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Because "well, they were both drunk, so..." comes up so often in discussions about rape...


Xuzi
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I don't think we can call a handful of cases, less than 5 that I can find, a trend. Given how many people are raped, it certainly isn't a risk anywhere near the level of rape. 

 

We can disagree about the definition of "trend."  By definition, trends start out small, but they don't always stay small.

 

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"Are you rhetorically asking if it is always wrong to try to convince people to do things?" OKBud asked, rhetorically.

 

It was obvious OKBud knew Cabra Azul knew the answer to that willfully obtuse question was no. Nein. Negative.

 

It was also obvious to OKBud, though, that Bluegoat probably doesn't think it's copacetic to pressure people into being intimate with you when they are reticent to do so. She thought back....Blue Goat was a kind woman, who endeavored to be helpful to those in need, and interesting in casual conversation.

 

So OKBud wondered: why was Blue Goat asking that question at that time, in that context at all?

 

She hoped the Canadian would elucidate her meaning in a cohesive way. She remembered that Blue Goat had studied philosophy, though and wondered if her forum peer merely asked questions for the sake of asking them?

 

Look, I really can't tel if you write like this if you are being serious or not. 

 

I don't have an isue with someone verbally trying to convince someone to have sex.  I don't see it as different from all the other things peop;le convince others to do for some reason.  There is sich a thing as verbal harrasment, but not all efforts, or most, to convince someone to do something, are harrasment.  I mean for goodness sake - even in cases where the person is actually quite sure of what they want/don't want, we are not talking about people who are children or made of glass.  People try and convince others of things all the time, and they aren't instrisically more significant or fraught scenarios.

 

Te reason I would say that is that it was brought up.  I think it is a huge strech to read anything like that into that song.  Of course it could be that she is a vulnerable person, that he is trying to drunk her up to take advantage of her.  Or, she could be totally in on the exchange, looking to create a little bit of fun/sexual tension.  But to reduce it to some idea that as a matter of course adults are so pathetic they can't have conversations about sex like they do about taking a vacation, or investing money, or moving to Alaska, seems pretty unjustified.

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We can disagree about the definition of "trend."  By definition, trends start out small, but they don't always stay small.

 

 

I think they have to be growing to be a trend. Otherwise, statistical anomaly seems a better name. 

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It is more than an anomoly. This article gives a decent overview.

 

http://www.newsweek.com/2015/12/18/other-side-sexual-assault-crisis-403285.html

 

’â€The issues lawyers take with school proceedings include the vague notices schools send accused students; the single-investigator model, in which one person is responsible for the entire investigation; the lack of access the accused have to records; and the way some schools bar advocates or attorneys from aiding the accused."

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I don't think we can call a handful of cases, less than 5 that I can find, a trend. Given how many people are raped, it certainly isn't a risk anywhere near the level of rape. 

 

Jumping off from your post, but not all these thoughts are directed at you.

 

Those are the highly publicized cases.  Those are the cases used to instigate whole threads around the internet on rape culture.   Read through the Rolling Stone thread here knowing the whole story was entirely made up.  Not a whit of it was true.  And many people will say it doesn't matter if it was true or not, the issue needs to be addressed.  Right? When they are found to be hoaxes, the accusation still stands, and no one reevaluates their opinions on the college or rape culture, or really what happened at all.  What sticks is "gang rape happened at college and no one cared".  Meanwhile, the Greek system is shut down, the man is shunned and put through hell, and no one can say anything because if the woman is questioned, it is considered a reason why women don't report rapes and even questioning her story is considered contributing to rape culture.  Then there is so much skepticism when there actually is a real problem.

 

I could give more anecdotes from people I knew and cases that happened around me when I was a young adult, but I doubt anecdotes are worth much.  I'll just say that I've seen enough to think that trying a case in a campus kangaroo court based on the "preponderance of the evidence" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt", where there are no legal consequences but someone can be kicked out of school and branded a rapist with little more than an accusation -- THAT system is very, very damaging for all involved.

 

If someone is raped, even at a university, they need to go to the police and avail themselves of the legal system.  The case needs to be tried, and consequences should be based on a guilty verdict.  Yes, that is true even though the guy from the OP got away with a slap on the wrist.  There is much more credibility to the publicity when he's actually found guilty.  This judge can be voted out of office.  An appeal can be made.  But kicking someone out of school or having them publicly shunned or taking away their scholarships based on an accusation or an "honor council" adjudicating the case is just a nonsensical way to handle these things.

 

I also think affirmative consent is a very silly, silly idea that is almost hilariously puritanical, and very unrealistic given what hookup culture actually is.  The whole point is going out and getting drunk and having sex anonymously with inhibitions loosened up by alcohol or drugs.  The whole point is being inebriated so that one can do things they would otherwise not do sober.  Does this mean they should be raped?  Absolutely not!  It does facilitate a sort of culture, though, where boundaries are much less clear, especially after the fact when neither party really remembers what happened and one or both people feel ashamed about some aspect of their night.  The fact that people want to ignore that this culture actually exists and they want a woman to be believed without question whenever she accuses a man of rape creates a problematic situation where a man is automatically a rapist if the woman says he is.  And, even if he isn't, being an accused rapist is not much better.

 

The funny thing is that I detest college hook up culture.  I think it's morally repugnant and dangerous for many reasons.  Rape being one of them.  Alcohol poisoning being another.  STDs being another.  And on and on, etc, etc.  I can't imagine wanting to be a part of it at all, female or male.  It is a gross idea to me to go to parties and drink to excess with the hopes of feeling buzzed enough to then engage in casual sex.  But, we want it both ways.  We want to say that kids should be free to do this stuff and have this college "experience" because it's all just fun and a biological urge and everyone just wants to do what feels good... and then we also want to say that sex has the potential to be so devastating that verbal consent must be obtained at every stage of an encounter, no matter how inebriated the parties involved are, and if among all this partying and intoxication that doesn't happen then one person is responsible for violating something sacred.  It is so backwards to me it's actually mind boggling.  I do agree that this culture is a rape culture.  The problem is people don't want to change the culture.  College kids certainly don't.

