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When Joke Articles Attack: Rise of the Cheetah

Sady

So. About this “cheetahs” thing.

“Cheetahs,” as recently invented in the pages of the New York Observer, are what happens when you, a Straight Lady (NOTE: I get that you might not be a straight lady. But the article is talking about those, mostly), are reduced to hanging out in bars and waiting for the guys at the bars to get drunk enough to like you and then having sex with the guys who are drunk enough to like you (or at least the idea of having sex with you) and then hoping that every drunk guy you have sex with will want to be your boyfriend but of course none of them ever DO, because you broke up with your LAST long-term boyfriend, and now you are OLD and everything is TERRIBLE and you should have just SETTLED because no-one WANTS you now and everyone is talking about you behind your BACK using terms for your behavior such as “COCK LOITERING” and aaaaiiiiieeeeee. Basically, it is one of those fantasies of female despair that only ever seem to come from dudes. Or, alternately, ladies in the 3.5 weeks right after they break up with someone in which case that is their grim vision of The Future. I should note that those ladies might mostly be me. But for dudes, fear of That Lady springs eternal! So eternal that they have to write articles about it! Apparently! And then everyone is like, “he is trying to get a rise out of you, this is silly and a joke, calm down,” and I would even be willing to do that under other circumstances.

But the problem, here? A big chunk of the article is actually sort of a rape joke. For example:

Seth had allowed the open bar to get the better of him. He knew he was completely wasted. What he didn’t know was that a predator was watching his every move.

Ummmm?

Yeah. The “predator,” in this scenario, is “Dana,” a friend, who – as per the article – watches him get progressively wasted, watches him talk about how he can barely stand up, then whisks him away into a cab over his friends’ objections and has sex with him. And “Dana” does this serially:

A few months later, Seth found himself watching helplessly late one night as Dana picked off one of his pals much the same way she had him: The fellow was babbling, stumbling drunk, and Dana chirped: “I’m heading the same way, let’s share a cab!” Another poor shmo who hosted an after-party at his pad one night to enjoy a little group reefer session suddenly found himself alone, except for Dana. Game over.

“She knows what she’s doing,” Seth told me.

And later:

Good God, I thought, how many of my fellow men are at risk at this very moment?!

Now. I find that discussions like these can get really heated really quickly, for obvious reasons. But first, let me say: I don’t think the writer of the article meant to summon up images of rape here. I don’t think the sexual encounters he’s describing are meant to be perceived as anything but consensual. I don’t think they were perceived, by the people involved, as anything other than consensual – at least, not the people interviewed in this article. “Horror” and “predator” are jokes, here; the tone is very clearly tongue-in-cheek. I don’t know the writer’s intentions, of course, but if I had to guess, I’d say he was just engaging in a venerable tradition of boy-joke. “Ha ha, she got me drunk! I couldn’t say no! She practically FORCED me to have sex with her!” Yeah, I’ve heard that one before. And it’s funny, to the people who tell it – in the same way, I guess, that calling Dana a “predator” or referring to her sexual encounters with guys as “prowling” or “striking” is funny – because (a) a GIRL? Forcing a MAN to do ANYTHING? Absurd! And (b) ha ha, how could someone “force” you to have sex against your will? Sex is great! You got lucky! And the rest of the article betrays no awareness of the really extraordinarily troubling overtones of the first bit, and instead focuses on what it perceives to be the main sins of the “cheetah,” mainly that she wants the guys she has sex with to be her boyfriend and doesn’t realize that no-one will EVER want to be her boyfriend because she is old and gross and pathetic, yuck. Or whatever. But, seriously: behold this quick re-write.

Sharon had allowed the open bar to get the better of her. She knew she was completely wasted. What she didn’t know was that a predator was watching her every move…

Jennifer said, “O.K., I think she needs to go home.”

David, who was 29, said, “Let’s go get another drink!”

“I wanna go home,” Sharon warbled.

“O.K., I’ll take her home,” David said.

Jennifer gave Sharon a “WTF?” look and said, “I’ll take her home.”

