Ms. Opinionated: Should I Remain Friends With a Rapist?

Welcome to Ms. Opinionated, our weekly advice column dealing with questions of life, love, feminism, and pop culture. Submit your anonymous questions here. This week, Sydette Harry responds to a reader who’s wondering whether he should remain friends with a rapist.  

Hey,

So, this is difficult to even think about. There’s a great deal of cognitive dissonance here. My moral compass is all over the place.

I (a man) have friend (a man) who raped another friend (a woman) many years ago. It was a time when I was very ignorant to feminism, and while I wouldn’t say I didn’t believe her at the time, it was more like I just refused to think about it simply because it didn’t fit into my world view and I didn’t know how to process it. I have remained (awkwardly) friends with both of them. It requires a great deal of compartmentalization, and I get outright hostile toward him whenever I talk to him and she comes up.

Now let me be clear, I absolutely one hundred percent believe her. I also believe that he does not think he did anything wrong. I believe it is a case of “silence is not consent” and that he does not or didn’t at the time understand that. This is of course in no way a justification. I’m just trying to explain how it went down.

So I really don’t know what to do. He and I have been interacting a little more recently, generally just playing video games and chatting about stuff (I tend to actively steer clear of topics involving relationships, women, and anything that could remotely threaten the compartmentalization that allows me to maintain any form of friendship with him). I would really like to confront and discuss this with him, as well as talk about consent in general, though I don’t know how without it becoming hostile. It makes me very angry to even think about. 

So what should I do? Should I just drop him as a friend altogether? Should I confront him (and how would I go about that)? If I drop him as a friend, am I just increasing the percentage of his friends that reinforce dangerous attitudes? Or am I complicit in reinforcing those attitudes by remaining friends (without at least discussing consent with him)? Should I do both? Or is this completely unfair (even a betrayal) to Her for me to maintain any form of relationship with him? Am I just completely deluding myself by even considering a friendship with him?

Regards,

M 

Oh this hurts me in my chest mostly because of what I am about to say.

Do not be his friend or not be his friend “for” her unless you talk to her about it. Again. Even after all this time her feelings may have changed, her desires may have changed and my feminist inclinations or your desire don’t matter as much as what she wants.

Her trust has already been broken, don’t be another one who lets her down. Consent is not just about sexual assault. It’s about boundaries of discussion, of possible triggers, and of personal preference.

As to whether you should drop him as a friend, It doesn’t sound like you want to. In the end, your personal circle is your personal circle, but you don’t sound like you want him there. So don’t be his friend. 

And that’s enough.

I am going to restrain myself from giving you Sydette’s treatise on intimate partner violence and how we handle it as a community.

Your letter sounds like you actually have even with your attempts at avoiding them, you’ve had conversations or even flashes about these issues and they have enraged you. 

Sexual assault and intimate partner violence are terrible things. Someone who doesn’t care enough about a woman to only have sex when she says “yes” bothers you. It’s not something that you need to filter through betrayal or feminism. One of the shifts that needs to happen as a culture is confronting how it actually makes us feel.

While the incident with you friend is an exemplar, HE himself with his beliefs bothers you. When you break it off, tell him that. It’s not about whose “version” of the story you believe, it’s about  saying that someone who talks and acts the way he does isn’t just discomforting for how he makes women feel, but for how he makes you feel .

You can say this without her, you should do it without her. 

Please let me know how it works out.

Sydette 

Do you have a question for advice columnists Andi Zeisler, Sydette Harry, or Nicole Georges? Send it in! All questions will remain anonymous. Read previous installments of our feminist advice column.