From me to Louis C.K.: You can fuck off and die now

It was mainly an aside. The point is that stronger drinks generally taste stronger. The only exception I can think of is a Long Island iced tea, so if you manage to mix a drink that is not a LIIT and it is strong without tasting strong, that was an impressive invention. Because I promise you that if you put more than the normal amount of vodka in a screwdriver, for example, it won’t taste good to most people—and they will definitely know it has a lot of alcohol in it. In fact, most of the women I have known over the years will probably get drunk more slowly on such a drink, because they will sip it very slowly if they drink it at all.

Not what I said. What we have to have is an understanding that there is a wide moral range of human behavior that still all falls under the umbrella of nonviolent and legal, from saintly and generous, to decent, to acceptable, to tolerable, to boorish and even despicable. Not everything that is immoral is a crime or a violation of someone’s human rights. In fact, this would describe the majority of immoral actions.

This is a point that appears to be lost on the “enthusiastic consent” crusaders. If they simply held that up as the gold standard, I would agree with them. But they seem to want to criminalize everything outside enthusiastic consent, and I vehemently oppose that project. Sometimes a guy will use slimy and manipulative maneuvers to worm his way into having sex with a woman (a woman who may be much younger and thus naïvely susceptible to his “game” but not legally underage). And then he may talk a bunch of shit to his dudebros about his “conquest” of her afterwards or treat her as a discarded plaything. That makes him a despicable jerk, an asshole—but not a rapist. The appropriate penalty for which is that decent people may not want to be friends with you. Not prison, or being kicked out of college.

Maybe deceptively strong drinks was covered in the last semester of the Mixology program you dropped out of.

Lol, iswydt.

Nope, that’s not the point, and it’s not an aside. One of the few interesting things about your posts is their regular insights into who you are. This is one of these moments. You said:

"I think if you manage to serve someone a drink that is really strong without it seeming strong…then very impressive.

…If it falls within the generally understood parameters of being an actual cocktail, with alcohol and mixer and no roofies, I don’t think that’s predatory."

As long as you’ve got the skills to blend it without the recipient noticing how strong it is, and as long as you’re only using alcohol, then you reckon it’s not predatory. Then we can add in your previous observation on predatory behaviour. You see nothing wrong with getting some drunk enough that “their non-debilitating buzz makes them more open to having sex when they might not have been into it stone cold sober”. You think it’s ok as long as you haven’t got them to the point where they’re “passed out, or so blitzed (even if still sort of conscious) that they don’t have a clear idea of what’s going on around them.”

To summarise: you think it’s ok to make people drink more than they realise to get them buzzed enough to have sex with you, as long as they’re not passed out.

Gary, you used some carefully chosen ellipses there, and you ignored my subsequent clarification of what you quoted. And I don’t appreciate your quoting me without using the quote function so that people can go back and see the quoted post in context.

I would note that in case it wasn’t clear, I think someone can be predatory and act in a way that is immoral and which all decent people should denounce, without it being something they should be arrested for, kicked out of college for, or lose their job over. Being a sleazy and manipulative lothario is certainly not something we should encourage in our sons and brothers, but people have the right to be that kind of person, as long as they don’t cross the line to sexual assault.

And despite your attempt to misrepresent and therefore strawman me, I did not say that line was crossed only if passed out, but also if the woman is conscious but so blitzed she doesn’t really know what’s going on around her. In fact, you quoted me saying that, but then curiously left that part out of your “summary”. :dubious:

You apparently would prefer a different line, although it seems you don’t want to be pinned down on where that line is. Is it when her inhibitions are lessened compared to what they would be if she were sober? If so, then that happens with the first drink. So you would necessarily further believe that an adult woman who has had a drink or two is not competent to decide she wants to have sex. Is that correct, or would you like to clarify?

I had actually already quoted that addition, but if it makes you feel better:

To summarise: you think it’s ok to make people drink more than they realise to get them buzzed enough to have sex with you, as long as they’re not passed out or so blitzed (even if still sort of conscious) that they don’t have a clear idea of what’s going on around them.

