Where there is a rape victim there is a rapist, obviously. If she was raped, he raped her. I’m not sure how this is anything other than a tautology; if you’re just saying you think a rape didn’t happen, then OK, but that means it didn’t happen, not that we shouldn’t treat him a certain way for it.
You never named the second thing I’m saying, so I don’t really understand where you pulled that bullshit gotcha at the end from. I never said the bolded parts. And of course the rules are the same for a man. Where did you get the idea that I said otherwise?
It isn’t a real world expectation because it’s not expected in the real world. By your standard, lack of affirmative consent means both parties have raped the other. Which is why it just doesn’t work as a legal or moral requirement in the real world. There’s nothing hard about asking “do you want to have sex”. It simply is unnecessary because I expect grown ups to be able to say no in the real world.
The only attitude that I hold is that both people participating in intercourse are responsible for that decision. I simply reject the notion that because the woman regretted having intercourse the following morning that the man has somehow done something wrong.
Indeed. Presuming they are sober enough. Or not scared.
Except nobody has ever said a man has done something wrong because the woman regretted intercourse the next day. That’s an accusation simply made up. I’ve never seen it suggested and certainly not in this thread.
Here’s a question: the girl in the story never asked Tony if he wanted to have sex. Should she have? Does not having done so make her a rapist? I assert that putting his penis in her (if he did - bruised and sore does not prove sex) is sufficient affirmative consent. I also assert that there are any number of similar things a woman can do to offer affirmative consent, without actually saying ‘I want to have sex’. In short, in the vast majority of cases, it’s entirely unnecessary for two people having sex to check with each other that they consent. To make everyone do so, every time they have sex, or be considered a rapist is ridiculous. It makes pretty much everyone a serial rapist, which is why I think you’re getting resistance to the notion.
If they aren’t sober enough to say no then they are effectively unconscious and it is rape. If they are too scared, absent any threat by the man, then they are abnormal and the one to blame for the non-consensual sex. I object to the notion that is acceptable to treat normal men as threats.
Of course they are. If even sven or the author didn’t regret intercourse the next morning then there would be no issue.
Please note I didn’t use the term “date rape” in the second sentence. To me date rape is rape. I understand if it’s one of your hot buttons, but the word date was immediately followed by a sentence saying it was, without prequalifiers, rape. I’m not sure where you are getting a sense of a value judgment based on types of rape out of my post. I certainly didn’t say anything about a date rape not being a big deal.
The story says
So, we need to insert “then things got hazy” in between “list of reasons” and “Do you still want me to make you come?” This is the piece which makes it possible to read the second question as asking if sex is ok. Pretty much anything could have happened there. We have an account that she laid back and rested her head on the ground, this could well have looked like she was getting into it from his PoV. He may have reasonably thought he had a green light for penetrative sex when she again asked for an orgasm.
Agreed, and I said I wasn’t comfortable coming to the point where I said the best outcome probably would have been not to charge him and not to use the label rape, because of its legal ramifications and societal baggage, for this encounter. If there were a misdemeanor sexual assault charge, I could get behind that, because he should have stopped when she said no sex. It would create a record so if something similar happened, he could be treated as a repeat offender, but wouldn’t carry the full weight, legal and societal, of a rapist charge. The world is full of gray, and the rape term, as is currently used in the US, is one we can’t afford to throw around. We need something to cover these shades of gray. Maybe inappropriate sexual contact, or something like that, so we can keep an eye on potential predators.
In my ideal world, after the situation in the article occurred, they would both be on a possible sex offender list, which is kept confidential and is not used by employers or anyone outside the justice system. Both of them would have had court-ordered therapy for their alcohol abuse issues, and the records sealed. Since objective facts were not reasonably available, the best thing to do would be to flag them both. Him because he may be a serial offender, and her because she may be a serial accuser. Then they both get a warning from John Law not to let themselves get into this kind of situation again and they go on with their lives.
Your expectation that there should be some formal declaration of the willing intent to engage in sex, i.e. “do you want to have sex” prior to actually having sex is both absurd and somewhat silly expectation with respect to the way mutual seduction normally progresses between human males and females. That an adult man (or woman) should be expected to throw this glass of legalistic ice water onto the proceedings of a mutual seduction is nuts. If a man was to make this declaration it would assumes a level of infantilization on the part of the woman so extreme it would be insulting to most women.
Please tell me where in an evening of mutual enjoyment you would insert this little bon mot without looking and sounding like a stiff, tentative, world class jackass.
But even sven wasn’t just regretting it the next day. She didn’t want it to happen at the time.
