A generation ago (and it pains me to say that, because I was in college at the time), people were whinging on about neo-Victorianism on campus because the idea that being female and drunk didn’t = consent was gaining traction. When you threw in the infamous Antioch College affirmative consent policy, reporters and dudebros had a field day. Waaah, it’s Victorianism to have to have your sexual partner AWAKE and AGREEING! WAAAAHHH!!!
So, no, I don’t think this is an actual problem.
Tom Tildrum – Thanks for the clarification and the link to the Bloomberg article. I’ll read the article later today as I’m interested to learn more.
I’ll repeat here that I don’t think the husband should be charged with anything, and if he did anything “wrong”, I suspect it was out of love and affection, you know? And that it’s mitigated by age, care-taking, affection, their years together, and so on. (But hey, I"m a romantic under the grumpy exterior.)
That’s true. But the idea that a drunk woman can’t consent, but a drunk man can and/or is a rapist, is appalling to me - and that attitude has been pushed by certain feminist thinkers. And that notion is grounded in the same gender-essentialist attitudes that perpetuated rape culture ‘‘back in the day.’’ It’s not really an improvement in the view that women have sexual agency.
You actually have to be very, very drunk to be incapable of consent. Just being what a normal person would call ‘drunk’ doesn’t cut it. If you look up the National Association of District Attorney’s document on the topic, you’ll find that some of the suggested indications of ‘too drunk to consent’ include inability to stand up and walk, inability to send a text message, vomiting, inability to talk clearly and so forth. We aren’t talking about ‘bad decisions’ territory here, we’re talking about genuine incapacitation. (Plenty of people may think that ‘too drunk to consent’ kicks in at a much lower level of intoxication, but the law apparently disagrees with them, as it should).
Given that the threshold of intoxication is so high, maybe a lot of men at that level would in fact have difficulty performing.
The mean old feminists raised a valid point years ago, that rape shouldn’t require resistance by the victim to be considered rape, because no other crime requires the victim to resist. Thus consent became the central element of the crime, which presents unique problems for prosecuting the offense. It’s the rare theft case that turns on whether the owner consented to giving his property away, but when it comes to sex crimes, sex without consent can look a lot like sex with consent. Controversy is inherent in date/acquaintance rape accusations because it usually comes down to conflicting narratives between the accuser and the accused, and any physical evidence is likely irrelevant. This makes prosecution dicey, which feminist activists don’t seem to be happy about, which is why they focus so much effort on things like affirmative consent standards.
Changing rape laws to require affirmative consent would certainly make rape easier to prosecute, but I consider those standards as problematic as “against her will.” Hectoring universities into introducing such standards is no less problematic.
I do think it’s a problem. To be clear, as I said in my first post, I believe rape is terrible crime. Physically forcing someone to have sex is a crime. Likewise “spiking” someone’s drink for that purpose, or taking advantage of someone who’s unconscious or falling-down drunk. Anyone who does those things should be punished. But Emily Yoffe’s investigation in Slate makes clear that innocent men at college are being condemned and punished, and not just in trivial numbers.
I’m somewhat reminded of H. G. Wells’ novel The Time Machine, where in the future we have two races, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi live a life of constant ease and pleasure with everything they want or need provided for them and nothing required of them. The Morlocks do all the work. The only condition is that once in a while, an Eloi gets snatched and eaten by Morlocks.
So frat boys and many other guys at college today live in a kind of guys’ paradise. They can hook up with any number of girls and have as much sex as they want. There is no legal or social pressure that either prevents them from doing so or expects them to have any long-term relationship with these women. Throw is plenty of beer and liquor, sports, parties, and so forth, and only a minimal demand for academic work, and it’s exactly what the stereotypical frat boy would dream of.
The only caveat is that once in a while, an innocent guy gets chosen almost arbitrarily, tried, convicted, and expelled from school, so the administration can prove that it’s serious about combating rape on campus.
Actually, at common law, you could plead voluntary intoxication as a defense to specific intent crimes, though IIRC it was just a partial defense; it’d knock the crime down to its general intent cousin. That can be changed by statute, though.
