Comments on: Craigslist and sexual assault

By: DecentMatter

DecentMatter — Mon, 24 May 2010 05:27:59 +0000

McDowell, the rapist, changed his plea from not guilty to guilty. This even more raises doubts as to whether he knowingly did anything. Not to excuse him AT ALL but he may be trying to come clean after realizing what the woman went through.
Is this more a case of negligence than rape?
Scary to think.
Any legal experts on here?

By: Pearl

Pearl — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:58:15 +0000

I agree with Emily, Women can have fantasies about all sorts of things. You could make the same point with BDSM. Again safewords and consent are the key. The point that the ex cannot be blamed it bull. People who hire hit men get jailed all the time and this should follow suit. I don’t see how he could deny he put up the ad if his credit card was linked to it. That’s probably why they require one. However, the person who actually committed the rape, that’s going to be a tough one for the courts because he could produce a paper trap (the emails with the ex) showing he thought he had consent. It’s a terrible tragedy for the women involved but I do hope the ex gets the book thrown at him.

By: jillian

jillian — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:40:58 +0000

Emily,
while i understand your concerns, i certainly didn’t say that women’s rape fantasies are unacceptable. i DID call into question the acceptability of a man’s ‘fulfilling’ this kind of fantasy without–as you mentioned–the use of explicit consent or safewords. it is my personal opinion that a man who would partake in such actions without being provided explicit consent may be more concerned with the feeling of sexual power and control over the woman than with fulfilling her fantasy.

perhaps i should have qualified my statement by saying “I’ve never met a woman who openly admits that she fantasizes about rape.” my intention was not to muddle the issues of rape and women’s sexual fantasies, so i hope this clarifies a bit.

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:57:54 +0000

"I’ve certainly never met a woman who fantasizes about rape...." I can absolutely, unequivocally guarantee you that's not the case. Rape (or "ravishment," if you prefer) fantasies are one of the most common varieties of sexual fantasies for women to have--it's just that for obvious reasons, they're not talked about very much. Psychological and sexological studies produce tons of evidence that rape fantasies are extraordinarily common (I found this article on a quick Google search, for example), and suggesting that women's rape fantasies are unacceptable reads a little like blaming the victim to me. The thing is, fantasy is where things like consent and safewords come in—and this is why it's very important not to mix rape fantasy in with discussion of actual rape. A woman could quite plausibly and reasonably ask her sexual partner to enact with her a fantasy of ravishment--and provided that the enaction is safe, sane, and consensual, it's not actually rape, and thus to be distinguished from the Craigslist issue you discuss here. I really wish you hadn't muddled the two issues, because doing so only further stigmatizes and shames the wide variety of women's sexual fantasies.