Why Yale Students Don’t Understand Date Rape

By ADRIEL SAPORTA

Decem­ber 2009

In a con­ver­sa­tion with a nor­mally non­judg­men­tal and moth­er­ing friend, I alluded to the date rape of some­one we both knew; my friend rolled her eyes and asked, “What does that even mean?” Her reac­tion is not unique for this cam­pus. Many Yale stu­dents approach the topic of date rape with a dis­con­cert­ing blend of hes­i­tancy and cyn­i­cism. Nei­ther Yale, nor its stu­dents, can be blamed in full for this ambivalence—few issues on Amer­i­can col­lege cam­puses are as con­tentious, or as per­ti­nent, as that of date rape.

This sum­mer at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity, I con­ducted a soci­o­log­i­cal study to explore how Yale under­grad­u­ates under­stand date rape, and con­se­quently to dis­cern their feel­ings towards its legit­i­macy as a felony. I wanted to exam­ine stu­dents’ reac­tions to the term “date rape” and to see whether or not their per­cep­tions of date rape con­formed to cur­rent legal def­i­n­i­tions.

Con­necti­cut law states that “[a] per­son is guilty of sex­ual assault in the first degree when such per­son,” among other pos­si­ble offenses, “engages in sex­ual inter­course with another per­son and such other per­son is men­tally inca­pac­i­tated to the extent that such other per­son is unable to con­sent to such sex­ual inter­course” (Gen­eral Statutes of Con­necti­cut, Title 53a, Chap­ter 952)[1]. The law spec­i­fies that “‘men­tally inca­pac­i­tated’ means that a per­son is ren­dered tem­porar­ily inca­pable of apprais­ing or con­trol­ling such person’s con­duct owing to the influ­ence of a drug or intox­i­cat­ing sub­stance admin­is­tered to such per­son with­out such person’s con­sent, or owing to any other act com­mit­ted upon such per­son with­out such person’s con­sent.”[2]

…an intox­i­cated vic­tim of sex­ual assault is con­sid­ered more respon­si­ble for putting him or her­self in such a state and sit­u­a­tion, whereas an intox­i­cated aggres­sor is con­sid­ered less culpable…

Acquain­tance rape is the most com­mon type of rape com­mit­ted in the United States.[3] About a quar­ter of Amer­i­can women will be the vic­tim of rape at some point in their lives; female col­lege stu­dents are in “the high­est risk cat­e­gory for date rape.”[4] Amer­i­can col­lege cam­puses, which wit­ness a high level of binge drink­ing, face the unset­tling sta­tis­tic that alco­hol con­sump­tion is twice as likely as force to lead to lack of con­sent in a sex­ual encounter.[5]

Much of the con­tro­versy about date rape cen­ters on its def­i­n­i­tion. How do we define “con­sent”? As we see above, accord­ing to Con­necti­cut state law a per­son is not in a posi­tion to con­sent to sex­ual inter­course if he or she has been served drugs or alco­hol “with­out such person’s con­sent.” Does this qual­i­fi­ca­tion sug­gest that if a woman drinks to the point of black­ing out—after hav­ing bought drinks for her­self—and some­one has sex with her uncon­scious body, it is not con­sid­ered date rape? On the other end of the spec­trum: if a man or woman can­not legally give con­sent while even slightly intox­i­cated, is all drunken sex deemed date rape?

Many feel that the use of ver­bal as well as phys­i­cal force should be regarded as rape. As one cyn­i­cal soci­ol­o­gist points out, there are prob­lems with this pro­vi­sion: “If ver­bal coer­cion con­sti­tutes rape, then the word ‘rape’ expands to include any kind of sex a woman expe­ri­ences as neg­a­tive.”[6] Must con­sent always be ver­bal? After all, dif­fer­ent par­ties in a sex­ual encounter can inter­pret non-verbal signs dif­fer­ently. For instance, “a smile in response to being asked ‘do you have a con­dom?’ could indi­cate con­sent giv­ing in an estab­lished rela­tion­ship, but might indi­cate ner­vous appre­hen­sion on a first date.”[7] Can con­sent only be estab­lished after tak­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of the context?

