Nancy Slotnick: Illegitimate Rape

Senator Akin’s comments last week beg the question: Is there such a thing as illegitimate rape? Does the double negative somehow imply a positive?  That just seems wrong. How do we identify rape in dating? Obviously the use of force is a dealbreaker. But the dance of saying no but meaning yes is one in which both genders participate.  And managing expectations is very difficult when you’re dealing with a stranger.

All that being said, there’s something empowering and exciting about a one-night stand, even for the girl.  Sometimes especially for the girl.  Maybe it is the danger.  The idea that you can live on the edge and brush with a dangerous situation but yet have good enough judgment not to choose a rapist or an axe murderer.

Or is it the prowess that you can be just like a man—i.e. have a sexual adventure without getting emotionally attached?  Or can you?  I don’t believe that most women can.  Well, yes, if there’s some “legitimate” reason (there’s that word again!) that a guy would never be husband material then we can remain detached.  (If he’s really good in bed.)  And it can be a lot of fun!  Like if he’s 15 years younger or the wrong religion, or both.  Or an axe murderer. Ok, well, that might not be fun.

There’s a rush to being able to have sex for f*ck’s sake.  It goes against everything we were taught about what girls are supposed to do.  And we’re not supposed to like it that way!  We’re supposed to want to make love.  So it’s fun to be able to realize that we are very sexual beings, and not to overthink it.

In fact the fling can also be character building.  How so, you may ask?  For this is quite counterintuitive.  I thought that if I don’t sleep around that means I have good character.  But when you have the experience of staying emotionally detached in bed, you start to be able to separate from your own head.  You learn how to take things less seriously.  You learn to live that line from Risky Business:  Sometimes you just gotta say….

And then, hopefully, you can apply the character you’ve built to a real relationship at some point.  Like if your partner asks you to do something between the sheets that seems really illegitimate, maybe you’ll do it anyway, because you learned how to detach after that great one night stand in graduate school.

Just one word of caution though- you could get pregnant that way.  Contrary to Akin’s thorough research (I believe his footnote was “doctors I know,”) I don’t think we women have developed a way of shutting our bodies down when we don’t want to get pregnant.  At least not yet— that would be a good invention though. 🙂