The “Nice Guy” Fallacy

Massive content warning: If you yourself are a survivor of sexual assault, you have our permission to skip this piece. It’s up to you. But please pass it along. 

The essay that follows contains descriptions of sexual assault. 

Rape and sexual assault can happen to anyone regardless of gender identity or gender presentation. Likewise, issues of consent can apply to anyone.  Unfortunately, most information about rape and sexual assault is presented in a very binary way–men are perpetrators, women are victims. The first person perspective of this story may fit that traditional mold but it is not the only story.

Sexual assault survivor resources:
In the US:  RAINN (Rape Abuse Incest National Network)  or call 800.656.HOPE (4673)
Outside the US, find resources by country in this PDF.

A Nice Guy

I like orange juice a lot. Especially orange juice with lots of pulp in it. I don’t like the dark. Never have–my night vision has always been awful. So when I used to stay out too late, as college kids sometimes do, I appreciated it when someone would offer to walk home with me, even if the entire route was well lit. Even if the sun was beginning to rise. So it would seem to make sense, on this particular night, that I’d appreciate the company on the walk home. Especially since it included an offer to buy me a carton of the orange juice I liked if I agreed to take the slightly longer route. The route that was a little darker; that had fewer people to run into along the way.

He was a nice guy. And he hadn’t given me any reason to think he might not be. He often walked me home. There was always Diet Coke in the fridge, even though he hated it. Because our friend M wouldn’t drink any other soda, and all they sold on campus was Pepsi.

And he remembered things. There was a night that a few of us were hanging out and hungry. It was too late to get a pizza, and as we rummaged through the kitchen, M volunteered to make spaghetti carbonara. All the ingredients were there. He looked at M like she was from another planet. He cocked his head in my direction and said “You can’t make spaghetti carbonara. It has bacon in it. She can’t eat it.” He reminded M that bacon wasn’t kosher while rummaging around to find the rest of the ingredients for alfredo sauce. 

Nice guys do those things. Nice guys walk you home when it’s dark. They keep a couple of cans of soda around. They remember your favorite pizza topping is mushrooms.

Nice guys don’t rape you. But I guess even when they do, they are still considerate enough to walk you home afterwards. 

A Normal Night

The night started like many others. I went over to his apartment with M to play video games. Which we did for about eight hours. In the course of those eight hours, I drank two 12-ounce bottles of beer. We ate pizza. We trash talked. And the night ended like many others. He walked me home. It was the middle part that was different. And I guess the end-part was a bit different. Other times when he walked me home, I didn’t have bits of his blood and skin under my fingernails.

Why did I walk home with him? Why did he offer? And why did I accept?

It’s hard to say. Parts of the evening are a blur. Parts are crystal-clear. There are things I said “yes” to. And things I might have said yes to if he’d asked. But what about “no?” I said “no” a lot that night. 

I don’t know how to talk about that night. In all the therapy, in all the talking, in all the times I’ve told the story, no one has ever sat down with me and talked about how to navigate this story that I have to tell over and over and over again, to different people in my life. To friends, lovers, doctors, therapists. Time and again I have to relive that night. 

Pizza and Video Games

The night started simply enough. M and I walked over. We picked up a pizza from the place on the ground floor of his building. Then the three of us watched the movie Intersection. I drank some beer. It was Heineken–it’s funny the small details that stand out. We played video games. I lost. Over, and over and over again. M left. There were more games. There was a second beer. I lost more games. The scores got closer and closer. I won a game. I celebrated the victory a little. He got angry. He’s a lot bigger than me. There was kissing. That was consensual. There was touching. Over clothes. Under clothes. Clothes stayed on. It was okay with clothes on. It was okay. I said yes. I remember what I was wearing. Even my underwear. So, so vivid, the details about my clothes.

I believed in the power of “no.” That if I said “no,” he would stop. But I also knew how to do that dissociation thing. Where you get pestered and nagged again and again for long enough that you finally say yes to something just to make it stop sooner. I was preparing for that. It felt like we were headed in that direction. That would have been okay. Not good. But okay.

He was still angry. So, so angry. Because he’d lost the game? Don’t know. He began pushing for more. The order of things gets blurry. I know all of the pieces, I just can’t necessarily read the map. He held me against the back of the couch. He left bruises on my shoulder with his hand. The kisses were more forceful. I didn’t want to anymore. His hand was in my pants. I know he yanked them off at some point. He left my socks on. I know he emptied his pockets. There was a knife. Condoms. Neither of which he used. But they were both there.

Things Turned

There’s a moment in there… when things turned. When I realized I couldn’t fight to stop what was going to happen but I had to fight to survive. To survive as safely as I could. If he could do this, what else was he capable of? How much did he want to hurt me? What was happening to my mind is called dissociation. I could feel myself separate into parts. My physical body was present in that room, on that bed. I could feel everything. But it was as if I was watching what happened to me. Like two shadows in the dark.

The dissociation followed me after he was done. It’s not like I’d never hooked up before. Never gone to the bathroom to clean up afterwards before. I’d done the “walk of shame” but I’d also experienced the post-coital promenade, too. The one where you want to be seen coming back from someone else’s place in last night’s clothes. This wasn’t either of those. I wanted to climb into my own bed and sleep. I wanted to boil my own skin off. To hide away and never come out again. I don’t remember if he said anything. I went to the bathroom. My fingernails were bloody. It stung. 

I remember the color of the wall, the color of the towels. I remember the container of soaps. And the Mary Englebright art. I tried to wipe off the stickiness. I didn’t know how to clean it up. I’d never done that before. I didn’t cry. I just did my best to wipe things off so I could find my clothes and go home. 

