Roiphe and Gaitskill's essays both discuss the debate over definitions of date rape using a very similar structure. Roiphe begins her essay using her personal experience as an introduction to the subject. She recollects reading a poster in college, which promotes a statistic that one in four women on campus are raped. "I remember standing outside the dinning hall in college, looking at a purple poster with this statistic written in bold letters"(Roiphe 156). Then, throughout the article she quotes opinions of scholars or rape victims to support her arguments. For example she mentions Professor Neil Gilbert who "questions the validity of one-in-four women as rape v

Even though they both discuss the same topic, the writers have very different opinions on the definition of date rape. While Roiphe believes that date rape should be limited to physical force, Gatskill expands its boundaries to include psychic pain. Roiphe claims that "if are going to maintain an idea of rape, than we need to reserve it for instances of physical violence"(Roiphe 64). She further implies her disapproval of any other explanation. "People have asked me if I have ever been raped. And thinking back on complicated nights, too many glasses of wine, on strange and familiar beds, I would have to say yes. With such a sweeping definition of rape, I wonder how many people are there, male or female, who haven't been date raped at one point or another"(163). Her sarcastic explanation leads her to conclude that because of such a wide variety of definitions of date rape, anyone can falsely claim being raped. In contrast, Gatskill believes that any psychic disorder developed from an unwanted sexual experience should be considered rape. "Emotional cruelty is more complicated. Its motives are often impossible to understand, and is sometimes committed by people who say they like you or even love you"(Gaitskill 174). She thinks that women don't have to be physically abused to suffer. Cruel intentions and the lack of explanation of why "it" happened cause much greater pain. Gaitskill moves even further to make her point. She directly criticizes and reacts to Roiphe's comment: " Even though she says she had an experience that many would call a date rape, she cannot understand or even quite believe, t

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Approximate Word count = 1088
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)