By David Futrelle
If you want to know how Men’s Rights Activists are adjusting to the #MeToo era, well, over on A Voice for Men they’re currently getting mad about a ten-year-old Scottish law that makes it illegal to rape someone when they’re asleep.
In a post originally published on Rebel Priest — a reactionary British site filled with denunciations of such things as “transgenderism,” diversity,and “Cultural Marxism” — UK commercial law professor and former UKIP candidate Andrew Tettenborn laments that in 2009 the “oh so woke” Scottish government passed a rape law that forbid men and women from having sex with someone unable to give consent — including (as one might imagine) people who are literally asleep.
“If you want to have sex with your wife,” Tettenborn complains, “you must always thoroughly wake her up first.”
The editors at AVFM see this law as so self-evidently outrageous that they used this bit of his post as a pull quote:
As Tettenborn sees it, this law — and a recent appeals court decision upholding the whole no-sex-with-sleeping-people part of it — basically
licenses the law in Scotland to poke its nose into what one might reasonably think were the entirely unobjectionable bedroom practices of a fair number of people up and down North Britain.
Not only does he see literally penetrating someone who’s asleep to not be rape; he also seems to think it’s sort of sweet and romantic.
Imagine a long-standing and loving couple in bed: as often happens, she wakes up in the middle of the night with him (again putting matters delicately) inside her, and thereafter both take pleasure in the whole event.
Well, yes, it’s possible that the woman in question might enjoy it. It’s also possible that she will feel completely violated by someone literally penetrating her body in her sleep. The point of the law is that there’s no way to know if she consents because PEOPLE WHO ARE ASLEEP CANNOT BY DEFINITION GIVE CONSENT. BECAUSE THEY ARE ASLEEP.
When you literally cannot know if someone wants to have sex or not, it’s always a good idea to err on the side of NOT RAPING THEM.
It’s also against the law to get people to sign legal documents in their sleep by putting a pen in their hand and moving it around with your hand.
But in Tettenborn’s view, the rights of a man who wants to penetrate his sleeping wife because, hey, she might be into it, outweighs the right of a woman to not have someone put penises or anything else in her while she’s asleep.
Tettenborn is also worried that these terrible women who don’t want to be penetrated in their sleep — or when they’re blackout drunk — could turn around and “blackmail” their husbands or boyfriends by … reporting a rape as a rape.
The possibilities it opens up for blackmail by a jilted or dissatisfied partner are frightening: however much both parties may have previously enjoyed somnolent or drunken sex, she can now put entirely unfair pressure on him and say that if he doesn’t do as she wants she will make a rape complaint, with all the official sympathy and credulousness of the feminist movement behind her, and correspondingly painful consequences for him.
Scotland has a population of 5.4 million. There were 107 rape convictions in 2017-2018. Less than half of all rape cases brought to court in Scotland lead to conviction; this is the lowest conviction rate for any crime. (The average acquittal rate for all crimes in Scotland is 6%.)
So yes, clearly the most pressing rape issue in Scotland today is “blackmail” by some capricious women who suddenly decides she doesn’t like her husband sticking his dick in her while she’s asleep.
Naturally, the comments on AVFM were as bad as the post itself.
“I suppose that Scottish men should stop sleeping in the same bed with their wives,” whined someone called 2cyer.
they probably sexually assault them several times a night by accident, under the definitions that feminists come up with, ipso facto.
“These expanded definitions and all encompassing laws only ever serve to control men interestingly,” complained Andrew0007. “As if the aim of feminism is a totalitarian state where men are strictly and rigidly controlled by … women.”
Andrew literally could not be more wrong. In fact, the 2009 law that outlawed sleep sex was also the first law in Scotland to recognize that men can be victims of rape.
Men’s Rights activists claim to care about the rights of male rape victims. But on AVFM, at least, they’re apparently much more concerned about the rights of men who somehow find it impossible to wait until a woman is awake before they try to have sex with her.
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Scot (by adoption) and independence supported here. ‘North Britain’ was a very fashionable name in the 18th century among the Scottish upper classes that had pushed through the Act of Union in 1707. They pretty much wanted to erase their Scottishness and assimilate Scotland into England. Fortunately they failed.