After cleaning up the best I could, I retrieved my clothes and got dressed. I drank some water. I mentioned that I had a class later that morning and wanted to take a nap before class. He wanted to get cigarettes, he said. He’d walk me home, he said, because it was still mostly dark. But could we go to 7-11? He offered orange juice. The kind with pulp. We walked up Pennsylvania Avenue. Turned right and walked down 24th street. I never go that way. I walk around Washington Circle and down 23rd, then cross over and walk up I Street. We went his way. Pennsylvania to 24th. Stop at 7-11. Across the plaza. Right on 23rd, cross at H street, and walk up H until we got to my building. I let myself in, using my key card. He was on the other side of the glass door. 

That was about 25 years ago. 

Then and Now

I have told my story a lot since then. Each telling is different, and each response is  different. But it was only recently that someone said: why did he walk you home? And I didn’t have an answer. I’d never wondered about that. Why did he walk me home? I know why a person usually walks someone home. It’s to keep them safe. 

Maybe he thought that if he walked me home then he was a nice guy. If he bought me orange juice then he was a nice guy. If we didn’t say the word “rape” then he was a nice guy. And nice guys don’t rape. So that would mean he didn’t either.

There are moments when I really do want to commit acts of violence against him. But most of the time I realize that there’s no point to that. That living my life; that existing and surviving is a bigger win than any kind of revenge might be. Because I know he doesn’t think of that night the way I do. He doesn’t think he did anything wrong. And he was enraged by the fact that I implied that what happened between us that night was anything but consensual. I don’t know how the tears, the fighting, the “no” repeated again and again, the “please stop,” the repeated requests for a condom…

How is it possible that none of that was enough to stop him? That it wasn’t enough, even in hindsight to realize what he’d done? He didn’t. And when he found out what I had said, he did his best to call me a liar. 

This is my fourth article about sexual assault. I keep writing about it because there keeps being more for me to say .Partly it’s for the voices that can’t speak up. Sometimes it’s because they aren’t ready or aren’t able to do it. Sometimes it’s because they’re dead. When I was working on the second and third sexual assault pieces, I had to read far too many articles that made excuses. And far too many articles that examined how college-aged men didn’t think what they were doing was rape or coersion.

The “Nice Guy” Fallacy

So I keep writing, because I’ve had enough of the nice guy fallacy. And I’ve had enough of the culture that enables it. Enough of phrases like “legitimate rape.” And Roger Rivard with his “some girls rape easy” in reference to how people change their minds the morning after. If we’re going to silence voices, how about we start with people who don’t have any empathy or insight into what they’re talking about”? 

And can we not start enabling kids quite so early? We ooh and ahh and tell boys how cute and charming it is when they ‘re three or four or five years old and they kiss girls without asking. When I was writing “Changing the Conversation,” my friend K reminded me about what happened back in first or second grade, when her daughter had reported that boys had been trying to lift her skirt and touch her butt. “Boys will be boys” was the excuse. And a forced apology. But nothing that would change behavior. And also nothing that would tell that girl: “We hear you, we trust you, we believe you.” Nothing that would tell those nice boys: ”These are healthier ways of telling her that you like her.” 

We know what “nice” means. Polite. Well mannered. Considerate. But fucking come on already… consider what it means when she says “no.” Because that “no” actually means something. Not “maybe.” Not “keep asking until I give in because I’m tired of hearing you ask.” Not mentally bargaining in my head that I can give in now and it will buy me a couple of weeks where I don’t have to give in. Or thinking “When did I last have my period (for real or not) so that I could avoid sex.” I know it goes without saying but a guy who doesn’t stop after all that probably isn’t that goddamn nice.

Follow the Rules… or Else

We put so much emphasis on whether the victims, the survivors, follow the rules. Don’t dress or behave in a provocative way. Don’t drink too much. Better yet, don’t drink at all. Don’t go alone. Don’t leave any drinks unattended. When you get raped and report it to the police, be prepared to have every aspect of your life, every choice called into question. Don’t bathe or shower. Don’t change your clothes. And we can do all these things, and still the rape kits sit, untested for years and years. And medical care after a sexual assault still costs a victim or survivor money. Not just the ongoing therapy that may be involved, but the immediate, emergency aftercare.

When can we, as a society, scrutinize the fact that there need to be so many rules of this kind in the first place?

I followed the rules. But what happened that night is something I’m still expected to explain or defend. I have to be able to tell you why I deserved not to be raped. That I was dressed in a way that covered me in not-revealing clothes, covered from neck to wrists to ankles. Sure, I had pretty underwear on but no one was supposed to see that. I had a chaperone. I didn’t consume excessive alcohol. Every time I tell the story I have to defend these points. Explain these ideas. Even if they don’t ask, I’m so used to being on the defensive that I do it anyway. Because when I became a rape victim (this is one of the only times you’ll hear me call myself “victim” and not survivor) the rape became my fault.

Will the Real Nice Guy Please Stand Up?

I still hold on to the idea that there are nice guys out there. Actual nice guys. In spite of all the evidence I’ve collected to the contrary. I have to believe in something. In hope. Somehow. In the idea that there are people out there who could do to others what was done to me, but who make the choice not to. Even more than that, not only do they choose not to, but they choose to call out the people who do those things. And to call out the people who enable the people who do those things. The environment that brings shame to me and impunity to them.

I believe in the idea that we’re better than this. That one day, my story won’t be so common that there’s a TV trope about it. That no one will be defending the choice to drink two beers and play video games over a long evening with a friend. Because it’ll be expected that their friends won’t do to them what my friend did to me.

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Part of a series on rape and sexual assault-to read more, follow the links below:

Part 1: I’m Going to use The R Word (& it’s okay if you do, too.)
Part 2: Consent: Changing the Conversation
Part 3:“Rape” is Just a Four Letter Word
Part 5: Rape Reporting Requirements are Dangerous