 

Men should not rape women.  To be honest, though, with the current hookup culture and the definition of rape being something done while intoxicated without explicit verbal consent, I don't see how it's avoidable.  Something has to change.

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If she doesn't want sex, and is no longer actively participating, and is not even capable of saying no because she can no longer speak she is so drunk, then yes, I would call that rape. Because if he is capable of having sex, he should be capable of noting that she is passed out/saying no/doesn't want to. 

 

However, honestly, talking about these very few cases rather than not the majority that are clear cut just again, makes it seem like there are no clear cut ones or that the majority are just this jumbled confusion. They aren't. Most of the time, the guy went looking for a victim. he is sober enough to manipulate them to a place where they will have privacy. If you are sober enough to want privacy and think that through and find a place, you are sober enough to know if the girl is into it. 

 

How would you know that the former type of incident is rare, and the latter common?  I think the former type of incident is really common, but most of the time people don't do anything about it - and really, what would they do?  It may well not be any kind of legal assault, and the people involved may not have been sober enough to remember things clearly anyway.  So no statistics would even be available on those kinds of numbers.

 

I really disagree with the idea that men that drunk are incapable of performing.  I think it's common to get to a point  are to a point where judgement is significantly impaired and still able to function sexually. (And even find a private or semi-private place though goodness knows some people don't bother.)

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Oh my goodness. The rates of false claims are about 2%, comparable with other kinds of crime.

The rates of actual rape are much higher than 2%, and under reported.

 

It is a nasty red herring to continue the narrative.

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I know this isn't exactly on topic, but speaking of "affirmative consent," does it mean anything if the person later claims she doesn't remember saying "yes"?  You could videotape her saying "yes," but then you would be in all sorts of trouble for making a video of that kind of intimacy.

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How would you know that the former type of incident is rare, and the latter common?  I think the former type of incident is really common, but most of the time people don't do anything about it - and really, what would they do?  It may well not be any kind of legal assault, and the people involved may not have been sober enough to remember things clearly anyway.  So no statistics would even be available on those kinds of numbers.

 

I really disagree with the idea that men that drunk are incapable of performing.  I think it's common to get to a point  are to a point where judgement is significantly impaired and still able to function sexually. (And even find a private or semi-private place though goodness knows some people don't bother.)

 

What I was saying was that someone being accused of and convicted of rape, in the former situation, is unlikely, not that it doesn't happen. 

 

I think "judgement significantly impaired" is not the same thing as "can't tell if a woman is a willing participant, or even conscious during sex". I've been around plenty of drunk men. Friends, friends of my husband, etc. A few were actually alcoholics. One is serving jail time for actions committed while drunk. NONE ever made me feel unsafe, none ever did anything to the women they were partying with that could be construed as rape. In my experience (and I do know that anecdote doesn't equal evidence), good guys are still good guys when drunk. And guys that rape drunk women are usually not drunk, and had a plan going into the evening that included getting a woman drunk or drugged and having sex with her. 

 

Generally speaking, men don't accidentally rape women. 

 

Are there false reports? Yes, but as far as we know it is not more than any other crime. Funny though, when someone reports a mugging most people assume they are telling the truth. No one starts talking about all the false mugging reports. But with rape, that always seems to come up. 

 

Crazy people will do weird things, for attention or whatever messed up reason. But those are the outliers, and we probably can't fine tune the laws well enough to eliminate those people at the outset, that is what the criminal process is for. The laws need to be based on the majority of cases. 

 

I will agree that these matters should always be handled by the real police, not campus honor courts.

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This is another interesting article on the topic- specifically it does a good job of looking at the 1 in 5 statistic.

 

 

"That’s the number most often used to suggest there is overwhelming sexual violence on America’s college campuses. It comes from a 2007 study funded by the National Institute of Justice, called the Campus Sexual Assault Study, or CSA. (I cited it last year in a story on campus drinking and sexual assault.) The study asked 5,466 female college students at two public universities, one in the Midwest and one in the South, to answer an online survey about their experiences with sexual assault. The survey defined sexual assault as everything from nonconsensual sexual intercourse to such unwanted activities as “forced kissing,†“fondling,†and “rubbing up against you in a sexual way, even if it is over your clothes.†There are approximately 12 million female college students in the U.S. (There are about 9 million males.) I asked the lead author of the study, Christopher Krebs, whether the CSA represents the experience of those millions of female students. His answer was unequivocal: “We don’t think one in five is a nationally representative statistic.†It couldn’t be, he said, because his team sampled only two schools. “In no way does that make our results nationally representative,†Krebs said"

 

"The Sexual Victimization of College Women, a 2000 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, is the basis for another widely cited statistic, even grimmer than the finding of CSA: that one in four college women will be raped. (An activist organization, One in Four, takes its name from the finding.) The study itself, however, found a completed rape rate among its respondents of 1.7 percent. How does a study that finds less than 2 percent of college women in a given year are raped become a 25 percent likelihood? In addition to the 1.7 percent of victims of completed rape, the survey found that another 1.1 percent experienced attempted rape. As the authors wrote, “[O]ne might conclude that the risk of rape victimization for college women is not high; ‘only’ about 1 in 36 college women (2.8 percent) experience a completed rape or attempted rape in an academic year.â€

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/12/college_rape_campus_sexual_assault_is_a_serious_problem_but_the_efforts.html

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One thing I think all of this makes clear. Drinking and making decisions is a bad combination. Drinking and driving is bad, drinking and having sex can be bad. I've told my older boys that to be on the safe side they should not hook up with anyone who has been drinking or while they have been drinking. They need to have their wits about them. And we've also discussed how by being sober they can possibly help others not get in risky situations.

 

Eta: reread my post and need to make clear that I'm not talking about the initial post. Unconscious people can't give consent. No gray area there. No questions. No asking for it. Im talking about the gray area when two are drunk and making bad decisions.

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Jumping off from your post, but not all these thoughts are directed at you.

