When Did 'Playing Hard to Get' Become Date Rape?

When did date rape become rape, and when did a horny young man become a rapist?

Courtesy of Pee-Wee Herman 

My grandmother loved Carvel ice cream. It was always a dilemma for me as a kid because every time she would tell me we were going there for a treat with Pop (my grandfather), I would fake most of my excitement — I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Thanks to Carvel’s homemade hard ice cream and many good flavors, it was the best for Gram.

Her favorite was butterscotch. Butterscotch, just by the sound of its name, was not something a kid in the 1970s appreciated. Then there was butter pecan, pecan, some orange ice cream with gooey cake-like chunks, real chocolate, pistachio, vanilla bean, toffee, and an assortment of rotating flavors that never excited my young palette. In an attempt to “keep up with the changing times” by the 70s, Carvel added two kinds of soft serve: chocolate and vanilla. That’s what I would get.

Up Route 9 a bit, though, right at the Raceway Circle, was the Jersey Freeze, the place where the teens, hipsters, a young Bruce Springsteen, and families with kids went. They specialized in 20 different flavors of soft ice cream and only two or three kinds of hard ice cream. As the years crawled by and my grandmother’s generation became less economically relevant due to aging, loss of mobility, and finally death, our local Carvel closed. My grandmother, however, outlasted the Freehold Carvel by seven years. Even before she died, when Alzheimer’s was blurring her days and turning them into a kaleidoscope of the past, she would lament the lack of a “good Carvel around here.” 

The front porch 

“She’s cruising for a bruising, that one.”

I recall my grandmother saying this about a beautiful young neighbor who strolled past the porch one summer’s evening. My uncle, who was permanently ensconced in a cloud of smoke and hidden behind a newspaper, looked over the edge and grunted in agreement. 

Years later, I would think that odd. Why was a well-dressed young woman heading out to meet friends “cruising for a bruising.” What I realize now and I would learn when I became sexually active dating when a teenager was a tussle for intimacy. That moment when you finally get up the nerve to put an arm around your date was one of the most thought-about for both boys and girls. The “when and how to do it” and the “what to do when he does it” occupied minds and often stunted conversation.

In my grandmother’s day and then my mother’s, when a woman denied a man’s sexual advances, it was called “playing hard to get.” I can tell you that as a teenager in the 1980s, an era on the cusp of the date rape phenomenon, there were many occasions when the tussle took place. The guys would try to get to “second” base — touch a breast — and the girls would try to prevent us. Sometimes, the attempts to attain these odd forms of intimacy would end in frustration, and other times, after some rolling around in the backseat of the car, they would end in some form of satisfaction. 

Why am I suddenly writing about this? Yesterday, while writing an article about Donald Trump, I reached for the phrase “playing hard to get.” I wanted to say that Trump was forcing himself onto women at a time when their attraction to him would have led him to act in aggressive ways and, as we learned later, force himself upon them. Many back then would have said that the flirting by those women led to the violent acts. My grandmother would have said, “She was cruising for a bruising,” and her generation would have concluded that she got what she was asking for.

Thank God, most of society no longer thinks that way. Thank God we have redefined these private moments between men and women. But as these private moments have evolved into public ones, are we subtly undermining young women and women by denying them the skills needed to deal with the realities of life? Not every moment between humans needs to be monitored, discussed, shared on Instagram, and obliterated by strangers who, nowadays, simply talk too much about things they have no clue about (like me).

It suddenly dawned on me that each time in my own life, there was a “tussle for intimacy,” then, according to today’s rules of engagement, I might have been “raping” my date. Most men and women over 40, I believe, know what I mean when I refer to the “tussle.” 

The tussle was not a rape in which superior physical force is used to hold a woman down and force her to perform unwanted sexual acts, but it was kissing accompanied by a wandering hand. Hand tries to slip past a belt and up a shirt or down further, and her hands prevent further exploration— “No.” 

You stop and think, “Damn, I was almost there,” and then kiss more. The scene gets hotter, and the car windows fog up; the wandering hand makes a second attempt — maybe a third and fourth — and the no’s eventually become less adamant, and then finally, a hand is up a shirt. Often, the whole tussle ended shortly afterward. Hand on breast, kissing continues, and then finally, the excitement of three hours of making out fades, and it is time to go home. 

There were boys in those days who would not be able to control their desires and force themselves upon their dates (one apparently is on the Supreme Court)— and that, folks, was rape. For the majority of us who never did that, we can recall the discomfort of “blue balls.” 

My question, and my concern, is, are young men nowadays being labeled rapists for misreading some passionate kissing and reaching for their date’s breasts or more? If a boy does touch the breast of a young woman who didn’t really want her breasts touched but figured it would be easier to let him do so rather than “tussle,” is she a victim? 

Something tells me that we are entering into a future where — or maybe it’s already here and it is the present — where words lack any meaning at all, half of society is a hero and the other half rapists and victims. A boy trying to touch a breast becomes a rapist. A man using superior force to restrain a woman and force himself onto her sexually despite her cries of no is a rapist, and both of the women are now “victims of rape.” 

I will be brutalized by ultra-liberal men of a certain age and cultural background for asking such questions. A lot of women will brutalize me for asking these questions. The politically correct, like extremists on the right, don’t want questions asked; they just want armies of victims and reasons to be out protesting and changing avatars on Facebook. 

Then again, while this seems complicated, I guess if a woman says “no,” then all attempts to slide a hand up her shirt while making out on the couch should end, right? I am asking women. Right? I would use the perspective of a younger 20-something. I may have to send this article to my nieces. 

I am just thinking out loud, people. I am not making any declarations in any way or another, but I am sure I will be accused of downplaying rape (I am not. Rape is an act of violence, of domination.); I will be called a “typical man” for my words in this article (I am not. I can challenge anyone to a discussion on the various political philosophies of feminism, and I was more or less raised in a matriarchy). I will definitely be labeled a misogynist. Whenever someone calls me a misogynist for my writing, I know I am onto something because thoughts and words that force their way out of the PC molds need to be swept away with name-calling.

Anyway, maybe no one will read this, and my worries and hopes of inciting a discussion will be unfulfilled.