Umm, this is going to be an odd first post aside from my into, but I feel like talking about this.

Basically, I would say what happened to me is maybe rape. For sure sexual assault, but I'm not sure about rape.

First of all I should state that me and my partner(who is genderqueer) are kinky people and therefore this experience, while to some may not seem sexual, was perceived as sexual to me because of the context of our relationship. 2 months ago, me and my partner were laying down to sleep, but they were somewhat restless, and I was very very sleepy. Basically, they started to scratch me and bit me, but I didn't protest much because I was so sleepy. Eventually it escalated to hitting(keep in mind these are normal things for us), and I wasn't able to say no, partially because I didn't want to disappoint them, partially because I froze up for some reason, sort of going into another world for a bit. Eventually I started to cry, and that got them to stop. This was the first time something like that happened, and the next day I was feeling horrible. I was moping a lot, knowing the cause but not exactly why. For the next week or so I felt the same way, and even after I felt better, when me and my partner tried doing kinky things again, I wasn't able to take it and I started crying. This happened a few times, and just last week I was finally able to enjoy doing that sort of thing again and not burst into a sobbing mess.

Umm, anyways, I guess I'm sort of wondering what other people think I should call this? I figured I felt sexually assaulted like 2 or 3 days after it happened, though I have not been sexually assaulted in the way most people would think ever, so I can't know for sure if that's actually how I felt. What's weird is I still feel safe with my partner, and actually even more so because they were able to recognize that they needed to stop and did so when I started crying.

Also, sorry if my post seems incoherent, this is my first time ever writing this stuff out.

Last edited by Kexx (03-01-2013 05:19:11 PM)

I think Frosty's got it right.  BDSM -- so I'm told -- is harder than vanilla sex because of the greater potential for injury, and also because it's very easy to accidentally violate someone's trust.  Many BDSMers believe that what's going to happen in a "scene" should be negotiated ahead of time, with words, every time, in order to avoid hurting someone or violating eir boundaries.  Just because you wanted to be beaten yesterday doesn't mean you want to be beaten today.  Otherwise you run into situations like you unfortunately had to live through, where one person assumes that something's okay, the other person is too dazed or scared to say no, and you end up with something that looks and feels an awful lot like actual domestic violence or worse.

I know from your intro post that you're seventeen, and I'm going to assume your partner is young too.  It sounds like you're already on the path to forgiving your partner for what happened, and given that you're both still new at this, I think that's probably appropriate.  (Though if you found you couldn't forgive them, I'd say that was okay too -- no one ever has to forgive.)  But the best way to make sure this doesn't happen again, as Frosty says, is to lay out some ground rules.  At the very least, you need this ground rule: "No sex or BDSM without consent -- and silence is not consent."

Kink is always hard to break into, because the rules change between 'vanilla' sex and kink. In vanilla sex between ordinary consenting adults, the rules that imply consent are actually pretty loose. In kink, the best policy is to take absolutely nothing for granted. Everything needs to be understood and accepted beforehand, and if there's going to be any surprises, they need the counterbalance of an absolute way to cease the play. I admit, guiltily, that I find safewords silly to use and think about, but they're necessary. But it sounds like you had a pretty unique situation, and it's not exactly a safeword that would have helped, but rather some other more subtle signal you could give your partner to say 'I don't want that kind of play, but maybe something more straightforward?'

That said, it seems to me like you're taking this pretty well and have a healthy attitude about it. You understand that with kink, there is always the risk, almost the inevitability, that at some point a boundary will be crossed, and you need to be ready for that. Kink on!

This is one of the best eplainations regarding gender equility and how the lack of it leads to a rape culture world wide; that I have seen:
http://snowflame-fancomic.tumblr.com/

Public Shaming tumblr is on a tear right now, collecting victim-blaming, rapist-defense, and other bullshit from around the web. I wish they weren't. It'd be nice, actually, if a few days went by without choice material to quote.

Thirteen isn't fifteen.

Nova wrote:

Thirteen isn't fifteen.

