Date rape fallacies: can there be purely voluntary acts?

Like many others, I have been puzzled by the theory and practice of date rape. When I first heard mention of date rape a few years back, I was a bit surprised that such a phenomenon had become a major problem. But my surprise quickly wore off as I reflected that this was the sort of thing that was bound to happen, given society's widespread moral subjectivism and consequently permissive sexual code.

But then I was surprised again when I read about astonishingly high rates of date rape on college campuses. In some places 25 to 50 percent of all undergraduate females had been victims of date rape. Now I was willing to believe (in fact I was eager to believe) that young men in college were not as gentlemanly as they were back in the days when I was alive. Yet I found it hard to believe they had become quite that bad.

My credulity was strained even more when I read the explanations for these high numbers given by critics of date rape research. According to the critics, these astonishing figures are a function not of a new kind of behavior among college men but of a new definition of rape among researchers. While "rape" used to mean coerced, nonconsensual sex, it now also includes having sex when you'd really rather not but you've been talked into it by a partner who has utilized any of a large number of items in the seducer's classical bag of tricks, e.g., flattery, promises, arguments, appeals to pity, reminders of past promises, threats to break off the relationship, etc. In other words, rape occurs even when consent is given, provided this consent is influenced by external pressure and is not simply the result of internal desire.

I found it difficult to believe that academic researchers could be as intellectually dishonest as the critics alleged. I suspected these critics were antifeminist right-wingers who were making it all up.

But of course it really isn't a matter of dishonesty; rather it's a matter of redefinition. The date-rape theorists are saying: "Hitherto the world has had an inadequate conception of rape, for that conception has not taken into consideration the full range of diminished consent that can be involved in a sexual act. Nor has it recognized that these lesser forms of involuntariness differ in degree only, not in kind, from the more extreme form involved in the classical conception of rape."

The theorists then note that the classical definition of rape was created by men, that is, by people who are inevitably insensitive to the many varieties of sexual involuntariness that may be experienced by women. By contrast, the new expanded and improved definition is created by women. The old definition defined the crime from the point of view of the perpetrator, the new from the point of view of the victim.

When I had got this far in my reflections I had a moment of illumination. I saw the point, and I thought the point was valid--even though I continue to be troubled by the use of the word "rape" to cover the whole range of events. For no matter how true the new feminist analysis might be, there still remains a world of difference between a smooth talker on the one hand and a man holding a knife to your throat on the other. Calling them both rapists may be a fine way of highlighting the malignity of the former, but it is also a way of trivializing the criminality of the latter. Nonetheless, I am willing to grant that the date-rape theorists have made an important discovery.

But once we start noting degrees of involuntariness, where do we stop? When is consent to a sexual act fully voluntary? For that matter, when is consent to any act fully voluntary? How many moments per day do you do purely and simply what you want to do--not what your spouse would like you to do, or your children, or your boss, or your co-workers, or the police officer, or the state legislature? Not many moments, I'd guess. Of course when we comply with the wishes of these others, we are often complying more or less with our own wishes. Our actions in these cases have a double source: internal inclination plus external pressure. But we need both; for when the latter is absent, the former is usually not strong enough to compel us to action.

I won't say there is no such thing as a purely 100-percent voluntary action, just as I won't say there is no such thing as a purely 100-percent altruistic action. If such deeds exist, they are the rarest things in the world. Yet to recognize that altruism is almost always alloyed with egoism is not to deny that there are altruistic acts and persons; nor is it to deny that there are fundamental differences between Mother Teresa and Stalin. Similarly, to recognize that voluntariness is almost always mixed with elements of involuntariness is not to deny that there is a real and extremely important distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions. Meeting one's contractual obligations may contain elements of the involuntary, but it is still radically different from being a slave or a prisoner.

The ideal of the purely voluntary sex act is part and parcel of the contemporary liberal belief that actions are morally sound only when they arise from the free choice of autonomous individuals. According to this view, if I allow others to impose their values or preferences upon me, I am not truly autonomous; my choices are not really my choices; hence my actions are morally defective.

But this quest for autonomy is a will o' the wisp, for human beings are essentially incapable of being purely autonomous. Humans are social beings all the way down; and to be a member of society is to be part of a system of mutual controls; hence it is to be something less than fully autonomous. At bottom, then, the desire for autonomy is the desire to live outside of society. As Aristotle said a long time ago, the one who lives outside society is either below human nature or above it, either a beast or a god.

So let's have one-and-a-half rousing cheers for the feminists exploring the many degrees of involuntariness involved in sex. But to the degree they get their effort mixed up with the impossible ideal of perfect autonomy and pure voluntariness, they are in grave danger of giving their important work the aspect of absurdity.