The complainant’s account of the event is found on pages 14 and 15. (Possibly elsewhere as well.) I can’t copy/paste it as it’s just an image pdf, but the basic gist is, she began to go down on him, he began bragging about the fact that he was having a sexual relationship with both her and her roommate, she became uncomfortable, said he wanted to stop, tried to push away*, but he was insistent, and belittled her refusal. Wanting it to be over, she finally let him continue to have oral sex with her til she ejaculated.
*That is how it is worded. Nothing explicit is said as to why this was a “try” rather than a “success” but the word used and accepted in the record is “try.” It may be that further explanation is given elsewhere in the transcript.
ETA to what follows: Okay, having written up what follows but before posting, I see a few additional posts that, on first glance, might address some of what follows. In particular, I see that Frylock has posted a link. I’ll post the following now, as-is, and then do some follow-up reading:
Again, my argument (which is also the argument of the articles I linked) doesn’t really depend much on his exact state of consciousness, but you seem to think it does. The fact was, regardless of his exact level of zombiness, he was too drunk to consent, and apparently quite obviously so; and the fact that, despite this, she initiated the act, making her the perpetrator.
Okay, I won’t question that (well, not much anyway) because I didn’t follow the Schumer argument closely. I was working from your earlier text which, on the surface, seemed to question the case that one party commits a sex act while the other party is clearly incapacitated. I thought the case seemed to question whether such a case would be treated symmetrically regardless of the relative genders of the participants, and I brought up the Amherst case as an example of a case being treated blatantly asymmetrically. And I can’t fathom why you don’t see some serious RO here.
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My comments are based on (possibly inaccurate) recollections of the transcript of the hearing itself.
I believe the coercion was a combination of physical and psychological. I don’t remember.
Understand that women in this position often cannot know that if they simply pull away hard enough and speak forcefully enough, the guy won’t become even more aggressive. If I suck a man’s dick (btw I’m male to be clear) because I have good reasons to be afraid of what he’ll do to me otherwise, because he’s taking actions to hold me in place and is speaking aggressively to me, then you bet I’m being assaulted, even if it’s in a sense my decision to keep going, and even if I started it before I said I wanted to stop.
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Okay, now I understand why you don’t see the RO. You still simply don’t believe that she assaulted him, and you still do believe that, in this encounter, he somehow assaulted her. And you have addition facts from a transcript that you didn’t link here.
Did she actually say, in the proceeding, that she was afraid he would become violent? If not, then you are injecting a hypothetical scenario that is entirely unsupported by any facts of the case (at least, going by the articles I linked). (And as I said I haven’t read camille link yet.) In the material I’ve read so far (just what I’ve linked), I certainly didn’t see anything to suggest that “he’s taking actions to hold me in place and is speaking aggressively to me, then you bet I’m being assaulted”. And if he was so drunk as to be in some kind of semi-zombie state, I would think that any hypothesis that he’s violent or threatening violence is an extraordinary hypothesis that requires extraordinary evidence. Or at least some evidence.
Oops, sorry, I see I got one of the QUOTE tags garbled above, which was supposed to enquotize another part of Frylock earlier post. Figure it out as best you can, everybody. Sorry. Too late to fix it.
The articles say he was “blacked out”, which I don’t think anybody questioned, even if there is some question as to just what “blacked out” exactly means. I thought it was beyond dispute that any level of inebriation that would be described as “blacked out” would be too drunk to consent. No?
No. As I’ve repeatedly said. That’s the problem with the entire story. There is no level of drunk defined as “blacked out.” Blacked out does not define a level of inebriation. It defines an inability to remember later.
I read some of the transcript. “John Doe” claims that he does not remember any of the events, up to and including whether he had a sexual encounter with “Sandra Jones.”
The articles say he was “blacked out”, which I don’t think anybody questioned, even if there is some question as to just what “blacked out” exactly means. I thought it was beyond dispute that any level of inebriation that would be described as “blacked out” would be too drunk to consent. No?
Well, yes: The facts of the case as I’ve read so far (and I haven’t read Frylock’s link yet either) seem to make clear that the actual acts performed consisted of a sex act initiated by the female party upon the male party, to which he was too drunk to consent. Then she accused him (two years after the fact), and the investigation was said to be a total kangaroo court, and he was found guilty and expelled. The actual facts of the case, as found later in the lawsuit, seemed to make clear that she was the initiator.