Irrelevant and assumptive. Do you have an opinion on any of my three questions?

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

Thirteen is pretty fucking young. And the dude's ain't anywhere near that young, I notice. Two fourteen/fifteen year olds messing around some night in the basement or whatever is one thing, two eighteen year old guys and a thirteen year old girl is fundamentally different, from my perspective. And they were arrested on separate sexual assault charges? On top of felony robbery charges that weren't enough to stop one of them from playing football for the school?

I would tend to agree with you on the age difference. And actually, so does the law. It's clear that she was being taken advantage of, but at the same time, I think cases like this deserve more careful investigation than just branding the boys as rapists and calling it a day. What factors were in play that made her believe this was all right? Is there a home or school situation, or pressure from some other source that allowed her to think of this as acceptable?  If she was willing, why was she willing?

The school seems to be a big culprit in the way this has been handled all along. Judging from the reactions of the other students and, as with Steubenville, the high importance placed on football as opposed to minor things like, oh, that felony charge, one could surmise that an atmosphere was created where the members of the football team believed they could get away with anything and still be protected. That sort of protection from consequences encourages bad behavior, and, being teenage boys, it's not hard to see how that would translate to a situation like this. Why is this situation created in the first place? What actions can we take to minimize the chances of this preferential treatment arising?

At the same time, I'm not saying no blame should rest on the boys who committed this action. No matter what environment they were in, breaking the law was their choice. What would be a fair punishment for their actions? Should they be treated as if they were working entirely of their own agency, or should they be treated as if this was the product of their environment, or somewhere in between?

I also ran across a good question on some tumblr site-- why aren't boys taught more explicitly what constitutes rape? There's a lot of emphasis on reinforcement for girls, like "don't go down dark alleys alone" and "don't leave your drink alone at a party" and such, but why is it not also emphasized that boys need to hear the complementary teaching-- "If she says no, or seems uncertain, you need to stop" and "jerking off won't get you put in jail, but having sex with someone who's too young might"?

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

Those twitter comments... Argh!

Ugh, I know what you mean. What a terrible environment. Still, having been in high school, I can see why kids would act that way. The person that gets other people in trouble, even if they deserve it, is always the asshole to high school kids

Thank you for elaborating on your point. The reason I said it was irrelevant was because I'm the only fifteen year old mentioned in any of this, and my circumstances are a comparison, not a likeness. Your three word answer implied that I thought the circumstances were the same, which I found very assumptive. Also, replies like your previous reply do nothing to promote conversation and examination, to which I have a strong aversion. Your reply was generally insulting and objectionable to me, and I think I did a good job of illustrating exactly why with the rudeness of my reply and the reaction you had. All I did was put you in the same spot you'd already put me in.

Nova, please remember this is a sensitive topic and very upsetting for some people. Had you elaborated on your first reply, as you've done now, it would have been a talking point to begin with instead of an arguing point. If you have any further questions about it, you can contact me in pm. Otherwise, let's stick to the topic.

Nova wrote:

Consent is not contained only within the mind of the individual. Consent is a construct that also takes into account the power dynamic and social dynamic of the people involved. It's why sex between a jailer and a prisoner is always considered non-consenting. Because the prisoner is by definition a ward of the state. We also define consent by differing age -- not between a 28 year-old and a 33 year-old, because the proportional difference between their ages is mathematically small, but more importantly because the difference in their cognitive development and life experience is (barring outliers like mental retardation or traumatic injury leading to brain degradation, disease, stroke, or the like-- in other words, ceteris paribus) small. The same cannot be said for the difference in maturity, cognitive development, and life experience of an eighteen year-old and a thirteen year-old.

The law here in Canada generally takes into account the difference between a 13/18 relationship and a 17/18 relationship, but I'm not educated enough on American laws about the same situation. Do you feel that American law provides adequately for those age disparities?

