You do not have to explicity concent to an action to concent to it. If your actions are such that a “reasonable” person would believe the next course of action would follow you have given your concent.
In the OP example the girl does seem to negate any implicit concent by saying she wasn’t going to tolerate his actions. Still it’s a very iffy area.
Anytime you’re actions and words are sending mixed signals, it leaves you open for interpretation.
The girl was stupid to talk about this. Judges are notoriously protective of their territory. A trial belongs in a court not the public forum. This doesn’t bode well for her. Everyone seemed to be under the influence, sworn testimony by a bunch of drunks who are partying isn’t going to have much sway either way.
I have little sympathy for anyone who puts themselves in a bad situation and won’t remove themselves. Like people who go to parties knowing their are drugs there and bitching about getting arrested, because while they knew drugs were there, they diddn’t do any of them.
If you give a chimp a gun you don’t blame the chimp if it shoots somebody. If you get drunk and start putting yourself in a position where you can be sexually compromised, well. I’m not saying she deserved this, but really, c’mon was she surprised this happened?
Sad part is I’d bet next week she’ll have learned nothing from this and be back out drinking and partying again.
To draw a distinction since as misunderstandings and ungenerous interpretations are particularly likely in this kind of thread:
In jurisdictions where I’ve checked out statutes, the standard to be convicted of sexual assault requires an absence of consent AND an absence of a reasonable belief in consent.
There can be an absence of consent on the part of the pass receiver combined with a reasonable belief in consent on the part of the pass maker. From the limited information we have, the man had a reasonable belief in her consent before and during the initial kiss and so wouldn’t be guilty of anything. After she shoved him off, he no longer had a reasonable belief in her consent. From the information she’s disclosed, it looks like sexual assault.
She never gave her consent but until she shoved him off, he wasn’t guilty of anything.
“If you give a chimp a gun you don’t blame the chimp if it shoots somebody. If you get drunk and start putting yourself in a position where you can be sexually compromised, well. I’m not saying she deserved this, but really, c’mon was she surprised this happened?”
That man is not a chimp. He is presumed to be reasonable even when drunk and he can trigger his own civil and acriminal liability. Consider a case where you leave your door unlocked in a bad part of town. That’s very stupid, correct? If you get burglarized, you ought not be surprised. But the fact that you acted very stupidly doesn’t take any civil of criminal liability away from the burglars. It’s the same for a woman who puts herself in such a position.
I’ve been sexually assaulted more than once. I had to stop being “nice.” And if I’ve been nice to long, I had to learn the signals that the guy was starting to think that I was leading him on and get the hell out when I could - get into a more public place, ditch him - whatever I needed to do.
It was absolutely a combination of me and the company I chose to keep. But I never was sexually assaulted in a bar, never when I’d been drinking, never when I wore a really short skirt and fuck me heels, never when I did the sorts of things that we accuse women of doing to encourage victimization.
For future reference Mark, if you’re getting mixed signals, DO NOT assume that’s a green light to shove your hand down someone’s pants.
It’s really not that complicated.
And on a related notes:
Guys who are worried about being hit with a false sexual assault or rape charges should follow the advice they give women: don’t get drunk out of your mind with strangers, don’t give mixed signals, don’t assume that you know what she wants better than she does, don’t hang around bad company, be aware of bad situations and have an exit strategy in mind. Be aware going in that when you put yourself in a stranger’s hands - you’re making yourself vulnerable. Just like women, it won’t stop a real whacko from hurting you. But it would help prevent simple misunderstandings. Don’t live in fear - just be aware.
As for her talking about it - if it happened, I don’t care who she tells. She could put up a billboard if she wants. That women are so often pressured to protect their attackers is one of the most pernicious things about sexual assault. Yeah, this reputation will follow him around. Tough shit.
If it didn’t happen, that’s a separate crime. If proof emerges that she’s filed false charges then she should be prosecuted fully. But I’m not inclined to assume she made it up. Cui bono? She’s the one getting the lion’s share of the grief here.
Really? You’re serious with this? I’ve read this several times, and you sound serious.
In which case, the reason we don’t blame chimps who have been given guns for shooting someone is that the chimp isn’t judged to be capable of understanding the consequences of pulling the trigger.
You can certainly try and argue that men don’t understand the consequences of sexually assaulting women - or even, more narrowly, that men don’t understand that it’s a problem to put your hands in someone else’s underwear when they’ve just told you to fuck off - but I have a higher opinion of a man’s intellectual capacity than that.
And I’m not sure what she ought to be learning here - that men can’t control themselves in the presence of drunk women in short skirts? That’s she’s so irresistibly hot that she completely destroys the moral fibre of men around her? If she did assume that men can’t control themselves around women in short skirts who’ve been drinking, she’d be slammed for being paranoid and misandrist (and rightly so, since obviously not all men lack a moral compass and the ability to judge consent…)
I like the idea that sexual assault can teach you a useful lesson about why women should not drink and party!
I can’t believe you find it “sad” that being the victim of a crime probably won’t suck the life out of this woman. Maybe it’d be less sad if she had been anally raped or something so that the lesson about not drinking and having fun would stick.