“Don’t worry about it,” David said, hailing a cab and then bundling Sharon inside…

A few months later, Sharon found herself watching helplessly late one night as David picked off one of her pals much the same way he had her: The girl was babbling, stumbling drunk…

“He knows what he’s doing,” Sharon told me.

Voila. A very serious story about the horror of having a rapist in your circle of friends, and not knowing what to do about it. It works this way, with the genders flipped, for the same reason that the original (and ancient) joke works: we conceive of men as unrapeable. They’re not, of course – which is why the story is troubling, even in its original version, and even if you’re aware that all of this is meant to be a joke – but the fact is that men may not live with the fear of rape in the same way that women do. What might be, for a man, an outlandish joke-story – a woman! Picking off guys who are too drunk to refuse her! For sex! – actually fits the (quite reasonable) fears or (way too common) experiences of many women. We’re all familiar with the scenario of someone isolating you when you are too drunk to give informed consent and forcing sex on you. Someone who may be (and, given statistics, is more likely to be) within your circle of friends. We’re so familiar with it, in fact, that we already have a name for people who do it. And it’s not “cheetahs.”

42 thoughts on When Joke Articles Attack: Rise of the Cheetah

  2. This article fails at humor. It’s offensive in all the usual ways– painting women (especially “old” women) as desperate to snag a man, implying that “pussies” are the indicator of women’s inherent value, and brushing off the very real possibility that perhaps the men involved in Dana’s conquests are actually victims of date rape, etc. It would have been much better (and much appreciated) if they’d re-framed the argument to examine how men are also victims of date rape. It would help de-stigmatize male victims of rape, for one. All that article did was further shame male victims, and further shame women over the ripe old mate-attracting age of, what, 23?

  3. Rather off topic:
    I am REALLY getting tired of women being referred to by the names of large predatory felines. Apparently, because I still notice and enjoy the sight of handsome young men, I am a “cougar”.

    W. T. F. ?!! Knock it off with the “pussy” references already!!

    and BTW: excellent article. Nail. Head. Hit. *two thumbs up*

  6. What’s with the “chirping” and the “warbling”? Aside from being unacceptably cheesy dialogue tags, I thought we were using feline metaphors, not avian ones! How am I supposed to keep my dehumanized people straight?

  7. Well said. I have a het male friend who (Trigger warning) at age 18 was bullied into sex by a college-aged woman. He’d told her he wasn’t ready for full sex, he just wanted to fool around. But he was drunk, and she just went ahead, he said no, but she got on him and he was too nervous and confused to push her off. He’s well over 6′ so nobody would ever believe him easily intimidated by a mere girl. And why would a real man reject a college girl throwing herself at him? The most unusual insight of all, he said, he’d been taught all his life you never push or hit a woman, and he just couldn’t process around how to physically stop her without violating all those years of teaching, so he froze. So it didn’t matter at all that presumably he was much stronger.

    It totally fucked up his sexuality and ability to have healthy relationships for some years. Is it rape? I think so. And it’s not funny.

  9. Lizzie-heck yeah it’s rape. No “I think so” about it. and I’m glad that Sady got that implication in the article. though, I thought Cheetah’s were supposed to be young? I didn’t read the article closely, and kinda refuse to look at it any more to protect my brain. but I never did understand what the issue with the Cheetah is, other than the date rape.

  10. I run into Cheetahs(along with cougars and pumas) at after-hour/private/underground parties rather frequently, and as the author of the Observer article stated, they are quite sad, and yes they really are predatory, but I would not go so far as to call them date rapists.
    Like cougars and pumas they are opportunists,there seduction techniques more often than not rely on the guys desperation/horniness than the guys being passed out drunk.

    Of course guys are going to blame it on alcohol, that’s the “manly” thing to do “I got drunk and ended up waking up next to a wilderbeast”(actually quote), just like many girls say “I was tired and wasn’t thinking straight”(another actual quote). Both are truthful explanations that allow the parties who made decisions they regret a graceful way out of the situation.

