Wrong. If the woman is so drunk she can’t remember then you have absolutely no control over what she may, or may not, think may have happened.
Fortunately this is why the law requires more than ‘I think’.
I don’t think there’s any argument about whether the man behaved correctly or not. If he was working and sober he’s in the wrong, totally a sacking offense, but it can’t be proven he behaved illegally. He may have misread how drunk she was. He may have also known her socially and didn’t keep a professional head on his shoulders. She may have enthusiastically consented. And he may be a manipulative and evil arse. But the law can’t prove this was rape.
More to the point, Wales doesn’t AFAIK have a separate legal system; many Americans might be unaware that Scotland does, which is why I drew the distinction.
And thanks, irishgirl, you’re not so bad yourself. It takes class to admit bias with the knowledge it might be seen to weaken your case. No-one’s made any excuses for sickoes who deliberately dope women, nor do I. For the rest, let’s just say that I plan to educate my sons so you’d happily trust them with your daughters (if you have any). It’s best to stay out of the grey areas than argue over the precise definition of where the blame lies.
(I’ll tell a story against myself by admitting that I was once - fleetingly - tempted to thrust myself on a young lady who’d had much too much to drink. It was not a hard temptation to overcome, but I’d be a liar to admit it didn’t exist for at least a moment.)
Sounds like in Sweden, you’d be wise to turn her down. In fact, I’ve heard the same thing on college campuses (though I don’t know if they were correct): sex with consenting drunk girls = laible for date rape. Given that I’ve never had sex with anyone other than my non-drinking wife, I woldn’t know, but I do remember stuff like that.
Why are you asking me? I’m one of the ones that started this line of questioning?
To be more plain: there definately seems to be a strong case to be made that a drunk off their ass woman cannot really consent to sex. Drunk people are notoriously easy to trick into things, manipulate, and so on. Why do you think guys TRY to get women drunk off their asses? Because they would have been able to bed them anyway but actually enjoy fucking a wet noodle? No: it’s to more easily manipulate them.
However, that argument also runs afoul of our legal system, in which no amount of drunkeness reduces anyones responsibility. However, THIS runs afoul of the whole rationale of diminished capacity that we use elsewhere in the legal system.
Of course, consistency is not exactly a built in feature of the law. Laws represent an expression of power (hopefully directed at the right things), not consistent moral systems or logic.
Perhaps you haven’t known many alcoholics, but some of them black out mentally while still continuing to walk and talk, though maybe not rationally. That’s not unconsciousness, but the original occupant of the brain is not home at the moment. Someone who doesn’t know the person might not know they’re blacked out.
If a blacked-out person gets into a fight, he still goes to jail for breaking somebody’s jaw. If a blacked-out person has sex with another person, is the other person guilty of rape?
I wholeheartedly agree. That’s exactly what I meant. And I know waayyy too many alcoholics.
As he should (if it wasn’t self-defense or protecting someone else, etc.)
Not necessarily. People in blackouts make both good and bad decisions. Maybe more bad ones than they would otherwise, of course.
Point being, if someone is in a blackout and is functioning semi-normally to the degree that the other person has no reason to suspect that the first person is too drunk to remember or consent, and person #1gives consent, then person #2 can have a clear conscience if they get down and make it funky.
What’s next, bars that have periodic breathalyzers tests and announce the results over the loudspeakers?
“Attention all patrons! Cindy here in the powder blue sweater seems just a bit tipsy, but she’s over the limit, so anyone taking her home for bumping uglies would automatically be guilty of rape even though she has propositioned you, grabbed your crotch, and signed a document of promissory estoppel!”
…mostly because I don’t currently have time to wade through the thread (we haven’t had Thanksgiving, yet, and my time is limited), so my apologies if this point has been made/addressed before this.
Just to be clear, I’m not taking a position on this issue, but a question does come up for me:
If someone can’t be held accountable for submitting to sex due to intoxication, how can they be held accountable for vehicular homicide due to intoxication?
No, no, I’m not saying that one is equal to the other…but we hold drunk drivers responsible for their actions because it was their choice to drink and drive. So why do we NOT hold drunk fuckers responsible for their actions because it was their choice to drink and fuck?
