From the article:
I posted this in another thread, but I think it summarizes my view:
Each of us, every day, does something that in retrospect could be inviting rape. I let the grocery delivery man in my apartment yesterday to set the groceries on the table. I’m recovering from surgery and can’t lift heavy items. He could have raped me. Yesterday, I took the baby out for a walk alone at night to calm her down. Someone could have raped me. Today, I am going alone to a happy hour. Someone could slip something in my drink and rape me.
So you can’t complete eliminate risk. Really, you can’t get anywhere close to even minimizing it, short of becoming a shut in.
It’s not a coincidence that the advice we receive about mitigating rape pretty much exactly mirrors the same boring old tropes that have been used to control women for centuries- generally try to always be under the protection of a man, don’t live or travel alone or otherwise show too much independence, keep your sexuality in narrow boundaries, don’t pursue jobs or whatever that could “put you at risk,” and don’t be too wild. Stay home, stay chaste, tend to the family and you’ll do fine.
In generations past these controls were maintained by religion, the economic threat of being considered unmarriagable, etc. They were also fairly explicitly enforced by rape (and still are in some countries). In the West we no longer, as a matter of course, rape women who chose to defy their male relatives, work outside the home, or become politically active. But we can still give dire warnings in a faux-concerned tone.
Is it a coincidence that I hereby advise both men and women against drinking themselves into a state of incapacitated helplessness, while condemning anyone who’d prey on either such exemplar of falling-down-drunk stupefaction?
How closely do you feel this aligns with the advice presented in the article that’s the subject of this thread?
I’m not Magiver, but I thought if you were drunk enough, you couldn’t consent and therefore it was rape. I’m not saying I agree with that reasoning, but there it is.
Regards,
Shodan
This.
Consider the concept of consent. It could be active or passively given. But realistically, it can only be actively denied. I think we all agree that “no” means “no”. That is different than not consenting. And this is important when alcohol enters into it. From a legal standpoint a person who is drunk is not considered to be in full mental faculty. Having sex with a drunk invites a legal interpretation of consent. Was it actively given before and after getting drunk? Was “no” ever stated?
It would be very possible to have sex with a drunk women and wake up in a jail cell because her sober side didn’t want to have sex with you.
But that’s not actually how the law works.
The law responds to charges of rape. There is no “get out of jail free” card if the charge is disputed.
This is exactly why I suggest that men moderate their drinking: to avoid being accused of assault.
No, there’s not. But charges won’t be brought unless there’s an allegation of a crime. In my state, being drunk in itself doesn’t render a person incapable of consent , so there wouldn’t be any waking up in a jail cell because her sober self said she was drunk at the time. Her “sober self” would have to allege that she was passed out at the time, or that she was drunk because someone gave her alcohol without her consent.
And I doubt if any state has a law saying that simply being drunk makes one unable to consent. Just because of the practicalities and logic of it. A has sex with B who is drunk. So A raped B. But A was also drunk, so B also raped A. Two victims and two rapists. Not to mention the fact that it makes no sense to say that voluntary intoxication eliminates the capacity to consent to sex, but has no bearing on criminal responsibility.
I wish Bricker would pop in and explain the legal side of this better. The point I’m trying to make is that a person who is drunk does not have the same mental capacity to reason as when sober. This doesn’t just affect the person who is drunk. It affects anybody dealing with the person who is drunk. Taking advantage of a drunk person doesn’t bode well in a court setting.
It’s good advice for women not to get drunk at bars for a number of reason. Rape is one of them. It’s good advice for men not to get drunk in bars. Rape is one of them. Even if I could tolerate a drunk woman I would not go to bed with her. It’s along the same risk as being a male school teacher and being in a room alone with a female student.
There is a get out of jail free card, because consensual sex with a drunk person is not against the law. So how could you go to jail for it?
No one is disputing that someone who is drunk doesn’t have the same mental capacity as someone who is sober. But that doesn’t mean the legal system treats who is voluntarily drunk as someone who cannot consent to sex. And as far as “taking advantage of a drunk person not boding well in a legal setting”, that depends on what you mean. If you you mean that sometimes drunk people are easier to victimize and a jury might take that into account, maybe. But first there has to be an allegation that something illegal happened- and “He had sex with me when I was drunk” by itself isn’t going to be enough in most places.
In college campuses across North America where an accusation will suffice.
Keep in mind that public accusations of rape even if unfounded is all it takes to ruin a persons life, jail time or not.
There’s also a push by feminists that drunk sex is not consent. Regret the next morning should not be considered rape.
So you’d like women to moderate their drinking to lessen your chances of a false accusation? Or is it that you’d like rape accusations to be taken less seriously?
False accusations have nothing to do with drunkedness, the legality of drunken sex, or anything we are discussing. Bringing them in to this debate is a straw man.
Hey you’re the one that brought it up.
On some college campuses, rape cases are handled by the college authorities, who have a vested interest in finding that it wasn’t rape. Instead, it’s regarded as a teachable moment for the rapist, who gets a slap on the wrist and MIGHT get suspended for a semester or two. The rapist gets no criminal penalties, no criminal record, even if he has a history of doing this before.
Keep in mind that getting raped is all it takes to ruin a person’s life.
And being drunk does not mean that a person is consenting to sex. If a person is drunk enough, s/he’ll consent to having his/her own spleen removed. Don’t want to get accused of rape the next day? Then don’t screw drunk people. There are a lot of rapists who purposely target drunken women, and then claim that she wanted it.
Puking qualifies as a safe word, one should suppose.
Are you sure? I read on the internet somewhere that false accusations have nothing to do with being in an alcoholic stupor.
But what I think the author of the article is trying to say is that if you don’t want people to prey on your inability to make good decisions then don’t put yourself in a position of intellectual compromise.