Rape between women

It does happen, of course. This one is particularly upsetting since it is so violent.

Assistant District Attorney Susan J. Loehn said the 20-year-old victim, who is a Smith College student as is Kendall, met the two defendants in downtown Northampton and went to their 104 South St. apartment.

The woman went there voluntarily, despite the fact she had obtained a restraining order against Klobertanz in August, according to Loehn and police reports. The incidents took place Friday night into Saturday morning, police said.

The three had "several bottles of champagne" and then went to a bedroom where the three engaged in consensual sex, according to Loehn and police reports. During the encounter, the victim was placed in handcuffs, although she did not remember how, police reports state. After Kendall slapped her face, the victim told the two she wanted to stop, police said.

They refused, and Kendall cut her abdomen and other areas of her body with a knife and raped her while Klobertanz held her legs, police said.

Kendall has no criminal record, while Klobertanz has a pending assault and battery charge in Rhode Island, Loehn said.

I know I've written before on here about how rape is easy enough to understand if we understand how dominance and aggressiveness is eroticized for men to an unholy degree. But I want it to be clear that I know these things are complex. Women are fully capable of getting off on violence, and that women tend to do so much, much less often means mostly that we are disempowered to such a degree that women rarely see themselves as violently aggressive sexual subjects. But of course there are a few who will.

There is no easy solution to the problem of rape. Still, I tend to think that deconstructing gender roles is an important step. Male-aggressive vs. female-passive forms of understanding make violent power plays in sex inevitable. That women will wear the mantle of aggression at times does not change this, since it's the end result of the eroticization of fear and violence.

I have a hard time really articulating this, because I don't really have a problem with consensual power plays in bed like BDSM, though I don't actually find that stuff really erotic. But I don't think consent is really that hard a concept for anyone to figure out. I strongly disagree with the notion that all that happens is that people take the same fantasies of dominance out of the consent realm and into actual violence. I think people know very damn well where the boundary is.

Why do I think this? Board games, video games, and card games. People have no problem distinguishing between the fake but fun aggression behind a game of Monopoly or Spades or whatever. Sure, there are occasional times when people cross the line, but that's usually because they are hiding their very real aggression behind the game. I think you are seeing the same thing with people who pretend not to know where sex games end and rape begins.

Via Steve Gilliard.