A T&S blogger posts about being sexually assaulted. Not rape, it didn’t go that far, deo gratia, but groping and pawing.

The comments have the usual mealy-mouthed pieties and the whole thing has an unseemly undercurrent of advocating for the death of unborn children, but ignore all that, the post is very much worth reading.

Here is what is most striking about the post. The assaulter apparently didn’t realize that his advances were unwelcome. The girl froze mentally when he first touched her and said nothing, did nothing. She even had something of a physical arousal response (this is not unusual, and for good reason–rape would be physically quite destructive without some of the concomitants of female arousal). As the bloggress admits, its very possible that the creep has and had no idea that he had trespassed on her body.

The liberal arts college solution is for careful and explicit consent at each advance in intimacy, preferably in writing. But as long as men want to seduce and women want to be seduced, from the foundation of the world to the end of mortality, that solution is risible. I did not ask my wife first when first I kissed her; it would have been a false note if I had.

In Miracle of Forgiveness, Spencer W. Kimball said

Even in a forced contact such as rape or incest, the injured one is greatly outraged. If she has not cooperated and contributed to the foul deed, she is of course in a more favorable position. There is no condemnation where there is no voluntary participation. It is better to die in defending one’s virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle.

Kimball’s counsel is a counsel of perfection. He does not actually suggest that the woman should resist unto death, but he suggests something akin to it, so in its way his counsel is a heroic counsel.

Heroism is too much to expect in the real world. Women may freeze. Men too–I have been put in a number of situations that called for heroism in a small way, and sometimes I have shone and sometimes I surprised myself with my own mewling cowardice.

So Kimball’s model is a model, something to aspire to, not a reality. But as a model I like it better than the victimhood model where women do not speak their minds or defend their persons. I like Kimball’s womanhood. She is Molly Pitcher, Betty Zane, Mary Murray Murdoch, Gianna Molla, Gabrielle Helms . . .

Let us continue to encourage ourselves to be strong, and have compassion when we are not.


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