You’re saying two things. First you say that if a man doesn’t consent, then he can be raped.
But if a drunk woman can’t consent to sex, then a drunk man can’t consent to sex either. The football player in the story was drunk, and therefore unable to legally give consent to sex, and therefore was sexually assaulted.
Or is it only drunk women who can’t give legal consent to sex?
Well, I think it’s also how active you are in the situation. If a woman is passed out, completely unconscious, and a drunk but conscious guy crawls on top of her and manages to have sex with her, I don’t think we can say that he was raped, even if he was too drunk to know what he was doing.
I never disputed that. But the legal standard in the majority of the US does not require a woman to give consent to sex. It requires her not to express non-consent. And those are very different things.
Bwah?
edit: So the opposite (hey, another negative!) of “not expressing non-consent” is an active verbalization of “No.” Is that not incorrect?
As a student of creative writing, one of the first things they teach you is the “unreliable narrator.” Don’t see it too much in non-fiction, though.
Secondly, I don’t think it was rape. I think it was a drunken mistake. I’ve made drunken mistakes, some sexually. But I’m not about to get them arrested for rape.
If you have sex with someone (absent threats etc.) who doesn’t say no, you have no committed rape (in the overwhelming majority of US jurisdictions). There is no requirement for her to say yes to sex.
And if the drunk woman asks him to make her come?
Obviously someone passed out is black and white.
But if a really-drunk-but-conscious can’t legally give consent to sex, even if she actually says she consents to sex, then how can a really-drunk-but-conscious man legally give consent, even if he’s crawling on top of her? If when a drunk woman tells a drunk man that she wants to have sex, and he crawls on top of her and has sex with her, it amounts to him sexually assaulting her, then how doesn’t it amount to her sexually assaulting him?
If a really-drunk-but-conscious person can’t consent to sex, then the same standard applies to all kinds of people, not just women.
Of course, the consequences of sex are different for women than they are for men, so maybe one answer is to agree that sexual assault laws shouldn’t be gender-neutral.
It just seems to me that if a drunk teenage girl can’t legally consent to sex with a drunk teenage boy, then a drunk teenage boy can’t legally consent to sex either.
Right, gotcha.
Well, in the situation described in the OP, I don’t think that it was rape. I meant a situation where there wasn’t any, “Make me come” talk. Just a drunk guy having sex with a passed out cold girl. I don’t think he’d be the victim of anything. If it was a situation where a girl said something like, “Make me come” and he thought that meant sex and she was sort of semi conscious but he didn’t realize it…I don’t think anyone was raped. It may have been bad sex or not the best idea in the world, but I don’t see either of them as rape victims.
I do agree that we need to hold men and women to the same standards. Though in some cases, one party may be less drunk than the other. In this situation, it sounds like both were incredibly drunk and that’s why a miscommunication seems to have transpired. If she’d been less drunk, she might have clarified, “No, I’m only in the mood for xyz, not for penetrative sex.”
More accurately (again presuming her story is true) this should be “And if the drunk woman asks him to make her come, but specifically says no sex”?
For a few reasons:
-it wasn’t without precedent, we had sex previously, although I hadn’t felt like it for weeks, due to the PTSD and depression (therefore the reason for the sleeping pills)
-mostly because the pills, before I actually fell asleep, would make me relaxed, giddy, maybe even flirty - who knows? Maybe I started things with him? It wouldn’t have been like an limp, dead girl - more like a twilight state.
Lastly, because I don’t want to think of it that way. Call it denial if you want, but I choose to consider that since I was out of it, I can’t definitely say how I responded, and yes, I know the argument that if I was not able to say yes, then it should have been considered a no, but I still don’t want to think of it that way.
So, let me keep my rose-colored glasses on, for now, okay? 
But then he asks her again and she says yes, in a manner that he very well could have interpreted to mean “yes sex” even if she didn’t mean it that way?
ETA - sorry, that was in response to villa.
Yeah - once she has said “no” to sex (and again this is all presuming her version to be the truth), it becomes incumbent on him to ensure that what she says later is clear.
And what she said later really wasn’t unclear. I can’t really see how “No sex” … “So you still want me to make you come” … “Yes” can be translated as consent to sex. It seems pretty obvious that it means, “make me come but we aren’t going to have sex.”
Posyn, it never occurred to you to ask afterward? If I found out someone I was dating had sex with me while I was unconscious, I’d want to know everything. Well, before I forcibly removed their testicles. And I get the whole concept of denial, but at some point, I don’t think people can really define criminal acts…I don’t like the idea of being robbed but if someone grabs my purse, I don’t think I can really pretend it wasn’t robbery.