I hoped, through this soci­o­log­i­cal study, to find out where Yalies stood on the mat­ter. I admin­is­tered a web-based sur­vey with the aid of Face­book. Yalies who were already in my net­work of “friends” were invited to par­tic­i­pate: 72 responded, all between the ages of 18 and 23.[8]

In the sur­vey, respon­dents were pre­sented with the fol­low­ing hypo­thet­i­cal setting:

“Sce­nario A. Two col­lege stu­dents, a boy and a girl, leave a party at which nei­ther has been drink­ing. The two return to the boy’s apart­ment in order to “hang out.” After spend­ing some time talk­ing, they begin heavy pet­ting. All cloth­ing is removed except under­gar­ments. The boy shows inter­est in sex­ual inter­course. The girl says “no,” and the boy responds by try­ing to per­suade her ver­bally. Although the girl con­tin­ues to show inter­est in the boy sex­u­ally, she explic­itly says that she is unin­ter­ested in hav­ing vagi­nal inter­course. He con­tin­ues to ini­ti­ate vagi­nal inter­course. The girl remains pas­sive and does not react, pos­i­tively or neg­a­tively. Would you con­sider this date rape?”

69.4% of respon­dents con­sid­ered Sce­nario A date rape, even with­out either party’s being intox­i­cated. Only 9.7% responded that it was not date rape, and 20.8% responded “depends” or “unsure.”

Respon­dents were then asked if they would con­sider Sce­nario A date rape if the boy forces the girl phys­i­cally to have sex­ual inter­course, at which point she gives up protest­ing. As soon as phys­i­cal force is put for­ward, 93.1% call the sce­nario date rape. I was sur­prised to see that even 2 respon­dents said it wasn’t date rape, and that 3 responded “depends” or “unsure.” Inter­est­ingly, the two who replied “no” and two of the three who replied “depends” or “unsure” were women. It is pos­si­ble that men are care­ful not to approve of phys­i­cal force in any sex­ual sce­nario, wary of the asso­ci­a­tions with vio­lent, or stranger, rape. Per­haps women would rather not admit to being phys­i­cally defen­sive in such a scenario.

Must con­sent always be ver­bal? After all, dif­fer­ent par­ties in a sex­ual encounter can inter­pret non-verbal signs differently.

When asked if they would con­sider Sce­nario A to be date rape if the girl has had 3–4 drinks at the party, 84.7% of the respon­dents replied “yes”—more than when she is sober (as the case should be, given the legal def­i­n­i­tion of date rape). Reas­sur­ingly, when asked if they would con­sider Sce­nario A to be date rape if the girl drinks to the point of black­ing out, 95.8% responded “yes”. Only one respon­dent (female) replied “no.” Research has shown that while men were more likely to blame women, and specif­i­cally their intox­i­ca­tion, for non­con­sen­sual sex­ual acts, women were more likely to blame mutual mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, men’s mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of sig­nals, and gen­eral soci­etal and male atti­tudes towards date rape.[9] My sur­vey respon­dents’ answers did not reflect this statistic.

Respon­dents were next asked to “con­sider the same cir­cum­stances as those of Sce­nario A, but both stu­dents have had 3–4 drinks at the party (from now on referred to as “Sce­nario B”). Would you con­sider this date rape?”