 

Those are the highly publicized cases.  Those are the cases used to instigate whole threads around the internet on rape culture.   Read through the Rolling Stone thread here knowing the whole story was entirely made up.  Not a whit of it was true.  And many people will say it doesn't matter if it was true or not, the issue needs to be addressed.  Right? When they are found to be hoaxes, the accusation still stands, and no one reevaluates their opinions on the college or rape culture, or really what happened at all.  What sticks is "gang rape happened at college and no one cared".  Meanwhile, the Greek system is shut down, the man is shunned and put through hell, and no one can say anything because if the woman is questioned, it is considered a reason why women don't report rapes and even questioning her story is considered contributing to rape culture.  Then there is so much skepticism when there actually is a real problem.

 

I could give more anecdotes from people I knew and cases that happened around me when I was a young adult, but I doubt anecdotes are worth much.  I'll just say that I've seen enough to think that trying a case in a campus kangaroo court based on the "preponderance of the evidence" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt", where there are no legal consequences but someone can be kicked out of school and branded a rapist with little more than an accusation -- THAT system is very, very damaging for all involved.

 

If someone is raped, even at a university, they need to go to the police and avail themselves of the legal system.  The case needs to be tried, and consequences should be based on a guilty verdict.  Yes, that is true even though the guy from the OP got away with a slap on the wrist.  There is much more credibility to the publicity when he's actually found guilty.  This judge can be voted out of office.  An appeal can be made.  But kicking someone out of school or having them publicly shunned or taking away their scholarships based on an accusation or an "honor council" adjudicating the case is just a nonsensical way to handle these things.

 

I also think affirmative consent is a very silly, silly idea that is almost hilariously puritanical, and very unrealistic given what hookup culture actually is.  The whole point is going out and getting drunk and having sex anonymously with inhibitions loosened up by alcohol or drugs.  The whole point is being inebriated so that one can do things they would otherwise not do sober.  Does this mean they should be raped?  Absolutely not!  It does facilitate a sort of culture, though, where boundaries are much less clear, especially after the fact when neither party really remembers what happened and one or both people feel ashamed about some aspect of their night.  The fact that people want to ignore that this culture actually exists and they want a woman to be believed without question whenever she accuses a man of rape creates a problematic situation where a man is automatically a rapist if the woman says he is.  And, even if he isn't, being an accused rapist is not much better.

 

The funny thing is that I detest college hook up culture.  I think it's morally repugnant and dangerous for many reasons.  Rape being one of them.  Alcohol poisoning being another.  STDs being another.  And on and on, etc, etc.  I can't imagine wanting to be a part of it at all, female or male.  It is a gross idea to me to go to parties and drink to excess with the hopes of feeling buzzed enough to then engage in casual sex.  But, we want it both ways.  We want to say that kids should be free to do this stuff and have this college "experience" because it's all just fun and a biological urge and everyone just wants to do what feels good... and then we also want to say that sex has the potential to be so devastating that verbal consent must be obtained at every stage of an encounter, no matter how inebriated the parties involved are, and if among all this partying and intoxication that doesn't happen then one person is responsible for violating something sacred.  It is so backwards to me it's actually mind boggling.  I do agree that this culture is a rape culture.  The problem is people don't want to change the culture.  College kids certainly don't.

 

Men should not rape women.  To be honest, though, with the current hookup culture and the definition of rape being something done while intoxicated without explicit verbal consent, I don't see how it's avoidable.  Something has to change.

 

Yes - this is to me the big contradiction - hook up culture is simply not compatible with the kind of affirmative - consent, very low tolerance for the ability to consent while drunk, model.  And yet it is understood as important to sexual freedom in general, and a woman's sexual freedom to have sex in the same way men do, to allow for this kind of sexual culture to exist.  

 

Now - it is also true that most of these incidents don't result in convictions, because as it is they can't - they don't in many cases meet the standard and even if they do, there are no good witnesses, including the two people involved.

 

But that doesn't mean they don't affect perception, in many ways.  The standard being demanded more and more by activists is not only affirmative consent, but enthusiastic affirmative consent.  This is not a few fringe people.  My observation is that many people are being influenced by that idea - that they are interpreting people having drunk sex as automatically being rape, or where the person said yes but then didn't seem that into it but didn't say anything negative, as rape.  I can't think of any way to bring that to some kind of statistical analysis, since it is about attitudes not convictions or legal accusations, all I can say is I am finding it more common to hear people talk that way (or write that way), to question their own experiences that way, to advocate for that kind of approach.

 

 

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Oh my goodness. The rates of false claims are about 2%, comparable with other kinds of crime.

The rates of actual rape are much higher than 2%, and under reported.

 

It is a nasty red herring to continue the narrative.

 

Talking about false claims of unreported rapes seems a little - impossible. Maybe even a red herring.  It also doesn't speak all that directly to claims, or just beliefs, that are completely in good faith but don't in fact count as rape or assault. 

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News flash for the a-hole father! Don't do something that causes irreparable harm to another person. No one gives a @$ how little time the act took but they sure as hell care what the act was! This is not a far cry from a defense of, "It only took 45 seconds to kill the little lady, so sad that he has to be punished for 45 seconds out of 45 years!" God help us if that kind of insane reasoning became an acceptable plea for mercy for any violent crime.

 

Though it would cause me profound pain if one of my children had to serve a long prison term, I would rather that than have him or her on the outside finding new victims.

 

Kind of makes you wonder what kind of a lowlife the dad is....what skeletons he has in the closet.

 

Makes me wonder about the judge too.

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I would personally draw the line between "rape" and "attempted rape" by penetration rather than completion of the act. Once he has violated the sanctity of her body, he's a rapist regardless of whether or not he gets the chance to finish the rape.

WARNING. FRANK DESCRIPTION BELOW (hopefully the young and/or sensitive to this have already gone elsewhere).

I am not sure what you mean. In California, as I understand it, rape is based on sexual intercouse. Any penetration, even slight, with his penis would be rape. When I said 'complete the act" I meant any penetration with his penis. No ejaculation necessary.

