What is rape? Sex without permission. But what if a woman wants to be raped? Is she to be denied her little foibles because someone says that that sort of thing is nasty?
Consider a woman, naked on your bed and holding out her arms to you, smiling. That's an easy one to answer -- she's willing.
Consider a second woman, curled up in a ball and screaming and saying go away. Again, an easy one to answer -- she's not willing.
But what about all the permutations between situation one and situation two? Where do you draw the line and say that is rape and that is not? Even harder, how do you define the situation where a woman wants to have sex but feels constrained to say no, against her own wishes. Is that rape?
The reason I'm waffling on about this sort of thing is because of a situation that arose at my house recently.
It was a Saturday morning and I was sitting down in the kitchen having a cup of coffee when in walked my sister, Penny, and one of our neighbours, Carly.
Carly was a quite attractive young woman, married, no children, reasonably intelligent, and seemed fit and healthy. The sort of woman I might try and get to know better if it wasn't for the husband attached to her.
As I was saying, the two of them wandered into the kitchen and Carly propped up a wall while Penny turned on the electric jug. They totally ignored me. I was just part of the furniture. Carly was in full complaint mode, never mind that the subject wasn't really fit for my ears.
She was dissecting her husband, rather brutally, I thought. Apparently he wasn't too good in bed. His performance, when she could persuade him to perform, was substandard and lately, Carly said, hadn't been able to perform at all. Carly was missing out on her bedtime antics and feeling frustrated.
Listening to her run on I suspected that her husband's cock had gone into retreat in sheer self-defence, but I may have been wronging her. Fortunately my sister didn't make any comments about her own sex life or I might have said something rude. A visitor, on the other hand, merited some politeness.
Penny finally got around to getting down a couple of mugs to make them some coffee, opened the fridge and then turned on me.
"Where's the milk, Andy?" she asked me, sounding exasperated.
"There isn't any," I said comfortably. "I used the last of it."
I could feel the chill coming from her but it didn't really worry me. I had my coffee.
"Why didn't you get more or at least warn me we were out," asked Penny.
"I did," I said gently. "Last night. You said you would pick some up on your way home."
For a wife you would accept you're at fault and rush out and get some milk. For a sister, you tell the truth and she can go get her own milk. I ignored the dirty look that came my way, and sipped my coffee.
Penny said something rude to me and then turned to Carly.
"I'll just run down to the corner shop and grab some milk. I'll only be five minutes. You stay here and entertain Andy for me."
Carly laughed and waved Penny on her way. Me, I just observed to myself that Penny had no concept of time. It would take her five minutes to get to the shop and five minutes to get back. Five minutes inside the shop, giving fifteen minutes she'd be gone, minimum. The way she natters to people it'd probably be closer to half an hour before she returned.
