Rape on campus: Democrats exploiting the issue

Ok, then do you think people who are “intoxicated” should be considered at least sometimes capable of consenting to sex or do you think they should always be considered incapable of giving meaningful consent?

Thanks in advance for your answer.

That depends. What do you mean by “intoxicated?”

No, it’s not, particularly not in SDMB in GD.

So, both Mace and I have asked you to define “intoxicated”.

Please do so.

I know you’ve been giving evasive answers and, by your own admission, deliberately violated the rules of GD, but since you were the one first asked, it would seem to me that one who’s interested in honest debate should be willing to answer the question.

Thanks in advance for your answer.

“Evasive” is a word used to describe someone who should be saying something or talking about something, and is avoiding doing so.

But it’s not the case that I should be defining “intoxication.” So my responses do not count as evasive.

I’m just not responding to a question I don’t have any interest in answering, and am under no obligation (not even a weak one) to answer.

If you think I should be defining “intoxication” based on anything I’ve said, you need to reread each of my posts carefully. If you still have that impression after doing so, I’m happy to discuss the question with you of whether I should be defining “intoxication.” I’ll explain to you why it is in fact the case that I need not do so.

You’re way off base here. You’ve been misinterpreting just about every post you’ve responded to just enough to give yourself room to make a generalization that isn’t actually responsive. For instance, I didn’t say anything about people I consider to be drunk. I’m sure if it were my position you wanted me to explain further, I’d be right now typing a post that you’d then call a dodge or evasive.

This whole socratic line turns out to be one that started nowhere and is going nowhere. Just as a sort of freebie, incidentally, regarding the sex-while-intoxicated = sexual assault bit:

No. She published a study, one of the questions in which was about sex while intoxicated. Then, as I understand it, in response to criticism of the form you’ve indirectly made here, she recalculated her results to exclude the situations you object to. She ended up with the famous 1/5 ratio anyway.

Going back through my first posts, what I can do for you is clarify some things that don’t seem to have come through to you yet for whatever reason.

When I originally endorsed the claim “An intoxicated person can’t legally consent to sex,” what I meant by the word “intoxicated” was “having whatever characteristics fall under the definition of ‘intoxicated’ in the relevant jurisdiction.”

Later on ITR Champion pointed out that if that’s my definition, then the claim I endorsed was incorrect. In fact it is possible, in some jurisdictions, for a person to fall under that jurisdiction’s definition of “intoxicated” and yet still be able to legally consent.

I conceded the point to ITR.

As far as I know, that’s everything I’ve said relevant to your question in this thread.

You are asking me what I think “intoxication” really means, how I myself use the term. My response to that is twofold:

A. I think you misunderstood what I meant when I referred to intoxication originally in this thread–see the explanation I just provided (again). I wasn’t using a concept of intoxication, I was simply referring to the legal definition, whatever it may be.

B. I don’t use the term myself, and do not have a clear definition of it, and do not apply the term. In other words, as I said before: “Not a clue.” And in this thread, with you, it’s not something I’m interested in pursuing. The topic doesn’t grab me. And “what is Frylock’s understanding of ‘intoxication’” is neither the topic of this thread, nor a topic I have opened up in this thread. (Again, if you think I did open up the topic of my own understanding of ‘intoxication’ in this thread, read the explanation at the opening of this post again, please, and be reminded that when I endorsed a claim about intoxication I was not using any concept of intoxication of my own, but was instead simply referring to the legal definition, whatever it may be. I was not deploying my own understanding of “intoxication” but was instead making a claim about the legal concept of intoxication. My claim turned out to be false, as it happened. And so far as I can tell, that should have been the end of it til you joined in.

You’re responding to a post that wasn’t addressed to you so I think there’s been some confusion.

Actually, IIRC her claim was not that one in five female college students was raped but that she claimed that one in four college students was raped.

As to the rest, I think you’re misremembering. She came under fire for the wording of some of her questions which seemed to indicate that she classified a woman who’d had consensual sex while drunk was the victim of rape. She defended her study by pointing to the law which stated that a person who was drunk could not legally consent to sex.

She also referenced drunk driving laws to determine whether a woman was drunk and famously declared, “just like the public needs to be protected from the drunk driver, the drunken woman needs to be protected from the male driver of the penis.”

Anyway, I’m merely making the point, as is Frylock that there does not seem to be universal agreement on whether or not someone who is intoxicated can be considered capable of meaningful consent to sex.