In many of the college cases, what you are talking about is a one night stand with a stranger. Or sex on a first “date” between people who have had a few conversations after World Civ. That has bad idea written all over it. You don’t know this woman to know she won’t cry rape. You don’t know each other well enough to know who might be a walking petri dish. Who might be obsessive and turn into a stalker when they want more than a one night stand. What happens if pregnancy occurs?
The neo Victorian mores make some sense - and not just from a rape standpoint. And frankly protect men as much as they protect women. Do you really need her hanging outside your Phil 101 class every day, texting you at 3am. Do you need to discover that your one night stand went to college for a modern MRS degree - a child support check from a smart guy for 18 years. Getting accused of rape may be the worst thing that can happen when you have sex with someone you barely know - but its all sorts of stupid (says someone who has a good friend who was married for years to a girl who got pregnant accidentally on purpose)
I don’t know the actual answer to this, but I would imagine if this woman was senile she had caretakers, and was possibly in a home. So it wouldn’t be difficult for the older couple to be caught in the act. I worked briefly in a continued care retirement facility and it wasn’t unheard of for old people to be caught having sex (I don’t recall a case where consent was an issue, though.)
I agree that’s a problem. But I’d point out that men are also condemned to death or life in prison for murders they didn’t commit.
To start with, universities should not be in the business of investigating alleged rapes, as the Harvard Law School professors noted. Universities are not law enforcement agencies. Young women should be told that regrets do not equal rape. Drinking and doing drugs with someone do not equal rape (and the common-sense idea that maybe you shouldn’t be doing so much of either that you get wasted). And so forth.
One of the other problems, to be honest, is that young middle and upper-middle-class women are really quite sheltered. They think that because they should be able to do something, they can safely do something. I see this a lot in the city and in late trains. If they come from non-city environments, they’re really naive. THAT should be addressed by the university, instead of them trying to be cops, lawyers, and judges.
Stupid definitions like this from the survey don’t help, either: “The survey defined sexual assault as everything from nonconsensual sexual intercourse to such unwanted activities as “forced kissing,” “fondling,” and “rubbing up against you in a sexual way, even if it is over your clothes.”” Unfortunately, those activities happen to a lot of women, in and out of college. I am not sure they rise to the same level as actual, forcible penis-to-mouth/vagina/anus rape. Maybe it’s my age, but some douchecanoe dude grabbing my boob or grinding against me isn’t rape. It’s fucking annoying (no pun intended), but not rape.
And sexual assault is still NOT OK and is a crime that at least sometimes should be prosecuted. Its the difference between throwing a few punches at someone and beating them senseless. It is NOT OK to force a woman into the corner and grind against her, even if that is not rape.
FYI, the way you’re describing sexual assault there, as just a normal part of life with which women have to put up? That’s what feminists are talking about when they talk about rape culture. It’s not acceptable or normal for men to just grab your boobs. Well, it is - but it shouldn’t be. If it takes women throwing a shitfit about it to get some men to knock it off, well, that’s on them.
This kind of reminds me of driving drunk in the 80s. It basically took a 2-prong tact to lower drunk driving rates: one, changing the legal code to put real consequences in place, and, two, transforming public perceptions of how big of a deal it was. I think a lot of people still put things like groping, grinding, and grabbing over in the “being a dick” pile, not “being a criminal” pile. It’s nothing they’d ever do themselves, and they are pretty appalled that it happens, but it’s “really really rude”, not “mildly criminal”. It’s still behavior people try to make excuses for, or “contextualize” in a way they’d never do for rape. A stranger takes your wallet on the dance floor? Call the cops. Stranger cups your boobs? These things happen, they suck, move on. And while having your boobs cupped probably isn’t the end of the world, it probably won’t leave a girl traumatized for life, it certainly can’t be compared to rape, neither is having your wallet stolen.
The woman’s daughters (by a previous marriage) appear to have been at odds with the man all along, and they went to law enforcement after hearing from caregivers that the two may have been engaging in sex. (The two were never actually confronted in the act). The man to some extent admitted to sexual activity after being told by the police that there had been a hidden camera in the room, although it remains to be seen whether there actually in any video evidence, or if that was just something the police made up to prompt a confession.
Every single woman I’ve ever known well enough has freely admitted to being sexually assaulted by a stranger, of the all of a sudden a guy on the bus was groping my thigh variety.