[Trigger Warning] Why the term "gray rape" is bad.

jimhines has an excellent post about the problem with the term "gray rape." The comments are (so far, at least) excellent and there's some really great conversation happening.

There's really not much more I can add to what he's said already except to reiterate his final points:

So to everyone worrying about “misunderstandings,” you’ve got a choice. You can choose to make sure your partner enthusiastically consents to what you’re doing, or you can choose not to. Why wouldn’t you make sure? I can think of only two reasons.

1. You’re uncomfortable talking about it. If that’s the case — if you’re not comfortable talking about what you’re doing — then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it?


2. You’re worried they’ll say no. Meaning you’re not sure they want this, and you’d rather risk committing rape than risk asking and being told no.

The absence of the word no does not imply consent, particularly when that enthusiastic "Yes!" is missing too. Silence is not consent. A meek yes after being coerced, pressured, and/or badgered into consenting is not consent.

This is not a difficult concept to grasp, it really, really isn't, but so many people want to whine about "mixed signals" or "misunderstandings." Men, if you are at any point unclear as to whether or not she's enjoying what's going on, the onus is not on her to speak up. The onus is on you not to be a jerk and to ask her if she's fine.

Maybe later I'll open up about something that happened to me that falls under this heading, but for now all I'm asking is for people to read and to think about what's being discussed.

Apparently, it's still dangerous to go out in public while female.

Fresh on the heels of the Girls Gone Wild case wherein we learned telling the camera man "no" and having someone else expose your breasts still counts as consent, we learn that it's unreasonable to expect our breasts not to be photographed while fully clothed on the subway.

Richard Weir of the Boston Herald reports that on July 5, a woman on Boston's Green line leaned over to pick up her stuff, "accidentally exposing her breasts." She heard a click, and looked up to find a dude "admiring his photo" of her boobs. So she snapped his picture and gave it to Boston police. But while most people seem to agree that taking upskirt photos is illegal, the status of "downshirt" pics is a little more complicated.

It's only more complicated if you think any part of a woman's anatomy is less autonomous than another, but that's not the part that sticks in my craw.

The Suffolk County DA's office says the photographer is a criminal — a spokesman explains that "taking a picture of a woman who leans over and inadvertently exposes part of her chest is in our mind a crime" and "a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy beneath his or her own clothing." But Boston civil rights lawyer Howard Friedman says, "You don't have an expectation of privacy on an MBTA train." And attorney William Korman concurs, arguing, "If you take a picture of a woman in a skimpy bathing suit at the beach, that's not a crime. How can it be a crime then on the bus or subway?" [Emphasis mine]

Um...what?!

Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me that being fully clothed in the subway is just like going to the beach in a string bikini? Never mind the fact that a woman wearing a "skimpy bathing suit" is no more consenting to having her bare breasts photographed than a woman wearing a parka.

Why is it so unreasonable to expect that my breasts or my vulva are not going to be photographed when I'm out in public? Why is it so damn hard to understand that you should ask for someone's consent before taking their picture? Why is it women are punished for existing in public while female?

And to the commenter saying "I take pictures of weird people on the bus all the time!": Seriously? Are you really not seeing a difference between taking the picture of a body part associated with sexual arousal against someone's will and taking a picture of that dude dressed like a clown to share with your friends on Facebook?

Some days, I really hate the world.