I think that’s the problem. It’s kind of a Rorschach test as presented. You could see her as too drunk to know what she was doing. Or you could see her as stating she didn’t want penetrative sex, despite her drunkenness. Or you could see her as begging for sex. It’s all too vague.
I feel like you are doing women a disservice by doing this. In my particular situation, it was arranged beforehand that my companions would encourage me to drink, while the guy kept things in moderation. Then he arranged for the group as a whole to hang out in his hotel room until I passed out, and then when I was asleep they would leave. Eventually I woke up with him in the bed, and figured it was easier to do what he wanted than deal with fighting him off. I didn’t run. I didn’t scream. I gave in. It screwed up a good chunk of my life- my serious boyfriend promptly dumped me, and that changed my whole direction in life. It took me a long time to get my life back in order from that.
Was I raped? No. Was what happened bad? Yes.
That’s kind of where I’m ending up. It’s not a pretty road to get there though. First I have a reasonable argument running through my head that drunkenness impairs judgment enough that informed consent is not possible. Thus drunk people can’t consent to sex. That’s a non-starter for a billion reasons though. Inadequate ability for enforcement, differing levels of drunkenness, longstanding societal acceptance of drunken sex, etc. So if it’s just a virtual impossibility to implement the rule that drunk = non consensual as a bright line, then we must decide it’s possible to obtain consent from a drunk partner.
Ok, so once that’s established, we start to get situations like the OP. If she said “we’re not having sex” in the manner she relates it, then I would consider it date rape. I might not charge the boy, but I would still consider it rape. I can’t reconcile her approaching the guy, the two clear “make me come” requests, and the willingly leaving the public area and disrobing, so I’m not positive. A good man would have stopped, but then it’s not illegal to be less than a good man.
And then there’s another factor, which I wish wasn’t a factor, but is. Rape is second only to inappropriate behavior with a child in its life-wrecking potential. Given the he-said-she-said nature of this accusation, I’d be very hesitant to charge the guy with rape, especially given her intoxication. Even accusations can destroy lives. So I’d probably offer her counseling and support services, but not take him down because of it. Thus if everything happened as described, it’s very unlikely he’s a danger to society and needs to be incarcerated to protect others and rehabilitate him.
If there were some other way, perhaps a “you skirt close to the line” list, and we could put his name on it, and let him know his name was on it, then it would serve both the public need to check this behavior and to be able to escalate it if his name turns up in another possible date rape report. But since the only tool we have to deal with a rape is a hugely destructive and indiscriminate one, I’d not press charges if I were the DA. Judging by the responses of the dopers, odds are he’d be acquitted by a jury anyway. And what she most needs isn’t to see him locked up, it’s help correcting her own behaviors because if it weren’t this guy it would be some other guy. You can’t go around getting smashed, approaching drunk guys, and saying “make me come” and expect everything to go well for you.
Enjoy,
Steven
As far as I can see from her account, the only basis that she has to think that Tony had intercourse with her is that she was sore and bleeding a little afterwards (presumably from the vagina). She does not, for example, mention having any semen inside her or seeing a condom. Thus, her experience is equally consistent with Tony having clumsily fingered her, in an attempt to “make [her] come,” as she requested, without “having sex,” as she asked him not to.
Interestingly enough - I did, sort of.
I knew what had happened the next morning, although my memory was quite sketchy. So I waited a few days, until after I had gone out with friends and said to him (when we were alone):
“Honey, I was out at the bar last night and ran into an ex. I got really hammered and left the bar with him. I don’t remember much of what happened but when I work up this morning, he told me we had sex and I initiated. What do you think about that?”
He answered, “I think it was rape.”
So I said, “Okay. I don’t think it was him, I think it was you a few nights ago and we need to talk about it…”
We did talk about it, mostly with him apologizing and having this horrified look on his face. We didn’t staty together for long after that.
There you go, I have hemmed and hawed back and forth about what I feel about it. I am not always sure. I felt like it was a betrayal. I feel like I was violated, in a way, but I don’t have all of the other feelings that I hear rape victims have. Maybe it was because with the PTSD and depression I was already going through, I had my limit already. Who knows? I just know that I would never say to a sobbing person who was just raped that I have any idea what she is feeling.
Does any of that make sense?
And I feel like you’ve proved my point. You weren’t raped, and you weren’t the victim of sexual assault. You apparently had some crappy friends (I assume that your facts of their intentions comes from an admission by one of them). But really, no one forced you to drink and no one forced you to sleep with the guy. Those were choices that you, and you alone, made. You, and you alone, are responsible for them. I didn’t feel like bothering with saying no, so I just let him is such a cop out.
And like I said in my previous post. You’ve made yourself into a victim instead of a girl that got drunk and shagged some random dude. You never mentioned any violence or any coercion. What happened was your choice, and is deserving of no sympathy (besides the sympathy for having shitty friends).