Charges of sex assault w/ voluntarily intoxicated victims

Great Debates
21

I still think it’s important. I know in the society I grew up in we were all way to lax with consent. In part because of British prudishness and being overly concerned that it’s “unromantic” or something like that, thinking it’s somehow better to try to “read the signals”, i.e. guess. I think it’s much healthier for kids to be taught to discuss consent in a straightforward and explicit manner without feeling it’s inappropriate or awkward to do so.

If this becomes the norm for healthy casual sexual encounters, it might more quickly set off red flags when someone encounters a predator who does not follow these norms. The excuse that “I thought you were giving me the signal with your body language” or some bullshit no longer holds up.

22

I’m in total agreement that we should be teaching people (and not just people when and if they make it to college) that they have every right to deny consent to anyone for violating their person or making them feel physically threatened; as a culture we emphasize the value of being ‘nice’ over being forthright when it comes to physical and emotional boundaries, especially for women, which leads to many victims of assault being too ashamed or unwilling to speak up for themselves. But I question that the ‘affirmative consent’ seminars that seem largely focused on both parties being ‘nice’ offer any real benefit in preventing predatory or opportunistic assault and may even subtly facilitate such attacks by making it seem that as long as someone is being ‘nice’ they can’t really be a predator. I would much rather see it instilled in all children that they have an absolute affirmative right to deny anyone to touch them in a way that is uncomfortable or pressure them into doing something they don’t want to do. Parents often don’t want to do this because it makes for more defiant children but it also makes for adults who aren’t conditioned to say, “Yes” to anyone just because they seem friendly.

Stranger

23

Is it immoral if you’re both drunk?

mmm

24

Yes. Drunken people often do things that are immoral. In that case, I think they were both wrong.

One advantage of labelling it “immoral” rather than “rape” is that rape is a crime committed by one person against another person. But two people can act immorally with regards to each other at the same time. That, sadly, happens all the time.

25

Consenting to get drunk is not the same thing as consenting to sex, thouygh And, yes, it would obviously be theft to take someone’s wallet that they offer you when they are clearly drunk. You would reasonably know they might not actually want you to take said wallet, but that their inebriation is keeping them from thinking clearly. The term consent implies “informed” consent, and one is not fully informed when inebriated.

There are two confounding factors: the fact that the other person may also be inebriated, and the fact that you may not always be able to tell someone is inebriated. It’s debatable if those who are a little buzzed count as inebriated. Criminality tend to require the mental capacity to commit the crime, and a knowledge of the facts that would make their action illegal.

But if someone notices someone is drunk and takes advantage of that state? That is a lack of fully informed consent. And when the action without consent is sex, that is, by definition, rape.

This seems to agree with everything I’ve ever read on the subject of alcohol and rape. I’ve never seen the idea that it’s not rape if the person is asking for it while drunk. In fact, I’ve seen many claims that it explicitly is rape.

I don’t see any value in not calling it rape, either. That sort of muddying of the waters just makes it where it become more acceptable. I definitely see no value in switching the label to “immoral,” as most people consider morality to be somewhat relative, with it varying based on circumstances and personal beliefs. As a result, you will often have people who justify immoral actions with rationalizations, because they really want to do them.

Someone who takes advantage of a drunk person isn’t just doing something immoral. They are doing something that should be criminal. Just like when they take advantage of anyone else in a compromised mental state.

And I don’t see any reason to coddle those who want to come up with loopholes, freaking out at the word “rape” being applied to something they shouldn’t be doing. Causing them to freak out and question their actions is the point.

26

In the newspaper article I read (Chicago Trib - paywalled, I think) Gov. Pritzker is quoted as saying: “It doesn’t matter if you had a beer, or a shot, or five, that’s your choice. But the assault was not.”

The suggestion that someone would be presumed incapable of consent after a single beer is damned scary.

27

Context matters. What’s the “assault” in this sentence? And sexual contact?

I would agree that the vast majority of adults are sober enough to fully consent to sex (or to refrain from consenting to sex) after one beer.

28

I think this sort of law piles on to the idea that sex is something bad, to be ashamed of, or permanently scarring. People make bad choices about all manner of things - including whether to get drunk or to have sex. The fact that someone engages in sex that they regret the next day is not necessarily something that should scar them for life - or be criminalized. I have no objection to anyone calling it immoral. But this is the state’s criminal code for sexual crimes.

What if a woman gets drunk, and at a party with a lot of other drunk folk, asks an equally drunk guy to fuck her. The next day she regrets her actions. Did a sexual assault occur? (Likely a question of fact for the court/jury.). I n my mind, if it wasn’t violent, and there wasn’t a power imbalance (such as the guy is sober, looking for drunk women), well, probably both parties should learn a lesson - on responsible drinking if nothing else. But I think far too much activity is criminalized these days in the US.