 

I assume the rape charge was dropped because the defendant was apprehended in the act, tackled and restrained, and there was no evidence his penis was ever involved. There was no physical evidence of penal contact (no semen) and he had his pants all zipped up, and no witnesses saw otherwise (victim can't remember).

 

But he admitted to penetration with his finger, and under California law that is apparently charged as assault via penetration with a foreign object. Attempted rape, but not completed, because he never got the chance to penetrate with his penis.

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Jumping off from your post, but not all these thoughts are directed at you.

 

Those are the highly publicized cases.  Those are the cases used to instigate whole threads around the internet on rape culture.   Read through the Rolling Stone thread here knowing the whole story was entirely made up.  Not a whit of it was true.  And many people will say it doesn't matter if it was true or not, the issue needs to be addressed.  Right? When they are found to be hoaxes, the accusation still stands, and no one reevaluates their opinions on the college or rape culture, or really what happened at all.  What sticks is "gang rape happened at college and no one cared".  Meanwhile, the Greek system is shut down, the man is shunned and put through hell, and no one can say anything because if the woman is questioned, it is considered a reason why women don't report rapes and even questioning her story is considered contributing to rape culture.  Then there is so much skepticism when there actually is a real problem.

 

I could give more anecdotes from people I knew and cases that happened around me when I was a young adult, but I doubt anecdotes are worth much.  I'll just say that I've seen enough to think that trying a case in a campus kangaroo court based on the "preponderance of the evidence" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt", where there are no legal consequences but someone can be kicked out of school and branded a rapist with little more than an accusation -- THAT system is very, very damaging for all involved.

 

If someone is raped, even at a university, they need to go to the police and avail themselves of the legal system.  The case needs to be tried, and consequences should be based on a guilty verdict.  Yes, that is true even though the guy from the OP got away with a slap on the wrist.  There is much more credibility to the publicity when he's actually found guilty.  This judge can be voted out of office.  An appeal can be made.  But kicking someone out of school or having them publicly shunned or taking away their scholarships based on an accusation or an "honor council" adjudicating the case is just a nonsensical way to handle these things.

 

I also think affirmative consent is a very silly, silly idea that is almost hilariously puritanical, and very unrealistic given what hookup culture actually is.  The whole point is going out and getting drunk and having sex anonymously with inhibitions loosened up by alcohol or drugs.  The whole point is being inebriated so that one can do things they would otherwise not do sober.  Does this mean they should be raped?  Absolutely not!  It does facilitate a sort of culture, though, where boundaries are much less clear, especially after the fact when neither party really remembers what happened and one or both people feel ashamed about some aspect of their night.  The fact that people want to ignore that this culture actually exists and they want a woman to be believed without question whenever she accuses a man of rape creates a problematic situation where a man is automatically a rapist if the woman says he is.  And, even if he isn't, being an accused rapist is not much better.

 

The funny thing is that I detest college hook up culture.  I think it's morally repugnant and dangerous for many reasons.  Rape being one of them.  Alcohol poisoning being another.  STDs being another.  And on and on, etc, etc.  I can't imagine wanting to be a part of it at all, female or male.  It is a gross idea to me to go to parties and drink to excess with the hopes of feeling buzzed enough to then engage in casual sex.  But, we want it both ways.  We want to say that kids should be free to do this stuff and have this college "experience" because it's all just fun and a biological urge and everyone just wants to do what feels good... and then we also want to say that sex has the potential to be so devastating that verbal consent must be obtained at every stage of an encounter, no matter how inebriated the parties involved are, and if among all this partying and intoxication that doesn't happen then one person is responsible for violating something sacred.  It is so backwards to me it's actually mind boggling.  I do agree that this culture is a rape culture.  The problem is people don't want to change the culture.  College kids certainly don't.

 

Men should not rape women.  To be honest, though, with the current hookup culture and the definition of rape being something done while intoxicated without explicit verbal consent, I don't see how it's avoidable.  Something has to change.

 

 

Who is "we" in this paragraph? Clearly you aren't including yourself..... so I'm not sure who you are outraged with.

I only remember affirmative consent as being a widely mocked program at Oberlin College, like, 20 years ago.  It may have occurred on some other campus since hten but from an outsiders perspective (not in college, but pop culture savvy), I am completely unaware of it.

 

Yes - this is to me the big contradiction - hook up culture is simply not compatible with the kind of affirmative - consent, very low tolerance for the ability to consent while drunk, model.  And yet it is understood as important to sexual freedom in general, and a woman's sexual freedom to have sex in the same way men do, to allow for this kind of sexual culture to exist.  

 

Now - it is also true that most of these incidents don't result in convictions, because as it is they can't - they don't in many cases meet the standard and even if they do, there are no good witnesses, including the two people involved.

 

But that doesn't mean they don't affect perception, in many ways.  The standard being demanded more and more by activists is not only affirmative consent, but enthusiastic affirmative consent.  This is not a few fringe people.  My observation is that many people are being influenced by that idea - that they are interpreting people having drunk sex as automatically being rape, or where the person said yes but then didn't seem that into it but didn't say anything negative, as rape.  I can't think of any way to bring that to some kind of statistical analysis, since it is about attitudes not convictions or legal accusations, all I can say is I am finding it more common to hear people talk that way (or write that way), to question their own experiences that way, to advocate for that kind of approach.

 

?? Yes, it's fringe, not mainstream to think "the standard" for sex being OK is enthusiastic affirmative consent. Sounds like an SNL skit.

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What I was saying was that someone being accused of and convicted of rape, in the former situation, is unlikely, not that it doesn't happen. 

 

I think "judgement significantly impaired" is not the same thing as "can't tell if a woman is a willing participant, or even conscious during sex". I've been around plenty of drunk men. Friends, friends of my husband, etc. A few were actually alcoholics. One is serving jail time for actions committed while drunk. NONE ever made me feel unsafe, none ever did anything to the women they were partying with that could be construed as rape. In my experience (and I do know that anecdote doesn't equal evidence), good guys are still good guys when drunk. And guys that rape drunk women are usually not drunk, and had a plan going into the evening that included getting a woman drunk or drugged and having sex with her. 

