What is your take on this scenario from real life:
Someone is staying in a friend’s home. They have no reason to believe the friend is sexually interested in them. The friend gets chemically incapacitated to the point of passing out on the couch. The houseguest then has sex with the unconscious person, who doesn’t say no.
Is it rape? Who is to blame?
You’d have to be a complete bastard to do it, but IMO it’s not rape. No more than my carrying an incapacitated freind home is kidnap. I’ve done some pretty stupid things while Brahms but I never suggested that anyone else was responsible. I accept that if I’m no longer able to take acre of myself I am at risk, I take that risk.
Opal, having intercourse with an unconscious person is akin to stealing your friend’s wallet when they leave the room to go to the bathroom. Your trust in them may be misplaced, but it’s not a crime. It IS a crime, however, to steal their money or assault their person – whether they are aware that you did it or not.
Are you really saying it is not rape to have sex with an UNCONCIOUS person?!?!
Wow…I better hope I never end up in a coma!
Of course if you were in a coma and I put you in a taxi and sent you home you’d probably also be concerned. But if I did it to you when you had passed out at a party then you’d probably thank me. Fairly different circumstances, and added to that I assume you never willingly put yourself in a coma.
Perhaps it is best not to assume you know what the person would want in either case?
In my experience, but I am a guy, if I were to ask those questions, seem that unsure of myself, I would probably still be a virgin.
Date rape, by my definition, and feel free to disagree, is two people, out on a ‘date’ or otherwise going together into one of their bedrooms (usually a bedroom) consentually. Now, if the girl says no, and he forces himself on her and it isn’t some pre-arranged freakiness, I would call that date rape, punishable as rape. If the woman let’s herself get too drunk to say no, but stays conscious through the event … even without said or intended consent, I don’t think she has any case whatsoever. If she passes out… I don’t know that this would qualify as ‘rape’ but certainly a sexual assault of some kind, and definately a bit of a psyche problem on the man’s side.
Second thoughts the morning after does not a rape make.
Now, IMHO, if a woman asks me up to her bedroom after a hot, been sucking face, and having a great time night, she should probably expect me to make a sexual advance on her. However, if she says, beyond a whispered ‘no, we shouldn’t be doing this’ during the progression of actions, or I am required to become physical, that is a no-no. Many women say no during the negotiations of sex to hold out that ‘pure’ image they want to portray. Women, at least in my day, were still trapped in the slut or virgin categorization. But I don’t think there is anything wrong with continuing to try to persuade after a ‘no’. If she really means ‘no’ you can interpret pretty easily.
I think there is a ‘No’ (you are doing it wrong, try again)
and a ‘NO!’ (I don’t want to have sex with you.)
I dunno about that. *wring I now see what you mean in light of this.
I, too, have been with women who have said no and didn’t mean it(see below for how that is possible). I stopped progession of sexual activity and kept the level the same (you know, kissing was fine but “no” to, say, genital touching) and not ten minutes later did she push the contact herself. We actually ended up having sex that night. Needless to say, I was a little confused but it is understandable.
Sex takes two people. During intimate contact one may ask the other to stop progressing now but isn’t implying it won’t be ok later, even later that evening. In this case, you have obviously made your intentions of desiring more intimate contact. Let the other push the line s/he drew, not you. If you are pushing a line you didn’t draw you are commiting a nonconsentual act with the other person, and when that act is sexual, we call it rape.
in the words of spooje, “review THEN post, review THEN post”
damn closing tags.
Well, I’m a female, and I like it when guys inquire as to whether I am interested in escalating sexual contact. Why would you think it makes you sound unsure? I think it is the considerate thing to do; if a woman is not at all interested in, say, hand-genital contact and you do not ask before proceeding, well, you may have your hand up her skirt before she realizes what you’re about. She can say no at that point, but she’s already had sexual contact of a sort she didn’t want. If a guy asks me if I want to do something and I do, then I say yes; if I don’t want to, I say no. For that matter, I’ve asked guys if they want to escalate sexual contact; I don’t necessarily assume because a guy is making out with me that he’s OK with anything I might want to do.
Huh!!!
