Before I have an opinion on this I would have to know the statistics on how often lies and actual crimes happen and the severity of the repercussions of each
I’d be very interested to hear more about that case.
This was a rape trial? I don’t know very much about English (English, right?) criminal procedure, but it couldn’t have been a criminal case if the alleged victim was making arguments in court, right?
I don’t think it’s fair to hold the woman to one standard (“I was drunk and can’t be held accountable for my low resistance”) and the man to another (“I was drunk too! I’m supposed to have judgment to know her wanting sex was on account of inebriation and not because I’m Go’ds gift to women?”). Just arguing academically. I was never in this particular situation, and am way too old and too light a drinker for this to be a realistic possibility. It’s just a tough situation from both sides.
[QUOTE= Hentor the Barbarian]
Kimstu, well there was that one incident, but that involved a chifferobe.
[/quote]
I got that!
“Accountable for my low resistance” is one of those phrases that sort of drops out and becomes extremely deep when you think about it.
Well, leave out the gender-roles aspect of it for a minute, since after all it does sometimes happen that men are raped and that women are rapists (and the two circumstances don’t always coincide).
I think the point is that it’s fair to have one standard for being able to defend oneself against rape and a different, stricter, standard for being able to stop oneself from raping somebody. It’s not unreasonable that the legal accountability for a crime should be on the person in the position of actually committing the crime.
Likewise, if a pedestrian is so drunk that they’re kneeling on the sidewalk puking in the gutter and not paying any attention to traffic, that’s unwise. But if a driver is so drunk that they inadvertently drive up on the curb and kill the puking pedestrian, that’s not only unwise but a crime.
Even though the driver didn’t mean to hurt the pedestrian, and the driver’s drunkenness impaired their ability to properly look out for the pedestrian, and the pedestrian’s own drunkenness impaired their ability to look out for themselves, the responsibility for the outcome still rests with the driver, i.e., the party who actually inflicted the harm.
Refer to Kobal2’s quote of the text. Explain how a man that is fully asleep, unconscious, or unable to communicate (at all) able to have sex (or attempt to have sex).
I’m fairly certain that’s has always been illegal and has nothing to do with this law. I think this law deals with the previously mentioned “low resistance” angle which has a lot grey area.
If we are to leave gender out of it, I’d feel better if there was a cite for a drunk man having sex with a woman, then declaring the next day that it was rape.
You left out the middle clause, which is the relevant one here.
Which woman that “declared” that it was rape are we comparing this to?
No, this does not change the burden of proof. It just changes what is being proved beyond a reasonable doubt (from “the accuser said no” to “the accuser did not say yes.”
Yes, like all rape cases it is hard to prove. Doesn’t mean you don’t try to catch them.
A blow-up doll filled with beer?
If the media are to be believed, there is a lot more anonymous sex and so-called “hooking up” (what we used to call “one-night stands”) than there was a generation ago. It happened that I went to college in the late 80s, when AIDS was a death sentence-- lots of people dying in their 20s and 30s from it, and the treatment horizon looked bleak. There was also no way to test for the virus itself at the time, only the antibodies, so you be infected for a while, able to infect others, and not know it, even if you went and got tested. It scared a lot of people away from hooking up. Not that everyone was necessarily going out and signing purity pledges, but holding off on sex until a couple of months into a relationship, then getting tested, and NEVER having one-night stands was fairly common.
It was a change from the previous decade, when there was a lot of sexual freedom, what with doctors finally not caring who they prescribed the pill for (at one time, it was hard to get it if you weren’t married, and ditto for diaphragms), abortion was legal, and universities had pretty much ended in loco parentis policies, along with dorm curfews, and soforth.
I’m willing to believe there is a lot more sex happening now than there was in my day, but we were scared. We were the first people to lose our virginity in the wake of AIDS. I also think that probably there’s a regression to the mean, and if we were a little extra prude, and people are slightly more indulgent now, it all evens out. I don’t think people change much, just circumstances, like the addition of HIV to the mix.