 

Generally speaking, men don't accidentally rape women. 

 

Are there false reports? Yes, but as far as we know it is not more than any other crime. Funny though, when someone reports a mugging most people assume they are telling the truth. No one starts talking about all the false mugging reports. But with rape, that always seems to come up. 

 

Crazy people will do weird things, for attention or whatever messed up reason. But those are the outliers, and we probably can't fine tune the laws well enough to eliminate those people at the outset, that is what the criminal process is for. The laws need to be based on the majority of cases. 

 

I will agree that these matters should always be handled by the real police, not campus honor courts.

 

Ok, but I think what people are suggesting is that ideas like affirmative consent are really starting to change the way individuals are thinking about rape - even when the courts have not gone in that direction.  This is significant, for a few reasons - there are activists who would like these ideas to become the legal standard for rape, they can at times affect how people are understanding accusations of rape and how they deal with those situations outside of legal scenarios, and also that they affect how people feel about situations they themselves have experienced.

 

Keep in mind that the idea of needing explicit, affirmative consent is now being modified by many activists to explicit, affirmative, enthusiastic consent. 

 

I can kind of see from your posts I think that you are making what I think is a questionable assumption - that someone who learns this kind of definition of rape will understand implicitly when it doesn't apply.  So - if I agree to have sex with my boyfriend but feel pressured a little or like it would be a pain to refuse, and so I say ok but am not a very active participant - well, I would not call that rape.  That seems like common sense, but I'm not so sure that is true - I've seen a number of fairly mainstream discussions where many participants would say that clearly is rape - if not legally, morally, and the legal situation in their mind ought to recognize that.

 

The list of things that lawyers are complaining about campus situations - some are not just things like being incompetent at doing it, there are also issues around the basic definitions of sexual assaults on some campuses.  (One particularly odd one that comes to mind, maybe in California, said that in instances where two drunk people had sex, even if both were willing, the one who suggested it was guilty of rape.)  Well, if it wasn't really rape, would the other person bring charges?  It seems logical to say, of course not, but I am less and less sure that is true.

 

Or another way to put it might be, if people can be conditions by their experience and culture in such a way that they don't recognize assault when it happens, why could it not also happen the other way?

 

I don't think false accusations are really even part of the discussion - people who do that are unusual and criminal.  What is more significant are people who feel they have been assaulted or violated, whether they have made an accusation or not.  I think that is really common, and it does not necessarily mean only men who set out to be predators are involved.

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Who is "we" in this paragraph? Clearly you aren't including yourself..... so I'm not sure who you are outraged with.

I only remember affirmative consent as being a widely mocked program at Oberlin College, like, 20 years ago.  It may have occurred on some other campus since hten but from an outsiders perspective (not in college, but pop culture savvy), I am completely unaware of it.

 

 

?? Yes, it's fringe, not mainstream to think "the standard" for sex being OK is enthusiastic affirmative consent. Sounds like an SNL skit.

 

Over 1000 universities in the US use affirmative consent as a standard.

 

I agree that it sounds like a SNL skit, but I haven't found that means that an idea won't be popular or have a serious audience.

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Over 1000 universities in the US use affirmative consent as a standard.

 

I agree that it sounds like a SNL skit, but I haven't found that means that an idea won't be popular or have a serious audience.

 

Not going to get upset that universities are teaching students to make sure their partner wants sex before they proceed. Worse things are going on in the world. By far. This standard doesn't just protect women,it protects men from this hazy no mans land other posters are talking about. 

 

another poster (I think) talked about hook up culture being okay in people's minds, but then the idea of affirmative consent going against that. I'm not sure who these people are that are for affirmative consent, but also for getting drunk in order to have sex. I can't think of any. I'm for affirmative consent. I am against the hook up culture. 

 

And affirmative consent doesn't have to be weird. It can be "are you sure?" whispered softly. It can be crass if you want it to be "I want to take you home and bang the hell out of you!" Whatever. Again, in the real world, this doesn't apply to husbands and wives, where I think we are safe to say that although no means no, there can be consent without it being spelled out. 

 

I think anyone thinking too hard about that probably is being distracted from the much greater issues facing men and women on campus. 

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Who is "we" in this paragraph? Clearly you aren't including yourself..... so I'm not sure who you are outraged with.

I only remember affirmative consent as being a widely mocked program at Oberlin College, like, 20 years ago. It may have occurred on some other campus since hten but from an outsiders perspective (not in college, but pop culture savvy), I am completely unaware of it.

 

 

?? Yes, it's fringe, not mainstream to think "the standard" for sex being OK is enthusiastic affirmative consent. Sounds like an SNL skit.

We was the royal we, as in society. I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority as far as my opinions on hook up culture. I'm pretty sure must most people see it as a rite of passage.

 

It's funny you mention SNL; I saw some type of psa where the guy was asking "is this ok?" over and over with each "step" and I thought it was a parody (it was not, I don't think). It's like, yes get drunk and stoned out of your gourd with a bunch of horny 21yo's, but you all better become mentally clear and alert and Victorian about things if you start making out with someone and of course ask ask before you try second base. Really? There's no incongruity there?

 

Enthusiastic consent only makes me think of When Harry Met Sally.

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Not going to get upset that universities are teaching students to make sure their partner wants sex before they proceed. Worse things are going on in the world. By far. This standard doesn't just protect women,it protects men from this hazy no mans land other posters are talking about.

It's not just teaching it, it's using it as a standard for disciplinary action, along with a preponderance of the evidence standard rather than guilt beyond a reasonable doubt standard.

 

ETA: as far as I know, a mugger is assumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in court. So, the victim, while taken seriously, still has to prove his case legally and is not just automatically believed. People may not bring up false mugging cases, but in general an investigation is still conducted and a victim is not automatically taken at their word.