Mind you, I’m not saying that we should, but the question does have to be asked: Why is being drunk an excuse on the one hand, and not an excuse on the other?
It’s patronizing and offensive to say that women cannot choose how much to drink and who to fuck. Women are capable of making choices and culpable for the choices they make.
When I get drunk off my ass, I am fully aware of what I am doing and how I am affecting my judgement. If I don’t want to have sex with someone I regret, I tell one of my friends “Hey, keep an eye on me and don’t let me in any bedrooms.” And when I do do something stupid, I take responsibility for it. I expect no more and no less from any other human.
A woman is raped when she is unable to consent or resist- or if she is threatened with violence if she does not consent or resist. If you can talk, you can give or deny consent. And if you deny consent and are forced, I hope that all the fires of hell and the judicial system rain down on your attacker. But if you can’t remember what happened- well, that sucks, but thats not something you can get a conviction for. If I can’t remember if I spent the hundred bucks in my wallet or some guy took it, thats my problem. This woman is doing a diservice to all women with her frivolous claims and her supporters are setting back women’s rights by decades.
It’s kind of interesting that several posters have brought up the example of folks being held to task for drinking and driving. That is, that one is still held responsible for their actions should they injure themselves and/or others while under the influence.
However, in this case what happened seems analogous to if a drunken person had turned over their keys to a designated driver and then halfway home the designated driver dragged them over behind the wheel and just let go and let what was going to happen, happen.
This wasn’t two folks left to their own devices, both drunk or one drunk and one taking advantage of the other’s drunkenness. This was a case where a “designated sober person” so to speak was put in charge of a drunken person.
It sounds to me as if the drunk girl or her friends or acquaintances DID do the right and responsible thing, that is basically “okay, I’m obviously too drunk to be sensible, would you be so kind as to see me home”?
She was at least responsible enough to realize her state and try to remedy it, that makes his behaviour doubly slimy.
In this particular case, or others like it that is. If it’s a case of a woman getting too drunk, consenting to sex and then later regretting it and using her drunkenness to get revenge…then I have to somewhat agree with others here regarding it being YOUR responsibilty to not get so blasted that you have sex with icky strangers.
Well you certainly can and should if you said no, were raped, and just can’t remember it.
We are going to be dealing with a LOT more of these sorts of gray areas as more and more “products” hit the market that allow people to influence each other, whether openly or covertly. There are soon to be sprays and scents that cause physical arousal in addition to all number of drugs that alter moods and minds. We’re already dealing with drugs (GHB) that alter or erase memories.
I think you know not of what you speak. GHB does not “alter or erase memories”. Taken in a large enough dose, it renders one unconscious. In lesser doses, it creates a sense of euphoria and alters one’s perceptual processing.
Slipping someone enough GHB to knock them out and then take advantage of them is akin to assault with a weapon; both render consent meaningless and both leave marks (tox screen vs. bruising). Assuming the person takes GHB willingly, I think there’s not much difference from getting blotto except that, in my experience, GHB has less of an effect on cognitive capacities than alcohol, but more on visual and emotional states.
Perhaps you are arguing that a yet to be designed “love potion” could be used to manipulate a person, gaining consent when under other circumstances it would not be given. Yes, that’s an issue, but not much different. Claims of altering or erasing memories are a tad overblown, I think.
Practically, in a he-said/she-said situation, where she can’t remember, legally there is no way to convict. It’s one of those sad situations where justice can’t be carried out.
Let me start with a disclaimer. Many years ago, I was responsible for a security guard being fired from his job because of an unwanted and unasked for kiss on the cheek. If anyone feels the full story’s relevant, I can tell it later. I’ve told it here before.
I talked about this thread with my gentleman friend yesterday, and both of us feel the judge did exactly the right thing when he told the jury to find the security guard not guilty of rape. If the girl was too drunk to remember whether she gave consent, then there is a reasonable doubt. Yes, it was a foolish move on the guard’s part, but this is a 20 year old student we’re talking about. I don’t know, from what I’ve read so far, who initiated sexual talk or contact; for all we know, the girl might have done so. She doesn’t remember. TVeblen said it better than I did. Just as being drunk doesn’t automatically imply consent to sex, it also doesn’t give one a license to accuse men of rape because one can’t remember giving consent or gives consent to someone one ordinarily wouldn’t.