    So why make it more difficult than it already is? I readily admit to having made some really bad hook-up choices, so I can’t begrudge anyone else trying to put a positive spin on their unfortunate learning experiences.

  11. I don’t think there is “a very real possibility” that Dana is a date rapist. I think it is far, far more likely that the writer is exaggerating her behavior for the sake of “humor.”

    I’m saying this because if this is based on a real person, then this guy has joked about her with his friends who have been the “victims”, and men do actually know and feel it when they’ve been violated. I know a lot of guys are not particularly quick to pick up on other people’s feelings and other guys will make a joke out of genuine pain, but still, I don’t think that a column like this could result from his friends really getting raped. There’d be some anger there, not just the casual contempt that gets dished out to every sexual woman by guys like this.

    Dana-as-described, though, is definitely a rapist.

  12. This article makes me wonder about this guy’s (joking) definition of rape, and how it seems a lot like what MRAs like to *say* is the female definition of rape: a guy has consensual sex and then regrets it ’cause now she wants flowers and commitment and babies so he calls it (jokingly) rape to get sympathy about the clingy woman — just like MRAs *think* that women go out, have consensual sex, and then regret being such giant sluts so they call it rape to get sympathy. Too bad that the women generally are being actual rape-raped and not just joke-raped (and then are harassed by MRAssholes)… makes it a little less funny. 9.9

  13. … men do actually know and feel it when they’ve been violated …

    Umami, are you not familiar with the discrepancy in responses from surveys that ask women if they’ve been raped, and surveys that ask them if they’ve been victims of certain kinds of behavior (which happen to be rape) instead? It’s my understanding that the incidence of rape is much higher in the latter surveys … that in fact it is not uncommon for some women to not realize that their experience falls under the legal definition of having been raped.

    Men are generally trained that to be a victim is to be a chump, and often very reluctant to admit (even to themselves) that they’ve been victimized. Plus, I think the belief that women can’t rape men is still pretty prevalent. So I think that the chance that a male victim of sexual violation would either not realize or not admit to himself that he’s been victimized could very well be higher than the proportion of women who are unclear about the nature of their experiences. (Just to be clear, I’m not making any kind of claim about how often men are sexually victimized by women.)

    At any rate, when I was reading the OP I was bracing myself for a completely piece than it ended up being. Good post, Sady.

  14. Duh, ballgame. Of course I’m familiar with that phenomenon. I’ve seen for myself the relief that people feel when they get “permission” to call a rape or sexual assault by its proper name.

    Just because someone doesn’t call it rape doesn’t mean the emotions from being violated don’t exist.

    And if those emotions had existed on any level in the conversations that this guy had with his friends, they would have been detectable in the article. They’re not, IMO.

  15. I take back the “duh”, sorry. I was thinking your point was very obvious and I felt patronised but I can see now how my original comment wasn’t completely clear.

  16. “I’m saying this because if this is based on a real person, then this guy has joked about her with his friends who have been the “victims”, and men do actually know and feel it when they’ve been violated.”

    There’s also a huge amount of pressure not to acknowledge or express those feelings, though. That Jimmy Kimmel interview with Lil Wayne springs to mind. Men who get too close to admitting to having been or feeling victimized by a sexual encounter with a woman come in for a lot of bullying and silencing from their peers, even those they consider friends.

  17. “I don’t think there is ‘a very real possibility’ that Dana is a date rapist. I think it is far, far more likely that the writer is exaggerating her behavior.”

    Right. I think that’s the operative thing happening here. And I think he’s doing that to play up the absurdity of the women-as-predatory-big-cats metaphor he’s working with. The issue is, it makes her sound ACTUALLY predatory. I think not on purpose. But the rest of the article doesn’t betray any awareness of the fact that Dana-as-described is engaging in some really troubling behavior, which effectively normalizes that behavior, which is not good.

  18. Dana-as-described is engaging in some really troubling behaviour, which effectively normalizes that behaviour, which is not good.