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Oh please. Where are all these poor boys in prison because they didn't explicitly ask between each thrust?

 

It's difficult enough to get an actual violent rapist into prison.

 

And do you know what, if men are so worried about this - good! Women have been constantly told to modify their behavior 'for our own protection', I have no problem with men trying it for once.

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How would you know that the former type of incident is rare, and the latter common? I think the former type of incident is really common, but most of the time people don't do anything about it - and really, what would they do? It may well not be any kind of legal assault, and the people involved may not have been sober enough to remember things clearly anyway. So no statistics would even be available on those kinds of numbers.

 

I really disagree with the idea that men that drunk are incapable of performing. I think it's common to get to a point are to a point where judgement is significantly impaired and still able to function sexually. (And even find a private or semi-private place though goodness knows some people don't bother.)

Especially young men. Young men can perform well beyond when older men and women wouldn't. Dh jokes that ask any man and he'll tell you that when he was younger being erect required being consciousness and sometimes not even that if they were having a good dream.

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And affirmative consent doesn't have to be weird. It can be "are you sure?" whispered softly. It can be crass if you want it to be "I want to take you home and bang the hell out of you!" Whatever.

Even in your example, it's a difficult standard to apply when both parties are drunk and someone remembers something differently than the other person. Even sober, it can be difficult to prove that at the moment of the act there was consent, since it can be revoked at any time. Something whispered, a nod...at any time someone can change their mind. This is a good idea and women should be able to do so, but how it plays out practically can be complicated.

 

I don't think most cases are honestly as cut and dry as a sociopath with an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. My observations make me think it's often a lot less predatory than that and a lot more blurry. And I have to think that the people who argue that there's no way these things can be blurry just haven't been around a situation where they have seen a woman make out with a guy (both drunk), seen a woman follow him to his room, where they have tried as a friend to gently redirect her (to no avail), and then had a discussion the next day with how her and heard how she wouldn't have done that if they had been sober. And with affirmative consent as the standard, she was raped. And the guy had no clue she was not interested, and, I'm sorry, but neither of them was in a state of mind to be asking "is this ok?" over and over again. I saw this scenario play itself out with small variations over and over again as a young adult. It was shocking to me how common it was. It still makes me feel icky when I think about it, and I think I saw a very mild version of things since none of my peers were doing drugs at all. And it is baffling to me to think you could even attempt to apply affirmative consent or preponderance of the evidence standards in those situations. But these hookups are what hookup culture *is*. It's often what people go to party schools *for*. I do not get it, but it is so, so common.

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What I was saying was that someone being accused of and convicted of rape, in the former situation, is unlikely, not that it doesn't happen.

 

I think "judgement significantly impaired" is not the same thing as "can't tell if a woman is a willing participant, or even conscious during sex". I've been around plenty of drunk men. Friends, friends of my husband, etc. A few were actually alcoholics. One is serving jail time for actions committed while drunk. NONE ever made me feel unsafe, none ever did anything to the women they were partying with that could be construed as rape. In my experience (and I do know that anecdote doesn't equal evidence), good guys are still good guys when drunk. And guys that rape drunk women are usually not drunk, and had a plan going into the evening that included getting a woman drunk or drugged and having sex with her.

 

Generally speaking, men don't accidentally rape women.

 

Are there false reports? Yes, but as far as we know it is not more than any other crime. Funny though, when someone reports a mugging most people assume they are telling the truth. No one starts talking about all the false mugging reports. But with rape, that always seems to come up.

 

Crazy people will do weird things, for attention or whatever messed up reason. But those are the outliers, and we probably can't fine tune the laws well enough to eliminate those people at the outset, that is what the criminal process is for. The laws need to be based on the majority of cases.

 

I will agree that these matters should always be handled by the real police, not campus honor courts.

I agree it's always a police matter.

 

I agree that with rare exception, so rare I can't really think of one, no one is raped accidently.

 

I disagree that when someone reports any other crime people assume they are telling the truth. I for sure do not. People lie. Sometimes their lies are horrific and appalling. The fact that it's a horrific and appalling thing to do is often not enough to stop people from doing it, whether it be a lie or an actual act.

 

I presume I don't know the facts.

 

If my own daughter came to me, I would presume I knew more of the facts than reading about a case online.

 

If we are to uphold our laws and use our courts, as you suggest and I agree, then we should presume the defendant is innocent unless and until the prosecution proves otherwise.

 

In this case, the court convicted, so I presume they felt the prosecution was able to prove it.

 

But then there are so many cases of cluster messes as illustrated in that docudrama How to Make a Murderer (which I am confident doesn't show us all the facts either) and I seriously wonder why any of us put any trust whatsoever in our justice system.

 

And rape is difficult to prove in most cases because the truth is, most of the time it does come down to he said vs she said. I am with you that I *want* to trust that no person would say it unless it was true, but we can't send people to prison/ruin their lives/away their freedoms just because someone said they did something. We don't allow that, or shouldn't, for any crime either.

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JodieSue, how many of those women later claimed they were raped? Any of them? How many wanted to go through a trial? Deal with the social consequences of being a rape victim? Etc etc. You can say that people are trying to call that rape, but again, people are not actually, on the whole, reporting this as rape. 

 

As for preponderance of the evidence thing, that is a whole separate issue. 

 

Finally, I know what hook up culture is. I think it is dumb, a bad idea, and demeaning to both men and women. I think it does nothing good. 

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To be clear, I hope my sons wait until their wedding night and even if that doesn't happen, that they aren't foolish enough to get drunk and sleep with random drunk women. It is a dangerous game and he could ruin someone's life (to say nothing of their own). I pray desperately that we're raising them to find the hookup culture distasteful and undesirable and that they grow to believe they should not ever take what is not theirs.

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JodieSue, how many of those women later claimed they were raped? Any of them? How many wanted to go through a trial? Deal with the social consequences of being a rape victim? Etc etc. You can say that people are trying to call that rape, but again, people are not actually, on the whole, reporting this as rape.

