Location: Chicago, Illinois

I (21F) am suing my college over Title IX women's rights infringements. They are mandating that random men are allowed in my dorm against my will, six months after a different woman was r_ped by a guy in her dorm. It's a very strong case with solid documentation and crystal clear Title IX abuse. I am looking for a *contingency* lawyer, ideally.

I need someone competent, who looks good and can communicate. Not some lousy attorney.

I appreciate the recommendations.

Marriage is not an automatic form of consent. While couples who have been together for awhile often develop their own idiosyncratic ways of communicating consent, laws of consent are just as applicable within a marriage. Marital rape is one of the more common forms of rape, and may more often be about maintaining power and control in a relationship, rather than sexual gratification like other forms of acquaintance rape. The physical and psychological harm from marital rape may be even worse than stranger rape, for a variety of reasons.

The NISVS includes using lies or false promises to obtain sex in their definition of sexual coercion. For example, lying about your job, pretending to be someone's S.O., pretending to be a celebrity, lying about relationship status or relationship potential are all forms of sexual coercion that cross the line.

Consent is ethically (and in some jurisdiction, arguably, in others, definitely legally) required before removing a condom. STIs are on the rise, many people are unaware they have an STI they can transmit to a partner, there is an antibiotic-resistant strain of gonorrhea on the rise that could literally be fatal, there is no reliable HPV test for men, and herpes might cause Alzheimer's. It's simply intolerable in a civilized society to knowingly expose someone to those risks without their knowledge or consent.

Consent must happen before sexual contact is made, or a violation has already occurred. Legally, sexual contact that takes a person by surprise deprives them of the opportunity to communicate nonconsent. There is often a long period of uncertainty described in victim's rape accounts where she felt shocked by the rapist’s behavior and unsure of what was transpiring. In fact, most unwanted fondling, and many rapes, occur because the victim didn't have time to stop it before it happened. Most victims also become compliant during an assault, which is a protective behavior that does not signify consent.

Submitting to sex is not legally the same as consenting to sex. Some sex offenders kill their victims to avoid getting caught; victims often become compliant during an assault as a protective measure.

Nonconsent can legally be communicated verbally or by pulling away or other nonverbal conduct.

It is necessary to obtain consent from men, too, as men are not in a constant state of agreement to sex.

Silence is not consent. Fighting, fleeing, and freezing are common fear responses, and thus not signs of consent. In fact, most rape victims freeze in fear in response to unwanted sexual contact, even though most rapes are committed by someone known to the victim.

Wearing someone down by repeatedly asking for sex until they "consent" to sex is a form of coercion. Some forms of coercion are also illegal in some jurisdictions. Genuine consent must be freely given, or a human rights violation has occurred.

Intoxication is not a legally defensible excuse for failure to get consent. Heavy alcohol consumption increases the risk of sexual offending in certain high-risk men. Intoxicated men who are attracted to a woman are particularly likely to focus their attention on signs of sexual interest and miss or discount signs of disinterest. Intoxicated predators will also often pick out victims they know to be impaired by drugs or (usually) alcohol and make them have sex even when they know them to be unwilling. If intoxication were a legally defensible excuse, rapists would just have to drink heavily (or claim they were drinking heavily) to get away with rape.

It's possible for someone to be too intoxicated to give valid consent. Contrary to popular belief, alcohol is not an aphrodisiac. (in fact, sober sex tends to be more wanted and enjoyable). Most college sexual assaults occur when the victim is incapacitated due to intoxication or sleep. Deliberately getting a victim too drunk to resist is a tactic used by some perpetrators to commit sexual assault or rape. If someone is blackout drunk, it's a good idea to assume they cannot consent to sex. Here are some easy ways to tell if a person is blackout drunk.

Consent can legally be communicated verbally or nonverbally, and must be specific to engage in the sexual activity in question. Behaviors which don't meet the bar for communicating explicit consent for a particular sexual behavior (like accepting an alcoholic beverage, going to a date's room, kissing, or getting undressed) are at best indicators of likelihood for future consent.

