Does a ‘No’ Automatically Make It Rape?

I am a feminist and a Laker fan. So when word got out last summer that Kobe Bryant was accused of rape, it hit me like a Tim Duncan hook shot eliminating my team from the playoffs. I couldn’t believe it. There was something wrong. Kobe of the ingratiating smile and impossible grace, the gentleman of a sport not known for its gentleness, was shrouded in the darkness of a brutal crime.

Obviously, this was a horrible mistake; some girl was just trying to cash in on a harmless flirtation and would soon repent. It’d be over in no time, I decided, my golden boy restored to his role-model image. But the young woman didn’t repent, and it didn’t go away.

There had been sexual intercourse, Bryant allowed at an excruciating press conference, but it was consensual. He spoke of his adultery as though it were the lowest of sins, a deeply shameful act for which he was sorrier than anyone could imagine. And I found myself wishing him gone from my television screen.

I don’t want to believe that one of my heroes might be capable of this kind of violence. They had sex, yes, but did he rape her? One comes inevitably to this resonant question: When does rape begin?

At the moment a woman says no? Yes, many of my righteous sisters would assert. But she went to his room, late at night. Though I’m too old-fashioned to see a tacit agreement to intimacy there, would a generation more sexually enlightened than I see otherwise?

The woman was sexually active, according to news accounts. Did she think the basketball star had invited her to his hotel room because he found her witty, someone with whom to share repartee? So let’s say she did think it might lead to a sexual encounter. Let’s suppose that the two of them had that same expectation. They chat, they inch toward each other; in short, they do what people do in a hotel room late at night, and then she says no. At a certain point, she utters the syllable. But he doesn’t stop. Is this rape?

Or is it rape when you’re walking down the street, for example, or in your hallway and someone comes out of nowhere, pins you down, with or without a weapon, and uses you for sex? No chat, no inching. No appointment. No expectation.

Is it rape, a criminal act of violation, when you have willingly joined someone late at night? He hasn’t drugged you or strong-armed you, as far as anybody knows. But sometime between entering the door and rushing out of that same door, you became uncomfortable with the sex and wanted it to stop. He didn’t, and you’re furious. You feel violated, and rightfully so. But is it rape?

Did Kobe Bryant force this woman to have sex? Or to finish what they both had started?

When does rape begin? As a feminist and a Laker fan, I feel the question weighing on me like a full court press.

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Elyce Wakerman teaches writing at Cal State Northridge.