 

As for preponderance of the evidence thing, that is a whole separate issue.

 

Finally, I know what hook up culture is. I think it is dumb, a bad idea, and demeaning to both men and women. I think it does nothing good.

I think zero of them pursued a legal claim (socially, in two cases I can remember they made it widely known they were drunk and wouldn't have been with him otherwise, I'm not sure if that's what you were asking though). There isn't one to be had without an affirmative consent/preponderance standard in those cases. This was not on a college campus. There was no honor council or office of gender based issues or anything like that. They would have had to prove that they were raped beyond a reasonable doubt. I'm pretty sure none of them would have been able to do that, even if they had been raped after willingly going into a bedroom with a guy. And that, to me, is the real tragedy of hook up culture. If something really bad happened behind those doors, no one would know. The drunk people don't remember, and party goers just witness a pretty standard hookup. I mean in the OP article, thank God someone saw it happening! Otherwise it's just two people dancing, making out and then disappearing from a party...which is pretty dang standard for a party like that. And she blackouts and doesn't remember...and nothing happens to him at all. It turns my stomach to think it was just random bicyclists that stopped this because drinking to excess and disappearing from a frat party with a random guy isn't anything for anyone to notice!

 

I'm glad(?) you don't like hook up culture, however, I don't think, short of society and young people in particular radically changing their ideas about drinking and sex, it will not be going away anytime in the near future.

Edited by JodiSue
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Isn't it odd that we are so quick to find fault in a woman's story, and so quick to assume good intentions of these poor confused men.

Who are you talking to? It would help if you would quote the bit you're wanting to discuss.

 

Otherwise, isn't innocent until proven guilty pretty much standard? I hope?

 

But for the record, I don't assume someone who is getting drunk with the intention of having sex with other drunk people has good intentions. Far from it.

Edited by JodiSue
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Who are you talking to? It would help if you would quote the bit you're wanting to discuss.

 

Otherwise, isn't innocent until proven guilty pretty much standard? I hope?

In the eyes of the law, yes. As compassionate lay people, I don't think that interrogating victims is my place. I prefer to err on the side of support, especially when the statistics are on this side.

 

Eta- I was speaking to the general tone of the thread and can't multiquote on my phone.

Edited by LMD
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In the eyes of the law, yes. As compassionate lay people, I don't think that interrogating victims is my place. I prefer to err on the side of support, especially when the statistics are on this side.

 

Eta- I was speaking to the general tone of the thread and can't multiquote on my phone.

I guess I would leave the interrogation up to the professionals as well.

 

I'm usually highly skeptical of media in general, especially after the RS piece and the Columbia case. And learning about how shoddily colleges are handling these things with their own courts (!!) and standards. And learning what the 1 in 5 statistic actually represented.

 

My big beef is that we have to stop trying to treat sex as just something fun and casual and not indicative of any serious commitment or relationship, while simultaneously trying to instill these values into our young people that it is a horrible, huge deal to do it when you're impaired or unable to make good, solid, mentally clear decisions. There are thousands of kids going to parties every weekend, drinking, and hooking up. I would bet dollars to donuts affirmative consent is rarely invoked. And I have huge doubts that it is a standard that can be fairly or usefully or practically applied in that culture.

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I really don't understand college hookup culture. I hooked up plenty of times when I was in the Navy, but I was sober when I had sex all but one of those times, and that one time I planned it (and gave consent to the guy I picked for that particular adventure when I was still sober) entirely because I had never had sex while drunk and wanted to know what it was like. My conclusion was that it was not as much fun as while sober, which led me to conclude that people who only hook up and have sex when they are drinking are really missing the boat on that one.

 

I think it's bollocks that girls are sent the message that it's only okay to cut loose and enjoy casual sex if they have social lubricant like alcohol lower their inhibitions first. Getting drunk for it's own sake now and again is it's own activity, imo. If you wouldn't do it while drunk, you need to make sure you drink with people who will make sure you don't do anything you wouldn't do sober. Whether that's hook up with someone you'll regret, or rape someone, or whatever dubious activities may lie on the spectrum in between the two.

 

But then, the only thing I've ever done drunk that I wouldn't do sober was sing karaoke in front of people.

 

With that as my frame of reference, my advice to my DD will be to 1. not have sex while drunk because it's not as much fun, and 2. don't get drunk with people you don't trust to look after you when you are vulnerable. That includes, if necessary, taking your keys and sitting on you to prevent you from doing something you didn't plan or intend to do going in.

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Has everyone seen the rapist father's response.    "20 minutes of action"  that's how he describes his son raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster.

 

Awww, all he did was rape an unconscious woman for 20 minutes, and now he can't even enjoy a juicy ribeye steak anymore — so tragic!  The fact that someone could not only write that letter with a straight face, but be completely oblivious to how incredibly tasteless and offensive it is, boggles the mind.

 

Sadly, there seem to be quite a few of Brock Turner's friends and supporters posting on various forums and news sites defending him. They insist it was consensual, Brock simply didn't notice she'd passed out, and now she's totally ruined his life because she changed her mind later. One guy claimed that if the police and doctors hadn't made such a big deal out of it, she probably would have just woken up the next morning and figured she'd had a typical Saturday night hook up. She's an "older woman" (3 yrs older than Brock) who's not even a Stanford student and therefore was obviously at the party to get laid, and she took advantage of a hot young freshman athlete. The person scumbag who runs the Brock Turner for 2016 Olympics FB page called her a "drunken skank" and said that women like her target good-looking successful guys like Brock, and she was just looking for her 15 minutes of fame.

 

Yeah, those people really exist.  :banghead:

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Rape is a crime; drinking alcohol is not

https://socialistworker.org/blog/critical-reading/2013/03/16/rape-crime-drinking-alcohol-is

 

"Alcohol is the new “short skirt.†A poll done in 2005 by Amnesty International/ICM found that 30% of respondents believed that the victim was “partially†or “totally†responsible if she was drunk.

