is exactly the problem with acquaintance rape, especially on college campuses: Victims tend to worry about how other people will consider the situation. Because women not only know their attackers but also know people who know them, they’re afraid to speak out. Are you supposed to turn a guy that you know in to the police? What if your friends are unsure whether to believe that you really didn’t want it?

The other poison of acquaintance rape is that it causes an extreme feeling of guilt in its victims. They often think, “Maybe I didn’t say ‘no’ loud enough,” or their friends say, “I would have stopped him.”

But, as in any sudden event, people tend to freeze when it happens. I know I probably would. Sometimes you really can be too drunk to make a decision. Or sometimes you might want to just make out but not have sex.

Having safe, consensual sex means making a firm choice to do it. Rape happens when someone does not get to make a choice about whether they want to have sex. Period. If you’re too drunk to decide, you did not get to make a choice. If it happened too fast for you to say anything, you did not get to make a choice. Legally, you have to give a clear verbal or nonverbal yes to sex to give consent.

If you do feel like you have been a victim of rape, you have somewhere to go. Georgetown offers resources for sexual assault victims that many other universities do not, according to Schweer. In addition to her position, Counseling and Psychiatric Services has a trauma specialist, and there are well-known campus programs like RU Ready and the upcoming Take Back the Night as well. “We want you to be able to come forward,” Schweer told me.

Schweer’s mission is to create an environment where sexual assault is not tolerated and where victims can become survivors. It’s a mission that we all should share, and it begins with a simple rule of thumb that I found in a brochure on acquaintance and date rape in Health Education Services: “If you feel you are being pressured into unwanted sex, you probably are.”

There’s nothing gray about that.

Emily Liner is a senior in the college and layout editor of THE HOYA. She can be reached at liner@thehoya.com.

SKIRTING THE ISSUES appears every other Friday in The Hoya.