I am absolutely astounded that anyone can think it isn’t a crime to have sex with an unconscious person. This isn’t someone who consented without being fully aware of their actions, folks, this is someone who didn’t consent at all.
I mean, if you’re in a hospital for an operation and some staff member comes into your room and has sex with you before the anaesthetic’s worn off, is that not rape?
FYI folks, my original post here was in response the factual question of who is responsible for preventing rape, and as people had already posted “no means no,” I wanted to include the legal concept that people are not required to read others’ minds - nonconsent must be communicated, especially if consent may be implied by the situation or other actions.
Of course, this does NOT apply when the victim is incapacitated. Here’s NC’s law on the subject:
I’d guess that definition 2 covers date rape drugs, etc., while 3 covers voluntary intoxication.
Note that the language is gender-neutral. A woman who has sex with an unconscious man is equally culpable as a man who has sex with an unconscious woman.
Note that when we get into mental states, the language gets kind of fuzzy: “knows or should reasonably know.” This is a balancing act between protecting potential victims, and avoiding prosecution of people with no ill intent who make an innocent mistake.
In any case, I’d say the best course for both sexes, both under the law and in practicality, is not to drink excessively on dates.
JustAnotherGuy- interesting observation. I guess you’d better be DAMN sure which “no” it is before you jump on. I don’t think that “I thought she was still negotiating” will be much of a defense if you’re wrong.
Sex with a passed out drunk person? Well, there is no consent, implied or real, so hmmmm. We can’t substitute “coma” for “passed out drunk”, because the latter is a transitory state, while the other may not be.
I can’t get past the “eeewwwwww” factor on this! I guess I would press charges, because consent was never given on account of I wasn’t conscious. This is very different from the scenario I described earlier however, where I frankly didn’t know WHAT I said because I was in an alcohol-induced blackout. For all I know, I could have bellowed “ride me hard & put me away wet, cowboy!”
Scary either way.
And yes, I think it sucks that people must be so cautious and frightened. But I am a lot less scared today, now that some of my behaviors have changed. I don’t hang around scary places or scary people, so I don’t worry about getting attacked, arrested, or whatever. I chose to do those things in the past, and that was a freely-made choice, accepting the risks involved with my lifestyle. Doesn’t mean that it would have been my fault if I got attacked, but the territory was iffy at best.
ruadh, my fault that my post was unclear. When I said “your trust is that person may be misplaced, but it is not a crime.” I was referring to the unconscious person, not the offender. In other words, she may have been naive to trust this “friend”, but being naive isn’t a crime. It IS a crime, however, to physically attack a defenseless person. And unconscious people are, by definition, defenseless.
My (poorly communicated) analogy was that stealing a credit card from your friend’s purse is a crime, regardless of whether she was aware that you did it.
Sorry for the confusion.
Personally, I wouldn’t buy this as rape. If you’d had sex with this guy, and then gotten charged with rape, and I were on the jury, I would acquit you.
This man was very actively consenting to have sex. The only reason he didn’t have sex with you was because you refused. He signaled in half a dozen ways that he wanted you, and he never said no. Obviously his judgment was impaired at the time, but he certainly knew what he wanted. Lots of sober people have lousy judgment too; that doesn’t mean sleeping with them is rape.
Having sex with someone passed out and unconscious is entirely different. They’re not consenting; they *can’t * consent.
Personally, I think you made a good decision not to sleep with him, but that doesn’t mean it would have been rape if you had.
Likewise I agree with EJsGirl, when she says the fact that she doesn’t remember anything in the morning doesn’t invalidate any consent she gave last night.
Bad thing about blackouts is for all you know you passed out. In fact, most of the time you did at one point or another. Back when I was younger and drank way too much I would have blackouts quite frequently. Sometimes the memories would start coming back later, but most of the time it is lost to me forever.
The way I see it, if the ‘victim’ can’t remember it, the prosecution should be required to provide proof that the victim was unconscious or said no. Without that, it seems unfair to assume the worst, especially with such serious accusations. People do stuff when they are drunk they normally wouldn’t. I knew a 15 year old virgin who asked me to have sex with her, and when I said no went up to a total stranger and asked him, because she was drunk (luckily for her I was a friend of the family and saw to it that she got home and into bed). Sober, she was nothing like that. If she had sex with someone that night I don’t think it would have been rape (well, technically statutory if the guy was more than 4 years older than her, but I have never known anyone in that town to get in trouble for having sex with a 15 year old). It would have been a pretty immoral thing to do for the guy who did it, and would have been a terrible thing to happen to that girl, but it would not be the same as if she was forced or if she had been unconscious.