That doesn’t make any sense at all. A false accusation can be made by a woman you don’t know, by a woman that is nowhere near you; unlike actual assault or rape where by definition the perpetrator needs to be in your physical presence. Short of arranging for 24/7 video surveillance of yourself there isn’t really any way to take precautions, all you can hope for is that she makes an obvious mistake (like you were halfway across the country in front of witnesses while supposedly raping her), and that you get a judge who is more interested in the truth that in Making An Example out of you.
Say what? At worst, a few people are saying bad things about her. His life on the other hand life is probably ruined. People just don’t care all that much about the truth of accusations like this; when you make an accusation of sex crimes like sexual assault, rape, or child molestation against someone most of the population goes into holy war mode and doesn’t care if it is true or not.
Oh come on, his life isn’t “ruined.” She’s hardly accusing him of being a horrible rapist…she basically said he ruined her day, and that it is bullshit that he can get away with that and that she’s decided not to let him. I’m inclined to agree. He got called out publicly for doing a pretty jerkish thing that he thought he could get away with. Well, he didn’t get away with it and while he’ll probably get some well-deserved flack now that people know how he conducts himself in private, I don’t think he’ll be making the sex offenders list.
I’ve been a victim of some minor sexual assault like this, and I never said a word. And you know what? I should have. Why should they be able to pull that shit knowing that I’ll be too embarrassed or whatever to tell their families, employers, whatever that they are the kind of guy who does that stuff?
Hey taxi driver who pulled his dick out and waved it around at me- If I knew your name, I’d say it. Hey guy at the bar who rammed my arms behind my back and forcibly kissed me- I think everyone should know you did that! How’s your fiance going to feel? Yo dude who pulled his dick out in front of my friend and chased her down the road- let’s post your name, too! And I’ll add the guy who walked right up to me and gave my breasts a good twist! I’d gladly put all of your names on the net.
I don’t think guys realize how depressingly common this bullshit is. This sort of thing happens all the time, and most of the time people get away with it because realistically women are not going to bother to go to the police for it. And while it’s not life-ruining or anything for the women, it is uncomfortable and scary, and frankly nobody has the right to make us feel this way!
People do this shit to you?? What the hell. I wonder if I’m living in a different universe than y’all or something. None of this type of stuff happens to me or my friends (at least that they’ve told me about).
Maybe a guy will inappropriately grope me if I’m in one of those balls-to-the-wall dance club situations but I usually just move. And it’s never been under my clothes.
One time at a club a guy randomly caressed my stomach while I was walking by him. I slapped his hand away. And maybe I’ve been flashed, but if it was, I imagine it would be a drunk dude pulling it out in a crowd just to get attention, not someone creeping up and doing it just to me.
WTF. This is so strange to read about for me. And even stranger to think that it’s common for large swaths of women.
You don’t know if he actually did anything, and you don’t know that he won’t get put on the list, people get put on sex offenders lists for trivial or outright false offenses all the time. And once on the list they get treated by the public as rabid rapists and child molesters even if all they did was sleep with their 17 year old girlfriend when they were 18.
And I think that women don’t care about lives being ruined by false accusations of sex crimes because the odds of it ever happening to them are negligible.
Granted a lot of these things happened in China. Now, the stereotype that western women are “open” was surely a part of things, but even the biggest racist asshole on the planet knows it’s not okay to pin a woman down, or to pull your dick out in a closed vehicle. I think the bigger part of things was that I was obviously vulnerable- being in a foreign place, less-than-fluent with the language, etc. and probably without a good methods for reporting them to the police.
The other time I got so much shit was the last time I was visibly vulnerable- as a young teenager. Unbelievable the number of people who think it’s okay to show their dick to a twelve year old.
So what is the answer? Women should just let any guy who feels like shoving his fingers somewhere or pulling his dick out get away with it, as long as they kindly stop short of rape?
Please tell us what your experience/awareness is of this actually happening in the real world. What people have been put on such a list and for what trivial offenses? How does that process work? In what ways specifically have real people had their lives ruined when they haven’t done anything wrong, and how do you know?
I’m not necessarily calling for a citation, although I’ll certainly accept one. I’m just wondering, since you’re obviously aware of this enough to say it happens all the time, what you can tell us about it off of the top of your head.
I like to do gender switches with these kinds of issues.
Let’s say a guy is at a conference after-party, and he’s flirting, drinking, and having fun. He goes to the bathroom and gets cornered by a male colleague who tries to kiss him. Dude pulls away and says he is not intrested, and the guy shoves his hands in the guy’s pants and grabs his dick.
Which of these responses are we likely to hear?
“He’s probably making it up!”
“What did he think was going to happen? He put himself into that situation.”
“They both showed poor judgment.”
“That’s screwed up to put a guy’s reputation on the line like that. What if he gets on the sex offender’s list?!?!”
“I bet he’s one of those guys who hangs around gays because he likes the attention. Serves him right.”
“What’s sad is he’ll probably not learn from this, and be back drinking and partying”
Doesn’t make sense, does it? None of these opinions make sense without misogyny.