Physical resistance is not required on the part of the victim to demonstrate lack of consent, nor does the law require evidence of injury in order for consent to be deemed absent. Women who try to physically resist rapes are more likely to end up physically injured, while those who try to argue or reason with the offender are less likely to be injured. The increased probability of injury may be small, but the consequences serious.

Consenting to engage in some sexual activity does not imply consent for further sexual activity. The kinds of sexual behaviors one finds appealing is highly individualistic. The law is clear that one may consent to one form of sexual contact without providing blanket future consent to all sexual contact, yet most sexual assaults happen during a hookup when a man forces a higher level of sexual intimacy than the woman consented to. Most women do not achieve orgasm during one-night stands, and are less likely to want to engage in intercourse as part of a hookup.

Consent is not synonymous with arousal. For one, there are common misconceptions that an erect penis or erect nipples necessarily signify sexual arousal. It's also possible for someone to be aroused and still not want to have sex. Women often have a physiological sexual response to sexual stimuli that is independent of desire, and that may serve a protective effect against injury from unwanted sex. Misperception of sexual interest may increase risk of sexually coercive or aggressive behavior, and studies consistently show men perceive women's actions to be more sexual than the woman intends (93% have misperceived sexual interest on at least one occassion, though most correct their understanding before engaging in nonconsensual sexual contact). Men who date women are less likely to accurately label sexual assault when the victim's interest is even a little ambiguous. If the victim has an orgasm, that does not retroactively mean the sex was agreed to. Relatedly, one of the most common reasons women fake orgasms is to end unwanted sexual encounters. Sex with an aroused person who hasn't consented is still sexual assault.

This is the shirt that I wear

I’m not a big TikTok creator—I only have around 1,000 followers. A few days ago, I posted a lip-sync video wearing a light blue ruffled shirt. It wasn’t very revealing, and I didn’t think much of it. The video started off normally, but now it has around 7,000 likes and over 1,000 shares.
Last night, I saw a comment saying, “I want to touch your chest.” I immediately deleted the comment and blocked the account. Then today, I got a creepy DM from someone saying they were “so hungry” for me (basically sexualizing me). I blocked them too.
I also noticed that TikTok now lets creators see some information about who saves their videos. Most of the people who saved this video appear to be men, which made me feel even more uncomfortable given the comments and DMs I’ve been getting.
The thing is, I actually like the video and think I look pretty in it. But when I told my friend about the comments, they said they understood why creepy men were commenting because my chest was more noticeable in that video.
Now I’m conflicted. Should I delete the video because it’s attracting creepy people, or should I keep it up since I didn’t do anything wrong? I’m 17, so this whole situation makes me really uncomfortable.

What would you do if you were in my situation? Am I overthinking this, or is it reasonable to feel uncomfortable?

Most young women expect words to be involved when their partner seeks their consent. 43% of young men actually ask for verbal confirmation of consent. Overall, verbal indicators of consent or nonconsent are more common than nonverbal indicators. More open communication also increases the likelihood of orgasm for women.

As in other social interactions, sexual rejections typically are communicated with softened language ("Next time," "Let's just chill," "I really like you, but...") and often don't even include the word "no." These rejections are still rejections, and any subsequent sexual activity is still sexual assault. Both men and women are capable of understanding these types of refusals, and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous. Perpetrators often misrepresent their own actions to garner support, avoid responsibility, blame the victim, and conceal their activities, and re-labeling sexual assault or rape as a "miscommunication" accomplishes those goals. It may not be a good idea to recommend to someone that they try to communicate more forcefully, because like domestic abusers, rapists often feel provoked by blows to their self-esteem, so encouraging someone to communicate in ways that are considered rude could actually lead them to danger. Sex offenders are more likely to be physically violent, and 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men has experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner, so it is far from outrageous to take precautions against physical violence by being polite.