    I think a better way of looking at is – should that behaviour be considered on par with rape/sexual assault, or is it something while distasteful, falls under a different category – scummy behaviour rather than illegal behaviour?

    People play all kinds of games – “Oh I’m not dating anybody(or married)”, “I’m have this great job”, “graduated from XXX”, stringing people along, using high pressure techniques to snag a date, flirting/teasing, the uses of “Ringers” etc

    Is what the described Dana does worse that the “tricks” mentioned above?

    1. Is what the described Dana does worse that the “tricks” mentioned above?

      Do we really need to go into a rudimentary definition of rape? Telling someone that you graduated from a fancy school when you didn’t is actually really fucking different from “having sex” with someone who is so intoxicated that they cannot meaningfully consent. The former = being a douche. The latter = RAPE.

  19. Is what the described Dana does worse that the “tricks” mentioned above?

    I think using chemical substances to get sex *is* different than just bullshitting about your Rolex. I think it crosses a line into coercion. I had a guy try to pick me up at a bar last year with all this stuff about how he travels to Italy all the time and how he’s super rich and how he’s friends with Obama (uh-huh) and I was just like “lol” because I could detect bull all over. But if the same guy had tried to get me fall-down drunk instead or had targeted me once I had gotten myself fall-down drunk a lot more of my defenses would have been down and it would have potentially been a really different situation.

  20. And if those emotions had existed on any level in the conversations that this guy had with his friends, they would have been detectable in the article. They’re not, IMO.

    I don’t know why you think these feelings would be so easily detected in a third-hand account, umami. I don’t think it’s always easy to see it if the man is right in front of you, talking about it … you might just see ‘a drinking problem’ or ‘a guy who flies off the handle for no reason’ or whatever. I think you underestimate the the degree to which males are socialized not to express (or often even acknowledge to themselves) feelings of vulnerability, as preying mantis points out.

    I don’t think there is ‘a very real possibility’ that Dana is a date rapist. I think it is far, far more likely that the writer is exaggerating her behavior.

    It may very well be that the writer is exaggerating the woman’s behavior, but if he’s not I would think people here would have had to have been present during the encounters to take the possibility that she’s a date rapist off the table.

  21. The story is a mix of reporting, satire, and misogynist fable. It’s probably a waste of time to speculate about which elements are which.

    If we take the story at face value, Dana is clearly a date rapist. We’re told that she deliberately isolates helplessly drunk guys because she knows that they won’t have consensual sex with her. If these guys are really as drunk as the story says, there’s no way they can consent. Ergo, rape.

    Maybe the author is embellishing for “comic” effect. If so, as Sady points out above, he’s asking us to laugh along with a really sick rape joke.

  22. I think a better way of looking at is – should that behaviour be considered on par with rape/sexual assault,

    This is Feminism 101. Having sex with someone too drunk to consent is rape. Seth as described appeared to be too drunk to consent (I found: “I woke up with a condom still on my dick,” really disturbing). Therefore, the situation as described is rape.

  23. Besides the previously discussed, I can’t get past this seemingly ingrained connection with mating being predatory and violent.

    Our culture seems obsessed with it. Personally, I’m still green on realizing that this does not have to be the case. Because of this obsession, somehow I grew up thinking that, being prey is a compliment-it means they are attracted to you or “like” you-yet (to no surprise in retrospect) I end up feeling violated and victimized-even by a “best friend”. Leading to incredibly unsatisfactory encounters, and burns so deep that I cannot even dream of the day that I will be able to be intimate with someone again.

    I consider myself a strong independent woman, yet I can’t seem to get past this. Why is our culture so obsessed with that caveman image of one partner having to club the other one in order to gain intimacy? Is there somewhere out there that correlates attaining intimacy through true, non-manipulative kindness? If so, I want to got to there.

  24. This is Feminism 101. Having sex with someone too drunk to consent is rape. Seth as described appeared to be too drunk to consent (I found: “I woke up with a condom still on my dick,” really disturbing). Therefore, the situation as described is rape.