How about, instead of drunkenly handing someone your wallet, you drunkenly buy round after round for the house? The next day, you still have your wallet, but it is empty. Did a crime occur?

29

Personally, I don’t think getting raped is a “lesson” that women who dared to get drunk around rapists need to learn.

30

So, if 2 drunk people decide to have sex the man is a rapist?

31

Huh? Did you misunderstand the scenario? What if it’s two drunk gay men? Did they rape each other?

32

Absent the context of the rest of the Governor’s comments, I don’t read your / the Trib’s snippet that way at all.

I read it as “You drinking lots does not excuse somebody else assaulting you. You should have the freedom to drink little or lots as you wish without being assaulted. The new law provides additional protection for the case when you choose to drink lots. As in: ‘to the point you’re oblivious.’”.

33

Your wallet is something that is not given away by most rational sober people, so that’s kinda a bad example. But people do open up their wallet generously. If someone offers to give you money out of their wallet, you may not know that they will regret that in the morning.

I know a woman who, while she is now much past those days, back in her party days, she would get drunk, and seem relatively sober. You’d think that she was a bit tipsy, but not hammered. However, she was in fact black out drunk and wouldn’t remember a thing that happened the next day.

I do think that there is value in differentiating people who made a bad decision, possibly while under the influence themselves, and someone who is actually predatory. Lumping them together is not fair to either the perpetrators or the victims.

34

Could someone give specific criteria so that a casual observer can determine that a person is too drunk to give consent?

35

The simple criterion is, if you don’t feel comfortable with the situation, you are under no obligation to have sex with the drunken person. You don’t need to start figuring out whether they are “too drunk”, just get out of there. Same if they are sober, or high on mystery pills, or any other time.

36

If they do not respond to questions loudly shouted at them or do not react to being shaken then they are too drunk to give consent. The problem is that there are no criteria for the minimum level of intoxication to be unable to give consent. It becomes very difficult to determine sometimes, that’s what juries have to do when the matter can’t be resolved.

The ‘Yes means yes’ idea stated above seems to be a positive step.

37

Not really.

That says the standards, be they high or be they predatory, of the sober person should rule.

Yes, one should not have sex with somebody drunk while the situation feels skeevy to themselves. But the absence of the skeevy feeling is hardly clearance to proceed. That’s simply excusing a free-fire zone for the predators.

That’s probably not what you meant. But it’s sure how it sounded to me. And perhaps to others.

38

Why would the standards of the predatory person rule? I never implied anything like that. I am suggesting that if a person’s behaviour causes one to question whether they are in their right mind, then one should definitely not have sex with them. The predators, on the other hand, would not care if their victim were intoxicated; in anything, they probably consider it a plus.

You are, I think, considering the case where a person is not visibly drunk, maybe had no drinks at all—is that “clearance to proceed”? Obviously not, if you mean categorically, but that is just the basic question of how strangers let each other know they are interested.

Hear is a real-life example: the woman out in the park after midnight who was writhing naked on a picnic table and inviting passers-by to “touch her”. So she was not unconscious. Was she drunk? Who knows? At least she was not physically assaulting anyone.

39

The thing about consent is it isn’t a moment, it’s a process. You should be consenting the entire time you are having sex, screaming consent, whispering consent, consenting with your hands and mouth. And if this consent stops, you should too, at least long enough to find out why.

Moods can shift fast, especially late at night, even more so when drugs and alcohol are involved. Back when I was establishing my bonafides in drunken sexual encounters, it wasn’t uncommon for one of us to say mid-encounter “I’m too tired, I’m not feeling it anymore, let’s pick it up in the morning”. And it wasn’t a big deal because we were grownups and we liked each other. Even if we didn’t know each other well we’d established a strong rapport, or else I wouldn’t have been there.

Yes, there were times I consented to sex with someone I probably wouldn’t have slept with if I was stone-cold sober. I wasn’t taken advantage of, I knew what I was doing. But I realized I was hurting people, men who took the encounters way more seriously than I did and wanted more than a one night stand.

I really preferred the womanizers, we were on the same page and it was so much easier.

The point to that digression being that “intoxicated woman consenting to sex with someone she just met” does not always mean that someone took advantage of her. Some women like getting intoxicated and having sex.

But gaining consent isn’t just about getting to yes, it’s about staying at yes, and if someone is not responding they may not be consenting anymore.

But I agree that intoxication, in and of itself, does not make consensual sex rape. It can be hard to judge the intoxication level of another person, not everyone slurs and stumbles and starts dancing on tables.

40

A video I found about tea and consent, and what that has to do with sex.