No?

Easterblog takes on the Kobe case and notes that "No" doesn’t always mean "No"(?). Rape is a bizarre confluence of law, society & biology. When Randy Thornhill & Craig Palmer wrote A Natural History of Rape the reaction was not proportional to the strength or weakness of their thesis, rather, the issue because intertwined in is vs. ought issues (as I like to say, there ain’t any "versus," the two can be pried apart if you have a little will and let your emotions calm down)[1]. To step into cultural issues, I had a close friend who was trying to learn Spanish and so was proactive in making the acquaintance of local men of Latin American origins (she was planning on going to Cuba, which she later did). One problem she noted was that it was difficult for them to understand that when she said sbe wasn’t interested, it actually meant she wasn’t interested. One of the men, a friend, explained that in Mexico "good girls" automatically say "No" to any advance and that a man must be presistent to show that he is sincere and serious about her. So my friend’s first or second protestations were just ignored by him, and so by the third advance, while she was getting irritated, he was assuming that the courtship was just proceeding along its normal trajectory. Taking the case even further, I once took a class in college (to satisfy the "Multiculturalism" requirement) that discussed the differences between the newly arrived Turks and Germans in their attitudes toward sexual relations and consent. No surprisingly the Turkish men committed many rapes because of total ignorance of local mores.

Back to the United States, I suggest Dahlia Lithwicks piece in Slate, Rape Nuts, to show the schizophrenia of our laws. I point to the above dissents in biology and sociology from the conventional paradigm of free will, equality before the law, and gender equity to suggest that our history shapes our perception and reaction to rape, and that our legal framework, informed by abstractions, is a mess because of the unrealities that it assumes as the norm.

fn1. The fact that small orangutan males rape females is generally shocking to most Americans when it is noted on nature shows-I suspect far more shocking than when a predator consumes a prey animal.