Editorâs Note: This piece has been significantly revised to better convey its original intent. Please read the newer version at this link.
Last weekend, Max Temkin, co-creator of the popular card game Cards Against Humanity, wrote a blog post about rape accusation. The post went up somewhat unnoticed, thanks to a combination of EVO, the World Cup, and GaymerX happening all at the same timeâbut itâs something that we, as a gaming community, should talk about.
You can read Temkinâs post hereâhe describes his previous relationship with the woman who accuses him of rape, and he talks about his complex feelings around social media, to which some people have taken to protest him and Cards Against Humanity. He notes that he feels hurt but will try his best to continue to be a feminist moving forward. And above all, he wants you to know he didnât do it. The accusation is âpatently false.â Itâs âbaseless gossip.â He hasnât even spoken to this girl in a decade. Heâs never been accused of something like this before. He doesnât plan on suing her, but he wants you to know he would have a âclear caseâ against her.
Temkin writes:
Yesterday morning, Josh forwarded me a tweet that said:
âTIL: Max Temkin, co-creator of Cards Against Humanity, raped a friend of my friend while attending Goucher College. I donât support CAH.â
We assumed this was someone making a tasteless joke, and I replied to tell him that it wasnât funny. But after some more digging, I found a Facebook post from a girl I knew in college accusing me of sexually assaulting her, and urging people to boycott Cards Against Humanity.
I had a really brief relationship with this girl in college; her dorm room was next to mine, and after a few evenings staying up talking all night, we made out. We spent a few nights in each othersâ rooms, but we never had sex and neither of us pressured the other into doing anything we werenât comfortable with. After a few nights, I broke things off in the cowardly way that 19-year-old guys do, and I just stopped returning her calls and texts. I can imagine she was hurt by this, I know that I would be hurt if someone broke up with me that way.I havenât spoken to this girl in nearly ten years. If she felt I did something wrong in our relationship, she never confronted me about it or brought the issue to the school.
A lot of the discussion Iâve seen about Temkinâs post has been about whether he did or didnât rape his accuser. Itâs about who is telling the truth. Thatâs important, of course, but thatâs not what this post is about. This post about how poorly Max Temkin responded to an accusation of rape, and about what I think his post couldâperhaps shouldâhave been about instead.
There is of course no right way to respond to being accused of raping someone. I donât fault Temkin for not getting something like this completely right. Still, he handles it badly. He spends too much time trying to defend himselfâwhich I understand as an impulse, given the gravity of the situationâand not enough time contemplating the idea that he mightâve messed up. Or, more importantly than either of these, taking the discussion in a useful direction.
Other people have written about their issues with the post, and you can read some of those critiques here. If you want the Cliffnotes version of it: Temkin doesnât completely apologize, and itâs hard not to read the parts about the legalities here as a threat to the woman. Thatâs not cool.
Thereâs a part in Temkinâs post that stood out to me, though. The part where he talks about rape culture:
Part of rape culture that hurts everyone is that it makes it difficult to talk about what is and is not consent, and makes it incredibly scary for people to speak up when their boundaries are crossed. It is entirely possible she read something completely different than I did into an awkward college hookup. If any part of that was traumatic for her, I am sincerely sorry, and I wish we would have had a chance to address it privately. Iâve sent her an email and a Facebook message and given her my contact information, but so far I havenât heard back (but she did edit her post to remove my name).
Now, thereâs a lot about this paragraph that is kind of gross. As our sister site Jezebel says, Temkin is basically âemploying the tropes of rape culture in his own defense, even while wrapping himself in the language of social justice and positioning himself as a good feminist.â Nevermind the non-apology (if it was traumatic!), or the mention the deflection about how she mustâve read the situation. Or the fact that he reached out to this woman privately, and how at this point thatâs kind of weird.
Putting all of that aside, I wish Temkinâs post spent more time around the idea of consentâwhich he briefly touches upon in that paragraph I quoted. Because, letâs face it, Temkin canât prove anything to us about an accusation that happened years ago. But he can use his platform to open up a dialogue about a subject that affects a ton of peopleâand doing so would be more useful for us as a public to engage in rather than to argue a He Said She Said situation.
I wish Temkin invited people to have frank discussions about how difficult it can be to get consent completely right. I wish it spent more time talking about how we all probably have stories from high school or college where consent got tricky, muddled, confusing.
Like that time you started making out with someone and you werenât sure if you should take it further, but the other person was going along with it so maybe itâs okayâand the next time you see each other everything is awkward and it dawns on you that maybe you read it all wrong. Or that time you found yourself doing something you werenât sure about with someone you genuinely likedâhow you let it just slide, because hey, it was nobodyâs fault. Or that one time you were too scared to speak up and tell someone what you wanted, because you didnât want to be fussy and theyâre a totally nice person. Or that time you didnât grab a condom before having sex, because youâd ruin the moment.
Or the timeâŠ
We all have stories like that, right? Itâs always worse when youâre younger, donât know what youâre doing, and are still working out unrealistic societal pressures that tell guys they have to be experienced Don Juans and women that they have to be immaculate bastions of purity.
People get consent wrong all the time, and itâs not because everyone is some kind of savage, evil rapist (and to be clear, the situations Iâm describing are not necessarily rape, but they are situations were boundaries were crossed). Most transgressions are small, untalked about. We all falter. How could we not? This is what society tells us about romance: it should just work. You might fall in love at first sight, no words necessary. And if your love interest knows exactly what to do, if they can get it right without asking, not only is that ideal, then it was meant to be. The best romance is one where nobody communicates and everyone gets it perfectly. And if youâre having trouble you can open up a magazine that has an article that can tell you what to doâbecause lord forbid you actually talk to the person youâre interested in and ask what they need from you, what theyâre comfortable with. That would be embarrassing. Donât you know what youâre doing? You should know what youâre doing.
Consent is not about being perfect, not to me at least. Yes, consent teaches you the importance of asking for permission and making sure you donât cross any boundaries, but it also teaches you the importance of being honest about where you fall short. Consent exists not just as something that should be used to get the green light for a hook-up, but as a mode of thinking about and processing experiences youâve had in the past.
Temkin almost gets there: he presents the idea that maybe the woman read the situation differently than he did. But you have to remember the context is how the accusation is âpatently false.â It happened a long while ago. He broke up with her. Maybe this hurt her feelings. Maybe she read it wrong.
Temkin sets an example for the community, but heâs not willing to really contemplate the possibility he mightâve messed up, nor does he do much to further a crucial conversation about consent that everyone should think about. And when Temkin is one of the minds behind a hugely popular game, and has gained profile as âone of the good guysâ who supports progressive organizations and people, this is a problem.
I donât expect everyone to get consent right all the time. But having better conversations about consentâand being willing to admit the possibility of past mistakesâwould be a start.
UPDATE: Discussion about this piece has turned into an argument about whether Max Temkin has a right defend himself, especially if he is wrongly accused. Of course he does, and I never meant to imply that he does not. He and his accuser are both innocent until proven guilty. They both deserve empathy and none of us should rush to judgment. My intent for this opinion piece was to focus on issues that I hadnât seen significantly explored in his blog post nor in the discussion around it: issues of consent and an opportunity to discuss the grey areas of consent. Some readers have said that Temkinâs first priority should only have been to defend himself. As I said in my piece, I understand that impulse. I do not, however, believe that needs to be the end of the discussion.
