First, there are the people who look you anywhere but in the eye as they nervously whisper, "But how did you get an erection?" The implication being that my penis couldn't possibly have been hard enough for intercourse unless I was enjoying it. If you own a penis or have seen one in action, you know that the things have a mind of their own -- hell, half the time you wake up with an erection. Boners happen at the drop of a hat, a rustle of fabric, a gentle breeze, you name it -- as long as everything works down there, literally anything can set it off. An erection is not a dowsing rod of intention, it's a bundle of nerves that can be manipulated by anyone who halfway knows what they're doing. If men had absolute control over their arousal, premature ejaculation wouldn't be a thing.

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"All right," they say, "then why didn't you just shove her off?"

First, think about how horrific that question sounds when asked of a female victim, since most people will accept that a 120 pound woman isn't able to overpower a rampaging rape monster two and a half times her size. But even people who would never ask a female victim that assume I could easily have fought off some girl. You know, if I'd really wanted to.

There are actually several reasons why I didn't physically defend myself. First, how about the fact that I don't want to inflict violence on anyone, regardless of who they are or what they're doing? You know, like most of you -- all of us have been put into situations that maybe could have been solved by physical force, yet most of us haven't been in a fistfight since grade school.

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I'm a pacifist, but really so are most of us in polite society -- it's crazy to ever ask a crime victim, "But why didn't you just overpower your attacker?" Hell, Sugar Ray Leonard was sexually assaulted as a young man, when he was already an Olympic contender on his way to becoming a prizefighter. Don't you think he would have stopped that if he could have? It's not the same thing as fighting off a mugger -- all of your physical strength becomes useless, because your attacker makes you feel powerless. All of society's messages about what's happening are wrong.