And, so you know I'm not just saying "w00t Canada rules" or something, one of the exceptions to the consent laws in Canada is that it's not considered a criminal offense when "a young person aged 12 or 13 consents to sexual activity with someone less than 2 years older". To be perfectly honest, while I don't advocate criminal charges in a situation like that, to me, a relationship like that would strongly indicate an abnormal situation in one or both of the young people's lives. What are your thoughts on that? Am I unjustified in mentally classing that as a red-flag situation?

Okay. Like I said, pm me if you have anything else to say.

In other, more awful news, apparently public opinion has no effect on the students in Torrington.

Even after pleas from their school officials and a week of national shame, the students of Torrington High in Connecticut are still taking to social media to defend one of the rape suspects who was the star of their football team.

It's pretty terrifying how deep this runs. They're still trying to support the football players and shaming the victim. I would imagine, too, that some of them probably know who it is. I wonder how long it will be until someone leaks her name?

If a student asked you about it, were you allowed to say, "That's an important question, but unfortunately the school doesn't permit me to talk about sex with you guys at all.  They will totally fire me if I answer your completely reasonable questions.  I'm not even allowed to tell you what search terms you could Google to find out about age-of-consent laws in the state of such-and-such?"

satyreyes wrote:

If a student asked you about it, were you allowed to say, "That's an important question, but unfortunately the school doesn't permit me to talk about sex with you guys at all.  They will totally fire me if I answer your completely reasonable questions.  I'm not even allowed to tell you what search terms you could Google to find out about age-of-consent laws in the state of such-and-such?"

I got called in and censured for "you're going to have to educate yourselves on this one" in regards to a question about drinking and sex.

Of course, I also got called in once, for lending a hairbrush to some students who needed to prepare for a graduation party, because it was "erotic" contact with an intimate object. (Being called into the principal's office and hearing you've had erotic anything with an intimate whatever is fucking scary, especially if they wait to explain exactly what they mean.) They watched us closely, constantly, for a lot of little things. And, yet, it took concerted heavy effort to get the creepshots-taking, friendly touch, math teacher finally busted. The genuine vile pervs seem to skate by in US schools, I suspect by sounding moralistic and reporting everyone else.

Yasha wrote:

No well thought out commentary here. Just... are you fucking serious? They got on your case for a hair brush?

Scared the piss out of me, that, and then it's... a hairbrush. I'd have just given the students the brush, if I'd known it'd be a problem. Or told them they needed to borrow another student's. That's a very special kind of kink, I would think, getting off by someone else using your brush.

I told myself that I was going to stay away from this thread, because it's like a huge trigger for me, but...

I am, once again, totally confused about the situation that happened to me and if it was rape or not. I was penetrated with fingers, not with dick, but it was absolutely freaked out and not okay with it--it hurt so damn much--and I told him to stop and he did not stop until I pulled his fingers out of me. It was terrifying, but I kept making excuses for him. That part scarred me so much emotionally that I continue to have nightmares about it (a lot) and am paranoid about meeting new people, about being in a relationship in the future, etc. He also forced me head down during oral once so that I was choking. This was also terrifying, and not what I wanted to be happening, and I told him so.

And then there's the part where, when he wanted sex-stuff, he assumed it was going to happen. It wasn't "do you want to?" It was him kissing and groping me and eventually taking my clothes off and things would happen. I did what he said--gave him oral--to try to keep him happy because, somewhere in my mind, I was terrified that if I didn't he was going to hurt me more. (He made things that seemed like passive-aggressive threats to me. For example, he said "I wouldn't have to rape you. You'll do whatever I want.") During this time, I protested once, verbally, and his response made me sacred again ("What do you mean you don't want to?!"). So it fell back into the same pattern because I was afraid, again, that he was going to hurt me.

I know this wouldn't hold up in court as a rape case, and that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking, essentially, if I was raped. I'm asking, in particular, if the absence of a "no" means "yes" in my situation, or if saying "okay" because you're afraid your partner will hurt you if you don't, equals consent.

I used to have this figured out more, but since I'm hitting this subject hard in therapy, I don't know anymore.

Also: I have no idea if this is on topic or not. Please let me know.

Last edited by bella (03-27-2013 12:08:49 PM)