I do figure the security guard has learned an important lesson about having sex with drunken women, though. I think it would be appropriate for him to lose his job, if that hasn’t happened already, simply because, as I assume he’s worked out, it shows rather appallingly bad judgement.
I will say up front that I am addressing the case of drunken consent, not a case in which a woman makes up a lie after the fact.
The analogy that is missing here is that the woman has already suffered the negative consequence for her stupidity–unwanted sex, and whatever consequences may come from that in terms of disease, pregnancy, whatever.
Picture 2 drunk women late at night. Both are obviously drunk, and both do something stupid. One accepts a ride home with a guy she barely knows. The other walks home through a bad part of town carrying her purse in her fancy club clothes. The woman who gets the ride home has sex forced upon her. She does not protest, may even say something like, “ok, fine, whatever.” The second woman is mugged and has her purse stolen. Maybe she’s scared and says something like “Here, just take it!” We would prosecute the mugger, even though the woman exercised bad judgment in walking home alone in a bad neighborhood. We don’t assume she really consented to give him the purse. There’s no guarantee she’ll get the money or the purse back, though. She, just like the rape victim, suffers the consequences for the bad judgment. The criminal suffers the consequences of committing a crime.
We prosecute the mugger because he has both the requisite mental intent - “mens rea”- and commits a guilty act - “actus reus”. If he threateningly accosts a woman he doesn’t know in an alley, even if she says, “Here, just take it,” he cannot reasonably believe she’s freely consenting to make a gift of her purse to him.
We cannot prosecute the driver, because we can’t show his mens rea. Unlike the mugger, he may have quite reasonably believed that “OK, fine, whatever,” was consent to have sex. It depends on the circumstances; you can draw them so that his belief is unreasonable, or so that it’s very reasonable. Her degree of intoxication, his awareness of that intoxication, their conduct leading up to the act of sex… all of those are factors that would play upon the determination of whether his view that he has consent is a reasonable one.
Yes, it is…to an extent. But in today’s environment, given the chemicals which women (and presumably men) can be slipped without their knowledge in a public setting, it is also rather myopic to blindly say that they universally DO choose how much to drink and who to fuck. That’s why this is such a heady issue: diminishment of judgment, and when to lay the effects of it on whose shoulders. I agree with you to a large extent: if a woman wants to go out and get blitzed and then wakes up the next day to realize that she had been drunk enough to nail someone she’d never met, I’m all about the “she’s an adult and is responsible for her actions” scenario. But if someone preyed on her and introduced elements into her experience without her knowledge/consent, I wouldn’t be so hard-core about just blaming her exclusively.
Yeah, and I agree with this as well. My point was that “being drunk/intoxicated/etc.” does not constitute an excuse from one’s behavior. However, if that state was not voluntarily acquired (i.e.: one of the person’s drinks was drugged w/o their knowledge), or if–as you pointed out–there was someone congizant who simply abrogated their responsibility, then the equation changes…in my book, anyway.
The driver could have reasonably known that she was unable to give any kind of meaningful consent. Or maybe not, but no reason not to hold him to some standard of common sense. How often does a woman who’s just met a man actually consent to sex, especially unprotected sex, or in the case of the OP sex in a public place? Is that happening to male Dopers often enough that they think this is a reasonable assumption? Sometimes if something seems way too good to be true, it probably is. The plural of “letter to Penthouse Forum” isn’t case law.
I don’t mean to imply he should be automatically declared guilty. He could defend himself on the grounds that she wasn’t actually impaired, that he had no way of knowing she was impaired, or that his belief of legitimate consent was plausible. But to assume she must have consented because she was drunk and can’t prove she objected? Find out a little bit more about what he claims his *mens rea * was, and if it jibes at all with the facts of the case. And while we’re at it, we can give the guy with the purse a chance to claim he was asking for bus fare. But does it jibe with the facts?