I think it’s not a crime, or justification for being fired or expelled from college. That’s far from saying it’s “ok”. Are you unable to read the portions of my posts where I express moral disapproval of “sleazy” “lotharios”? :dubious:

ETA: And I note that you continue to dodge my question. You want to question where I draw the line, but you won’t state your own for the record. Coward.

I draw the line pretty easily. I don’t sleep with someone drunk if I don’t believe they’d have slept with me when sober. It’s a nice straightforward rule, and it means you don’t excuse yourself for bullshit like “I’ll get them drunk to improve my chances, but it’s ok because I’m only using alcohol, and they’re not passed out”.

Let’s put aside the question of whether it should be a crime.

I’m comfortable with the idea that if you violate consent by tricking someone into drinking more alcohol than they expected then they should be able to write about it on a website and call you to account.

As a woman, I find the notion that I’m incapable of consent after having downed a couple of glasses of wine incredibly condescending and infantilizing.

No means no. But my yes also means yes. If I say yes and I regret it the next day, that’s on me. It was a learning experience and it will help me make better decisions next time.

These conversations have other overtones that I find disturbing, a carry-over from days I thought we were past. One of them is the idea that a woman’s virtue is her most precious possession. The other is that the default position is that sex is something that men want and women don’t. Because sex is so so icky for girls that the guy better be double-dog sure she wants it, because what sane woman would want to do THAT?

Fuck Louis CK. I have no use for him anymore.

So. Much. This. You dug into some underlying prejudices there that I hadn’t consciously perceived, but as soon as you laid them out, it was instantly clear you were speaking truth.

Am I missing something?

The context in this thread is that the woman has been given additional alcohol without her consent, and this leads her to having sex when she would not have chosen to do so sober.

That means she was drugged. That’s not okay. It’s not the same thing as her choosing to drink a little more alcohol. Alcohol is actually the most common date rape drug–easy to spike a drink with that.

Even without an actual rape, it’s a consent violation. And it has nothing to do with the person’s gender: it would be just as wrong with a man or someone else. If anyone ever snuck anything into a drink that I didn’t want there, I would be quite traumatized.

As for when the person chooses how much they drink: different people have different comfort levels. Obviously not drunk is okay, and passed out is bad, and we all have to draw our lines in different places. Personally, I draw the line at disequlibrium–when they seem to have trouble walking. But I’d be willing to move the line either direction depending on what people tell me.

“Additional alcohol” violates her consent? That’s nonsense, unless he claimed to put a certain exact amount in and secretly put way more. Most people who aren’t bartenders don’t use jiggers: they just splash some liquor in the glass and fill the rest with mixer.

I agree with you about disequilibrium though.

In one of those funny coincidences, this had not been a live issue for me for some years–but then it became one again just this past Saturday night.

I was out at the bar, and a young woman took a shine to me, you might say. But although the woman in question was definitely tipsy (she was a bit unsteady when walking to the bathroom for instance), she was very much the aggressor, which added an interesting wrinkle. She kept offering to buy rounds of shots to drink with her (I accepted one), saying things like “you’re the coolest guy I ever met” and “I love you”. When I casually mentioned my wife, she flat out stated that I was making her jealous.

So where did this come from? It’s not like my night usually involves what sounds like the opener to one of those classic Penthouse letters. The key element, I think, in combination with alcohol, was that she was mad at her boyfriend. I offered a sympathetic ear, and my usual gentlemanly charm, but we really had nothing in common from my perspective. She was very “basic”, complaining for instance about her friend’s boyfriend’s “weird vegan food” and showing no sign of being into anything intellectual or culturally highbrow. She was also very vain, expressing outrage that some other person she met guessed her age at 28 when she is in fact 26. “Do I look 28?” I told her she did not look that old, that she appeared to have perfect skin without any smile lines or anything (and this was true). Boy did she eat that up with a spoon. :rolleyes: (She will be a sad case when she hits her forties, I expect.)