The Amherst policy, in common with typical policies of this sort, say that inebriation is no defense. That’s rather vague. Usually, that would mean that if the female is drunk, then she can’t consent even if she says she does and the male is responsible to know that. But now it seems to mean, as well, that if he is too drunk to consent, then he, not the female, is still responsible for whatever happens, and if she accuses him, this his drunkenness is no defense.
It sounds like the policy, as actually implemented, is that no matter which party is drunk (or even both of them), and no matter who initiates doing what with whom, the male party is the responsible one. And it sounds to me, more and more, that you’re trying to develop the argument that this is rightly the way it should be.
ETA: Seeing your latest post, above, I now wonder if this is your argument: That being “blacked out” and not remembering anything does not mean he was too drunk to consent. Do you mean to argue that maybe he was sufficiently sober that we was able to consent? If so, say that, and we can argue the case from that point of view.
To bring this conversation back to the thread, the Amherst case doesn’t serve as a very good example of what Frylock was asking for. Frylock was asking for:
(bolding mine)
The Amherst case is one where a man claims not to remember anything, including whether there was any sexual contact, a woman claims she started to consensually give him a blow job, and the woman claims she was nonconsensually forced to finish the blow job.
Can we all agree, no matter who is telling the truth in the Amherst case, that it is not a good example of the situation Frylock was asking about? Because even if the man is completely telling the truth, it isn’t a case where everyone acknowledges what he was saying but still call it rape. Right?
I’m starting to wonder how many times I have to repeat myself.
“Blacked out” means “I don’t remember the events.” It does not mean “I was not conscious” or “I was too drunk to consent.” It doesn’t have to have anything to do with how drunk someone was, though there is generally a correlation. So, “I blacked out” is not “I was too drunk to consent.” “I passed out” would be. “I blacked out” isn’t.
If someone asks me at midnight what I was doing at six and I can’t remember because I was drinking, I might say I blacked out. But if it turns out that at six I was raping someone, the fact that I blacked out is of no relevance. And, perhaps of greater importance given the accusations in this case, I could be too drunk to consent to sex and still be liable for rape.
Well, okay, maybe it isn’t exactly a close match for the kind of case Frylock asked for.
It looks like Frylock is asking about cases in which the alleged perpetrator is drunk, and he is asking if such cases will be judged symmetrically whether that alleged drunk perpetrator is the male or female participant. I think it’s understood (amirite?) that in such a case, inebriation is, or ought to be, no defense for the perpetrator.
The Amherst case is (apparently disputedly now) a case where the victim (the male, if you believe that version of the story) is the drunk one, and too drunk to consent, in which case the other party is the culpable one. So I suppose that difference makes this case unlike any example that Frylock is looking for.
But now, on top of that, there is apparently a dispute as to just who was the perpetrator in the Amherst, but the facts as I’ve read them seem to show the female was the perp.
I was starting to think that you jsgoddess were trying to develop an argument that a drunken male participant must be the culpable party, regardless of whatever the other facts of the case might be. But now, you’re even questioning how drunk he was. Do you think he was able to consent?
And what would it matter if he could and did consent? He wasn’t the one bring the charges against her, so she wasn’t being asked if she had obtained his consent anyway. I’m less and less sure what point you’re trying to make.
Do you want to just drop this entire Amherst tangent, if it’s not exactly relevant to a point Frylock was trying to make earlier? If so, okay. I interpreted this thread to be a wide-ranging one that might ramble all over the subject of “Anti-Feminism”, so I brought this up because it seems to drive home the point that the pendulum has swung waaaaay to far, to the point that an accused male if guilty, not only if he didn’t get valid consent, but if he didn’t even initate and perform the alleged acts, but instead the accuser herself did.
I’m dubious about the claim that she consented, then changed her mind, tried to stop, he wouldn’t let her, and she feared violence. I’ll need to read that transcript now to see what to make of that. On the surface, it doesn’t sound very plausible to me. And note also, her text messages (which appear clearly to exculpate the accused) were only discovered after the hearings, so the transcript wouldn’t have mentioned those.
ETA:
I see, also, that a lot of our posts are leap-frogging one another, so I hope we can sort out any confusion that’s going to cause.
With respect but also with snark, I just don’t have enough wtf’s for this.
