
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 30, 1993                   TAG: 9304300422
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SEXUAL ASSAULT BY ANY NAME

IN RESPONSE to Justin Askins' April 7 commentary, "Women should take their part of responsibility for `date rape' ": His solution is to relabel date rape as "understandable assault," a solution he presents using post-feminist language, quotes and a claim to be women's ally.

Allies like this, women - and all survivors of rape - don't need.

The following is his imagined encounter of "understandable assault." A young man "after spending an evening with a young woman, being invited to her apartment, finding her receptive to his initial sexual advances, undressing with her - has sex despite her decision at the last minute that she would rather not."

My question: Whose "last minute" and whose definition of "sex"?

The young woman and man may have enjoyed sex, such as kissing, the intimacy involved in undressing for each other and the excitement of arousing each other. Whatever the evening's sexual activity, the young woman at some point expressed her decision that she did not want to participate in other sexual activities. She set boundaries, and communicated them to her partner.

Sexuality and its pleasures are built on communication (intercourse's root meaning) and mutual understanding. In his scenario, the only attempt to reach "understanding" is when Askins asks modern law to establish the "substantial culpability" of the person who set boundaries which were violated: the rape victim. No mention is made of the young man inquiring about birth control, safe-sex measures (such as condoms), or his partner's other needs. Rape is rape is rape: forcing someone, male or female, to have sexual intercourse against his or her will. I would support new legal language for rape, if it would help more rape survivors achieve success in convicting their assailants in the courts. Askins' new term, "understandable assault," instead connotes the term "justifiable homicide," as in killing in self-defense.

Rape can be "understandable assault" only if one believes in the Victorian hydraulic model of sexuality and the patriarchal values that supported it, in which the valve to the brain cuts off when arousal pressure increases and men explode unless arousal is followed by orgasm. ABIGAIL E. ADAMS Visiting Lecturer of Anthropology HOLLINS COLLEGE

by CNB