No-one’s got anything to say about the fact that one in seven male students are supposed to be in the same boat?

I’d also like to point people to this open letter(pdf) from the head of the National Centre for Higher Education Risk Management, it’s a very interesting read from an expert who deals with the issues daily, and is somewhat critical of the administration’s response to the situations.

I’m sorry. I won’t post again until I’m summoned by name.

What I said was that after criticism about the wording of her question regarding intoxication, she indicated that the number of positive responses excluding that particular question would have been 1 out of 5.

Yeah, that would seem to be the most likely reason. After all, they claim there’s an “epidemic” of rape on college campuses, based on data from years ago. And yet apparently Obama felt no need to take any action during the first five years of his presidency. Neither did congressional Democrats or those at state or lower levels of government. So were they willing to let this “epidemic” of rape continue for five years? Or do they really know that the “epidemic” is a gross exaggeration based on bad statistics, but they’re trying to use it because they don’t have anything else to run on this year? (After all they can hardly expect to win based on the success of their economic policies, health care law, or foreign policy.)

It’s more than just being on a campus. In the dorms coed is the norm everywhere including bathrooms now. There is just way to high of a hormone level for any kid to NOT do something stupid if they are in the wrong situation.

I was not snarky too you so I’m not sure why you’re being snarky with me.

You responded to a question to Frylock as if it was addressed to you and I thought there might have been a mistake.

Er…my point was that she pointed out that legally speaking if a person was legally intoxicated then they were considered to be incapable of consent and therefore victims of rape.

My point was that it’s not really clear that there’s universal agreement to the idea that it’s possible for a person who’s intoxicated to give meaningful consent to sex.

I obviously think it’s possible for someone to be legally intoxicated and you do as well, but it’s hardly clear that’s how all others feel.

Furthermore, it’s not necessarily clear when phrases like “unable to give consent” are used it means someone who’s unconscious or semi-conscious that every reasonable person would agree can’t give meaningful consent or that the person is someone who is legally drunk and therefore deemed unable to give consent by people like Dr. Koss.

In fact, since we’ve had at least one college student on this thread say they were taught at their Freshman orientation that any level of intoxication rendered a person deemed “unable to give consent” if those responding to the survey had been given similar instructions.

I should point out my facetiousness. Before chiding a request for a citation, I had addressed the “pro-rape party” post in a slightly different manner…

Just to be clear, that was a long time ago. And the instruction was from poorly trained (IMO) “sexual health counselors” who were befuddled when we asked two drunk people who have sex are raping each other. I believe the answer was “well, it’s probably the man who was the rapist, because if he was really drunk he couldn’t get an erection,” said by someone who obviously had never been a drunk, horny, 18 year old.

They were very big on affirmative consent. I.e., you must receive a verbal “yes” prior to everything. That might include handshakes for some folks here.

Since there seems to be a challenge with a hard line to say what is or is not “too intoxicated”

I have posted a poll asking for the ladies to chime in on where they feel that line might be

Good God almighty, man. Your posts here are about 10% on topic and about 90% a nitpicky hijack not related to the OP. Take a step back and read how you’re arguing, think how it looks to other people (hint: incredibly annoying), and consider letting whatever point you think you’re making, or think you’re scoring, just fucking drop already.

It seems clear to me that there are different meanings for the word “intoxicated,” and that people intend it to refer to different levels of inebriation at different times, and that someone can be too drunk to drive legally but not too drunk to consent to sex legally, and that nobody disagrees with any of those statements. Unless someone disagrees, trying to prove someone used the wrong definition of “intoxicated” in a particular post has got to be the most boring thing to argue ever.

I think that the point is that confusion over the definition of the term “intoxicated” could be leading to higher than actual incidents of sexual assault being reported in these studies.

People are conditioned to think of .08 or a legal too drunk to drive as being “intoxicated.” Well, if I am in a dorm room and have a BAC of .17, I am not necessarily likewise intoxicated because I’m not driving. So there could be confusion by these questions if I was asked if someone tried to have sex with me in my .17 BAC state. I might be included in the statistics even though I was under the influence but still clearly capable of consenting to sex.

Regardless of what freshman orientation tells people, just because you had enough to drink so that you wouldn’t have had sex without the alcohol, does not turn the sex into rape. Most jurisdictions consider that level to be to the extent of being passed out, nearly passed out, or so intoxicated as to not be oriented to time and place.

