"Gray Rape" : A New Form of Date Rape

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October 15, 2007, 4:00 pm

‘Gray Rape’: A New Form of Date Rape?

By Sewell Chan

When Robert D. Laurino, chief assistant prosecutor for Essex County in New Jersey, told a friend that he was speaking on a panel about the topic of “gray rape,” the friend was confused. “Are you talking about the rape of the elderly?” the friend asked.

An article in the September issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, “A New Kind of Date Rape,” defined “gray rape” as “sex that falls somewhere between consent and denial and is even more confusing than date rape because often both parties are unsure of who wanted what.”

A standing-room-only audience packed the lobby of the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice this morning to listen to a vigorous panel discussion on the idea of “gray rape” — and whether the term is even meaningful, helpful or harmful. Not too many events in the intellectual life of New York City bring together Jeremy Travis, the legal expert and former city police official who is the president of John Jay, and Kate White, editor in chief of Cosmopolitan, which sponsored the event.

The panel had four women and three men and was moderated by Ashleigh Banfield, the Court TV anchor. Ms. White promised a “very scintillating discussion.”

Laura Sessions Stepp, a Washington Post journalist, wrote the September article on “gray rape.” It has stirred considerable discussion on blogs and discussion boards. (Ms. Stepp’s latest book, “Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both,” about how smart, ambitious young women do emotional damage to themselves by getting physical with men they are not dating or may have met for the first time, also raised some controversy.)

In this morning’s discussion, Ms. Stepp said she did not embark on the story believing that there was such a thing as “gray rape.” She said, “For me, rape is rape. I really didn’t know what that term meant.”

But in the course of her reporting, Ms. Stepp said, she came across descriptions of “sexual encounters where usually both parties were very drunk and really didn’t know what they had said to each other the next morning.” In such cases, consent is uncertain. Such cases are more likely to emerge today, Ms. Stepp argued in the article, in an era when sexual boundaries and rules for women have loosened and when it has become socially acceptable for women to pursue casual sex.

“Girls go after guys just as often as guys go after girls these days,” Ms. Stepp said at the panel. In her article, she wrote, “The odd thing about the current equal-opportunity hookup culture is that a lot of guys may feel as uncomfortable and confused as their dates do when things end up in bed.”

Ms. Stepp’s article and her comments generated a wide range of reactions from the other panelists. Some panelists, in particular, were concerned that the concept of “gray rape” could be used to exonerate men from their culpability in violent sexual crimes.

“Rape is still rape,” said Neil Irvin, director of community education at Men Can Stop Rape, saying it almost “seems cliché” at this point to have to remind people that no means no.

Ms. Banfield pressed the issue. “Is it possible that you could acquiesce at the beginning of the evening and by the time you’re too drunk to be heard or understood, it would be unfair for men to try to decipher when the no ends up actually arriving?” she asked.

Joseph Samalin, who as a student at State University of New York at New Paltz and at Columbia University was active in groups that oppose women’s violence, did not buy that premise. “There were a lot of things in the article that concerned and frustrated me,” he said. He said that intentionally or not, the article might have the effect of suggesting that “you can be a woman in charge of your own sexuality … but not too much because these are the consequences that will happen to you.”

Mr. Samalin added: “We still need to hold a lot more men accountable for their actions, their behaviors and the violence they commit. I’d rather be at a panel here on that.”

Ms. Banfield maintained that gray areas remained one of the most fraught areas in discussions of sexual violence, especially on college campuses. She cited the case of Adam Lack, a Brown University student who in 1996 was accused by a fellow student of sexual misconduct. The accuser said she could not remember the events of the evening but said she was too intoxicated to be able to consciously consent to sex. Mr. Lack maintained that the student had initiated the sexual encounter and that he was not aware she was drunk. No criminal charges were brought, but Mr. Lack was subjected to academic discipline.

Chitra Raghavan, a John Jay psychologist who conducts research on intimate-partner violence and rape, said she did not accept the article’s argument that it has become socially acceptable for women to pursue casual sex.

“I would respectfully disagree that women have been sexually empowered to hook up,” Dr. Raghavan said. “What’s happened is that women are not legislated anymore. There’s a huge difference for it to be legal for women to pursue sex and for it to be socially acceptable for women to pursue sex.”

Many studies have shown that rapes often do not involve physical violence or coercion, because the mere threat or potential for physical harm is enough to make victims submit, she said. Dr. Raghavan also said that studies have shown that women’s sexual interactions do not change appreciably if they have been drinking and that serial rapists maintain (inaccurately, of course) that their victims did not resist and in fact wanted to be raped. She said that the discussion of alcohol “is endemic of how we blame women,” saying that such blame could lead to a viewpoint like: “Women hook up, get drunk and then say they don’t want sex. Tell them to cross their legs and put on a chastity belt!”