I mean, is it really socially acceptable to go around groping people when they’re asleep and hoping they’ll say yes when they wake up? Is asking beforehand that hard in situations where you have no idea how the person is going to react to sex? I’m not talking about situations where people are dating or on a date or there’s some amount of sexual tension. I’m talking about someone who’s expressed no interest in me before coming up to me and groping me in my sleep. I would hope we’d be able to agree that that’s wrong, no?
So she says. See my post about first hand drunken accounts. I suppose when I say “regret it the next day” I should be clearer. The problem I have is that with no explicit “no”, the men in these situations naturally and reasonably conclude that they have consent. Saying the next day “actually I didn’t want to have sex” just doesn’t work in any moral or legal sense.
Yes, because no one would assume a sleeping person would want to be groped.
So then why doesn’t even sven’s account fall into something bad that happened to her? She woke up to the guy in her bed and didn’t say no. And right after you’ve woken up, who knows how alert you’re going to be. It would have made it more clear cut if she’d said no, but I still feel comfortable saying that the guy was sleazy for having sex with her. She described the sex as just her letting it happen. A guy who’s having sex with someone who’s essentially lying there and who hasn’t expressly made it clear she wants to have sex may not be a rapist but if we put things on more of a spectrum, I do think he falls closer to sex offender than to normal law abiding guy.
even sven’s account doesn’t fall into something bad because she gave effective consent for it to happen.
I guess I am filling the blanks a little bit here, but I’m assuming it wasn’t surprise sex. I assume it was the natural making out->groping->sex bit giving her plenty of time to say no before intercourse.
The “groggy after waking up” bit is a really lame excuse. If someone that I didn’t want to have sex with woke me up, it sure wouldn’t take me long to get my senses together and tell them to stop.
Well, I’ll let even sven say what happened, but to me it sounds like she woke up to the guy starting to have sex with her and basically just let it happen. It doesn’t sound like she was all that involved but I could be wrong.
I don’t see why it’s a lame excuse, though, to say that someone’s out of it right after they wake up. Especially if they’ve been drinking. If I’m really out of it and I wake up to someone starting to have sex with me, and I’m too out of it to say no, it’s my fault? Why isn’t it the fault of the asshole who thought he had a right to my body without asking? I’m just creeped out that the attitude seems to be, hey, if she doesn’t say no, do whatever you want.
even sven’s situation really sets off my alarm bells. The guy knows he has no chance while she’s sober, so he sets up a time when others around her will help impair her judgment. She thinks she’s safe in a group, and then she’s maneuvered to a certain spot, where he happens to be the local authority. Then once she’s at her most vulnerable, she’s set up for an offer she can’t refuse, or at least would have to weigh the possible consequences if she refuses. Now that guy needs to spend some time in jail. Seduction is one thing, but conspiracy to place someone in a unfamiliar, powerless position, AND ensure they were more vulnerable than they would be otherwise? Scummy.
But the guy from the article, he was approached, he was propositioned, he was NOT specifically told manual only, hell, he may, as pointed out by Dolukhanova have stuck with manual only(him being totally naked when she awoke argues against this). He himself was drunk, and there was no cold-blooded planning or third parties involved in the setup. Those are some pretty big factors in why I could say sven’s rapist should serve time, but “Tony” from the story probably shouldn’t.
shrug If she wants to come back and fill in the details, she can. I will say, to sum up, that trying to get a girl drunk to have sex with her is skeevy, but not what I would call morally or legally wrong. This sounds like a college story, and unfortunately for a lot of people getting drunk and having sex is what college is about. The man presented choices to even sven and it appears that she consented to every choice she made. That ultimately absolves him of moral responsibility in my book.
I don’t see what is wrong with that attitude. A girl (or a man for that matter) can do whatever they like with me until I say no, so long as they give me that opportunity to say no. I don’t think it’s a reasonable expectation to get explicit affirmative consent to every sexual act. People need to be treated like adults, and the expectation is that adults object to activity they do not want to participate in.
If college to you means that letting people grope you when you’re asleep without explicit permission is okay and that the person being groped is the one with the obligation to say no, then that goes a long way towards explaining why rape rates are so high among college aged females.
My attitude is pretty much the opposite. Unless you’re reasonably sure, you don’t get to touch my body. And no, I don’t mean that someone needs to ask at every step of the way. A guy putting his arm around me or kissing me when we’re on a date isn’t committing assault if he doesn’t ask first. But I draw the line at a guy waiting till I’m passed out to climb into bed and start fondling me. That’s something you do need permission to do.
So, is there a way to make someone come without having sex? (I know I know, there’s a video on the internet of a woman having an orgasm on a roller coaster, but this story does not seem to have a roller coaster in it so I don’t think that applies) Generally all types of sex are still sex, right?