By his own account, Bill Cosby is not a sexual predator, but a chivalrous, caring man.

This was how the entertainer cast himself in a decade-old deposition, which finally became public Saturday in a New York Times article. Accused of using drugs to sedate and molest a female friend, Cosby said the relationship was consensual, and discussed similar encounters.

To many rape survivors, this sounds eerily familiar: A popular, outwardly kind man is accused of committing premeditated and cruel acts of sexual violence. To everyone else, it sounds unlikely and unbelievable. We are taught that rapists are psychopaths and loners. They prey on vulnerable women, and attack in the dark.

Cosby insists he is innocent of molestation or rape, but more than 40 women claim he is guilty. If he's guilty, Cosby’s deposition is a powerful reminder that there are reasons a rapist looks at himself and sees, on the whole, a virtuous man.

A rapist may have deemed himself an excellent judge of consent, particularly sensitive to the nuances of non-verbal communication. He may feel he knows a woman well enough to "read" her. After all, in four-fifths of rapes the victim knows the attacker, and he often exploits the trust of a relationship or rapport.

Cosby describes himself as a "mentor" to the women he raped. And tell me rape is not about power. http://t.co/nupkOOHDAX — Elizabeth Plank (@feministabulous) July 20, 2015

If a woman turns rigid or unresponsive during physical contact, that cue may be eclipsed by every positive interaction that preceded it. The discrepancy, in his mind, does not make him a rapist.

This, according to the deposition, is how Cosby described the process of fondling a woman who eventually sued him for molestation: "I don't hear her say anything. And I don't feel her say anything. And so I continue and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped."

Despite the allegations against him, Cosby also felt attuned to the supposed desires of the women in his midst.

“I think that I’m a pretty decent reader of people and their emotions in these romantic sexual things, whatever you want to call them,” he said.

That assertion is perverse given that Cosby also admitted to using quaaludes in his quest for sex. He spoke of one such encounter as consensual, but when asked if the woman in question was capable of giving her consent after taking the sedating drug in 1976, he replied, “I don’t know.”

Until recently, conventional wisdom held that anything less than screaming in protest makes consent — when it is given and revoked — blurry. Women have also been asked to define rape on rigid terms, as a crime characterized by force or violence. If they didn't resist an unwanted advance, the logic goes, it couldn't have been an assault.

But we now know more about the neurobiology of trauma, and how it causes survivors to shut down during an attack, even if collective judgment says they should have fought back.

As a result, we are remaking the rules of consent, requiring that it be given verbally before and throughout a sexual encounter. This social experiment will have its successes and failures, but it means that the rapist who considers himself incapable of rape must learn how to see terror in the face of his victim, and not read it as ambivalence. More importantly, he must ask permission.

Deposition exposes sordid details about Bill Cosby's attitude toward women http://t.co/MNg2bPCDGL pic.twitter.com/j6QMQEQwUV — Mashable (@mashable) July 19, 2015

New, hard rules for consent are essential because rapists need to know they are raping, and that there are no justifications for their behavior.

Few rapists are charged and prosecuted, so we know relatively little about those who escape the legal system. But the existing research indicates that men who commit rape may do so again and again.

A 2002 study of more than 1,800 respondents found that 76 individuals, or 4% of the sample, said they were responsible for an estimated 439 of 483 rapes.

Most importantly, they were not asked to self-identify as rapists, because few people would make that confession, or see themselves as capable of sexual violence. Instead, researchers described sexual assault, and they admitted to engaging in the behavior. In other words, they admitted to raping when they didn't have to phrase it that way.

Similarly, in a recent study of 86 male college students, some men said they would never rape a woman but also said they would use the kind of physical force that characterizes rape.

These men did not hold overly hostile attitudes toward women, a trait that might make female friends or acquaintances wary. Rather, they displayed hyper-masculine behavior and lower levels of hostility, compared to those who admitted they might rape a woman.

We increasingly understand that rapists are our friends, co-workers and even our family –- not just stalkers and deranged misogynists. Investigations into rape in the military and on college campuses have proven that rapists can, outwardly, be seemingly honorable men.

Yet, it's clear that many rapists don't recognize themselves. That should always be their burden and not their victim's.

We can continue to pretend that only the unhinged rape, or we can acknowledge that some very ordinary men take power that does not belong to them.