    And the LAWS make it very clear that being intoxicated to the point a person’s judgement is seriously impaired is not an adequate defence/excuse for subsequent stupidity.

    There is a huge difference between having sex with a girl that’s passed out and convincing a drunkard (male or female) to come home with you. The former is rape, the latter is colloquially referred to as having regrets for breakfast….or possibly the walk of shame.

    blurring the distinction between the two cheapens the severity of legitimate rape cases.

    I’m not condoning “cheetah” or their male-counterpart (hereafter known as Hyenas) behaviour, what they do is pure douchebaggery, but their prey is not exactly innocent and free of blame are they? Like I said before, “I was drunk” (or high,confused, tired, wasn’t thinking straight,etc) does not give someone the right to accuse another of rape.

    1. There is a huge difference between having sex with a girl that’s passed out and convincing a drunkard (male or female) to come home with you. The former is rape, the latter is colloquially referred to as having regrets for breakfast….or possibly the walk of shame.

      The LAWS also generally say that if a person is intoxicated to the point where they cannot consent to sex, then having sex with them is rape. Even if they aren’t passed out, if they’re so drunk that they cannot reasonably consent, then there are a whole series of things that it’s illegal to do to them. Sex is one of those things.

      I’m not condoning “cheetah” or their male-counterpart (hereafter known as Hyenas) behaviour, what they do is pure douchebaggery, but their prey is not exactly innocent and free of blame are they? Like I said before, “I was drunk” (or high,confused, tired, wasn’t thinking straight,etc) does not give someone the right to accuse another of rape.

      No one is saying that being drunk gives someone to right to accuse someone else of rape. We are saying that being in the presence of a drunk person does not give you the right to have sex with them! Think about it this way: If a person is to drunk to, say, sign a contract selling you their house — if you would be ethically, morally and legally in the wrong if you handed them the contract and the pen and asked them to sign, knowing they were in no state to really consent to sell you their house — that person is probably also too drunk to consent to other things. Like sex. So best not to target falling-over drunk people for sex, because it’s unethical and, if they can’t consent, may be illegal.

    2. And the LAWS make it very clear that being intoxicated to the point a person’s judgement is seriously impaired is not an adequate defence/excuse for subsequent stupidity.

      Right. Which is why “I was drunk!” is not an adequate excuse for having sex with someone without their consent (also known as “rape”).

  25. Alex Catgirl, you are wrong about what “THE LAW” says (which law, and where, by the way? and at what point in time? and as a consequence of what kind of lawsuits and which people who had access to what kind of lawyers? etc etc). But you are especially wrong to focus on “accusations” of rape. (and of course on “stupidity” or whatever)

    The point is consent – if someone is too drunk to consent to sex, then it’s rape. It doesn’t have to do with “accusations” by people who were drunk .. it has to do with the person on the OTHER side, who is making the decision to have sex with someone who is too drunk to consent to them. If Person A has sex with Person B who doesn’t consent to sex, Person A is committing rape. It’s pretty simple really.

    The law has moved (where it has moved at all) very slowly on the issue of rape, and the definition of rape has changed as people have mobilized to make it more responsive to the realities of rape (which could only happen pretty recently, especially when women have begun to be included into the category of citizens who have access to legal recourse). It is at best really naive to take the law as the last word. In this instance, take consent as the last word. or at least the first one.

  26. Em – Alex Catgirl, you’re wrong. The LAW says that if you’re “too drunk to give consent” it’s rape. What’s “too drunk to give consent” is debatable, but it usually occurs before passing out.

    And your last sentence sounds awfully like a typical misogynist explaining why women cry rape all too often.

  27. I’m not underestimating anything, ballgame.

    All I’m saying is that you can’t make emotional undercurrents go away by being socialised not to express them. Repressing emotions does not make them undetectable, even at second hand. It’s just a matter of reading between the lines. Literally in this case; it is just as possible to pick up someone’s emotional subtexts in their writing as in other kinds of communications. But this is now the third time I’ve explained the same concept in different words, and you’re repeating yourself too. If you don’t see it, you don’t see it. We disagree. It happens.

