I think this goes to the heart of the matter. In all the examples in the OP, the women did not want to have sex but that wasn’t always clear. Being in a situation where you don’t want to have sex but have it anyway is not good, but I wouldn’t classify it as being rape.
She (privately) withdrew consent when she saw my tattoo. She didn’t express that lack of consent because of fear, just as some of the women in the OP didn’t. Legally there wouldn’t be a case here, probably, since I’m not really guilty of rape per se–I’m unaware that she’s withdrawn consent. But from her perspective, she’s being raped because she’s not consenting.
The fact remains that the initial consent was withdrawn. That’s my point: an affirmative consent can be withdrawn in exactly the same way that an implied consent can be withdrawn, so affirmative consent really changes nothing about the moral and legal landscape of rape.
But how do we define consent as being withdrawn? Is it something you have to explicitly say, or is it something you decide on your own?
I mean, there are scenarios where you don’t give consent and it’s more clear cut even if you don’t say anything. The only ones coming to mind though are the ones for when it’s an abduction or stranger rape or the person is incapable of giving consent.
I mean, if a woman goes to your house/room and sees something that scares her, is that rape? I’m trying to think of something clear cut enough that most people would assume she has reason to be afraid. Absent a lot of dead bodies, though, I’m not sure what that would be.
There’s no such thing as privately withdrawing consent, she either did or didn’t consent and in your example she quite clearly did consent.
The drunk thing drives me crazy. “I was too drunk to give consent” but he is supposed to stay sober enough? If the girl’s inhibitions or control drops as she gets drunker why don’t his? Why doesn’t he get the sme pass?
The lesson is not to get drunk around people you’re not sure about!
No, lack of affirmative consent is not by default rape. It might be, under the right circumstances. The woman with the ten rugby men? Yes, I would count that - I might be afraid to say something, too, in that position? Girl with a cock in her mouth? You don’t need to talk to indicate your displeasure.
As a factual matter, of course you can privately withdraw consent. Whether it’s meaningful to do so in a legal sense isn’t the point of my example. I take it that you think the woman in the OP’s rugby example wasn’t rape.
No, you can privately withdraw willingness, but consent is inherently public. By the same token, if a woman sees a really hot guy on the street and thinks to herself “Man, I’d really like to have sex with him” but says nothing, and the guy then grabs her and drags her into a back alley, he’s still raped her, even though she wanted it, because she didn’t consent. The rugby team example is also clearly rape, because the default assumption is “no consent”, and the woman consented only to the first two guys, not to the rest of the team, so the default was still in place for them. She didn’t have to publicly withdraw consent for them, because she never publicly granted it in the first place.
If a woman consents to sex with me because I have a knife to her throat, that’s not consent because it’s given under duress. If a woman willingly consents to have sex with me and then I put the knife to her throat to prevent her from withdrawing consent, she’s also under duress and her lack of withdrawal can’t be considered to be willing. An element of the rugby example is that she was too scared to say no. Citing a default lack of consent in that case doesn’t really settle things because the issue is implied consent.
My point here isn’t whether or not the guys are guilty of rape. My point is that an affirmative consent doesn’t really solve the problems that are inherent in implied consent and a default lack of consent. It’s not really a safe harbor for men. That’s the point of those idiot “is this okay?” briefings that college men have been getting–you have to ask at each stage to avoid transitioning affirmative consent to implied consent.
I’ve really got to wonder what kind of fabulous sex people, male and female, are having when there’s any question about consent. If there’s any doubt that your partner wants to fuck your brains out, you’re not doing it right. The worst thing that can happen if you don’t have sex is… you won’t have sex.
Sure, but the fact that you have a knife to her throat is also known to all parties involved. You can’t give consent to someone without them knowing it, because if they don’t know it, you didn’t give consent.
What about the intermediate stage between the questions? What if she changes her mind then? I feel that during intercourse, after each thrust, the man should ask again to determine if he continues to have her consent. But what if she changes her mind mid-thrust?
That’s clear for affirmative consent, but for implied consent it’s much greyer. A woman who actively particpates in sex is certainly making known her consent, but how do you know if her passive submission is consent vs a coerced lack of withdrawal of implied consent?
You’re essentially arguing (and correct me if I’m wrong) that once a woman affirmatively consents, she is consenting until she affirmatively does not consent. Are you denying that implied consent exists?
Yup, this is my point: affirmative consent always becomes implied consent, and in the normal case implied consent is fine. My girlfriend and I rely upon it exclusively, unless she’s watching reruns of Frasier, in which case I send an email with a very direct question.
As far as the knife-to-the-throat goes, I’d call that “implied nonconsent”. Just as a woman kissing you and tearing at your clothes implies consent even if she says nothing, holding a knife to her throat implies coercion even if neither she nor the knife wielder says anything ( bar some fairly intense BDSM scenario, but that’s a special case ).