It’s not just plausible, it’s utterly unremarkable. If you don’t think women “consent…, then change… [their] mind, [try] to stop, [aren’t allowed to], and … fear… violence” and therefore acquiesce, with heartbreaking regularity, then I don’t know what world you’re living in.
How so? To my recollection she simply states “I made a terrible mistake” or something along those lines. You don’t think rape victims say this to themselves in most cases?
Okay, I’ll make this declaration: If any party of “blacked-out”, according to the definition jsgoddess gives of being sufficiently drunk so as to engage in some activity and not remember it later, then I feel comfortable in arguing that that is too drunk to be capable of giving consent. The male party was said to be “blacked-out”, and that isn’t disputed that I can see, so according to even this definition, he was unable to consent to anything.
Is that where we are having a difference here? Do you believe that one can be “blacked-out” (as defined) and that this is still not to drunk to consent?
And it’s generally understood, I think, that if either party is sufficiently incapacitated, for any reason, to be able to consent, then the other party is responsible to recognize that and act (or refrain from acting) accordingly.
You misunderstood. 340,000 total occupational deaths, men and women. If 10% of that is women, then there are ~310,000 male deaths. 290,000 maternal deaths, so a total of ~320,000 female deaths.
And the fact that reproductive work is not considered work is part of the problem that feminism is attempting to solve. It’s dangerous, unpleasant, and essential to society’s survival. It definitely is more worthy of the title “work” than killing poor people in other countries.
Of course all this discussion of the 2012 Amherst case began when those arguing that “feminism is NOT about equality” tried to provide a case in support of the proposition (paraphrasing, here):
— the proof that Feminism is Not about Equality is that when roles are reversed, feminists fail to condemn women for performing the same acts they do condemn when those acts are performed by men. —
And the act chosen was rape. So the FINAE supporters offered up the Amherst case, in which the male was expelled (in December 2013; the incident in question had occurred in February 2012).
For the FINAE side to successfully make their case that this is supportive evidence, it must consist of a genuine reversal: a case of a female raping (or sexually assaulting) a male–and there must be evidence that “feminists” have spoken in support of the female or at least, failed to condemn her conduct and/or call for her prosecution.
But this case won’t work for the FINAE purpose. It’s not a clear-cut case of a female sexually assaulting a male. What keeps this from being a clear-cut case of a female assaulting a male:
1: The male has (he claims) no memory of the incident.
2: The female claims that though the encounter began with her consent, she withdrew consent but was forced by the male to continue (this is from page 13 of the expelled-guy’s lawsuit, by the way; it’s referred to in the post from Frylock that’s quoted at the bottom of this post) :
3: The male has no counter for the female’s assertion that he forced her to continue the sex act, because–according to his own testimony–he has no memory of the event.
So this is NOT a case that supports the argument that “Feminism is Not about Equality,” because it is not a reversal of the type of case that feminists DO condemn (males sexually assaulting females). You need a clear-cut case of a female raping/sexually assaulting a male, and then after that you need to look for silence from feminists on the subject. (Looking for “silence” is, of course, rather tricky. But most of us here would accept ‘case is well-known, and major figures calling for equality for females say nothing about it in the six months or so after it comes to national attention’ – or a reasonable equivalent.)
Srsly? In the more usual (or at least more stereotypical) case, the male is the active party, the initiator, the one using (or threatening) force. In those cases, sure, I’m sure you’re right. No dispute there. If the guy if physically pushing her around, knocking her down (or up), on top of her, humping away and won’t stop despite her requests then of course.
But this Amherst case? He’s too drunk to consent (I’m still pretty sure that “blacked-out” is drunk enough to be too drunk to consent), and she is the active party, the initiator, but she decided she wants to stop and he somehow prevented her? Did he threaten violence? Did the transcript actually say that?
And how much initiation does it take to complete the case? The classical definition of rape is “penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the act”. More modernly, the definition has been expanded very much beyond that, so that rape can be found even absent actual penetration. How should we interpret this when the act consists of a blow job?
Did she acknowledge herself that she started, then decided to stop? Too late. If he didn’t (or couldn’t) consent, then why is she not a rapist here right from the very first slurp?
If I forcibly stick my dick where it ain’t welcome, then think better of it and immediately back off, have I not already “completed the act”? Why is that not also the criterion in this case?