  28. Alex Catgirl, I think we all agree that it’s possible to be tipsy enough to make a bad decision, but still sober enough to decide. But that’s not what this piece is supposedly about. The “cheetah” is supposedly targeting guys who are completely wasted.

  29. Yeah. Sorry about this – I was away from my desk for a lot of the day today, but I need to be among the voices chiming in to say, if we’re concerned about rape and don’t think it should happen, “never isolate people who you know would not readily have sex with you under other circumstances while they are incapacitatingly drunk or high in order to have sex with them” is a really fine and dandy and by all means non-rape-cheapening guideline to live by and/or impose on others. People play games to have sex with each other, but THAT game? Unacceptable, under all circumstances.

  30. On guys joking about victimization…there is a video circulating around on hip-hop sites right now of a drunk/high lil’Wayne telling a group of his friends about having a women perform oral sex on him at 11 yrs old–at the insistence and in front of a group of older men. Although the story is about an instance of child abuse of Wayne and rape of both the woman and Wayne, its told by Wayne as merely a minor and comical anecdote about how crazy his life has been for years. I don’t know if the “facts” in this article are true–but I don’t think the fact that the victim made a joke about his experience makes the story unreliable.

  31. Besides the previously discussed, I can’t get past this seemingly ingrained connection with mating being predatory and violent.

    This is a US thing. Check out The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille for a deeper understanding.

  32. The guys who allegedly ended up in bed with Dana weren’t joking about their own experiences. But the author seemed to treat the whole story as a joke. It’s hard to tell what’s being exaggerated for comic effect and what to take literally.

  35. Lil Wayne tells that story a lot and the one about “losing his virginity” at a very young age to a much older women. in one interview expresses that yes he sees this as rape/unwanted/traumatic. think the way he minimizes it is common for victims of rape and abuse.

  36. Thank you guys for picking up on this. I saw this somewhere else on my list and was really disturbed that it didn’t seem to be being discussed as what it is: rape.

    I’m kind of disturbed in the comments by how many readers are willing to just dismiss this as a joke. “It’s just exaggerated” “It was for comic relief.” The article was meant to be humorous, but the facts were given to us and I don’t find them funny. Why are we willing to give “the real Dana” the benefit of the doubt with this story and not, for example, brush off the same kind of satire from Josh Brorby today? Could it possibly be our deepseated belief that only women can be raped?

    Rape apology goes both ways. While we are teaching our sons not to rape, we also need to be teaching our daughters the same things.

  37. I find it entirely possible that guys who are targeted by Dana and her ilk give no clue whatsoever to their friends that they’ve been victimized. For one, men are socialized not to talk about their feelings as much as women are socialized to talk about ours. For another, it’s got to be one of the most humiliating things in the world for a He-Man Woman Hater to admit that he was in some way overpowered or victimized or forced to do something against his will by a woman. Woman weak, man strong, so if woman get man drunk and take advantage of him, it must be something worthy of a joke, right! Ha, ha. Oh, that Dana.

    And Alex Catgirl, the law (in most states) says that intoxication doesn’t absolve a person of guilt when they commit some kind of a crime. Get drunk and run someone over with your car? Still a crime. Get drunk and rob someone? Still a crime. “I was too drunk to know what I was doing” is no defense.

    But being drunk doesn’t mean that you can’t have a crime committed against you or absolve the person who committed that crime. If you’re drunk, the guy who runs you over is still guilty. If you’re drunk, the guy who mugs you is still guilty. And if you’re drunk, the person who rapes you is still a rapist – even if she’s a woman. There’s no “blurred line” – regardless of sex, a person who’s too drunk to consent is a person who’s too drunk to consent.

  38. And just to clarify, my first graf up there wasn’t intended to dispute what Lindsay said @ 36. Whether Dana’s victims were telling their stories in a joking, dismissive tone or not, what they were describing is rape, which is not something that should be treated as a joke. I wonder if, were he himself victimized by Dana, his attitude would change.

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