Right. And while I think shoving a cock in someone’s face is kind of boorish, you think that if you trusted someone enough to go to their room with them, you’d be willing to push it away or tell them no or bite down or something. The way the woman describes it is that she just seemed to not feel like saying no. I can understand the woman who’s got a gun to her head and pretty much has to go along with sex out of fear for her life, but is “I didn’t really feel like saying no” a rationale response to rape?
We have an extremely strange situation where leftists on one hand demand a lower burden of proof (via ever increasing standards for consent) and harsher sentences for rape, but on the other hand, demand a higher burden of proof and more lenient sentences for other crimes. This is especially true in death penalty cases where the perpetrator is black: how do you think that feminists would react if some serial rapist was found not guilty while the evidence against him was as strong as, say, the evidence against Tookie Williams?
No, but "I was too scared to say ‘no’ " is. If a woman passively submits because I’ve got a knife to her throat, the threat is obvious, and her lack of a verbalized ‘no’ is understandable. If a woman is trapped in a room with a bunch of men with violent reputations, the rationality of "I was too scared to say ‘no’ " is still pretty comprehensible, I would think, even if the question of the intent of the men is arguable.
But in a situation where there is only one man and no weapon, does that make sense? The woman that I mentioned in the OP who said she was raped because she didn’t tell the man she didn’t want to give him oral sex is the one I’m talking about specifically right now. She didn’t sound scared, just that she didn’t want to do it, but she didn’t tell the guy that, so I don’t really see how he’s a rapist. She said she wasn’t drunk enough to pass out but drunk enough so that things escalated too fast. And I really hate to say this because it makes me sound like I’m blaming the victim, but if you get so drunk that you feel you can’t consent but you’re still conscious, maybe you shouldn’t be putting yourself in situations where sex can happen. (Of course, I do think that guys should try to make sure they’re with women who want to be with them, but if the guy in that case was also fairly drunk, too, it makes sense that perhaps he was as oblivious.)
Situations like these really frustrate me because they seem to make women out to be such fragile, frail creatures who could easily be raped and that men have to make sure they really mean it. I’ve gone down on guys without specifically asking them if it was okay to put my mouth on their penis and none of them have (to my knowledge) commented on blogs saying that oral sex started and they were drunk and felt it would just be easier to lie there and let it happen.
Cite? (Assuming you’re suggesting that this supposed demand is being met, which, looking at rape conviction statistics and my ow experiences, I suspect it is not).
I really don’t think the comment about oral sex from the OP is detailed enough to discuss. We have no idea what her relationship was with the guy, what was said beforehand, or what else took place. I know several women who have been sodomized after consenting to vaginal intercourse. None pressed charges, only one used the r-word. Was that just a misunderstanding – he assumed the default option for her orifices was open for business (because she’d opened the floodgates through intercourse, or perhaps regardless), while she assumed the opposite?
I’ve got a problem with this. I’ve been told by people who don’t know me that I look scary, again 6’6" 350#, and I think it’s absolute bull that I could be brought up on rape charges because a girl who seemed willing, moved to make it easier to take of cloths and such, said that she is afraid to say “no” to me. I have no defense and no way to stop it from happening besides asking "Are you really sure you want to do this it’s not just because I’m big and scary is it?” If I can’t go by physical and vocal (or lack there of) clues there is something wrong.
I was just discussing this with my buddy and this was his example (he’s muscle bound and ‘scary’ too) so if he’s making out with a girl and puts a hand on her knee and moves toward her inner thigh and she spreads her legs how can he know if its because she wants him to or she just thinks he’ll hurt her is she doesn’t go along with it. Say its the second case and he thinks that she is one of those girls who repress their sexuality so they don’t ask for things but just follow along (outside of the Dope they do exist) how can he be sure, even if he asks, that she wants to and isn’t just afraid of him. It is an unfair burden to place on guys if you don’t require at least a “no” or some obvious form of not going along (not spreading her legs in the earlier example).
Good, you haven’t been keeping up with my blog, I thought we were rushing it but I thought you’d make fun of me for being unmanly. I felt so ashamed afterwards I cried for a week.
What if she’s drunk and he’s sober? Does that make a difference? I mean, if they’re making out, but she’s smashed and he’s within the legal limit to drive, could she legitimately say he raped her because she was too drunk to coherently object or stop him? I’m talking about situations wherein you’re not in a standing relationship with the person.
People are raped by friends, family friends, and family members when they’re stone cold sober, so adding alcohol to the mix should only make things clearer, not less so. If someone you’ve never had sex with before is drunk, don’t fuck them until they’re sober. I think that’s a good rule of thumb.