I Never Called It Rape: The Ms. Report on Recognizing, Fighting, and Surviving Date and Acquaintance Rape

by Robin Warshaw

Throughout the stories both Bowman and Washington told, the men seemed to assume that they were entitled to sex, that the women they were with were inconsequential, and that resistance was to be ignored.

As to women’s “complicity,” when you drink and get drunk, you are responsible for what happens when you throw up or are too sick to go to work. In our society, though, responsibility for crime falls on those who commit it. Women don’t “deserve” rape because they are intoxicated, but if they drive drunk and injure or kill someone, they are guilty of a crime. Likewise, men who are drunk when they rape are legally responsible for the crime of hurting someone else, even if she was drunk, too.

But not knowing the right label for an experience doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Clearly, the majority felt abused, even if they didn’t know the precise legal term for it. Indeed, the title of this book came from my interviews with women who, again and again, told me they knew something bad had happened to them, but they didn’t call it rape because it had happened with someone they knew.

Sex is pleasurable. Isn’t that exactly why acquaintance rape and date rape are so disturbing? They imprint violence, forced contact, and the denial of personal rights onto social and sexual spheres that ought to be sources of relaxed playfulness, sensuality, reciprocated desire, enjoyment, and caring.