Gray Rape is Bullshit, and Saying You Were Raped is Brave

There's no such thing as gray rape. Period.

1. Waking up "to find him sticking it in" after having said no "a bunch of times" is rape. It is not "fuck[ing] that guy you didn't really want to fuck." It is not "gray rape." It is rape, which is defined by a lack of consent.

2. It doesn't matter if the situation wherein a dude "sticks it in" without consent is "nonviolent" and/or "collegiate." Rape is not determined by the existence of force, but the nonexistence of consent.

3. "I remember that sexual experience a little more vividly than most of the consensual sexual experiences I've undergone in a similar state of intoxication, but neither sentiment makes it RAPE, does it?"—No, your lack of consent makes it rape.

4. "It's something, 'date rape' I guess, but it's not rape unless I say it was, right?"—Wrong. If you didn't give your consent, and especially if you said no "a bunch of times" and then fell asleep, then it was rape. And it really, really doesn't matter if you inform your rapist that you're not putting him on 'your list,' or if he kisses your ass the next day, or if you've "found that when a guy demeans you in a drunken state, it is more likely to stick with you and haunt you if you give anything resembling a shit about his opinion." You were still raped.

5. "And come to think about it, how gross do you have to be to fuck someone when it's, like, three Goldschlager body shots away from being necrophilia?"—Someone who does that isn't gross; someone who does that is a rapist.

All right. I'm done. I can't say anything I haven't said before about a thousand times, most relevantly here.

Except maybe this: I'm pissed that the woman who wrote the Jezebel piece has decided to go after feminists who are angry about the original "gray rape" piece in Cosmo, sniffing: "[I]f you're reading Cosmo for purposes other than to revel in its unique special brand of inanity you have bigger issues with your sexual identity than what to call that time you fucked that guy you didn't really want to fuck."

But I also feel profoundly sorry for her, because I've rarely seen an example of a woman so desperate to dissociate herself from the stigma of rape, so willing to engage in such pitiable semantic gymnastics to redefine a rape as something else, so clearly resolved to the notion that to admit victimization is to admit weakness.

And that's why this silly, contemptible feminist spends so much of her time blogging about sexual assault, saying over and over that to be a survivor of rape does not have to mean shame and brokenness and guilt, that it is brave, not weak, to say, plainly: "I was raped."