One of the more common insults tossed at The Red Pill is that the community encourages rape. This very serious accusation generally stems from two principles: 1. Negging (a PUA term relating to playful/teasing banter with a woman in a way that slightly makes fun of her that a PUA would tell you is nothing more than treating women like normal people instead of lavishing them with complements and free drinks, while an anti-PUA would tell you the tactic is all about finding stupid girls with low self-esteem and berating them with insults until they feel miserable enough to fuck you) and 2. Last-Minute Resistance (another PUA term relating to many women’s propensity to freeze up when they’re about to have sex with a guy and verbally indicate uncertainty, that a PUA would tell you is mostly just token resistance done for plausible deniability so the woman feels like less of a slut, while an anti-PUA would tell you that it is a clear withdrawal of consent and any further physical contact of any kind by the man is rape.) While The Red Pill and the PUA community aren’t one and the same, there have been countless discussions about rape and consent, and how The Red Pill’s views on men, women, and relationships align (or interfere) with all of that. So a few hypotheticals for you guys follow. Because hypotheticals are fun.

Which of the following scenarios below are rape, and which are not? Why?

  1. I go to a bar. I meet a girl and we start talking. I buy her a few drinks. By the end of the night, we’ve each had three or four. We’re not drunk by any means. Maybe a bit buzzed. Both of our judgments are still pretty much intact, but the alcohol has lowered our inhibitions. Really, our connection isn’t that strong, the chemistry isn’t that great, and if we were stone-cold sober, neither one of us would want to have sex, but it’s getting late, neither one of us wants to go home alone, and with those drinks in our systems, we make the bad and uninhibited decision to go back to my place and have sex. In the morning, we’re both kind of awkwardly regretting it – her especially. She wasn’t out-of-it-drunk and knew what she was doing, but she had some alcohol in her system. If she were completely sober, she’d never have consented. Rape?

  2. I bring a girl home from a bar, we’re messing around, the clothes start to come off, and she freezes up and says, “I don’t know if we should be doing this.” I stop immediately and respond, “I need you to be clear with me. You don’t know? Or are you asking me to stop?” She pauses for an uncomfortable few seconds and won’t meet my eye, then replies, “…You don’t have to stop.” We proceed to have incredible sex that we both thoroughly enjoy. That’s about the farthest thing in the world from ‘enthusiastic consent.’ I didn’t mean to be pushy or coercive with that question, but I wanted clarification. Rape?

  3. Here’s a fun one based on a true story. So my wife and I had sex last night. It was late before we had our kid tucked into bed and everything cleaned up around the house. We have some out of town visitors coming and my wife wanted to vacuum, while I put away laundry and dishes. With our visitors arriving today, opportunities for sex over the next few days will be nonexistent. So I asked last night if she wanted to have sex, and she sighed in exasperation. “Really?” “Yes, really.” “But I’m so tired.” “Then say no.” “Fine, we can have sex.” “You know what? Let’s just forget it and get some sleep.” “No, then you’re going to pout all night and I don’t feel like dealing with it.” My wife often likes to act as though she doesn’t like me, doesn’t like sex, and she only deigns to have sex with me because putting up with my bad attitude annoys her. She then proceeds to enjoy the sex immensely. Anyway, that’s definitely not ‘enthusiastic consent.’ That was an outright, “The answer was no, but you’ve browbeaten and coerced me into a yes.” Did I rape my wife?

  4. I meet a girl at a professional function, and she asks where I work and what I do. I figure I’m never going to see this girl again, so I embellish a bit about my position in my company to impress her, and she gets really impressed. So impressed that we go back to my place and have some incredible sex. During pillow talk afterward, she starts asking if I can help her get a job in the industry, when I’m not actually in any position to be able to do that for her. I decide that the best thing to do is come clean, so I tell her that when we first met, I was really nervous and wanted to impress her, so I lied about my position. She’s seriously pissed off and declares that I lied to her to trick her into sex, and storms out of my house. Rape?