WARNING: This post contains descriptions of sexual assault that may be disturbing to readers.
Disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein has spent much of this month in Manhattan Supreme Court, where he faces five sex-crimes charges. The event is both a media blitz and cultural reckoning, a catalyst for conversation about the way powerful men weaponize sex and leave their victims with lasting trauma—a very real and very symbolic moment for the #MeToo era.
When it’s done, six women will have testified against Weinstein, telling stories of abuse that are shocking both in content and consistency. Two of the witnesses, the actress Annabella Sciorra and former production assistant Miriam Haleyi, recalled similar alleged assaults by Weinstein in agonizing detail.
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Though the incidents happened over a decade apart—Sciorra testified she was raped in 1993 or 1994, and Haleyi’s alleged assault occurred in 2006—both women reported that Weinstein performed forced oral sex without their consent. (The women also alleged that Weinstein vaginally raped them, too.) Through their mutual attorney Gloria Allred, Sciorra and Haleyi declined to comment.
To be clear: Oral rape is rape, and not quantitatively less affecting on a victim than a vaginal or anal assault. But just as a few decades ago sexual assault was once considered something carried out by strangers in dark alleyways (we now know eight out of 10 assaults are committed by someone known to the victim), today the public perception of rape remains focused around intercourse.
That could be in part because, until 2013, the FBI defined rape in vague, antiquated terms: “Carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” It was later updated to include, “Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
RAINN, the largest anti-sexual assault organization in the United States, also defines “sexual assault” as “attempted rape, fondling or unwanted sexual touching, forcing a victim to perform sexual acts, such as oral sex or penetrating the perpetrator’s body, and penetration of the victim’s body.” The average number of victims raped each year is 433,648, but statistics are not broken down by the type of assault. A spokesperson for the nonprofit declined to comment for The Daily Beast.
Forced oral sex is illegal in the United States no matter where you live. But not all states have adopted the FBI’s broad definition. For instance, in Georgia, rape only exists as “any penetration of the female sex organ by the male sex organ.” If convicted, one faces a penalty of 25 years to life. That means oral sex falls under the lesser charge of “sodomy” or “sexual battery,” offenses with dramatically shorter sentences.
“I certainly think I can point out that I don’t think a lot of people understand the actual, legal definition of rape,” Mary P. Koss, a regents professor at the University of Arizona, told The Daily Beast. “For that reason, they could think [non-vaginal rape] is less traumatic. Any act that includes penetration is traumatic.”
Jennifer Wyse is a social worker for Safe Horizons, a nonprofit offering services for victims of abuse and violent crime. In New York, where Safe Horizons is located, oral rape is classified as a “Criminal Sexual Act”—not first-degree rape.
“The big reaction victims have to that is ‘How could it not be rape?’” Wyse said. “The emotions are so similar. The sense of utter violation, the loss of autonomy over your body, feeling totally powerless—all of that is the same. Society sees it as less ‘serious,’ so the survivor can feel very belittled.”
In 2016, an appeals court in Tulsa, Oklahoma, ruled that a 16-year-old girl was not raped by a 17-year-old boy who forced her to perform oral sex while she was drunk and unconscious. That decision was based on a literal interpretation of the state’s oral sodomy law. It was a decision that Benjamin Fu, then the assistant district attorney and director of the special victims unit, called “insane” and “offensive.” After a public outcry, the law was changed.
“It’s archaic that many of our states draw a distinction between which sexual bodily violation occurred,” Fu, who is now in private practice, told The Daily Beast. “It would be nice if people understood that sexual assault is sexual assault, and it shouldn’t be categorically dependent on what orifice was penetrated. That seems to not acknowledge the inherent agency of a person in the way we should.”
Even if a state’s definition has been amended, it takes more time for any law to trickle down into culture. Even between consenting partners, oral sex is still seen by many as a gateway to the full thing. Remember, back during the 1998 impeachment, Bill Clinton didn’t think it counted, either.
“There is quite a bit of research on how people define what counts as sex,” Zoë D. Peterson, director of the Sexual Assault Research Initiative at the Kinsey Institute, told The Daily Beast. “Some of that research suggests—especially for heterosexual participants—[people] universally agree that penile/vaginal intercourse is sex, but there’s a lot more disagreement about oral sex. Is it sex or not?”
Paige Bik, the intervention program manager for the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault, agreed. “Some people have that idea that, ‘Well, it’s not necessarily sex.’ In a religious sense, sex is penetration of vagina by penis. It’s been written in our law for so long, people have that idea stuck inside their head. In music, art, a lot of things I come in contact with, oral sex can be seen as recreational, not as ‘serious’ as having ‘regular’ sex, in that sense of penetration.”
Blame this mentality, like many sexual health blindspots, on the proven failure that is abstinence-only education. “Oral sex comes with no risk of unwanted pregnancy, and a reduced risk of STIs as compared to penile/vaginal intercourse,” Peterson said. “Especially with the attention on STI risk that came in the 1980s and ’90s, maybe that partially accounts for the shift in view of oral sex as a relatively safer activity. That’s my speculation.”
It is an innocent-enough mentality for consenting adults, but one that could shape how certain people view oral assault—with the (false) preconception that the act is perceived as lesser than vaginal rape. As Peterson added, “If our definition of sex is very narrow, then we might intuitively imagine that rape and sexual assault also fit into a narrow definition of what counts.”
Along with that, cultural depictions of cunnilingus, from Taoist writings to The L Word: Generation Q, have painted the practice as one of the ultimate forms of sexual gratification for women.
“We often think about oral sex as something that’s done for the pleasure of the receiver,” Peterson said. “That’s a problematic stereotype in the case of forced oral sex. In all non-consensual sexual acts, regardless of how they’re experienced, sometimes [perpetrators] look for signs that the victim is experiencing some kind of physiological reaction as signs that they consented or enjoyed it.”
Disgustingly, Weinstein reportedly told Sciorra, “This is for you,” after he allegedly orally raped her.
“In a consensual way, this type of sexual act feels more intimate for some women, so when they’re violated in that way, it feels like a boundary-crossing, and such a gross thing that someone would exploit,” Dr. Dawn Hughes, a clinical and forensic psychologist in New York who treats victims of interpersonal violence and traumatic stress, said.
All of the experts who spoke with The Daily Beast emphatically pointed out that those who experience oral sodomy are subjected to the same psychological effects and emotional reaction as anyone who is vaginally assaulted. For social workers, the means of an attack hardly matter—a rape is a rape.
“Very rarely do I ask somebody what exactly happened in an assault,” Bik, the program manager, explained. “People aren’t as likely to just come out and say, ‘Yes it was vaginal or oral rape.’ For survivors of sexual assault, it’s very much the same.”
And unfortunately, the presence of an oral rape does not mean the absence of other violence. “Keep in mind, plenty of people who are charged with oral sodomy are also charged with rape, because they keep going,” Fu, the former DA, said. “[Rape] is really about feeling power over somebody, so some people need to keep going.”
