Friend Reveals Someone's Rape During a Game of "I Never"

[Wonderflonium]

So, I was reading through the archives, and I came across this:

http://www.etiquettehell.com/?p=1703

Here's the post:

I’m not sure this qualifies as an Oops, but is rather one of the most cruelly tacky comments I have ever been subjected to. I was out with some old friends from college having drinks and we decided to play a round of the drinking game, Never-Have-I-Ever. The basic rules of this game are that everyone, in turn, says something they haven’t done. Everyone else present who has done this thing will take a drink. It’s generally played by groups of friends as a way to get to know one another better, and we felt it would be a good opportunity to catch up.

Well, we went a few rounds when my former roommate, whom I had been rather close with in college, said “Never have I ever had sex in a car.” This not being true of me, I did not take a drink, and she immediately called me on it, making quite a fuss about it. I laughed it off at first and said she must have me confused with someone else. Then–in front of all of our friends and loud enough for several other people at the bar to hear–she tells me to play fair, that I was raped freshmen year by a guy I went on a date with in his car, and that counts. Can you imagine? Granted, this was several years in the past and an event I had dealt with through counseling, but obviously not something everyone knew about or that was appropriate for publicly toasting.

Needless to say, I and several of my other friends, awkwardly called it a night. I haven’t spoken to her since.

Here is the Dame's response:

I’d like to clear up my original comments on this post.  What I said initially was basically that this game involving private information and alcohol was potentially a train wreck waiting to happen.  What I didn’t say and should have was that the OP got hit by that train in a devastating way.  By noting the folly of the situation, I didn’t mean to imply some moral equivalence between the OP foolishly entering into this situation and the “friend” savagely (or best very insensitively) publicizing such a horrid memory, perhaps shared in confidence many years previously.  The “friend” was utterly wrong and I didn’t mean to defend her behavior at all.  Please forgive my tone-deafness in addressing the folly of getting into the situation without making clear that folly or no, the treatment that the OP received was inexcusable.

Merriam-Webster defines  “Discretion” as 1) the quality of having or showing discernment or good judgment : the quality of being discreet especially : cautious reserve in speech.

The indiscretion of the OP was in choosing to play a game that is, by its very nature, fraught with opportunities  for a major faux pas.  In no way is her date rape a result of an indiscretion, nor is rape itself merely an indiscretion, nor does the exegesis of the OP’s story indicate she was indiscreet in revealing her own rape.


I don’t consider participating in a drinking game that reveals things that should be very private, i.e. sexual information,  about oneself in a public bar to be an exercise in showing discernment or being cautiously reserved in speech regardless of whether one is raped or not.  I will disagree with some readers’ comments that the game is always innocent and harmless and their wrong assumption that I have no idea what I am talking about.  Drinking games like this were common in the Dark Ages when I was in college (I overheard  many lurid TMIs in crowded, noisy bars) and with two college students living at home, our hospitality is predominantly aimed at the 19-24 year old age group.  My two college -aged children, when asked last night at dinner what their thoughts were on the “Never Have I” drinking game responded that they were “recipes for disaster” and “too much potential for finding out more than you ever wanted to know about your friends”.   It cannot be an exercise in good judgment and discernment, i.e discretion, for anyone, raped or not, to add alcohol to the objective of TMI revelations in a public bar populated with God knows who overhearing it and either wishing they weren’t a party to hearing those discussions or salaciously enjoying every morsel.  And in this age of small electronic recording devices, your public indiscretions can go viral on Youtube.

The Expectation of Courtesy

“We should expect courtesy and kindness in all situations from those closest to us”, paraphrased, is what one person said about how the OP should have been treated by her friend.  We can *HOPE* people will engage in reciprocal courtesy but to expect it?  Totally unrealistic.  This site owes its 14 year existence to the harsh reality that people, even trusted friends and family, royally screw it up.   A myriad of variables such as upbringing, religion, self perception, ignorance, etc. means there can be a wide range of perception as to what manners even are or why they would be even relevant to someone’s life.   That’s why we learn to bean dip and dodge odd situations that have the potential to go south.   The site’s forum members in particular, learn how to recognize the approaching faux pas moment and deftly sidestep it.

As for the argument that the OP should be able to play this kind of game with the expectation that friends will treat her respectfully…again, we can *hope* that people will behave the same way we would  but to expect it as if it was owed or earned for one’s own good behavior?  Particularly when alcohol, youth and the folly of playing the game in a public bar is added to the mix?  Human nature being what it is, people *will* disappoint, let you down, offend and hurt you.  Human nature sucks sometimes.   And declining to play along with the game will not stunt or scar anyone for life.