Now that both the boy and the girl in the sce­nario are equally intox­i­cated, the num­ber of respon­dents who replied “yes” drops sig­nif­i­cantly (77.8%). This per­cent­age is lower than when only the girl has had 3–4 drinks, sug­gest­ing that respon­dents believe that the boy’s drunk­en­ness excuses his behav­ior. Prior stud­ies have shown that an intox­i­cated vic­tim of sex­ual assault is con­sid­ered more respon­si­ble for putting him or her­self in such a state and sit­u­a­tion, whereas an intox­i­cated aggres­sor is con­sid­ered less cul­pa­ble, his or her behav­ior per­ceived as a result of the alcohol’s effects.[10] It is inter­est­ing to note that this ten­dency to view alco­hol as less­en­ing an assailant’s respon­si­bil­ity is not appar­ent when research respon­dents con­sid­ered other sex­ual crimes (such as stranger rape or unwanted touch­ing).[11]

Respon­dents were asked to con­sider a ver­sion of Sce­nario B wherein the girl never sug­gests that she is unin­ter­ested in sex­ual inter­course, but has had sev­eral drinks. The num­ber of respon­dents who decided that this sce­nario is date rape drops to 18.1%. This is the only time that the per­cent­age of respon­dents who believed the sce­nario to be date rape is less than the per­cent­age of those who believed it not to be (45.8%). How­ever, 36.1% responded “unsure” or “depends”—significantly higher than the per­cent­age of respon­dents who answered thus in any pre­vi­ous sce­nario. As one study has demonstrated—although most of us already know this too well—American col­lege stu­dents have appro­pri­ated “an all too com­mon assump­tion … that if noth­ing is said [before sex­ual inter­course] then con­sent must be implicit.”[12] Con­sid­er­ing this last sce­nario date rape would be the equiv­a­lent, for many respon­dents, of con­clud­ing that all drunken sex is date rape, which goes against their instincts and prac­ti­cal sex­ual expe­ri­ences.

Many of my respon­dents felt that being in a rela­tion­ship jus­ti­fied what they would oth­er­wise con­sider date rape. When told that the girl and boy are in a long-term rela­tion­ship, the num­ber of respon­dents who believed Sce­nario B to be date rape dropped to 48.6% (from 77.8% when the two were not in a rela­tion­ship). While some admit­ted to con­fu­sion (answer­ing “unsure” or “depends”), it is inter­est­ing that any­one would change their answer from the pre­vi­ous scenario.

When asked whether they approved of the term “date rape,” a major­ity answered that they did not (54.2%) and many replied “unsure.” This gen­eral ambiva­lence towards the term forces us to ques­tion its con­tin­ued use. Should a new phrase be coined to reflect a wider dis­tance between stranger rape and acquain­tance rape? The con­no­ta­tions attached to “date rape” could pos­si­bly pre­vent vic­tims from report­ing sex­ual assault for fear of peers’ judg­men­tal and triv­i­al­iz­ing reactions.

25.4% of my respon­dents said that they had endured a non-consensual sex­ual expe­ri­ence, a per­cent­age that includes nearly half (48.5%) of my female respon­dents (a higher per­cent­age of women than lit­er­a­ture on the sub­ject would sug­gest). This sta­tis­tic is unsur­pris­ing; those who have had per­sonal expe­ri­ences with date rape are more likely to be inter­ested in tak­ing a sur­vey on the topic.

…Amer­i­can col­lege stu­dents have appro­pri­ated “an all too com­mon assump­tion … that if noth­ing is said [before sex­ual inter­course] then con­sent must be implicit.”

Uneasi­ness about the term “date rape” appeared in the per­sonal nar­ra­tives shared by my respon­dents. A num­ber men­tioned an unwill­ing­ness to clas­sify an expe­ri­ence as “date rape.” Many dis­cussed their own respon­si­bil­ity in the sit­u­a­tion. One woman wrote, “I would never call it date rape, but I did feel that a boy inten­tion­ally got me very drunk, and we ended up hav­ing sex … it is not the type of choice I would nor­mally make, and I don’t even remem­ber mak­ing a choice. But, I don’t remem­ber say­ing no either and he def­i­nitely did not force him­self [on me].” Another woman wrote, “i was really drunk but i dont think it was rape because i didn’t explic­itly say no [sic]”. One of the few male respon­dents who iden­ti­fied him­self as the vic­tim of sex­ual assault spec­i­fied, “i was black­out and she was aggres­sive. I don’t remem­ber say­ing yes, but it happened.”

