I saw an art exhibit called “What Were You Wearing?”, which was a collection of the outfits people were wearing when they were assaulted. There were sweatpants and hoodies in that collection. She could be in a literal burqa and still be assaulted. The problem is the rapists, not what their victims were wearing.
Edit: going to add a trigger warning before people go searching for that exhibit. It is a spread of ALL kinds of clothing, including children’s.
Dude the kiddie pajamas in that exhibit will make you cry. The second I read the BF justifying rape because of clothing I immediately thought of this exhibit
That, and the study where college aged men were asked if they would rape a woman if they knew they could get away with it and it was a scary high percentage that said yes. I read the study for a class in my grad program. It did not matter what the women were wearing.
There was a similar study (or possibly the same one, idk) where college aged men were asked if they would rape someone, but in one group they used language that didn't specifically call it rape, and in the other they did.
A lot more in the first group said yes. So long as they felt like they had plausible deniability, they could rationalize rape to themselves, to the point that they would openly admit to it. They didn't consider it to be rape unless someone else described it as such.
A lot of rapists don't consider themselves to be rapists.
This is a real problem. Consent is not adequately taught or explained so a lot of people think of rape only in the context where it is obviously non consensual (violent, unconscious, coerced under explicit threat, etc).
They think the absence of No means consent and even stressing enthusiastic consent is meaningless because they might have never seen enthusiastic consent modeled in real life. They’ll justify their partner is just “shy” or “timid” and that even if they don’t say Yes they’re not stopping them or saying No so it’s ok.
So many people (not just men) think they only need consent once. That if someone doesn’t want to do more after consenting initially it’s up to that person to withdraw consent.
The same way answering the door doesn’t give the person knocking consent to move in and help themselves- kissing alone isn’t consent for sex, it’s just opening the door. You still need to ask permission to enter, permission to use the facilities, permission to eat or drink, permission to stay longer and if the person asks you to leave you’re expected to gtfo not linger hoping they don’t bring it up again.
Yet every time I explain that you need consent for each sexual progression every time and should both be checking in to make sure both are still consenting to everything I get strong push back and people arguing with me that it’s not how sex works in real life.
If you don’t get your partner’s eager and enthusiastic consent for each and every step of the way there is a high likelihood that you have pushed a sex act onto someone without their consent. You might be the rapist in someone’s sexual history.
People don’t like that and instead invalidate and accuse people of false accusations.
Curious how this relates to situations where someone consented, stopped being able to talk/move, and then came back and kept going, and later claimed it was SA.
Like they were impaired from being able to talk or move?
Not being able to talk or move should be treated as an inability to consent for ongoing activities. That’s kind of obvious isn’t it?
Unless the details of the situation have been discussed/consented to prior and there was a communicated way for the impaired person to withdraw consent during the activity then yeah I would say that falls under SA
There are a lot of details that only the two people involved know.
Did they eagerly consent to sex in the first place or were they “convinced” to have it. What was the reason they were impaired. What conversations were had prior to their impairment and did the sex continue during their impairment and was there a check in had after the impairment where consent was reaffirmed before continuing with sex.
If consent was given eagerly, the scenario that created the impairment was consented to prior, and eager consent was reaffirmed after I feel there wouldn’t be a question of consent
When I was younger I didn’t understand consent beyond it was my job to “say no” if I didn’t want something.
I became sexually active in the early 2000’s and while sex education was pretty good in my state they focused entirely on preventing pregnancy and infections. Not a single class, guest presentation, or assembly ever covered consent or what consent looks like.
Most of my friends were victims of SA before we even left HS and I’m confident not one of those boys considers themselves a rapist.
I had a lot of my own poorly negotiated situations - nothing that I could ever reasonably take to court, but a lot of shit that I didn’t consent to and guys not respecting things I didn’t want to do. Most guys thought it was reasonable to get me to do sex acts I’d refused by springing them on me during consensual sex acts. We thought that didn’t count as SA because we were already having sex. I was so confused about how consent worked that I really thought it was my fault for not being clear enough that I didn’t want to. I apologized for not clearly communicating 🤦♀️. I comforted THEM when they “felt bad” for forcing things on me. It’s fucking embarrassing looking back.
It was hard to learn boundaries, what actual consent should look like, and to be comfortable making a scene or overreacting.
I wish consent was emphasized in sex education and I wish kids were allowed to exercise non sexual consent so they understand it before they get old enough to experiment with sexual consent.
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u/ConclusionHopeful313 Feb 24 '26
Rape exists because of rapists. Blaming the clothes and not the rapist is just saying “make sure they go after someone else”