Thank YOU for writing it! It is a great piece that can highlight that discussion in more of an unbiased manner. (Being that it is fiction, but still parallels current events in a relevant way).

I can appreciate the biological aspect and the impact it has on the conversational disconnect between men and women’s definition of “rape,” and yet I think it’s also part nurture as well. Men and women are socialized in the way that men can freely have sex with tons of women and they are considered a bachelor or even revered, whereas women who do the same are branded as promiscuous. (This is outside of monogamous relationships).

Being intimate is an emotional experience for my husband more so than it is for me (Due to trauma maybe, but I’ve always been a little apathetic towards sex in general; I realize that’s rare). The way I show love is by acts of service and quality time (I’m referencing the 5 love languages here), and the way my husband (and many other men) connect to their partner is through physical intimacy. So while men may sometimes have the capacity to feel emotionally detached from sex with a friend, an acquaintance, or that chick at the bar, I do believe that they can also have a significant emotional attachment to it as well, maybe even more so than women at times. That might also contribute to the reason marital rape is less common than acquaintance rape- Sex can be a type of currency or means of power and control when the man and woman aren’t in a relationship, whereas it can be an act of love and connection in a marriage or committed partnership.

The classmate that raped me is married now and (if I really want to go there), I would argue that he doesn’t rape his wife. He was predatorial and boundary-pushing to women he wasn’t in a relationship with. That doesn’t make him any less of a rapist, but it is something to think about.

In discussing differences between men and women and how they view sex and love in relationships, I often think about common fights in marriages:

“You don’t do enough work around the house” is a common argument for women.

“We never have sex anymore” is a common argument for men.

At the end of the day, it’s not really about those things- what they are really saying is “You aren’t showing me that you love me the way I need to be loved.”

So I’d be careful in assuming that men don’t understand or have the emotional connection to sex as much as women do, if that makes sense.

Also, I realize this is the farthest thing from a “one size fits all” situation, and I only referenced heterosexual relationships because that’s what I have experience with.

Hopefully that was a semi-coherent response- it’s 1 a.m.! Thanks in advance for reading.