She kept saying she wanted to “spend all night” with me, but she lived with the boyfriend she is mad at, and I of course live with my wife and two younger kids. But had she lived on her own and invited me over, I would have been sorely tempted. Because although as I say we really had nothing in common, she was objectively quite beautiful. I have been with some very attractive women, especially in my salad days, but I would have to say that even if her style wasn’t as hip as most of theirs, just as a physical specimen of humanity she probably has them all beat: perfect “figure” as my mom would say, fit without being too skinny; and very pretty: a natural blonde, with looks in the ballpark of Paris Hilton or Mamie Gummer. She would have been out of my league in high school or in my twenties, so it was extra crazy at this age (although I did recently read a study of heterosexual people on dating sites that found men’s attractiveness peaks at 50 and women’s at 18, so I guess maybe I’m still on the upward climb?).

So although I did give her a ride home, I ignored her entreaties to go somewhere else (it would have had to be the uber-tacky move of getting a hotel room) and then metaphorically kicked myself after dropping her off. I thought about our discussion here, and how we would think about a case where a super attractive woman is the aggressor, buying the shots, pushing for a hookup. Would we really fault a guy for giving in to that temptation, when she is out of his league, even if she is a little unsteady on her feet and the guy strongly suspects she would regret the hookup the next day?

Dude, if you “strongly suspect she would regret the hookup the next day”, then accepting the opportunity to hook up is knowingly setting her up for a situation that you have good reason to believe she won’t be happy with. Why would any normal decent person do that?

Not just with sex, but with anything. For instance, if my lactose-intolerant friend gets shitfaced and begs me to buy them an icecream cone because they sooooooo muuuuch want some icecream, I’m not going to do that. I’m not necessarily going to physically prevent them from buying an icecream cone for themselves, but I’m not going to give them icecream when I know it’s highly probable that they wouldn’t be begging me for icecream if their judgement weren’t impaired.

The fact that they voluntarily chose to drink enough to impair their own judgement doesn’t absolve me from my responsibility, as a normal decent person, not to encourage them in doing things that I strongly suspect they will regret.

You make a good case, as usual (are you a trial lawyer, a lobbyist, something like that? Just curious). But your analogy has a key discrepancy from my situation: we don’t have a deep, primal drive to watch our friends eat ice cream. We (straight men at least) do have a deep, primal drive to engage in coitus with exceptionally attractive, fertile women who are strongly coming on to us.

People getting drunk together in bars then hooking up for a night they later regret is so common that it’s a cliche’.

If the woman was falling down drunk, I would agree with you. If she’s passed out drunk, touching her sexually in any way is assault, and sex is rape. No question. But if she’s just tipsy and gregarious because she’s had a couple, then that’s on her. Women have agency, including the agency to have a few drinks to loosen themselves up if they are going out patrolling for someone. It is not a man’s job to decide if a woman is making the right choices or doing something she might regret, so long as she is capable of making those choices for herself.

I agree with Ann Hedonia - our zeal to demonize men and protect women is leading us down an almost Victorian path which threatens to infantalize women and take away their agency. What’s next, fainting couches? Or do we call those safe spaces today?

And, so …? Finish that thought.

“I have an instinctual desire for sex … therefore, I should be excused when I disregard whether the other person has conveyed genuine, knowledgeable, non-incapacitated consent?”

The whole point of this cultural movement is to teach men that it’s not okay to disregard those questions when your instinctive desire is urging you on.

That’s indeed what the entire history of human civilization is about. Civilization is the curbing of unchecked instincts to act on one desires and to take into account the desires and well being of the people around you. The whole point of civilized behavior is the principle that “you don’t always get to do what you want to do.”

None of this is about a “zeal to demonize men and protect women.” It’s to stop any person A from violating the consent of any person B for any reason whatsoever. Foregoing a chance to have sex is not a tragedy or a taking of something valuable.

I’d rather that Ann Hedonia be mad at me for refusing her come on than to go for it when there’s any question in my mind about her competence to consent. Neither she nor I have lost anything valuable if I forego it. And that works both ways, and it works regardless of the sex or gender or sexual preferences of the parties involved. It’s how all humans should treat each other.