This site raison d’etre for years has been the focus on one’s own personal responsibility for behavior in order to be more educational as opposed to merely being an archive of rants about those other bad people.  Most stories have a clear antagonist that requires no further explanation justifying just why they deserve Etiquette Hell.   It’s been the policy of the site for years to address how the story writer might have acted to either head off a potential faux pas or indiscretion and how to extricate oneself from a situation gone south.   The OP did have the choice to decline to play the game based on an observation that the game was to be played in a public venue where discretion will go flying right out the window. And there can be sympathy for her for just not being aware that she was walking right into a major faux pas.

Thoughts?

[Wonderflonium]

I missed the original response, which has since disappeared. However, I'm still pretty appalled by this response.

You can dress it up however you want, but it is still victim blaming/shaming, and that is not OK. The Dame's argument seems to be that OP shouldn't have done something that COULD have led to something bad. By that logic, I shouldn't leave my house because I could be hit by a car/raped/abducted by aliens. It veers dangerously close to the "she was asking for it" argument.

I have played that game many times. Sometimes, with close friends, it got racy; other times, it was a getting-to-know-you game with the "raciest" statement being something akin to "never have I ever eaten something from the garbage." Just because the Dame and her children have always experienced the game with a sexual component does not mean that the same is true for all of us. Given that we don't know what the OP's experience is, it is foolish to assume that she knew it "had" to get sexual, especially because apparently many people told the Dame that they did not have the same experience. (Of course, I can't check because the originals are gone.)

The Dame's whole argument is based on the idea that the poster was doing something inappropriate: playing a game in a bar meant to reveal details of one's sexual past. We have absolutely no way of knowing whether that was true or not. It could have started off innocently enough (she did say that they were a group of friends just trying to catch up with each other) and that could have been the first sexual question. At that point, nothing she could have done could have preserved her secret because her friend likely would have said something even if she stopped playing.

Again, and I can't state this enough, victim blaming is NOT OK. She was not engaging in any risky behavior. Just because you and yours are constantly surrounded by vulgarity does not mean everyone else is.

"This site raison d’etre for years has been the focus on one’s own personal responsibility for behavior." Perhaps the Dame could take her own words to heart and simply apologize rather than trying to backpedal and justify.

[blueberry.muffin]

I had to stop reading at the term "public indiscretions" that was used in the same paragraph discussing rape.

I'm going to hope that that was simply an extremely poor choice of words, and that's about the kindest way I can put it. Suffice it to say I'm disappointed, though not entirely surprised.

[Namárië]

Never have I ever played anything racier than PG-13 never have I ever. This is hardly the OP's fault.

[Petticoats]

It sounds like the OP was supposed to psychically know that her friend was going to expose this deeply personal and traumatic piece of the OP's past. If the OP had known her friend would do this, obviously she wouldn't have been socializing with this person under any circumstances, regardless of venue or the presence of alcohol. What the friend said is so far from even a rational way of looking at things that I don't see how it could have been anticipated, especially by someone who hadn't been in close contact with her recently.

The claim that none of us should expect basic courtesy from our friends (hope for, but not expect!) suggests that all of us should conduct our lives in suits of emotional armor. That's not realistic, and it's shockingly cynical to suggest that the OP should be faulted for trusting someone she used to be close to.

[Sterling]

I have played this game in many differentt settings, from playing with a group of girlfriends where we actually had to eat a cookie every time instead of drink (and that game was very pg) to playing at a bar where things got a little racy.  I have never seen behavior like what was told here.  The person who revealed that was beyond rude and into pure evil.

The comments made about how the OP "should have known better" were also over the top.

[Bibliophile]

While the game does disclose some personal information, the game is done in fun.  In all fairness, I would never expect anyone to be so crass, horrible, and just cruel to devise a specific question in that game just for the purpose of calling out someone's most horrifying memories.  You expect rational people, even in a drinking game, to not behave like utter pigs.  This behavior from her so-called-friend just isn't something that one can be prepared for or expect to anticipate.  The friend was way beyond rude. 

[LiveLoveLearn]

I missed this the first go-round, thank diety.  How is expecting a friend not to reveal this during a light-hearted game in public her fault?  That would be like someone saying "never have i ever intentionally killed an animal' and then calling someone out for not drinking when they'd hit a dog in their car, saying 'well, you were intentionally driving your car, so drink'.  This is beyond words and the dame's response reeks just as bad of victim-blaming as what's going on with our politicians.

[Ticia]

This one was beaten to death at the time the blog was posted. I'm not up for another round.