I’m sure that more than a few male posters here woke up in our younger days with some chick that we were appalled that we thought she was good looking the night before after “beer goggles.” Was she guilty of rape? I think clearly not, and that misunderstanding elevates these studies.

FWIW, after looking more carefully at the full thread, I think it’s pretty clear that I owe you an apology and also everyone else reading this thread.

I’ll start by doing so to you and to them.

It’s pretty clear you were not being disingenuous but were in fact revealing one of the really difficult issues associated with this question.

As you said, according to the law in every legal jurisdiction in the US, AFAICT “An intoxicated person cannot legally consent to sex.”

I think your statement is pretty clearly correct and while you may have thought that ITR’s link contradicts your statement, it really doesn’t.

Here’s his link. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/22/liberals-brainwashed-rape-drunk-have-sex

You’ll notice that Jessica Valenti is merely giving her opinion and claiming that this is what most feminists believe. She doesn’t actually present any evidence that the law doesn’t declare “an intoxicated person can in some circumstances consent to sex.

In fact, as far as I can tell, in every jurisdiction, or at least nearly every legal jurisdiction, the legal standard is that an intoxicated person cannot legally consent to sex.

From this link from the Sexual Trauma Services of the Midlands. http://www.stsm.org/myths-and-facts-about-sexual-assault-and-consent

For that matter, since we’re discussing rape on campus, it’s pretty common for universities to declare that a drunk person can’t give legal consent.

For example Stanford Specifically states that people who are intoxicated due to alcohol or drugs can’t legally consent to sex.

Obviously, most of us here don’t agree with that and do feel that there should be a line between being intoxicated and being “too intoxicated to legally consent” but for obvious reasons most universities and legislatures are reluctant to draw the line, particularly since it’s not clear where the line should be drawn and I suspect most of us would much rather have it drawn on a case by case basis.

For the record, that’s how I’d view it, but as John Mace said earlier, “blurred lines” aren’t good and we should use “proper terminology”.

Once again. I do apologize to you and to the others reading this. I also apologize for being a bit long-winded.

Thank you. That was much more clear and concise than I could have said and it’s especially not helped when universities flat out declare that people who are “intoxicated” …“cannot legally consent”.

I suspect many reading this may have heard of the case at Ohio University last year where a young couple were out celebrating homecoming, both got incredibly drunk and at one point she wound up leaning up agains the bank window while he got down on his knees and performed oral sex on her, while she seemed to be enjoying it quite enthusiastically. Pictures and videos of this were taken and went viral. It should be noted that they were both obviously extremely drunk and if they weren’t considered “intoxicated” then the word is meaningless and they both had an extremely difficult time even walking at the very end and had to lean against each other to keep from falling down.

The next morning she woke up not remembering what happened, saw the pictures and quite understandably freaked out.

She went to the police and filed rape charges. The police investigated, many campus activists exploded and, possibly under pressure, the DA apparently determined that a rape had occurred and convened a Grand Jury. I should also add that, just to show how assholish they are, decided to deluge the woman with e-mails and phone calls and plaster her name and photo all over their website. They were also so stupid they named the wrong woman and nearly ruined a poor girl’s life who’d done nothing wrong.

Anyway, after several months of having the lives of the people in the pictures turned upside down, the Grand Jury decided that regardless of how drunk the woman was, it wasn’t rape.

Here’s an article on the incident. http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/11/is_this_a_campus_rape_well_no.html

Now, I suspect a lot of people reading this may be upset at the woman and many have actually accused her of falsely accusing the boy of raping her, but, and I know many reading this may find this shocking coming from me, but I wouldn’t be so harsh on her. She was so drunk she doesn’t even remember the incident and was obviously heavily physically impaired during it, as was he.

Moreover, as Tara Culp-Resser of ThinkProgress indicates in an article on ThinkProgress, the case clearly fit university’s definition of rape.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10/23/2826331/victim-blaming-rape-ohio-university/

Obviously, attitudes like the girls and those who supported pressing charges and the male student certainly could have made their way into students taking the survey and affected results.

I’ll also admit to being really conflicted about it. On the one hand, I think it would be preposterous to declare the male student a rapist and throw him in a cage for next 15 years of his life, but at the same time, I’m really reluctant to say that a woman who’s so drunk she can barely stand and doesn’t even remember the events in question could be seen as being capable of giving meaningful consent.

I’m not going to link to any pictures or video of the incident because I’m not sure about SDMB’s policy and frankly I feel bad for both of the students who had their lives turned upside down as well as the poor girl tormented by the MRA activists but google would produce them.