The name survived in the North British Railway, one of two* competing Scottish railway companies, which existed from 1844 until the creation of the government-owned British Rail in 1948. The tendency to undervalue Scottish culture continues in opponents of independence to this day.
* The other was the Caledonian Railway, whose short-distance ferry operation survived after nationalization to become half of the Scottish ferry company Caledonian MacBrayne, which still operates most of the ferry routes in the Hebrides and Firth of Clyde.
North Britain? So I presume the author is posting from South Canada then.
Anyway, this is depressing as fuck and all too familiar. I used to provide advice on a relationship advice subreddit, and stopped for two reason – 1 became a full time youth counsellor so needed a break from that, and 2- how often a woman would say “I was raped by my partner in her sleep” to be told “No you weren’t. That’s not rape”
And the arguments were always the same, either
“Well, I wouldn’t have minded if you did it to me, therefore I don’t see what your problem is”
or
“Are you sure you didn’t consent?”
These guys, completely random guys, would be absolutely insistent on it, keeping at it for days, insisting that sleep rape was consensual sex and going into hysterics when anyone said otherwise.
Reason #842375 I am happy to be asexual AND aromantic.
I don’t need sex and I don’t need pair bonding. Bullet dodged!
@Alex, I’m so sorry about what he did to you and what you experienced.
@Alex
Oh gods, that is a nightmare. I am so sorry, and glad you got away from that bastard.
@WWTH
So IDK what goes on in Youtube’s suggestion algorithms exactly, but I have it from inside sources that Google has had a fascist problem for a while – like, alt-right aligned employees have been making things hard for everyone else, and especially for minority employees. Some people have left the company just because of that. IDK how high up it goes, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the resistance to fixing Youtube came from far-right elements inside the company.
Alex, I’m so sorry for your experiences with your ex. This Tettenborn person and his supporters can go chew on dead rats. (Hope that doesn’t violate the comments policy.)
*CONTENT WARNING* for describing my experiences with sleep rape.
Buckle up, kids, this’ll be a long one.
I used to sleep very heavily* in my 20s and this happened to me twice. It was horrible both times but one I consider rape and the other I don’t. Why? It was what happened after that made the difference for me.
The first time was with a boyfriend I’d been seeing for a couple of weeks. When I woke up in the middle of him fucking me, I got upset and started crying. He didn’t believe I’d been asleep. I struggled and begged him to stop, which he didn’t until he finished. It left me angry and bruised but, TBH, I didn’t even see this as rape until the early 2000s even though it was a hellish experience.
The second time was with a one night stand. When I woke up in the middle of him fucking me, I got upset and started crying. This guy did believe me when I told him I’d been asleep until that moment. He immediately stopped what he was doing because he was pretty freaked out himself, but he held me and comforted me until we were both calmed down. I felt validated and my fear and bewilderment were mitigated, so we went back to sleep and had some more nice sex in the morning after the guy made *very* sure I was really awake. I never saw him again, but I never forgot him!
I started warning sex partners after that and it thankfully never happened again.
@Wetherby – In both of my experiences, I was apparently willing and wet before the penetration commenced, but I was also still sound asleep and unable to consent. Which is why this is really tripping my trigger! Also, lube in the bedside table is a thing.
*I’d also been known to answer my phone and have pretty much normal conversations that I never remembered. An in-person conversation, too, once.
@JM, your experience reminds me of the study that showed people will admit to sexually assaulting others if you don’t use the terms sexual assault or rape, but merely describe what they did. Too many people still think it’s only rape if the attacker matches the “masked man with a knife in the bushes” stereotype.
There is a parasomnia, I think it’s the REM one, that can lead to people acting out in their sleep. I’m told (by various partners) I can tribadize a leg while still out like a light. If someone thought that was concent to sex and I woke up being penetrated… Eww, that’s all I’ve got to say about it.
@Alex: I’m so sorry you went through that. My ex used to do the same thing to me.
He also body shamed me when doing this, because whenever I woke up, his excuse was that he had to do it while I was asleep with the lights off. He claimed I was “too overweight” to do it any other way than in the dark, half asleep. Doctors, everyone else said my weight was fine. I developed an eating disorder over this.