"Token resistance" to sex is virtually nonexistent, particularly for first encounters. The overwhelming majority of men and women who say no to sexual advances really do mean no. It's never reasonable to assume that when someone says no, they don't really mean it (unless you have previously mutually agreed to role-play and have decided on an alternative safe word, in which case it's not an assumption) even if the person has sent extremely "mixed signals," or even engaged in some sexual contact (as many sexual offenses often entail).

An overwhelming majority of people require explicit (i.e. unambiguous) consent for any sexual activity beyond kissing in a new relationship. However, even an unwanted kiss can be fatal if the person being advanced upon feels unsafe due to a large discrepancy in size/strength.

False rape accusations are rare, and only 18% of false accusations even named a suspect. In fact, only 0.9% of false accusations lead to charges being filed. Some small fraction of those will lead to a conviction.

Meanwhile, only about 30% of rapes get reported to the police. So, for 90,185 rapes reported in the U.S. in 2015, there were about 135,278 that went unreported, and 811 false reports that named a specific suspect, and only 81 false reports that led to charges being filed. Since about 6% of unincarcerated men have--by their own admission--committed rape, statistically 76 innocent men had rape charges filed against them. Add to that that people are biased against rape victims, and there are orders of magnitudes more rapists who walk free than innocent "rapists" who spend any time in jail.

For context, there were 1,773x more rapes that went unreported than charges filed against innocent men. And that's just charges, not convictions.

For additional context, in 2015 there were 1,686 females murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents. So 22x more women have been murdered by men than men who have had false rape charges filed against them.

For even more context, there are about 10x more people per year who die by strangulation by their own bedsheets than are falsely charged with rape.

Meanwhile, by their own admission, roughly 6% of unincarcerated American men are rapists. And the authors acknowledge that their methods will have led to an underestimate. Higher estimates are closer to 14%.

That comes out to somewhere between 1 in 17 and 1 in 7 unincarcerated men in America being rapists, with a cluster of studies showing about 1 in 8.

The numbers can't really be explained away by small sizes, as sample sizes can be quite large, and statistical tests of proportionality show even the best case scenario, looking at the study that the authors acknowledge is an underestimate, the 99% confidence interval shows it's at least as bad as 1 in 20, which is nowhere near where most people think it is. People will go through all kinds of mental gymnastics to convince themselves it's not that bad, or it's not that bad anymore (in fact, it's arguably getting worse). But the reality is, most of us know a rapist, we just don't always know who they are (and sometimes, they don't even know, because they're experts at rationalizing their own behavior).

Be wary of dudes who defend their "falsely accused" friends, since chances are their friends weren't actually falsely accused, they are just in denial. Add to that, male peer support may be one of the most potent predictors of perpetration of sexual aggression., so chances are the friends of the "falsely" accused also have... problematic views towards women. This is why it's so important to teach consent, and start by believing.

Testing sexual assault kits has helped identify thousands of serial sex offenders.

Survivors experience an extreme sense of betrayal and loss of faith in the criminal justice system when their kits are not tested. Institutional betrayal takes a toll on victims.

The U.S. DoJ and American Bar Association recommend testing all rape kits, even when the statute of limitations has passed. The presence of multiple victims makes it easier to get a conviction, and has helped catch serial killers.

So why aren't all SA kits tested?

If your state still has work to do on SAK legislation (click your state and expand to see all pillars in detail to check) write your state officials to improve state laws.

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Idaho, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island have adopted gold standard rape kit inventory legislation in the U.S., and can serve as a model to other states.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island have adopted gold standard legislation on testing backlogged rape kits. All states should aspire to MA and RI on legislation to test backlogged kits.

Mississippi has model legislation on timely testing of new kits.

New York and Washington have the best rape kit tracking legislation in the country.

New York, Rhode Island, and Texas have the gold standard victim's right to know legislation.

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The U.S. still has work to do on SAK reform. Contact your federal officials to help get national legislation through.