 

The “hookup†culture of young people is where the newest rape myth, “gray rape,†is most insidious. Gray rape promotes the idea that it is hard to identify what constitutes consent or non-consent and that many situations described as rape, especially when alcohol is added to the mix, are confusing or simply unknowable. Legally, a person who is drunk cannot consent to sex and having sex without consent is rape. But alcohol consumption doesn't completely diminish the ability to consent to or decline sex. It is only in situations where the person is unconscious (blacked out) that consent isn’t possible.

 

Alcohol-facilitated rape isn’t an accident. And the gray rape ideas that are currently popular, that assert rape is the result of miscommunication, confusion or intoxication, are not only wrong, they let the rapist off the hook and blame the victim once again.

 

Dr. Abbey explained the sexist double-standard of drinking:

 

“Women who were drunk when raped are often viewed by others as partially responsible for what happened. Interviews with a group of college students showed that the male attacker was held less responsible for the rape when he was intoxicated than he was when he was reported as being sober. In contrast, the female victim was held more responsible when she was intoxicated than when she was reported as being sober. Thus, in terms of how others will perceive their behavior, the costs of intoxication are higher for college women than for college men.â€

 

Alcohol-facilitated rape doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Sex crimes occur in a society where women are unequal to men in every arena of life and in a culture that degrades and commodifies women’s bodies and sexuality."

These are genuine questions, not snark:

 

 

Can a woman choose to have sex if she is drunk? Can she legally consent if she is impaired? Can a man choose to have sex if he is drunk? Can he legally consent if he is impaired?

 

I completely disagree that alcohol is the new short skirt. If someone forces themselves on someone else against that person's will it is rape, no matter how drunk either of them are. Maybe people will say it's not a good idea to get blackout drunk (as it rarely is), but I've seen no one here excusing rape because of that or saying a woman is at fault for it if she is drunk. The dichotomy comes when someone says, "it's not a good idea to get blackout drunk" and that is somehow interpreted as, "you deserve whatever happens to you if you get blackout drunk". The two statements could not be more different.

 

It is interesting to me that I also have observed that men seemed more likely to laugh off a drunken hook up with someone they viewed in hindsight as not someone they should have slept with. They get ribbed about it by their friends, but it's viewed in reddit terms as "dm;hs" (didn't matter; had sex). Whereas women seem more ashamed of it. They don't take the same attitude about sex for the sake of it as men do, they generally take it more personally as shame if they felt like they shouldn't have hooked up with the person they slept with, even if their academic stance about it would be more liberal and empowered; that women should be more cavalier about who they sleep with in order to have equal status with men.

 

What is unclear to me is if intoxication should always prevent someone from giving consent, enthusiastic or otherwise. Should it be akin to a minor signing a contract? As in, even if they sign (or say yes), it doesn't hold up legally.

 

Again, this is with the idea in mind that at college campuses across the country, kids are getting drunk and sleeping together. Is all of that sex happening without consent?

 

I do think the one correct idea expressed in that article is that alcohol facilitated rape does not occur in a vacuum. We've created a huge petri dish for it at colleges all over the country.

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These are genuine questions, not snark:

 

 

Can a woman choose to have sex if she is drunk? Can she legally consent if she is impaired? Can a man choose to have sex if he is drunk? Can he legally consent if he is impaired?

 

I completely disagree that alcohol is the new short skirt. If someone forces themselves on someone else against that person's will it is rape, no matter how drunk either of them are. Maybe people will say it's not a good idea to get blackout drunk (as it rarely is), but I've seen no one here excusing rape because of that or saying a woman is at fault for it if she is drunk. The dichotomy comes when someone says, "it's not a good idea to get blackout drunk" and that is somehow interpreted as, "you deserve whatever happens to you if you get blackout drunk". The two statements could not be more different.

 

It is interesting to me that I also have observed that men seemed more likely to laugh off a drunken hook up with someone they viewed in hindsight as not someone they should have slept with. They get ribbed about it by their friends, but it's viewed in reddit terms as "dm;hs" (didn't matter; had sex). Whereas women seem more ashamed of it. They don't take the same attitude about sex for the sake of it as men do, they generally take it more personally as shame if they felt like they shouldn't have hooked up with the person they slept with, even if their academic stance about it would be more liberal and empowered; that women should be more cavalier about who they sleep with in order to have equal status with men.

 

What is unclear to me is if intoxication should always prevent someone from giving consent, enthusiastic or otherwise. Should it be akin to a minor signing a contract? As in, even if they sign (or say yes), it doesn't hold up legally.

 

Again, this is with the idea in mind that at college campuses across the country, kids are getting drunk and sleeping together. Is all of that sex happening without consent?

 

I do think the one correct idea expressed in that article is that alcohol facilitated rape does not occur in a vacuum. We've created a huge petri dish for it at colleges all over the country.

For the record, being drunk has long been a standard for not allowing legal consent. And not just for sex, as contracts signed while drunk are not valid.

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38% of college-aged women who have been sexually victimized while in college had first been victims prior to entering college, making past victimization the best predictor of future victimization (6)

 

This is interesting.  I wonder why this would be.

 

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It's also because we are sick of the disingenuous excuses from rapists who apparently can't tell when a woman doesn't want to have sex with them. Fine, act dumb and this is the response you get. We'll make it crystal clear so the poor things don't get too confused. And so we have some tiny amount of recourse to object when we are raped again.

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Incidentally, I read today that a man is more likely to be raped/sexually assaulted himself (3%) than be falsely accused of raping someone (2%).

 

Maybe, just maybe, regretful hussies aren't the big issue here...

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If a guy is that worried that he might end up being accused of rape, the solution is EASY. Don't have sex when either of you are drunk. Don't drive drunk, don't take your finals drunk, don't show up to work drunk, and don't have sex drunk. There, now you don't have to worry anymore. 

 

Women are told to be responsible in order to minimize the chances of being raped. Well, guys can be responsible and do what they have to do to minimize the chances of being accused of rape.

 

I just can't feel sorry about telling a guy not to have drunk sex with a person he doesn't know well. Life's rough. 

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