I can’t believe I put up with that crap for so long. But he was so good at manipulating…
The attitude appears to be that getting the other person turned on and into it is for these people a tediously necessary chore in order to get to make use of the other person’s body, rather than being with another person wanting you as well being rather the principle point of the exercise. Hence the outrage that you have to go to all trouble of still bothering about someone’s wishes, feelings and desires even when you have already done them the huge favour of marrying them just so you didn’t have to.
(NB Just in case, for careless readers: the above is a speculative description of the incel mindset as described in the above article, not my own views.)
That’s a very nice hypothetical scenario this person described. I’m sure both imaginary people had a ton of fun. Here’s another one: A couple is lying in bed. The man wants to have sex but the woman doesn’t. He waits until she falls asleep and penetrates her while she’s unconscious.
This is rape.
“How am I supposed to know the difference?” fucking ask. Ask while she’s awake. “I’d like to do this, are you okay with it?”. Same as anything else that has to do with sex, make sure the other person is into it beforehand. You can’t go around playing lotto with something as emotionally charged and personal as sex unless you’re fine with the possibility of seriously hurting your partner’s feelings.
But that kills the mood! /s
(This is an actual argument an ex made. Any discussion of likes, dislikes, etc. kills the “spontaneity” and thus the mood. ?)
Kupo – One of my very favorite partners was the one with whom I had the most “mood killing” discussions. Before, during, after; we talked about the sex we had a LOT. And we had a lot of sex! We both enjoyed the talking and the sexing.
If talking about what kind of sex you want to have with someone is a mood killer, I think you must be doing it wrong.
It would most certainly spoil an assault, though, which is likely why these guys hate the idea so much.
Personally, I would that a lot of the ‘non-spontaneity’ would also be considered ‘foreplay’.
(Me, I’m mostly asexual but not aromantic. At least as far as I can tell. I’m human; it’s complicated.)
@Yutolia:
There was a session on the radio this morning about the trial starting up against Keith Raniere of the sex cult/’self help group’ NXIVM, which included talking to people who had been in that and other cults, and some of the discussion about how people get sucked into them.
It came to mind (and was almost said in the show) that when you get right down to it, the whole ‘I’m too smart to fall for that sort of thing’ is:
A) beside the point, because by the time you realize it actually is that sort of thing you’ve probably already been inside for a while, because groups like that almost never reveal themselves to the new marks (this part was actively mentioned in the discussion);
B) wrong, because smart people are often also better at coming up with justifications for why they’re still going along with it after things changed;
C) actively contributing to the problem, because it’s still victim-blaming bullshit at one remove.
Which is a long way to say that from everything I’ve learned about this, ‘I can’t believe I put up with that crap for so long’ is one of those things that is much easier to say after the nightmare is over.
Thanks for the validation of my immense horror with my ex, y’all, honestly. He did say I was oversensitive, and told all my former friends that I was hysterical and crazy because I misinterpreted him being playful and spontaneous in bed.
Thankfully, that’s a good while back. And I have people who believe me now. But it’s really hard to get people to hear you as a man who was a victim of spousal rape. It really is. It’s why I lean into “Believe Survivors,” because being a victim knows no gender.
I think there’s a reason that “sleeping with someone” is a euphemism for having sex; it’s one of the most intimate things you can do with someone outside of sex. It requires a fair bit of trust to do in someone else’s presence because sleep is a state of vulnerability that is recognized throughout the animal kingdom.
How many movies, books, TV shows, etc. have scenes with people in situations where they feel they need one of their group to keep watch while others sleep? I mean, hell, we all had to take our turn in basic training getting up in the middle of the night to do our two-hour night watch shift!
So, yeah. Raping someone in their sleep isn’t playful or spontaneous, it’s fucked up.
You can only have one or the other as of now. You can either protect men from false allegations by not having any laws on rape, or you can protect women from rape, by having laws on it. Women are much, much, much, much more likely to be raped than men are to have some bitch lie about it. Who is in greater, more immediate danger? What will help the most people? What will keep morals in check? Anti-rape laws. If they’re truly worried about men in that regard, press to have laws made that help protect them, but don’t call to take away the safety nets of women just because you can’t understand why we wouldn’t want someone sticking their dick in us while we’re sleeping.