More sex in general means more regrettable sex (also more good sex-- more of everything: more vanilla, more BDSM, more oral, etc.) But I agree that the last thing a woman is going to do is broadcast her mistake, even by disguising it as a rape accusation.
Most campuses have their own police forces, and if you call 911 on a campus, the campus police arrive. Also, if you go to the nearest police station to your dorm or sorority house, it will be the campus police. Yes, they are real police, albeit, they turn people over to the county court system, but so do the city police, the sheriff and the state police.
The problem you get into is when the campus police try to keep something in-house, and it appears to get brushed under the rug, but honestly, when that happens, it usually isn’t a winnable case for the DA. I lived in a college town (small town, HUGE university) for many years, and when a woman was attacked and beaten in addition to being raped, and there needed to be an investigation, and clearly someone was going to go away to prison for a very long time, even when it happened on campus, it got turned over to the city police right away, because the campus police don’t have detectives or a CSU. That made some people think a case that didn’t get turned over was not being taken seriously.
One other time though, when a woman who was underage (that is, under 21, but over the age for sexual consent) got drunk at a frat party and raped, and reported it, the fraternity chapter was suspended from campus, and after four years could reapply, with no promise of re-acceptance, and everyone in the house was put on probation, because no one would come forward with the name of the rapist, and the woman didn’t know. Additionally, anyone in the honors program was removed from it. Departments were also allowed to take their own measures, but I don’t know whether any did. This case was never adjudicated, and probably would have been a loser for the DA, and as I said, I don’t think they ever came up with a name for the actual rapist, so he technically “got away with it,” but he was on probation with the rest of his former fraternity (and had to find a new place to live), and even if one of his frat brothers had narced on him, it still would have been a “he said/she said.”
Now, the frat wasn’t even supposed to have alcohol in the first place, but if it had just been a matter of underage drinking, the frat probably would have had something like a two-year probation, with nothing personal against any of the individual members.
So some campuses do take things seriously.
Well then let’s celebrate, because the grey area has been cleared up. Sex with an affirmative partner is ok, sex with a partner who has not affirmed may get you in legal trouble. Clear as day.
What this is really about is university policies are consistent.
::begins frantically emailing venture capitalists::
English, yes, criminal, yes (the Old Bailey’s an extremely high-profile criminal court), and my memories of exactly what went down are dimmed by the years, but I believe I have summed up reasonably. Found this.
She and he were friends, as in “I will never fuck you but I’ll fuck anyone else in sight and tell you all the details later”. Seems she led him to believe his luck had changed.
I’m sorry, but bullshit.
Like it was said earlier in the thread, alcohol doesn’t excuse you from driving while under it’s influence. Sure it ‘takes two to tango’, but you didn’t know she was married before hand. I would have no sympathy for this woman, and feel sorry for her husband.
…but let’s BLAME alcohol for the sake of argument. She should have known better not to get that fucked up if it leads to cheating.
I’m not sure of much when I post things on these boards, (I often sit on the fence until I hear all sides of the story), but in this case I’m 100% sure that this woman is responsible for her own actions and doesn’t deserve pity.
As for the broader topic, “Yes means yes”, I’m not convinced that it’s a good idea… but I’m unsure. Just like I often am.
ISTM that this was just his story, and the prosecution was claiming she never consented at all.
Hasn’t there been cases where a JUDGE said basically "you didn’t say no enough or fight back hard enough’. Now the judge as to ask, “Did she say yes?” If not then it is criminal.
Which one do you want? Before I continue, I want to point out the I used the word “declare” because I thought it was neutral. I didn’t say she decided it was rape, and I didn’t say she claimed it was rape. I think we can remain agnostic on whether any particular case was rape or not and still address this.
Give me a cite for any case where the woman afterward said it was consensual and the man said it wasn’t.
Do you really want cites for cases where the woman later said sex was not consensual, but the man said it was, and the man was tried on rape charges? I can do that, but so can google.
The fact that it’s administrative instead of criminal makes a lot of my concerns moot. I do feel that the affirmative consent burden falls to the accused since it is defined as their responsibility to get consent, rather than it being the accuser’s responsibility to say no.