I know someone will say that if a person is so drunk they can’t remember it the next day they are obviously too drunk to give consent, but that’s not so. I drove home, chatted with my parents, and went to bed before while blacked out and my parents didn’t even know I had been drinking - I just woke up in the morning, my last memories being drinking at a friends house, and had to reconstruct the last night’s events through careful questioning. And if both parties are drunk, how can you say one person’s judgement was impaired to the point they didn’t know what they were doing yet the other had perfect knowledge? When you are breathing fumes it’s hard to smell the alcohol on somebody elses breath.
Badtz- thx for the details about blackout vs. pass out. I forgot that some people don’t know what a blackout is.
Basically, it’s like your brain goes home & goes to sleep, and your body leaves to go find the next party, saying and doing whatever it wants to. You don’t remember because nobody hit the “record” button on the VCR. The TV show was on, but if you don’t hit the button, it’s gone when you look for it the next morning.
Scariest thing in the world, especially if you’re a girl in the age of AIDS.
I have a problem with people who flatly state that ‘NO means NO’. The problem with that absolute statement is that everyone knows that NO does not always mean NO. Part of many people’s sexual flirtation involves seduction, pretending not to want to (to not look like a ‘tramp’), etc.
For a man, this can be very confusing. I remember one time years ago when I was doing some rather heavy petting with a girl, and she said, ‘Stop…’. So I stopped. And she got furious with me. Why did I stop? “Because you said so.” Well, she thought I was making fun of her. Not a good scene. In that case, ‘No’ clearly meant “yes, but I must pretend to resist so you don’t think I’m easy.”
As long as women continue to behave that way, other innocent women will be victimized by men who simply don’t understand the signals they are getting, or by men of low character who pretty much DO understand that they should stop, but seize upon whatever ambiguity they can find to justify their behaviour.
So women need to look inside themselves just a little more and realize that they are somewhat responsible for confusing messages that men receive that may cause them to act inappropriately.
And it’s all well-and-good to say that having sex with an intoxicated person is rape, but it ignores the fact that there are literally millions of women and men in North America who make it a habit to go out to the bar, have a few drinks (or a LOT of drinks), pick up strangers, and have sex with them. It’s what they like to do. So the suggestion that intoxication automatically means rape means that the woman gets to decide after the fact, because most of the time sex between intoxicated people was intended by both parties, even if somewhere along the way enough alcohol was consumed to make the concept of ‘consent’ at least somewhat fuzzy.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with women who are forcibly raped, whether because they are passed out or physically controlled. But the definition of ‘date rape’ has gone way beyond that, and in my mind that simply trivializes the pain and anguish that real rape victims go through.
Regretting it in the morning does not mean you were raped. It may simply mean that you made a bad choice, (or deferred making a choice at all by letting a man ‘lead’ you), for a myriad of reasons.
The other problem I have with ‘date rape’ is that by its nature it often boils down to, ‘Her word against mine’, and I don’t think anyone should ever be convicted on nothing more than the word of another individual, with no other corroborating evidence. There have been people charged with rape after the woman realized that he wasn’t going to call her again. That may be betrayal, it may be a calculated lie to get a gullible person into the sack, but it’s not rape.
Sam, I don’t think anyone has said that sex with an intoxicated person is necessarily rape- I know I have said just the opposite.
If someone is intoxicated to the point of unconsciousness, that is one thing. But simply drunk as hell and having sex is something else entirely.
I agree that “Sunday morning regret” does not mean date rape. “Date” rape only means that it wasn’t a stranger out of the blue, and it wasn’t your spouse or SO. Maybe if we go back to calling it plain old “rape” there will be fewer misunderstandings and pushing of envelopes.
So men need to stop expecting women to behave this way. The social belief that “failing to put up token resistance means you’re easy” is the problem here. Get rid of that belief.