From the data, it appeared that most Yale stu­dents were rel­a­tively informed as to the legal def­i­n­i­tions of date rape. It is pos­si­ble that most respon­dents under­stood which answers were “expected” of them (Yalies are usu­ally pretty good at com­ing up with the “right” answer). I did find, how­ever, that stu­dents’ under­stand­ing of that def­i­n­i­tion did not trans­late to their inter­pre­ta­tion of the sce­nar­ios. When given con­crete exam­ples, their per­sonal instincts pre­vailed over their intel­lec­tual grasp of the concept.

Only through a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of young adults’ men­tal­ity towards date rape and sex­ual con­sent can we con­struct ade­quate pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures. Stu­dents’ inabil­ity to define sex­ual coer­cion or con­sent will only encour­age sex­ual assault on col­lege cam­puses.[13] Under­stand­ing why date rape car­ries inap­pro­pri­ately high social accep­tance reveals deeper forms of struc­tural sexism.

Whether or not one believes acquain­tance rape to be more or less “seri­ous” an affair than stranger rape, date rape has nev­er­the­less become a per­va­sive prob­lem. Rape, as defined by our judi­cial sys­tem, is most often com­mit­ted by an acquain­tance of the vic­tim. The offense is indeed, as one of my respon­dents defined it, “the least pros­e­cuted crime in America.”

Adriel Saporta is a junior in Yale Col­lege. She is the man­ag­ing edi­tor of Broad Recog­ni­tion.

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[1] http://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/pub/chap952.htm

[2] http://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/pub/chap952.htm

[3] John­son et al.

[4] Loiselle et al., 261

[5] Loiselle et al., 261

[6] Sawyer et al. 1998

[7] Humphreys et al., 307

[8] A full descrip­tion of the study par­tic­i­pants illu­mi­nates some of the study’s short­com­ings. Approx­i­mately equal num­bers of men and women com­pleted the sur­vey: 39 and 33, respec­tively. An over­whelm­ing major­ity of my respon­dents were het­ero­sex­ual; there were only six male homo­sex­ual and five bisex­ual (but no les­bian) respon­dents. A major­ity lost their vir­gin­ity between the ages of 18 and 21 (43.1%) and had been with 7 to 10 sex­ual part­ners (18.1%). Prior stud­ies have shown that the more sex­ual expe­ri­ence an indi­vid­ual has had, the less impor­tant he or she believes receiv­ing ver­bal con­sent to be[8]. Con­trary to pop­u­lar expec­ta­tions, the major­ity of female respon­dents had had 7+ part­ners (30.3%), while the major­ity of male respon­dents could boast only 3 part­ners. Only 18.1% of respon­dents were fra­ter­nity or soror­ity mem­bers, and 51.4% con­sumed alco­holic bev­er­ages 1–2 days per week. None of the sur­vey ques­tions were required: par­tic­i­pants were allowed to skip any and all ques­tions. Need­less to say, these fig­ures reveal more than a few lim­i­ta­tions in this study. My sam­ple size was rel­a­tively small: 72 stu­dents can­not pos­si­bly speak on behalf of all Yale stu­dents. This was a non-randomized sam­ple of con­ve­nience: those who took the sur­vey rep­re­sented those who are on Face­book, rel­a­tively com­fort­able talk­ing about their sex­u­al­ity, and inter­ested enough (and likely already well-versed) in the sub­ject of date rape. Not only was my sam­ple overly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of het­ero­sex­ual respon­dents, but my sur­vey also did not inquire as to respon­dents’ under­stand­ing of homo­sex­ual sce­nar­ios of date rape. In addi­tion, it is pos­si­ble that respon­dents were con­cerned that their iden­tity would be dis­cov­ered, which would have affected their responses.

[9] Gillen et al.

[10] Castello et al.

[11] Wild et al.

[12] Sawyer et al. 1998

[13] (Sawyer et al. 1998)